Chapter Forty-Two
chapter forty-two
MAY
The sound of hooves against the ground booms in the quiet of the warm morning.
I escaped the haunting silence of Heath’s estate for the more peaceful quiet up here. This spot on Heath’s land feels like I’m in a completely different world, by myself, but not alone. The birds chattering away in the trees keep me company.
I can hear the soft sound of the long grass flattening under the weight of the horse as the strides slow to a stop behind the tree I’m leaning against.
I roll my eyes. “Heath, I told you I just need some time.”
All Heath wanted to do when we got back to his place was talk, but I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to sum everything up and make it make sense to him. So instead, he saddled a horse for me, and I rode until I found this spot.
I hear feet lightly hit the ground. “Lucky your best friend doesn’t really care if you want to be alone.”
I look around the side of the tree to see Isla patting the neck of a brown mare before tying the horse up. Heath took it upon himself to teach Isla and I the basics of horse riding after he found out both of us knew next to nothing about how to be around the gorgeous animals .
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in your super king living up the wifey status?”
She walks over to sit down, leaning against the tree next to me. “Well, I would be, except for the fact that a very worried man showed up at the penthouse, and wouldn’t let up on the intercom until we let him in.”
My heart sloshes in my chest at the mention of Rafael. “Caio wouldn’t have liked that.”
She huffs a laugh. “He was furious when I left. I’m lucky I’m quick enough to slip from his grasp, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I left the two of them together, so let’s just hope they’re both in one piece by the time I get back. I’d really appreciate not starting off our honeymoon by walking around with a husband with a black eye.”
I snort at that.
“He cares about you, May. What’s going on?”
I pull my legs up, hugging them to my chest. “Exactly like you said—he cares about me.”
She turns to face me. “And that’s a problem?”
“I think he’s in love with me, Isla,” I whisper.
“I kind of got that idea when he showed up at my place on my wedding night, refusing to leave until I agreed to talk to him. He’s freaking out, May. He’s so scared he’s lost you.”
I shrug. “He never really had me.”
She gives me a knowing look.
“He didn’t,” I say. “We were never…official.”
“That doesn’t mean shit. You and I both know it. Let’s talk about what’s really going on here.”
I sigh. “Marisol said it like it was so obvious…”
Isla smiles. “It is. Just like it’s obvious to me that you might feel the same. If you didn’t care about him, you wouldn’t run. You’d laugh in his sorry little face and strut away.” That pulls a shaky laugh from me. She shakes her head. “It might not be obvious to everyone else, but I know you.”
I look over at her and she grabs my hand in hers, tears threatening to escape her eyes. “I remember that night, how scared you were. I remember how much you trusted Owen, and I remember the next day. I remember the way I saw that sparkle in your eyes go dark.”
I sniff and that’s when I take notice of the tears streaming down my own face. God damnit, I’ve cried more in the last month than I have in my entire life.
“In all the time since then, whenever I’ve seen you with a guy, I was worried that spark would never come back, that it had gone out for good. But it did. With him, it did.”
I close my eyes, trying to ignore the earnest in my best friend’s eyes.
“I know you’re scared. I know you’re scared to put your trust in him, but if the way he looks at you is any indicator, he’s not bailing on you anytime soon. And if that’s not convincing enough, the fact that he braved interrupting Caio and I on our wedding night should reassure you that he’s not giving up on you either.”
I open my eyes, letting the floodgates open, my tears pouring out of my eyes. I see Isla through my blurry vision and she’s a mirror of myself, her cheeks wet with tears. “Do you think I can do it?” I ask.
She tilts her head. “Do what?”
“Marriage, kids, dog.”
She lets out a watery laugh. “If that’s what you really want, of course. You can do anything, May.” She squeezes my hand. “But I think maybe you should start with just talking to him first.”
I think I want that with him. Even though my instincts tell me to run, I think I want everything with him. I think I want to forget everything I thought I knew and instead learn something new with him.
I nod. “Can you tell him where to find me?”
She lets go of my hand and wraps her arms around me. “I’ll tell Heath to let him in this time.”
I pull out of her arms and shake my head. “No, not here.”
I sit down on the chair where I sat weeks ago, waiting for a bite on the end of my line. Back then, I found peace in the sounds of the nature, but now it feels like every whoosh of water over the rocks, every tweet of a bird, lasts for an eternity while I wait for Rafael to show up.
Talking to Isla helped to clear my mind. She knows me, and she knows the innermost parts of my mind that I can’t even explain in words.
I feel like I’ve been fighting my instincts since the last time Rafael and I were here. My instincts telling me to stay away, to hold back and keep my heart under lock and key. But it’s feeling harder and harder every day I spend with Rafael. I don’t know how to make it stop. Do I let my instincts take control? Or do I push them aside and try to ignore the one thing that I’ve always known?
The rumble of Rafael’s truck startles me. I let out a controlled breath. I shouldn’t be surprised. I did tell him to come here. I just thought I’d have a bit more time to get my thoughts in order.
If I’m being honest with myself, I’ve spent the last hour sitting here with a blank mind. Earlier my thoughts were running, tumbling through my mind without caution, but now it’s just empty up there. Not even a tumbleweed.
I was so sure when I was talking to Isla, so confident that this is what I want. But the more time I’ve sat here by myself, the more that confidence has slipped away. I don’t know what to think, so I’ve just been thinking nothing, and now Rafael is here. He will want an explanation from me, and I don’t know that I have one. At least not one that sounds coherent.
I hear the truck door shut behind me, but I don’t look. I don’t want to see the look on his face. I don’t know what I’ll find.That doesn’t work though, because within a minute, he’s in front of me.
He sighs. The look on his face isn’t what I thought it would be. It’s not angry, it’s not pissed off, it’s worried. It’s fear mixed with relief. “There you are.”
He’s looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something.
“You can’t be in love with me,” I blurt out.
He smirks as he kneels down in front of me, ignoring the chair beside me to kneel in the grass. “Still trying to tell me what to do, even now.”
I flare my nostrils instead of smiling.
“Tell me why it is exactly that I can’t be in love with you.”
My breath gets caught in my throat. I wasn’t expecting him to get me to list all the things that are wrong with me, all the reasons this can’t work. But he’s looking at me patiently, waiting for me to do it with the ghost of a smirk on his face. He’s trying his best to be serious when he thinks this is funny. It’s not funny.
“Because I’m brash.” He nods in agreement, and it pisses me off. He’s not supposed to be agreeing with me.
“I’m frustrating, and I’m rude.” He raises his eyebrows, and it just makes me angrier. “I’m flighty, and I’m noncommittal. I’m loud and I’m a bad cook!”
He doesn’t fight back his smile anymore. “That you are.”
I smack his arm and that pulls another smile from him.
“I’m cautious, and I’m untrusting…”
He pulls my hand out of my lap and presses a warm kiss to the top of it.
The butterflies in my stomach don’t go crazy, they don’t flutter, they’re settled. I feel warm. I feel safe. I think I have always felt like that in Rafael’s presence, ever since that night that he walked me out of the flames of my burning cottage. He’s never given me one singular reason to doubt him, and yet I still do.
This idea is ingrained so deep inside of me that even when I try, I can’t lift it away. I can’t dig it out and dump it on this grass, letting it grow roots here instead of in the deepest parts of my instincts.
“All the things you just listed, those are all the things that made me fall in love with you.”
I lied. The butterflies are going crazy now.
“They’re what make you, you. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if you weren’t a little bit crazy. If you weren’t strong and rude. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if you had tripped over yourself to get my attention. The way you acted so uninterested towards me was maddening, and it’s what made me want to keep coming back for more, even when I hated you for it.”
I shake my head.
“Don’t shake your head. I love you, May, more than I ever thought was possible. Screw whatever unwritten rule is sitting between us where we don’t talk about how we feel for each other.”
I feel a tear slip down my cheek and a second later, Rafael is reaching up to wipe it away.“I’m just going to be another number on the list of people that have hurt you.”
“Hurt me! Please, I beg of you to hurt me! If you telling me how you feel is going to hurt me, then grab the knife and run it through. It hurts more to think that you don’t even feel a semblance of what I feel for you.”
He brings both of his big hands to push my hair out of my face. “Do you want to know what I love the most about you?” I shake my head in his grip.
He chuckles. “Tough luck, I’m going to tell you, anyway. I love how stubborn you are. How strong you are in your opinions, and how you don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Unless I’m in between your legs, that is.”
I laugh this time, and it comes out steady, strong.
He smiles. “But that stubbornness is currently getting in the way of my girl telling me how she feels about me.”
I reach my hand up and place it over his. I don’t know what to say, so I just twine my fingers with his.
“I’m going to give you some time,” he says.
My stomach drops. “What? ”
“You need time to figure your head out, and me being around trying to make you feel how I do isn’t going to help. It needs to come from you.”
I can feel the waterworks leaking again. For god’s sake, here we go again.
Rafael must see something in my eyes, because he cups my face and levels his eyes with mine. “Let me get one thing straight—I am giving you space, but I am not abandoning you. I am not giving up on you. I will never do that, okay?” I nod. “I’m still here and I’m still trying. And when you figure out what it is that you truly want, you know exactly where to find me.”
I nod again. I don’t know how I’m meant to figure that out…what I want.
Rafael smiles in front of me. “And don’t go thinking this will ever get easy. I can assure you it won’t. I can guarantee you won’t stop trying to get under my skin, and I won’t stop trying to make you understand meatball etiquette. But that’s what I want. I want chaos with you. I want your chaos, I want your stubborn, I want your fire. You can’t scare me away, even if you try.”
As he says the words out loud, I repeat them in my head, and realize I don’t want him to leave me here. I don’t want space. I had space, and it didn’t help. I just want him here, next to me. I always want him next to me.
Maybe that’s all I need to know. Not what breed of dog we will have, or whose house we will live in. Maybe it can all just be as simple as the fact that I don’t ever want him to leave me.
I grip his head and pull him towards me, crushing my lips against his. I don’t have the words to explain myself, so I just let my body do the talking.
He groans into my mouth and pulls on my waist, yanking me off the chair and into his lap. Our lips never part as we tumble clumsily onto the grass. I moan as his tongue meets mine, and I grind my hips over his as I straddle him.
Rafael has always kissed me like he means it. But this time he means something more. Something I try to give back, something I try to say with my lips because I don’t know if I’m ready to speak it out loud.We’ve always been better at communicating with our bodies.
“May,” he growls.
“Yes, chef?”
He wraps an arm around me and flips us over, leaving me laying on the cool grass. “I love you.”
My heart tries to leap from my chest towards Rafael, like it wants to find a home inside his body, resting right next to his. My eyes meet his, and I hope he can see in them everything that I am so scared to say.
He must like whatever he sees because within a second, he’s unbuckling his belt. I shuffle beneath him, pulling my shorts down my legs.
He runs a finger against me. “Fuck, I’ll never get sick of that.”
I grin up at him and wrap my arms around his neck, pulling him down to me. He kisses me, his lips warm and soft as he pushes into me. Our collective moans fill the clearing.
Until he freezes.
“What?”
“I’m not wearing a condom.”
I sigh in relief, thankful that’s all it is. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not.” He goes to pull out.
I grip my hands firmly on his ass and push him all the way back into me. “Don’t. I want this. More than anything right now, I need to feel you. Please.”
“May,” he starts, but I nod and pull his lips back to mine. I can’t stand to be apart even for a second, and that’s when I realize that I really, truly never want to be away from him. If Rafael left tomorrow, if he disappeared, my heart would shatter into tiny little pieces that would stab me every time I thought of him. I’ve always thought of that as a bad thing, remembering the last time. But with every stroke of Rafael’s tongue against mine, I realize that this is what makes me feel alive.
This feeling, this man, this love yanked me out of the numb fog I was walking around in every day. Somehow I thought that it was easier than this. Keeping myself at a distance from anything near this kind of feeling. But as Rafael’s eyes meet mine, I think I would do it all again. I wouldn’t ever want to forget this feeling. I think I missed him before I even met him.
“Oh god,” I moan. “Rafael.”
The mix of his length filling me up all the way, and the clarity in my mind, is drawing me right to the edge.
He shoves one of his fingers in my mouth and then pulls it out, sliding his hand down my stomach and rubbing his finger over my clit. My eyes slam shut as his finger teases me perfectly in time with his thrusts.
My fingers grip his hair, and he sucks air through his teeth but doesn’t move away. His pace increases, and I moan into the fresh air.
“Rafael,” I whimper.
“Right here, spitfire.”
I come apart at his words, screaming out and holding him even tighter to me as he groans, pumping into me recklessly as he spills into me.
I let go of my grip and lay back down on the grass. The cool sensation is a welcome feeling against my burning skin.
Rafael presses his lips to mine. “I love you.”
I run my thumb over his cheek. “I love you too.” The words brand my heart as I say them out loud.
His eyes flare and it makes me giggle. “Are you sure?”
I nod. “I don’t need time. I don’t want space. I just want you. I love you. I trust you.”
Those last words hit their mark as his eyes begin to water. I know it means more to him than I love you. It means more to me, too. And it’s something I didn’t know if I’d ever say to someone again.
He seals my lips in another kiss. And another, and another, until I’m squealing beneath him and pushing on his chest.
He rolls us over again with a chuckle, leaving me on top of him. I take a second to catch my breath and sit up, taking in our surroundings. The place where everything came to a head. The only place I wanted to be for this conversation, not knowing it would turn out like this.
I look down at Rafael, and he’s grinning up at me. “You wanna go fishing?”
Fishing turned into a swim at the waterfall, which turned into Rafael showing me the tiny outdoor shower attached to the far side of the cabin that I never noticed the first time we were here.He pulls on the tap and cold water explodes onto my skin. I squeal and jump out of the water, leaning against the wooden side, just in time to see a gigantic spider crawling between two of the logs.
“Oh, fuck no.” I push the swing door and then I’m naked, standing in the middle of the clearing.
Rafael chuckles, pushing the door open. “Oh, you’re a little scaredy cat.”
“I am not a scaredy cat.”
“Yeah, the way you just squealed like a little piglet really displayed that.”
My mouth falls open and I fold my arms across my chest. “Did you just relate me to a pig?!”
His eyes are glued to my chest, and I look down to see my tits pressed up against my folded arms. I let them go, leaving my arms hanging by my sides. His smirk intensifies.
“Don’t smile. I’m mad at you.”
He reaches out to get me and I step out of reach, forcing him to step out of the little stall to come and get me.
His big arms wrap around my waist and effortlessly pick me up, dragging me back to the shower. “I called you a piglet, not a pig. Piglets are cute. ”
“Oh, so I’m not just a pig. I’m a juvenile pig.”
He plonks me under the water stream, which is now deliciously warm.
“Would you shut up?” He presses his lips to mine, forcing me further into the water as he steps toward me.
“I’m not the one throwing insults around,” I say in between kisses.
“ March ,” he groans. It’s meant like a warning, but instead of its desired effect, it just makes me wrap my fingers around his hard cock.
He groans as I pump by hand back and forth. “Say it again,” he says.
“I love you.”
His eyes flutter closed, and he leans his head back against the door. “Not that one.”
I pause my strokes and place both of my hands on his broad chest. “I trust you.”
He opens his eyes and wraps his arms around my waist, then presses his forehead to mine. “Can I wash your hair?”
I pull back. “You want to wash my hair?”
“Do you trust me to?” In this moment, I see it in his eyes. Those dark eyes that used to be like frosted glass, I can see right into them now. I can see that even though I’ve told him I trust him, he won’t stop doing these little things to continue to prove it to me. Even if it’s something as simple as washing my hair.
“What about that?” I flick my eyes down to his enormous erection.
“We can deal with that later.”
A smile tugs on the edges of my mouth, and I don’t think I can resist it anymore, not the way I used to.
I spin around, my back to Rafael’s front, and he can’t resist the urge to grab a handful of my ass before he’s reaching over into the cobweb infested corner to reach a shampoo that’s been sitting there for god knows how long.
I groan as Rafael digs his fingertips into my scalp, massaging the shampoo through my hair. In this moment, everything feels right, perfect even.
Something I never thought I would find in a man’s arms was peace, but as Rafael rinses the warm water over my hair, I can’t think of another word to explain the complete and utter harmony in my mind. Like the inner war is over. My heart and mind are in a truce, at least for now. I know it’s a work in progress, something that I can’t just switch off, but I also know that now it’s something that I want to fight, something I want to work through with the gorgeous man behind me, and I’ve never felt like that before.