Page 69 of Harbor

For now.

Diego instantly took off to explore, but Lucia turned to face Renzo with that smile playing at the edges of her lips again. He didn’t give her the chance to say anything before he kissed her.

Hard, and fast, and long.

Home was where the heart was, right?

That’s how the saying went.

As long as he was with Lucia, Renzo figured he was always home.

THIRTEEN

A lot could change in five days.

Lucia wasn’t really surprised that she felt that way, but sometimes, a reminder was always good. Peace, calm, and the mundane rituals of life day after day could lull someone into a sense of happiness that little else could provide. Or maybe it was the fact that Renzo seemed slightly calmer after a few days of being settled in San Francisco that allowed Lucia to feel like she too could stop looking over her shoulder every second of the day.

God knew Diego liked it here.

Lucia’s gaze drifted between the burner phone in her hands, and then to the sight twenty feet away from her in the park. A couple days after moving into their new apartment, Renzo came back from work saying someone had mentioned a park for Diego to play. It wasn’t far from their place—maybe a block of walking, nothing much. But the place was full of different kinds of playground equipment that any kid would love. Slides, swings, jungle gyms, and more. Everything that would get the kid running, and climbing. Burning off all that energy he constantly seemed to have.

Renzo made it his first priority to take Diego to the park every day after work, now. Lucia tried to take him during the day, too, if the weather was good and she didn’t have other things to take care of first. Which, frankly, she didn’t have very much to do except keep the apartment clean and stay busy while she waited for Renzo to come up from downstairs. Keeping busy was a hell of a lot easier than doing nothing for hours at a time, so she often made things for herself to do to pass the time.

The good thing about his job, too, was the fact sometimes, he wasn’t needed all the time. He didn’t have a set number of hours, really. It was whenever Todd called on him to go downstairs and help with something, or run across the city to grab whatever was needed. In a way, Lucia figured that helped Diego a lot, too. He constantly asked about his brother—he stayed by the small window far too often, looking out and searching for Renzo, wondering when, or if, he was coming back.

That broke Lucia’s heart.

For more reasons than she cared to admit.

Sometimes, getting the boy out to the park was literally the only thing that would drag him away from the window, and get his mind focused on something else other than looking for Renzo. So yeah, even if the skies did look a little dreary in the mornings when Renzo headed out for work, she still got Diego away from the window, made him get dressed, and took him down the block to the park.

Today, Renzo had joined them for that morning run to the park. He didn’t have to go into work until later in the afternoon, for whatever reason. She didn’t ask what he was going to be doing for Todd later. Why should she when she was simply happy that he was there with them while he could be?

God knew Diego was happy about that, too.

Diego’s squeals of joy carried over the park as Renzo chased his brother from one side of the park to the other. Renzo darted up a metal slide on one side of the playground equipment, while Diego took the winding metal stairs in an attempt to escape his brother. Not that it worked. Renzo still caught Diego in the middle of the equipment, picked him up with both arms, and swung him around. Diego’s laughter picked up even more as Renzo carried him over to the tube slide, and both of them came down to the ground, smiling the whole way.

It made Lucia grin, too.

She was happy on the bench looking after their stuff. Usually, she would be the one joining Diego on the equipment, especially if there were no other children for him to play with and all. She really didn’t want to interrupt his time with Renzo, though. She knew how much he looked forward to those times with his brother.

Lucia was content to sit right where she was, and watch them enjoy themselves for now. Besides, she had other things on her mind that felt like it was weighing heavily on her shoulders.

Glancing down at the burner phone in her hands, she twisted it around and around. The black screen almost taunted her, in a way. How easy it would be for her to just … turn it on. Turn the phone on, dial a familiar number that was never far from her mind as she had memorized it when she was a child, and just … tell the truth.

Or rather, tell her father the things she hadn’t really taken the time to explain. Because if she could just gain the courage to turn the phone on and dial her father, he might listen to her if he picked up the phone. He loved her, didn’t he? Next to Renzo, she didn’t think there was another man in her life who loved her as much as her father did.

And maybe over the last little while, since they had settled in San Francisco, her father had been on her mind more than she wanted to admit. When things were quiet, and the apartment was peaceful … when she didn’t have anything else to do but think, Lucia often went back to her father.

She was still mad at him.

Just not as much.

She was still bitter.

Just not as deep.

But, above all else, she loved him. That was most present, and mostly because she knew he loved her, too. Maybe that was why her mind drifted back to her father whenever she found herself quiet, and happy. Because she was happy, and if only he understood that—if only he knew this was where she wanted to be, and that she hadn’t run off with Renzo because she was forced to, then maybe her father would leave her be.