Then she said, “I don’t think ‘glad’ is the right word. Of course it’s good that he was caught and that he’s going to get a dose of civilian justice on top of what Angela and Connor already did to him, but…that won’t bring back Roslyn or Maya. It won’t fix what’s wrong with Danica.”
Oh, hell. He’d been hoping in the back of his mind, between trying to adjust to a new clan dynamic with his mother at its head, and attempting to focus on work and not the ever-increasing need to see Caitlin while the world conspired to keep them apart, that her friend might be improving. “She’s still having trouble?”
“Yeah.” A little gust of a breath, as if Caitlin had let out a sigh she couldn’t quite keep in. “I mean, it’s not like she’s in a trance anymore, but she still seems pretty out of it, and I guess she’s been having a lot of nightmares, too. She had to withdraw from school, and her parents just came by yesterday to get the rest of her stuff. They’re thinking about sending her to a therapist, although they’re not sure because no one in either of our clans is a psychologist or anything, and it could get weird if she has to go see a civilian.”
“Weird” was putting it mildly, Alex knew. There were certain things that had happened to Danica that weren’t exactly proper for a civilian to know, and it was even more awful that apparently her ordeal hadn’t ended when she’d been rescued.
But because he knew talking about it was painful, he didn’t press for any details, instead asking, “So you’re living in the apartment alone now?” Alex didn’t think he liked the sound of that, although he knew Caitlin should be perfectly safe in Flagstaff. Her cousin Adam was living there with his wife Mason, after all, and it wasn’t as if the Wilcoxes and the McAllisters were feuding anymore.
“For now.” Another one of those little pauses. “That is, my lease is up at the end of June, so I’ll have to decide by then what I want to do. But luckily, the money from my book sales is picking up, since I just published the final book in my trilogy, and that should bridge the gap. It’ll be okay.”
This girl never ceased to amaze him. She’d lost her friend, been through an ordeal of her own, and yet seemed to have dusted herself off and gotten back to her writing despite everything. “That’s great news,” he said. “Kind of surprising, but — ”
“Not really,” she cut in. “I was really close to being done anyway. It seemed like the best thing I could do was focus on the writing…and my classes, obviously. It wouldn’t have been honoring Roslyn to quit any of it. Besides, no way was I going to give Matías that sort of power over me.”
When she put it that way, Alex could understand how she felt. Letting that warlock interfere with her life any more than he already had would only be allowing him to continue to disrupt her plans and goals and dreams, and clearly Caitlin was a lot tougher than that. He also realized then that, however much he missed her, he couldn’t interfere. She needed to finish out the semester, if nothing else.
Afterward…well, he had a few ideas about that.
* * *
She tried to tell herself that it was all okay, that this separation from Alex didn’t get more and more painful as spring wore on toward summer. True, he had come up to visit as often as he could, and in the beginning, Caitlin had had the selfish thought that she was almost glad she was living by herself now, since at least it meant she wouldn’t have to hide their nighttime activities from anyone else. Yes, it was awkward squeezing in with him in her full-size bed, but still so much better than sleeping alone. But then he’d have to go away again, to attend to his own responsibilities, and she was left telling herself it was okay, that she’d see him again in a couple of weeks. It was never enough, but it was better than nothing.
Even more promising, Alex told her in mid-May that he’d submitted his resume to a local station in Tucson, and they were very interested in talking to him about an assistant marketing position. Caitlin had been thrilled for him, although he’d only shrugged and said, “Well, it’s not a job offer. And even if I do get an offer, I still have to deal with my parents and the store.”
Oh, right, that. “I find it hard to believe that there’s no one else who can manage it,” she protested.
A shrug. “Manuela could probably do a great job. The real question is whether my parents will let her. She’s not a Trujillo son.”
Since Caitlin had grown up in a tight-knit clan herself and knew all too well the weight of tradition and expectations, she didn’t force the argument any further than that. She could only hope that Alex’s father would come to realize that his younger son’s happiness was a lot more important than whether a Trujillo was in charge of things at the family mercado.