Chapter 37 #2
Claire rolled her eyes. “Fine. We’ll call it a case of animal magnetism so strong you had no choice but to let him ravish you.”
Bea snorted, folding her hands primly in her lap. Also accurate, unfortunately.
“Let’s talk about your sex life, for once, eh?” Bea shot back.
Claire shrugged, too casually. “There’s not much to tell.”
“After a year?” Bea’s voice jumped an octave.
Before she could fire off another question, her laptop pinged.
Incoming video call: Umma
“Darn,” Bea said. “Sex talk’s canceled, but don’t think you’re off the hook. Umma’s calling.”
“Merge it!” Claire ordered, gleeful.
Bea clicked. The call blinked, then split into three rectangles.
Umma appeared, hair perfectly twisted up, the soft lighting behind her giving her the aura of someone both nurturing and intimidating.
“Beatriz! And Claire!”
“Morning, Umma.” Bea couldn’t help but smile.
“Hi, Imo.” Claire waved like it had been an age, when Bea was ninety percent sure she’d been at Umma’s last weekend stealing kimchi.
“Have you girls eaten?”
“I had dinner,” Bea said, fighting a laugh. An Asian parent could time-travel to any era, at any time of day, and still lead with that question.
“Eating now,” Claire reported, holding up a banana and peeling it.
“How is Rafael’s face? Has it healed?”
Bea’s heart skipped. “His face?”
“From the fight.”
Bea frowned, brain doing a quick memory check. “Wait. I haven’t told you about the fight yet.”
Umma’s eyes darted off-screen, then back. “Oh.”
Claire perked up instantly. “Hold up. Imo, how do you know about his face?”
Umma sipped her tea with studied innocence. “Because I saw it.”
Bea blinked. For one horrifying second she imagined leaked photos and tabloids. “How?”
Umma waved a hand, as if it were the smallest thing in the world. “Rafael video calls us once a week. Papa and I drink coffee and we talk.”
Silence.
Bea’s jaw could have been scooped from the floor. “You talk? About what, Umma?”
“Oh, many things,” Umma said serenely.
Claire’s face filled the screen like a horror movie close-up, she was that close to her webcam. “How long do you talk for?”
“Thirty minutes, an hour. It depends on the topic.”
“What—why—how—”
“Since you left after New Year. Rafael said it would be a good way for us to know him. But I think he has just learned a lot about you; Papa can’t stop telling stories.”
Rafael had been having clandestine conversations with her parents. She couldn’t even be angry with him about it because she’d done the same with his mother.
“Did you tell him the bedtime roster story?” she groaned.
“Of course.” Umma’s eyes twinkled. “He enjoyed it when I told him you assigned Papa an earlier lights-out because you said he was grumpy in the mornings.”
Claire was half choking. “I didn’t know we were allowed to give him stories.”
Bea pointed a finger at the camera, laughing. “Don’t even think about it.”
“We don’t talk only about you. He recommended a cognac brand to Papa. They talk endlessly about steel.”
She removed her earrings, heart burning at the revelation, setting them on the little dish where her day-to-day jewelry lived. Then the silver bracelet. Finally, the Cartier watch Gage had given her for her twenty-second birthday.
She turned it over in her hand, thumb tracing the silver. For years, it had been part of her. She went to set it beside her phone charger, where it always lived. Stopped.
Not tonight. Not anymore.
She opened the drawer, found its velvet box, and tucked the watch inside. Then clicked the lid softly shut.
The gates opened like a sigh.
Tall, black, forged iron. The kind that didn’t just keep people out, they warned them not to try.
No creak, just hydraulic silence as they drew back into a soaring hedge line, revealing a long, sun-dappled drive, lined with cypress trees at perfect intervals, lanterns glinting between bursts of citrus branches.
Bea leaned forward, one knee bouncing until she caught it mid-spasm. Her nervosity now came with percussion. She wished she’d at least worn mascara rated for emotional emergencies.
The path curved—and then her breath left her completely.
A house.
White stucco. Double-height arches. Columns that looked like they’d been carved to impress ancient Romans. And beyond it, the glittering sea.
She gripped the seat. Butterflies were forming a tornado in her intestines. She was blinking too much, as if the image might settle into something she could process.
Rafael cut the engine. His movements were calm, but there was something in the way he exhaled, as if this was a moment he’d replayed a hundred times in his head. Climbed out and opened her door.
She didn’t move. Every nerve felt tuned to a frequency she wasn’t built to receive; something between awe and panic.
Whatever he was thinking stayed behind his eyes when he said, “Come in.”
She stepped out, thankful she was in sneakers. This wasn’t the sort of thing she’d manage upright in heels.
Warmth seeped through the soles of her shoes. The air smelled like salt and sawdust. Waves crashed close enough to feel, like the ocean had pulled up a chair.
Rafael’s hand was warm over hers.
The front door was massive, still half wrapped in protective film. He unlocked it, and together they stepped inside.
The air hit differently—cooler, cleaner, thick with varnish and newness.
She was too full; her chest couldn’t hold the feeling properly.
Light exploded across the hardwood, bouncing from the white walls and raw wood trims. A thousand questions pressed behind her teeth, but she was too full to speak.
He cleared his throat once, like he needed to steady it before beginning. She’d never heard him clear his throat before.
“We broke ground the day after I found out you didn’t go to London,” Rafael said. “I already had the plans. But that’s when I gave the order.”
He’d built this while she was still figuring out how to breathe around him.
She was afraid to ask, and yet she had to ask, “Rafael, what is this place?”
One word came back: “Home.”
It landed softly, then kept expanding until it filled every corner of her chest.
He led her deeper inside—to a library, shelves already fitted. Next door was a smaller, soundproofed room, beautifully lit.
“A quiet retreat. Music,” Rafael said. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth. “Or the kind of noise only I get to hear from you.”
A tingle started at the base of her spine and made its way higher.
The backyard opened next, a wide expanse of lawn bordered by tall hedges, the alfresco and deck unfolding toward an infinity pool that mirrored the sky. The poolhouse beside it stood proud and serene.
“For your parents when they visit.”
Every room she walked into felt like it already knew her. As if he’d built a place where she fit without asking.
“Did you design all this?”
He shook his head. “I just…kept answering questions from my architect. How many bedrooms? Library? Terrace? Path to the ocean? And every time, I answered for you.” His voice dropped. “Even before you were mine.”
She caught it: the faintest tension at his jaw. He was waiting for her reaction.
Her heart stuttered, then surged, trying to feel everything at once. “It’s…perfect.”
They walked through his office, two livings, two dinings, the kitchen. Everything was large, but just like his parents’ house, proportioned for use, not exhibition.
“There’s a gym through here. And an indoor basketball court. Might be noisy.”
“That’s fine,” she said, mouth tugging upward. “I like noise.”
He threw her a glance, then a half-smile that should have warned her. “You say that now. Wait until we have four boys and you can’t hear yourself think.”
Laughter bubbled up, startled. She choked. “Four?”
She could barely handle one Rafael. Four mini-versions? She’d need electrolytes. And a defibrillator.
“Minimum.” His tone softened. “And at least one girl.”
“Rather confident in your virility,” she managed.
“Not confidence. Intention.” He drew her close. “But even if it was just your voice echoing in these halls, that would be enough.”
Something in her chest overflowed. “I want kids,” she whispered.
His thumb stroked hers. “Loud ones. That slam doors and spill juice and tackle me when I come home.” A pause. “I want them to grow up on this beach. I want you to teach them to read in that library. Hear you sing to them.”
It escaped before she could stop it—half laugh, half sob, stupid and too real. If gladness had a physical form, this was it. “You’re making it impossible to breathe.”
He took her hand again, and guided her down one last hall. The bedrooms. And at the end, theirs.
Curved white walls swept up into a vaulted ceiling. Beyond the glass doors, a terrace opened to the ocean, blue and endless. The wind lifted her hair, the taste of salt soft against her tongue.
“This is where we’ll spend the mornings. You’ll wear my shirt, drink coffee you forget to finish.”
“Because the kids will interrupt?”
He shook his head. “Because I will.”
Her smile caught in her throat as he closed the space between them, wind in his hair, the horizon a blur behind him. His hands found her thighs, lifting her, settling her onto the terrace ledge. The stone was cool, his body anything but.
Every cell in her body whispered the same warning: pay attention.
She was eye level with him now. And he was everywhere. “Rafael—”
“I told you I wanted to marry you. After the first time.”
“I remember,” she whispered, palms sweaty.
“I told you, but I didn’t ask. You weren’t ready.” He leaned in, mouth skating over hers. “But you are now. Aren’t you, little Bea?”
Blood roared in her ears. Rafael’s fingers slipped just under the hem of her dress, tracing the skin of her knee.
One hand reached into his pocket; a small box appeared. He flipped it open.
His breath faltered. Just once. The only proof he wasn’t entirely in control of this moment either. “Tell me. Will you be my wife?”
Bea went utterly still, bones and heartbeat conspiring to buy her one more second. Her thighs clenched around him.
Every part of her had already answered minutes ago. Weeks ago.
She looked down at the ring—a huge pear-shaped blue diamond, ocean-bright, flanked by two crystal-clear ones that caught the light like wings. It didn’t sparkle so much as glow from within. Stunning, bold, too much. Like him.
Exactly enough. Like him.
Another ring flashed in her memory. Another man. The way her mind had screamed even as her body went still. This was nothing like that.
Her body wasn’t resisting; it was reaching. Not just toward Rafael but into him. Into the intensity she’d once feared. The heat that had always called her.
All fire. All truth. All in.
And she knew, with sudden, shattering certainty, that she could meet him there.
Her breath found shape. Her heart found language. “Yes.”