Chapter Thirty-Two
chapter thirty-two
RAFAEL
“ Dio santo ! What have you done to the place?” Nico runs a hand through his hair. “The beautiful wallpaper! No…”
“Nico,” I clap a hand on his shoulder. “If you love the wallpaper so much, you can put it in your own bedroom at home. I’m sure the girls you bring around will think it’s very masculine.”
He swats my hand away, and I just chuckle. The more time I spend with this kid, the lighter I feel. When I first met him, I thought he was a little psycho, but his energy breathes life into everyone around him, including me. “It was time for a change.”
I was scared that once we started renovating, I would regret it, but I don’t. I feel lighter. This feels right.
I’ve been working on putting Olive I didn’t want to give myself any time to think about a certain blonde and how good she tasted on my tongue a couple of nights ago.
I told May I wouldn’t sleep with her until she asked me to, and it took all of my self-control to walk out of that closet.
I’m asking you to.
Jesus, I was aching for it even more than she was, but I won’t keep doing this to myself, or to her. I don’t want to toy with her emotions, and I don’t want her to toy with mine. Because as much as she says this is just sex for her, we both know it’s not, even if she’s not ready to admit that yet.
But until she is, we need to keep things PG.
I shake my head, ridding my mind of the thoughts and focusing on what’s in front of me. Today is about getting the walls sanded and prepped for painting next week.
While my nonna taught me to cook, my dad taught me to build when I was young, and he taught me to do everything with my own hands. Why should you pay someone else to do something you can learn to do yourself ? he used to say.
When I got Nonna's house renovated, I didn’t do one bit of it myself. Builders were coming in and out for months, but this place? I wanted to do this myself.
I look over at Nico, and he’s just staring into the empty space, grieving. “Well, are you going to help, or are you just going to stand there like a stunned dog?”
…
“Boss!”
I turn off the sander and look over at Nico beside me. His eyes are wide. I yank the mask down off my face. “What now?”
His eyes just flick sideways. I follow his gaze to see May standing in the middle of the room with two coffee cups in hand.
She gives me a small smile, and she looks like an angel. Her skin is glowing against the dust that is flying around the room. I can’t help but rake my eyes down her body.
It’s getting colder here in Ruby Cove. The sun still shines bright in the sky, but the ocean breeze carries a chill at this time of year. May is wearing a plush, cream-colored sweater paired with jeans that hug her thighs like a dream. I have to hold myself back from asking her to turn around so I can see the back.
I bring my gaze back up to her face, but she’s not looking at me. Well, not my face. Her eyes are glued to my chest. I took my shirt off hours ago, and my body is now coated in a layer of dust from the sanding.
I’ve never had to wonder if May finds me attractive. It’s obvious. She’s one of those people who shows every single thought or emotion on her face, even if she doesn’t mean to. Right now, her face is saying she wants a rematch of Friday night. I smirk as I watch her clearly ogle me.
Nico clears his throat from where he stands to my left. “I somehow feel like I’m watching something I shouldn’t be.”
May’s eyes snap back up to mine, and when I expect her to blush, she just smirks at me before turning her attention to Nico. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met.”
I clear my throat. “May, this is Nico, my…”
“Right-hand man,” he says as he shakes her hand. I frown over at him. Not exactly what I was going to say, but alright.
“Nice to meet you, Nico. Rafael’s never mentioned you before.”
He cuts me an offended glare. “Funny that. He hasn’t mentioned you either.”
She holds one of the takeaway cups out to him. “Should we get to know each other? Fill in the blanks?”
“I would lo?—”
“Nico’s a bit busy.” I snatch the coffee out of her grasp before Nico can close his fingers around it. There’s no way I’m letting him steal the coffee that Vanessa clearly made for me.
“I’m not really. I’ve mostly been watching while you snap at me to do something,” he shrugs.
“Rafael!” May places a hand over her heart. “You really should treat your staff with more respect.”I narrow my eyes at her, and she just winks back at me, making my dick twitch.
“So, what are you doing here?” I ask cautiously. I haven’t seen her since the supply closet at Marina’s, and I don’t know what it means that she’s here now.
“I came to see if you needed any…help.”
“You help in that sweater and it’ll be gray by the time you walk out of here.”
She looks down at her outfit. “Yeah…poor planning on my part.”
“How would you help, anyway?”
Her eyebrows pull together at the implication that she couldn’t do anything here. “I know my way around a nail gun.” She folds her arms over her chest.
“Oh, yeah?” She nods. “How about a sanding block?”
Her frown deepens. “That too.”
“Good. There are a few bits that need light sanding. The machine will be too rough.”
“See, I’d just love to help, but what about my top?” she asks, attempting to get out of it.
“You can wear mine.” Her eyes go from smug to surprised.
“What about me, boss?” Nico pipes up.
I walk over to him, slinging an arm over his shoulder, and begin walking him to the door. “Take the rest of the day off. You deserve it.”
“Oh, uh…are you sure?” he stutters. “I can stay, I mean?—”
“I insist. Take some rest.”
His voice turns to a whisper. “I’d really love to speak to the pretty lady a bit more?—”
I turn him to face me. “The only person that will be speaking to the pretty lady is me.” I pull the door open and all but push him through it. “See you tomorrow!” I yell behind him.
When I turn back around, May has her head on a tilt. “You didn’t need to do that,” she says.
“I don’t need him wasting time staring at you instead of working.”
She smirks. “You’ve got that covered all by yourself, don’t you? ”
I can’t read her. Can’t tell what she’s thinking, or what her intentions are of being here. Not that I’m complaining. I’ll take any time with her. I just need to keep my impulses under control.
I grab my shirt from the table where I discarded it earlier and stalk over to her. I tug on the hem of her sweater that’s tucked into her jeans and yank it off her head, leaving her in nothing but her jeans and a pretty lace bra.
What was I just saying about impulses?
“Would you rather he be here for this?” I say, my voice low as I speak into her ear.She doesn’t reply, her chest just heaves in front of me. “That’s what I thought.”
I toss her sweater on a clean table on the other side of the restaurant. “Here,” I say as I pull my shirt over her head.
“Thanks,” she mutters as she fiddles with the hem that’s fallen past her waistline.She looks adorable swimming in the shirt that’s a little small for me. “It suits you.”
She looks up at me. “Put me to work, boss.”
After five minutes of being here, May decided it was too quiet—even with the electric sander on—and that we needed some music to ‘lighten the vibe’ so now every time I turn the sander off, I’m subjected to Taylor Swift singing through the speakers of May’s phone.
I take my safety glasses off and look over to where she was previously sitting on the floor sanding the wall. Except now she’s just sitting on the floor, leaning her head on the new wall with her eyes closed.
I put my sander down and walk over to her, sliding down the wall until I’m sitting next to her.
“Hey,” she says without opening her eyes.
“Hey.”
The song that’s playing isn’t exactly lightening the vibe, unless the vibe she was going for was melancholy.
Maybe it’s the song, or maybe it’s the fact that May’s eyes are closed, but I ask the question I’ve been wanting to ask since she opened up to me the last time we were here. “What happened? ”
She leans her head on my shoulder. “When?”
“To the baby?”This is dangerous territory, asking her to let me in on another part of her life when I should be staying far away from her, but I can’t help but want to know more.
She tenses up beside me. I should say s orry, that was rude, it’s none of my business, but I don’t. I just breathe evenly and wait until her body relaxes into mine.
“It was a false positive.”
What?
“There’s something like a one percent chance that it can happen, and it happened to me.” She laughs, but it lacks any humor. “The two little lines that blew my life up weren’t even valid.”
My mind is reeling. I can only imagine the way hers would’ve been when she found out.
“After everything, I went back to the dorm and did another test. I wished for it to be negative. After everything with Owen, I prayed that it was all just one big mistake…and I got what I wished for.”
“May, I’m so sorry.”
She shrugs against me. “It’s fine. It worked out for the best in the end.”
“Did it?”
She nods. “He would’ve hurt me somehow in the long run. I guess then was a good enough time as any to break my heart and remind me exactly why I should’ve never trusted him.”
I feel like I’m overstepping, but I can’t stop. “Do you want kids?”
“I second guessed it back then. The swirl of emotions that I had that night was like some sick rollercoaster. I was so confused, from Owen ending things and thinking I’d have to do it all alone, to not having to do it at all. It felt like I’d lost everything in a second.”
I reach over and intertwine my dusty fingers with hers. “And now? ”
She hesitates, and I squeeze my fingers around hers in encouragement. “I’m not sure. I’d need to trust someone enough to believe that I wouldn’t go through that again. That I wouldn’t end up just like my mom.” She snorts. “I’d need to be in a relationship first, but I honestly don’t know if I’m capable of that.”
“I hope one day you can. You’d be an amazing mother.”
She looks up at me. “You think so?”
I notice the tear leaking down her cheek. “Any kid would be lucky to have a mom who can kick some serious ass when necessary.” That makes her laugh. A sad, watery laugh, but I lap it up anyway as I swipe the tear from her cheek, leaving a smudge of dust on her cheek.
“Do you?” she asks.
“Why do you think I have such a big house?”
She snorts another laugh. “I never would’ve thought that’s why.”
“What else did you think those bedrooms were for?”
“I’d say you were running a brothel, but we both know you don’t like hearing people moan.”
“ Merda ,” I groan, running a hand over my face.
“Or maybe it’s just my moans you don’t like hearing.”
I snap and pull her onto my lap to straddle me, holding her head in my hands. “Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t suit you. I dream of the perfect sounds that come out of your mouth, just not when they’re for anyone but me.”
She raises her brows in challenge. “That’s a little possessive, don’t you think?”
“Outrageously. But if you think you’re anything but mine, you’re kidding yourself.”
She just blinks at me as heat blooms on the apples of her cheeks, her skin hot under my touch. “I’m not keeping my hands to myself so you can go get it somewhere else. I’m waiting for you, however long it takes. I’m not going anywhere. Understand?”
She nods as much as she can while I’ve still got hold of her head.I know she knows what I mean, even though neither of us has spoken about it out loud.
“Good.” I pull her face to mine. It takes her a second to comprehend what’s happening, but it doesn’t take long for her mouth to open to me. I kiss her slow, our tongues gently exploring as I tangle my hands in her hair. It’s different this time. It’s not frantic and needy. It’s comforting and soft, it’s exploratory and affectionate. It’s me sealing the promises I just spoke, and it’s her accepting them.
She pulls back to look at me, and I hope my eyes convey everything that I feel in this moment, everything that I feel in every moment with her.
I trail my finger down the bridge of her nose. It must tickle because she scrunches her little nose up. I chuckle, dropping my hand to rest on the top of her thigh.
She raises her own and lets her fingers trace over the lines of my face. “I hope that one day I can, too.”
“You’re only twenty-five. It’s okay if you don’t have it all sorted out yet.”
She closes her eyes. “Sometimes it feels like the walls are caving in. Like the pressure is too much.”
I frown. “The pressure from who?”
“The world. I don’t know. I mean, our best friends are getting married, and what are we doing? I have no idea what I want in life, if I want to be a bartender forever, or if I want to be an accountant, or a potter.”
“A potter?”
She shakes her head and opens her eyes. “I don’t know. That’s the thing, I don’t know anything. Maybe I should get a cat to keep me company. But I don’t know the first thing about how to look after a cat. Like should you really let them outside, or should you keep them inside and just have one of those cat jungles around your house?”
A small smile creeps up my face as she rambles. I can’t help it. She’s adorable. Her eyes meet mine, and that’s when I notice the shine in them.
“I don’t know if I want to be alone forever.”
“Oh, baby.” I pull her back into me, and she melts into my arms, letting my body take some of the weight from her.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt the way I do when I have May wrapped up in my arms. Feeling like the entire world could be crashing down around us, but it wouldn’t even matter. I don’t know if I would even notice, not with all of my attention on the precious girl whose breathing has slowed against my chest.
I never had a chance at pretending these feelings away, and that might be to my detriment, because in this moment, I realize that she has the power to break my heart.