Page 49 of In a Perfect World

Her shoulders sagged dejectedly, and she didn’t say anything as she sat back down, then grabbed her brush to finish combing her hair, and I knew that the image was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.Triana looked lost and empty, and I knew that it was partly my fault, something that I’d gladly spend the rest of my life trying to make up for, but not like this.

Not in Mexico.

“Look, how about...how about we just eat, talk some more, then get some sleep,” I suggested.“We can figure the rest out in the morning.”

“On the drive back home,” she uttered softly, accepting the writing on the wall.

“On the drive back home,” I echoed, confirming that Mexico wasn’t going to happen.

Just then, her phone chimed, and when she looked at the screen, she said, “It’s my brother.”

I let out a sigh of relief, silently thanking Tomasco Medina for his timing.As she texted him back, I prayed that she’d see it as a sign, and that she wouldn’t hate me too much once we got back home.Yeah, I knew that we’d be experiencing a rough patch for a while, but I was okay with that.As long as she was safe, and we could still be together, I was willing to put in the work.

However, the joke was on me.

Like a fool who’d been too stupid to give Triana the credit that she deserved, when she’d said that she wasn’t ready to go to sleep, asking for some alone time, I’d given it to her out of guilt.I’d known that she hadn’t wanted me to hold her, and why would she have?She’d been betrayed, and she had deserved her privacy.

So, I’d gone to bed alone, trying to minimize the damage, but when a quick gust of wind snapped me awake, it was to see that Triana still hadn’t come to bed, and I wasn’t about to let her sit outside in the cold because she wanted to be stubborn.

Sitting up, I crawled through the flap opening, and when I didn’t see her anywhere, I could feel my heart drop.Of course, she could be off in the trees, taking care of business, but I doubted it.Something in my gut was telling me that this was more than that, and when I saw a piece of paper flapping underneath the camping lantern, I immediately raced over to grab it.

Kario-

Thank you for getting me this far.

Triana

Triana was fucking gone, and I had no one to blame but myself.

Chapter 25

Triana~

I was scared, and I wasn’t even going to pretend that I wasn’t.It was sometime past three in the morning, and I had no idea where I was.Ever since leaving the camping site, I’d been following the creek, trying to save my phone’s charge in case of an emergency.Yeah, I had a charger in my bag, but there weren’t many electrical outlets lining the forest, and there was no way that I was going to show my face on any of the main roads.At least, not until I was back on Rancher Hills land, which I wasn’t even sure how close or far I was from the border, having let Kairo lead the way the entire ride over, and didn’t I feel like a fucking fool now.

I also couldn’t lie and say that my heart wasn’t broken, but not because he hadn’t wanted to come with me.When I had first come up with the idea, I’d known that there’d be a chance that he wouldn’t want to leave his family behind, and I’d been prepared for his decision, either way.However, what I hadn’t been prepared for had been the lies.It hadn’t ever occurred to me that he’d be stringing me along, playing the part in hopes that I’d change my mind, letting him off the hook, leaving him looking like a hero.