Chapter 2 #2
Oh, the venom. The accusation, as if only he knows what pain feels like and there is no sun because he can’t find it and he sure as hell can’t feel it.
I take a step in his direction, dropping my crappy shell into his hand.
“I can feel it. She tries to break through, fights like hell, but sometimes those clouds aren’t having it.
It’s like when you’re flying and you hit the space above the clouds and boom, sunshine.
But we have to work for it. Don’t you feel this?
” I pan my hands around us. “All this energy surrounding you? The waves and the sand and yes, the clouds too? But if it’s the sun you need, even if you can’t see her, she’s there. You just have to be patient.”
His hand meets my jaw, pretending to wipe sand or grit from my skin as an excuse to touch me.
I let him, stepping into his fist. Into his touch.
The morning wind thrashes violently around us, salt and spray sticking to our skin and clothes as it whips our hair about.
But I’m not afraid of him or his darkness.
“Fuck being patient, Raven. I haven’t seen the sun in at least two weeks.”
He’s likely not speaking in metaphors. He came from his hospital in Minnesota after a month of a nightmare, the last five days of which he was stuck in the ICU, only to be discharged and then taking an overnight private jet here, and we’ve had no sun for more than a week, despite it being hot, muggy weather.
“And yet you got up early this morning and ran. Before the sun was set to come up, even with the forecast of clouds.”
He shakes his head, not understanding.
“You had hope this morning that today would be different. ‘He that can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good.’”
He squints at me. “Who said that?”
“It’s a Jewish proverb, so I don’t know.”
“Your mother was Israeli? Mossad?”
“She was.” I lick my lips, a frog in my throat whenever I think of my mother. “My mother, the secret spy. I still don’t know how she died. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to know she was Mossad, though clearly, you do.”
“But you loved her? Remember her?”
“She was my mother,” I say simply, because show me a child who doesn’t love their mother.
“She was beautiful and strong and brave. I don’t remember her much.
Bits and pieces, moments in time.” I remember her not being around a lot.
I remember crying, begging for her to come home.
Asking why she left. Then she died when I was seven on an assignment and I resented her for that.
Resented her for not leaving that life for me.
Wondered why I wasn’t enough for her to do that.
My father had already retired from MI6 by that time.
Having had his life saved by Dr. Fritz and then swearing his life and allegiance to him and his family.
To me.
“Sounds like you’re describing yourself, Raven,” he says. “A woman who has endured the bad but still somehow sees the good. How do you do that so easily when life is so quick to turn painful and ugly and dark?”
I shrug because I just do. “I don’t know.
Some days I’m better at it than others.” Some days I feel listless and abandoned.
Not good enough. “I guess it’s like that sun.
It’s always there even if some days are cloudy.
You just have to find it. A famous Rabbi my mother loved said, ‘If you don’t know what you’re living for, you haven’t yet lived.
’ I live for my father and my cello and myself.
For the chance to attend The London Conservatory.
For one day seeing the world and playing everywhere I can.
That’s my dream. But life is life, Luca.
You can’t control it and you sure as hell can’t stop it.
I know what I wake up every day for. What I’m living for. What do you live for?”
I wonder if it’s because he’s rich and his life has always been easy until it wasn’t. Until he was in the wrong place at the right time but ended up throwing his life off-kilter all the same. Does he not see the sun because he’s always come to expect its rays on him?
He blinks at me rapid fire as if he’s not sure what to do with that. “Medicine. And I don’t have that anymore.”
“Do you know that for sure?”
He looks away.
“You don’t live for your family? Think of Landon. What he’s endured and still fights for. Every day is a different battle, but what defines us is how we choose to fight it.”
He grunts, propping his hands on his hips and swishing the sand around with his foot.
Landon lost his wife a couple years back in a tragic accident.
Since then, he’s been raising Stella on his own while finishing his cardiology residency—no small feat.
And yes, he’s a billionaire and has a family who loves and supports him endlessly, but that doesn’t take away a person’s pain and that doesn’t make everything easy street.
A wry smirk hits his lips. “You sure you’re only eighteen?”
I laugh. “I’ve lived an unusual life. I had two parents who were both trained spies and I grew up living in a staff house owned by a bunch of billionaires.”
“Thank you,” he whispers, stepping in and towering over me. “That’s the first thing anyone has said that’s actually managed to make me think.”
His nose hits the base of my neck, right over the dip before he glides up, achingly slow. I close my eyes, desperate to regain the breath it feels like he stole. I’m not strong with him. And truth, I’m not sure I want to be. I’m too new at this to pretend. Too unsure and scared and thrilled.
All I know is that he’s breathing me in. And my hands are now in his hair. And it’s soft and thick. And he groans when my nails rake down his scalp. And his lips and tongue, I swear, they just whispered past the underside of my jaw, stealing a taste.
My teeth bite into my bottom lip so hard I’m shocked I’m not tasting blood. Because holy freaking shit, Luca Fritz is smelling me. And tasting me. My knees just about give out on me.
“Breakfast,” he declares as he pulls back and creates space between us. But his eyes. Those clear, practically iridescent green eyes, they’re all over me. Waking me up. Showing me what being alive when the right man looks at you a certain way feels like.
“Breakfast,” I agree, doing my best to rein in my breathing, but my heart already knows we’re in trouble.