Love Arranged (Lakefront Billionaires, #3)(81)

Rosa’s gaze swings between us. “Lorenzo and I were finishing up.” She stands and walks over to her daughter to give her a hug. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

We both watch her disappear around the corner, and from my angle, it looks like the overgrown hedge swallowed her whole.

I stand and head over to Lily, who went back to checking out the fountain. “What do you think?”

“It works.” Her voice is strained.

“Now we have to fix up the rest of it.”

A bone in her neck cracks from how quickly she turns to look at me. “What do you mean?”

“Your garden needs some love.” I rub a speck of dirt off the side of the fountain, which could use a good pressure wash.

She stays quiet.

I speak up. “Your mom told me how much you love it here.”

Her shoulders slump. “I did—I mean, I do.” She shakes her head. “It’s…complicated.”

“For the record, the vaguer your responses, the more interested I become.”

I pull her into an embrace so she has no chance of escaping this conversation.

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” she says, exasperated.

“There is a first for everything.”

She swats my chest with a laugh, and the tightness in it lessens.

“Honestly?” She looks around the garden. “I couldn’t deal with it…or myself, for that matter.”

“What do you mean?”

She eyes the bench. “Can we sit down for this conversation?”

“Of course.”

Once she takes a seat, I wrap my arm around her. “Comfortable?”

She seems to be with how she melts into me, but her quiet “Yeah” confirms it.

“So, you were saying?”

“My dad was big on two things.”

“What were they?”

“A motto that was his catchphrase: Un Mu?oz nunca se rinde. A Mu?oz never quits.”

I nod. “And the other?”

“Wishes.”

I shoot her a look. “How so?”

She flushes under my gaze. “You know. Like close your eyes, make a wish, and toss the coin into the fountain.”

“That explains the coins. I was wondering about them when I dropped off your keys.”

“It was something special I had with him. He and Dahlia had their own thing together, but this was mine. Anyway,” she says, drawing in a gulp of air. “When I was little, he gave me this small bag of gold coins. There weren’t a ton, but he told me to use them wisely.”

She pauses, takes another breath, and says, “Nearly a year ago, I was down to one.”

I’m not entirely sure where this story is going, but the way Lily hesitates to speak makes me even more curious.

“What happened with it?”

“I wasted it on the wrong guy.” She doesn’t break my stare, and I instantly know I fucked up in more ways than I imagined.

She used her wish on me, and I took that dream—that hope—and I destroyed it with my selfishness.

The thought… My stomach is in knots, winding tighter with every pained breath.

“Lily…”

She holds her hand up. “Wait. Let me get this out.”

We sit there for a few minutes, the soothing sound of water cascading filling the quiet until she speaks again.

“After I ran out, I just…I didn’t see a point. I didn’t have any coins left, and visiting this place made me…so unbearably sad, to the point where I stopped making the effort. Running out of coins felt like I lost him all over again, and I couldn’t deal. So, I let his special place rot, along with that final wish.”

I’m the one struggling to keep eye contact now because how am I supposed to accept that I’m the reason for the pain in her eyes?

“I’m so sorry.” My voice rasps. “I’m so fucking sorry. For everything.”

She stabs another hole through my heart with her next sentence. “You say that, and I do believe you’re sorry, but it doesn’t take back the hurt you caused.”

She stands up, and my arm falls to my side.

“We can’t go back and change what happened. What’s done is done, and I’d rather focus on my future.”

My future. Not ours.

An important distinction meant to separate us, but I see it as a motivating one. Because that future she wants?

It doesn’t seem so far-fetched anymore.

Her smile is sweet, and far warmer than I deserve, further adding to the acid burning in my chest.

She turns and walks away, leaving me alone. Instead of following her, I stand and walk up to the fountain, where I find twenty-plus gold coins sitting at the bottom of the basin, representing all of Lily’s hopes and dreams.

I want her to tell me about every single wish, and I want to make sure she never has another reason to stop.

And I think I have an idea of where to start.





CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT


Lorenzo


Icame into today’s family gathering knowing that it would be tense, but I had hoped that after last weekend’s Chicago trip it wouldn’t be as bad as Lily’s worst-case scenarios. She asked me to be on my best behavior, and I’ve been nothing but an upstanding gentleman this afternoon.