16. RAFE #3
Still holding eye contact, she takes a backwards step, tripping off the kerb and into the road without looking. Horror shoots through me as a horn blares and a Vespa skids towards her.
I grab her arm, pulling her back onto the sidewalk. Her body swings into mine, thumping against my chest, and the Vespa veers around where she was standing only moments before, its horn still screeching as water splashes up and hits us.
“Shit,” Diana mutters, breaths coming quickly. Her fingers are fisted into the front of my coat.
“You need to pay attention to where you’re going. This is London.” My voice is unnecessarily harsh, but all I can think is she was looking at me.
I nearly killed her.
If anything had happened to her, it would have been my fault.
Still clutching my coat, she looks up at me. Her whispered “Thank you” escapes on a soft breath.
Rain streams down around us. Her hair is soaked, droplets gathering on her eyelashes before they fall to her cheeks.
I can’t look away, and the moment expands around me like I’m being sucked into a vacuum; sound fades and she’s the only other person who exists. The only other person I want to exist.
It’s unfathomable.
I don’t know how to get out or undo this seismic shift in our relationship. There’s something here that absolutely should not be here, and I don’t know how to shut it down. I don’t think I want to either.
Almost in a trance, I shift a strand of wet hair from her face and tuck it behind her ear, my fingertip trailing the delicate shell, exactly as I wanted to do that night at the kitchen island.
Her lips part on a barely audible sigh, and our breaths fog out in opalescent clouds, mingling in the space between us.
“We could dance in the rain,” she whispers.
Her voice jolts me back to reality. Touching her like this is completely inappropriate; it should have stayed in my imagination. My hand falls from her neck. “Excuse me?”
“That’s what we’d do if we were in a romance novel.
We’d dance. Or kiss, maybe. Or you’d confess your love for me.
” She shrugs like what she’s just said means nothing, and eases out of my arms. Disappointment filters through me; how can she step away so easily?
Didn’t she feel what I felt? “Isn’t that your car? ”
I look where she’s pointing and see my driver waiting in the Bentley, hazard lights flashing. I stride towards the car, and Diana follows, her earlier words, so casually uttered, clouding my brain. I shake my head lightly.
Did I just imagine all of that?
The driver steps out, bids us a good evening, and opens the door. I gesture for Diana to get in before me.
“Do you always do that?” I ask as I tug the door closed and settle beside her and the car pulls out smoothly into traffic.
She fastens her seatbelt. “What?”
“Imagine you’re in a romance novel.”
She lets out the sweetest laugh that infuses me with the impulse to join in, but I don’t. We’ve already shared so much tonight that one more burst of conjoined laughter might be enough to tip us somewhere I don’t want to go. Somewhere we can’t go.
“Sometimes. Reading a lot of romance books kinda does that to your brain, and rain is one of those things for me. It’s romantic.”
I glance down at my soaked suit, then over at her soaked dress, the fabric slick to her thighs and outlining their shape in a way I shouldn’t be noticing. She’s shivering.
“Turn up the heat,” I instruct the driver, then turn to Diana. “I disagree. Being soaking wet in the freezing cold is not romantic in the least.”
“Hmm. Well, sometimes they wait until they’re somewhere warm and safe, like in here.” She gestures to the car. “The windows would fog, and we’d definitely kiss. That’s the next beat. The kiss. That’s what’s supposed to happen. The couple narrowly escape some travesty—”
“Like being run over by a Vespa?”
“Exactly,” she confirms, peeling the soaked fabric of her dress from her legs and letting it fall back with a wet slap. “Or a storm, or… anything unsettling, and then, when it’s safe again, they kiss.”
The energy in the car feels thick and messy with tension, as if the kiss she mentioned is straining to manifest.
“Is that so?” I ask, sounding far more casual than I feel.
She nods. “Yup. Very predictable. Very romantic.”
I lean back in my seat, aware I’ve been edging closer to her as she speaks. “Is predictability romantic? I think I’d prefer to be surprised.”
She pulls her damp coat closer around her shoulders, smiles a tight little smile that looks almost knowing, and glances out of the window. “Okay, mister,” she mutters, barely audible.
It feels like she’s laughing at me, and, even more surprisingly, I’m not annoyed by it. I’m intrigued. What does she think she knows that I don’t?
She doesn’t explain, but rests her forehead against the window and gently taps the knuckle of her forefinger against the glass.
We don’t talk the rest of the way home, but my heart thumps like a fucking drum all the way there, as if it wants to beat out of my chest and into hers.