Chapter 24
“This is incredible,” I admit around a mouthful of pasta.
We had spent all afternoon in Celeste’s second kitchen laughing and working and learning.
The idea of it coming to an end, of us having to go back to the villa and pretend like nothing is going on between us at the moment, makes my chest ache.
Pretending he’s nothing more than a groomsman in my sister’s wedding, even for another couple of weeks, is going to be a lot harder than I initially thought.
But I can’t bring myself to tell Kate, not days before her wedding.
No matter how much I want to. I can be patient. I can wait until we get home.
I think.
“Did it hurt to admit that I was right?” Reid teases.
I hold up my thumb and forefinger, showing the fraction of space between them to him. “A little bit.”
He smirks in response, then he lifts a napkin from the table and reaches toward my face. I watch with bated breath as he gets closer and finally dabs at my chin with another half-smirk. “You have pasta sauce all over your face.”
“Worth it.”
I’m only momentarily surprised that I’m not embarrassed to be seen looking like a mess with sauce on my face and my hair a disaster from hours in the kitchen making what will probably be the best meal of my life.
But whatever this is between me and Reid, however these strong emotions are pooling in my chest, it’s all making me feel that much more comfortable around him.
Lamps flick on in the corner of the room and I break my stare with Reid to look around, realizing how dark the room got around us as we learned how to cook and fed each other pasta like we were in Lady and the Tramp.
For a moment, I wonder if I missed the sunset and night was starting to crest over us, but a look outside the plethora of windows shows dark clouds quickly swooping in.
“Is it supposed to rain?” I ask, not breaking my gaze from the impending weather outside.
“I don’t know.”
I look back to Reid. “What do you mean you don’t know? You didn’t check the weather when we left?”
“Why would I have checked the weather?”
I flail a hand toward the window, where the soft patter of rain starts against the glass. “For this exact reason.”
“It’s just rain, Jane. We’ll be alright.”
“Those roads were dangerously narrow when they were dry. You think we’d get home fine in a foreign country in the pouring rain?”
“It’s not pouring rain.”
As if on cue, a loud clap of thunder cracks. A girl next to us jumps in her seat at the sound, sloshing red wine in her glass.
“How are we supposed to drive home in this? We’ll never be able to see.”
Reid finally breaks his stare from me to look out the window and acknowledge the unexpected weather. The only sign of worry on his handsome face is his lips pressing into a thin line as he thinks.
“We can just wait for it to pass.”
“I’m afraid it’s not going to pass anytime soon,” Celeste says behind us. “You may have to wait it out here for quite some time.”
“How much time?” Reid asks.
“It’s supposed to continue for most of the evening.”
I turn to look at her with embarrassingly wide eyes. Dread pools in my stomach. We were supposed to be home for dinner. With Kate’s champagne.
Celeste must mistake my fear of upsetting my sister for something else completely because she reaches a gentle hand out and places it on my shoulder. “We rent out our spare rooms here if you need a place to stay for the evening. We have one left.”
“That would be great, Celeste. Thank you,” Reid interrupts, making the decision for me.
Celeste’s fingers squeeze on my shoulder and I know I was right about her giving the best hug from the reassuring squeeze alone. “I can show you your room when you’re ready. Enjoy your time.”
I drop my arms to the table and bury my face in them. “What are we going to do?” I groan, the words muffled by my arms. Reid’s hand starts rubbing gentle circles on my back.
“What do you mean? We’re going to spend the night here until it’s safe to drive again. I don’t know these roads. It’s not safe to navigate in a torrential downpour.”
“It might be safer than whatever hell is going to be waiting for us back at the villa when we don’t show up.” I lift my head up to look at him. “Kate is going to kill me.”
He rolls his eyes. “If Kate is a good sister, she’ll understand.”
I scoff at that. “She has a lot going on this week. She’s not going to understand anything that disappoints her and throws off her plans.”
“I still have hope that she can see how much you care and would do anything for her.”
I draw in a breath, trying to push the worry down. Reid grabs my hands across the table and somehow it pushes the worry down a fraction.
“Don’t worry about disappointing her tonight. It’s a random dinner, not the rehearsal dinner or the wedding. You were at every single thing she asked you to be at. This is out of your control.”
“You tell her that.”
“Happily.”
I finally look from the dark sky and the heavy sheets of rain to his face. He looks determined. Prepared. Ready to fight a battle for me.
As if on cue, my phone starts buzzing in my back pocket. My stomach drops.
“That’s going to be her.” My voice is a whisper, almost like the stress is pressing on my lungs and not allowing me to get the words out fully. I drop one of his hands and slide the phone out of my pocket.
“Don’t answer it,” he instructs. There’s such a deep command in his voice that my fingers automatically slide toward the red “decline call” button.
But then my eyes snag on the photo again—on mine and my sister’s smiling faces, a laugh caught on camera, a joy that I haven’t felt between us in years—and I pause.
“I have to answer it,” I whisper. “If I don’t answer, she’s going to be upset at me.”
“She’s going to be upset with you regardless so you might as well enjoy the rest of your night and just have her yell at you later.”
But I don’t decline the call. I look back at the screen, a lump forming in my throat. Reid gently pulls the phone from my hand. I look up to him, tears blurring my vision. His blue-gray eyes hold mine as he clicks the side button and turns the phone off.
“There,” he says. “Now she can’t bother you anymore today.”
I feel a very slight wave of relief and then his phone starts ringing.
He clenches his jaw. We both know it’s going to be Kate.
If not, it’ll be Jason, but either way, they’re desperately trying to get ahold of us no matter his resolve.
He lets out a heavy sigh and pulls his own phone from pocket.
He never breaks eye contact with me as he presses it to his ear.
“Yes, Kate? . . . Yeah I turned it off for her. . . . Because we’re out sightseeing like everyone else gets to do.
. . . Yeah I know we’re in the wedding party, but we’re also human beings and we’re allowed to enjoy our time here.
. . . Don’t worry, we’ll have the champagne back in time.
. . . Okay. I’m hanging up now. See you later. ”
And with that he ends the call, turns his own phone off, and shoves it inside his pocket.
“We are going to have hell to pay later,” I say.
“Well, that can be a problem for later then. I want to stay right here in this moment with you. With the rain on the window and the best pasta I’ve ever made and the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”
A kernel of worry embeds itself in my belly, but the rest of it leaves my body as he leans in and presses a soft kiss to my lips.
“Even if she doesn’t tell me I made the best pasta of her entire life,” he mumbles against my lips.
“I’ve had better.”
“Liar.”
I feel his smile against my lips as he kisses me again, and this time even that tiny kernel of fear doesn’t feel as big anymore.
Celeste was tragically right about the rain not letting up. It’s an absolute torrential downpour. We can barely see past the trees behind her house.
After the class was finished and we helped clean up as much as Celeste would allow, she showed us to the last available room in her home—which she explains started as their home and they now use as a bed and breakfast and the enclosed back patio houses their cooking class.
“Alright, here you are,” she says as she opens the dark wooden door to a cozy-looking bedroom.
It’s just as quaint as the rest of the home.
A window that would likely overlook the view had the rain not created a water curtain.
A little end table with a lamp casting a dim glow in the room.
A patchwork quilt on the single bed in the center of the room.
I stare at that single bed far longer than I care to admit, only coming back to reality when Celeste says, “The bathroom is down that hall. We stock extra tooth brushes and toiletries for guests. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen you may need. And our room is at the end of the hall if you need anything.”
And with that, she’s gone, sauntering off down the hallway without a clue what this one room has running through my mind.
I shut the door behind her and lean my back against it as I try to collect my thoughts.
The stress of not being back for my sister.
The excitement of being alone with Reid.
The worry that I may have fallen for him, but maybe this time alone will have him realizing that maybe I’m not the girl he thinks I am.
My sister’s words from yesterday come back to my mind, no matter how hard I tried to ignore them and shove them deep in the recesses of my mind to be long forgotten.
He said he wasn’t a relationship guy.
Why would he suddenly want to be a relationship guy for you?
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
I turn to face him, my heart pounding as I come down from the moment and from the fear of shattering it with just a few words. My teeth catch my bottom lip as I debate my next words. His eyes track the movement and he takes a step closer.
Now or never.
“Can I ask you something?”