Chapter 32 Aurora #2
I clamp my lips together. He told me he’d fallen in love with me after our fight. But he hasn’t said the words since. I didn’t trust him then, but now? The way he sounds – so convinced, so sure – has my heart racing.
He’s in love with me. So in love with me that he’ll break a guy’s hand. But he’s still not telling me everything. I know him well enough to understand there’s more to him being there tonight than he’s admitting.
We drive in silence, the tension thick and filling the car, until we pull up on Rafael’s driveway.
‘Why was Vance there?’ I ask as he kills the engine.
He stares out of the windscreen, his expression closed off like a vault.
‘He broke her heart. I know that much. And now he’s back again, and you’re what? Playing fight club with him? Was that Angelo fighting him?’
Rafael’s jaw clenches, but he gives me nothing.
‘Was it?’ I press.
‘Yes,’ he says finally.
‘Why?’ I splutter.
‘Because Vance was there, and they both wanted to, that’s why.’
‘That’s all you’re going to give me?’
He climbs from the car and strides around to my side. I take the hand he always offers me to help me from his car, but this time it’s covered in another man’s blood.
‘I’ll go and clean up,’ he grits, following my gaze.
We head inside and go straight to Rafael’s bedroom. He strips off his dark clothing as he looks at me, his face set in a grim expression like a mask of stone.
‘Come and shower with me?’ he rasps.
My gaze drops to the scar running down his chest. There’s still so much he’s not telling me. Tonight is just another example of how he can’t open up and let me in. How are we supposed to have a relationship if he won’t be honest with me?
I shake my head. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Fine,’ he hisses. ‘Suit your bloody self.’
He strides past me in just his underwear and slams the bathroom door behind him. I pace up and down in front of the balcony doors in his bedroom. He never opens them, but everything about tonight has got my blood racing. I’m hot and clammy and need air.
Unlocking them, I swing both open, stepping out.
The cool night air on my skin is a welcome companion, and I take a couple of deep breaths as I walk to a thick metal railing that runs around the edge between wide concrete pillars.
The garden spreads out beneath, the scent of jasmine bushes tinting the air with sweetness.
The pillars are wide with flat tops. Plenty of space to climb up, sit, and soak in the calming silence of the night. I settle myself on one, bringing my feet up and wrapping my arms around my legs as I wait for the sound of the shower to stop inside.
Five minutes later Rafael appears in the open doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair wet and tousled.
‘Get down,’ he whispers. ‘Aurora, get down and come here.’
I sigh and avert my eyes from his, back over the garden. ‘It’s so pretty. Why don’t you ever come out here?’
‘Get the fuck down!’
I whip my head around, ready to give him hell for thinking he can speak like that and order me around. But the sight of him stops me dead.
He’s clutching either side of the doorframe, his face contorted like he’s in agony.
‘What’s wrong?’ I slide off the pillar to go to him, but he’s already coming for me.
He grabs me in his arms, pulling me back on to the balcony. The force of my body crashes into his and he brings us both down on to the ground.
He slumps with his back against the pillar and bundles me on to his lap, the grip of his arms around my torso almost suffocating.
His entire body is shaking.
‘You . . . could . . .’ His chest heaves against my back as he struggles to speak, like something is tearing him up inside.
‘You’re holding me too tight,’ I wheeze.
‘You could have . . . fallen,’ he chokes out.
The panic in his voice makes my throat burn. ‘What?’ I wriggle inside his grip until I can turn and look at his face.
Tears are streaming down his cheeks, and his lips are parted as he drags in rough, uneven breaths. ‘Aur—’
‘Shh. You’re okay. Don’t try to talk. Just breathe, okay? I’m here.’
I cup his cheek and look into his eyes. He winces and lifts one hand to his chest, rubbing it.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
He grabs my hand, placing it over his scar. His heart is beating wildly, racing like he’s just sprinted for his life.
His face is pale and clammy, his eyes have lost focus.
‘Breathe with me, okay?’ I instruct, keeping my hand over his chest and my eyes locked on his. I take his hand and place it over my chest so he can feel it moving up and down as I breathe.
It takes everything in me to keep my breathing slow and steady and not panic at the sheer terror in his eyes.
‘In,’ I whisper, breathing in slowly and encouraging him to do the same. ‘And out.’ I blow out a slow, long breath, nodding encouragingly as the whites around his eyes become less pronounced and his breathing levels out.
‘Again,’ I whisper, stroking my thumb back and forth over his chest, tracing the line that he’s never permitted me to touch before.
We breathe together until his heart rate slows, and his body relaxes.
‘You’re okay,’ I soothe, stroking his wet hair back from his face. I keep the backs of my fingers resting on his cheekbone and gaze into his eyes. They’re glassy and wet, but he’s not crying any more.
‘I thought you were going to fall,’ he says, his voice hoarse.
‘I’m fine.’ I smile softly.
He stares at me like he’s still processing what just happened.
‘I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you.’
The emotion in his voice has tears springing up in my eyes, and I nod, because I don’t know what to say.
My eyes drop to his scar, and I open my mouth, wanting to ask, but knowing that he probably won’t tell me.
‘I feel the same way,’ I say quietly.
He takes my hand in his and lifts it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the centre of my palm.
Then he places it over his scar, right above his heart.
‘I had heart surgery,’ he breathes.
I nod, tears welling in my eyes as his barriers fall down like a tower of cards. I didn’t know what I was expecting to hear. But nothing could have prepared me for the anguish on his face.
‘I was nine years old, and I fell from the balcony at my parents’ house. A planter broke my fall, but it smashed, and a piece embedded itself in my chest. I needed open heart surgery to repair the damage.’
‘Rafael,’ I whisper, my vision blurring.
‘My heart stopped twice on the operating table, but they managed to bring me back.’
‘Oh my God.’ I look at the pillar we’re leaning against. ‘And that’s why—’
‘Why I’m a goddamn coward who’s scared of heights? Yes. You know, every time I go to my parents’ house, I walk around to look at that damn balcony before I knock on the door. It’s a ritual I perform. For no other reason than to remind myself of who I am. And who I’m not.’
I sob at the way he winces. ‘I can tell you who you’re not.
A coward. Don’t ever say that.’ I cup his cheek with my spare hand.
‘Listen to me, that’s a trauma. It’s a horrible, awful thing that happened to you.
Of course you’re going to be affected by it.
But you’re not a coward! How can you say that? ’
‘It’s what my father says. The day it happened he told me I needed to grow up, that I was becoming a man and needed to act like one.
And could start by doing some “man’s work” around the house.
So I thought I’d show him how grown up I was by stripping the ivy that was growing on their balcony.
My mother wanted to remove it all and repaint it.
I climbed the rail, and I lost my balance and fell. ’
My heart breaks for him. He’s never looked lost before. He’s always so confident, so in control. But looking at him now, I can see all the years of pain this has brought him.
‘You’re not a coward,’ I whisper. ‘You’re incredible.’
‘I swore the day I heard my mother crying over me that I’d never cause anyone to cry like that. I couldn’t handle hearing it again.’
The utter despair on his face makes my heart twist painfully. ‘But I don’t understand why you’d buy a house with a balcony if you hate them so much.’
‘I bought this house after I took over from my father as CEO for Fairfax Guardian. It doesn’t serve me to forget, Aurora.’
‘Why would you do that to yourself?’
He licks his lips, like he’s contemplating how much to tell me. Inside my head, I’m pleading with him to tell me everything. To be honest with me. To let me in. But I can’t force it. It has to be because he wants to.
His heart beats steadily beneath my palm and my fingers tingle against his warm skin.
‘The Wyndham account,’ he says eventually. ‘My father worked his whole career towards securing a client like them. He’d set it all up. All I had to do was meet with the head of the company and sign the contracts. It should have been easy.’ He blows out a ragged breath, his face pinching.
‘What happened?’
‘The guy, Montgomery Wyndham, liked to do business in . . . unusual ways. He invited me to his building in London. His offices were on the top floor. Fifty floors up. And he had a roof garden.’
I swallow, nausea swirling in my gut.
‘He wanted to talk outside?’ I say in understanding.
Rafael huffs. ‘Not just that. He was having a charity abseil down the side of his building that day. Raising money for children with cancer because his daughter was being treated for leukaemia.’
‘And you had to watch them going over the edge? That must have been hard, I’m so sorry.’
‘It was. I started guzzling down champagne to get through it. I just needed to get the contracts signed, then I could get the hell out of there. My heart was racing, Aurora. I thought it was going to give out on me right there. It felt like I was dying.’
His voice cracks and something inside me splits wide open. ‘It must have been awful.’
‘Mr Wyndham thought it would be a great start to our business relationship, and stellar publicity, if we were to abseil it together.’