Midnight in Montana - Chapter 6

Cass “You made your choices.” Cass brushed an invisible crumb from the knee of her jeans, unwilling to rehash ancient history for his afternoon entertainment. “I’m sure you had your reasons.” “I did, and they weren’t fair to either of us. I was too immature to make better decisions.” Emilio edged his chair around the small table so that it almost faced hers. “You remember that last night we were together out in the garden?” His gray-green eyes searched hers with an intensity that made her breath catch. Of course she remembered that night. She’d just had her seventeenth birthday, so she had a year before she could escape the system while Emilio only had six months left. The group home they were in had ten kids at the time, and a few of them had celebrated with her since the foster mom bought a cake. Emilio had only been in residence for three months, but they’d fallen fast and hard, though they’d made sure to keep their relationship a secret. “You told Mrs. Richardson that you were going out with some friends,” she recalled aloud as she helped herself to the grapes, remembering every facet of that night since she’d gone over and over it in her mind. “But I knew that was your cue for me to meet you in the garden.” The foster family had grown a lot of their own vegetables, with each of the kids tending their own rows. “In our usual spot at midnight.” “Right. We met behind the chicken coop so no one could see us from the house.” Emilio’s voice softened, as if the memory of those last shared kisses affected him too. Which was impossible since he’d turned his back on her afterward and never spoken to her again until she’d showed up at Kingsland Ranch. “That’s correct.” She refused to show him how his disappearing act had affected her. She turned her attention to filling her plate while the bees hummed in a nearby flowering bush. “And your point is what? That you should have said goodbye then?” “Hell no. My point is that Mr. Richardson wasn’t in the house that night. He went out to check on the garden since they’d been having trouble with rabbits eating the vegetables.” Emilio paused in the story, the silence stretching for a moment so that she heard the voices of the construction crew working on the main house—some laughter and raised voices over the din of power tools. “He saw us, Cass. Mr. Richardson caught us in the act of—” Cassandra gasped, a small sound escaping her lips before she covered her mouth with one hand. Because they hadn’t just been kissing. Her shirt had been half-off at one point. “No, he didn’t.” Absurdly, the first thing that came to her mind was that she had lived under the man’s roof for months afterward without him ever giving away that he’d seen any such thing. “Yes, he did.” Emilio’s jaw flexed, his posture tense at the memory. “And he was livid when I went back to the house after you that night. He confronted me in the kitchen and made it clear I would be finding a new living situation, effective immediately.” Cassandra reeled at the news. The revelation rewrote their whole history. “The Richardsons said you wanted to move to be closer to an uncle,” she murmured, setting aside her barely touched plate. “I don’t have any uncles that I’m aware of,” he reminded her. His mom had died of an overdose when Emilio was in elementary school. He’d never known his father. But Cassandra couldn’t process any of that right now. Wrapping the remains of her lunch in a napkin, she needed time to consider what it meant that Emilio had been forced out of the foster home. Because of her. Still, he hadn’t tried to find her after he’d turned eighteen, so it’s not like their grand plans for a future together meant as much to him as they had to her. “I’m not sure what to say right now.” She’d never been an impulsive person and she wouldn’t blurt the first thoughts that came to her mind now when so much of what she’d once believed was no longer true. “I’d like to go back now.”