CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tessa
I TAP MY fingers nervously against the armrest of my wheelchair as I sit outside the door to Rafe’s room. What started out as an incredible night turned bad so quickly I barely had time to catch my breath.
I lingered on the atrium bridge for quite a while, trying to get myself back into a place of neutrality after our heated dance. That Rafe had even noticed me watching Gavriil and Juliette dance and picked up on my quiet yearning had meant something to me. So, too, had me being his first dance partner.
And then there was the matter of the dance itself. Something so simple yet so sensual it had stoked a slow flame that crept through my veins and continued to smolder long after Gavriil had come to fetch him.
Except he hadn’t returned. Nearly fifteen minutes later, Gavriil had sought me out to tell me that Rafe had left. He’d been uncharacteristically somber and, when I pressed for details, simply said that he and Rafe had a disagreement and he had said some things he shouldn’t have. I sent Rafe a text, but all he’d answered was that he needed to get home and had arranged for the limo to come back to get me whenever I wished to leave. I’d swapped out my crutches for my wheelchair and spent the rest of the evening with Gavriil and Juliette. Juliette had been thrilled to talk about her house and my business, although I’d caught her more than once shooting a concerned glance at her husband. Finally, when people started to leave, I took the limo Rafe had arranged back to our hotel, conscious of the empty seat beside me.
Rafe booked us a room at the Hotel Grande Bretagne, the most luxurious hotel in Athens. The two-bedroom suite included a marble bathroom, ornate furniture, and a balcony overlooking the Acropolis hill. When I wheeled myself into the room, I was greeted with the comforting glow of a lamp that has been left on and an empty sitting room. Rafe’s door was firmly closed.
I resolved to stay in my room, give Rafe space. But his abrupt retreat, combined with Gavriil’s uncharacteristic behavior, ate at me. So now I’m sitting outside the door to his bedroom, working up the courage to knock.
I changed out of my gown and into a lounge set from a shopping trip with Katie all those months ago. A sleeveless silk top and matching pants in burgundy. Simple, but elegant, the cool material against my skin a much-needed contrast to the heat I hadn’t been able to get rid of since our dance.
I raise my hand to knock. Then I freeze. I still feel raw after our dance, vulnerable. Is me being here now the best thing for him? For me?
But, I tell myself as I raise my hand again, if it were anyone else, I would be checking on them.
I knock. Silence greets me.
Doubt creeps in. I debate returning to my room, but before I can make a decision, footsteps finally sound on the other side of the door. Rafe opens it. My breath catches in my chest. He shed his black tuxedo jacket but is still wearing his white dress shirt and black pants. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of skin and dark curling hair.
“Tessa.”
His voice is flat. Unease ripples down my spine.
“I just wanted to check on you. You left the party.”
“Yes. Gavriil and I had words.”
“That’s what he said.” I tilt my head to one side. “Are you upset with me, too?”
He braces one shoulder against the doorway and stares down at me. “It was disconcerting realizing my brother most likely knew about your intent to divorce me before I did.”
My stomach clenches. “Rafe—”
He turns his back on me and walks away. “It doesn’t matter,” he says over his shoulder. “It doesn’t change anything.”
I hesitate on the threshold. And then move into the room, closing the door softly behind me.
“I’m sorry, Rafe.”
He moves to the small balcony and looks out over Athens, his body stiff.
“I would ask that for the remainder of our arrangement, you not share any details with anyone else.”
“I didn’t tell him about…”
Rafe glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised and almost a challenge.
“The other part,” I finish lamely.
“My debauching you? Your discretion is appreciated.”
Irritation chips away at my compassion. “Look, when I talked to Gavriil, I was trying to get his perspective. To make sure I wasn’t jumping to conclusions or making a hasty decision.”
He looks back out over the ocean. “He said you talked to him a week before you sent the divorce papers.”
I will not feel guilty. I will not feel guilty.
“Yes. I hadn’t heard from you since I left. And then at the wedding you acted like I didn’t exist. There wasn’t any anger, there wasn’t any sadness, there was just…nothing.”
“Nothing,” he echoes. “That’s the state I usually exist in, Tessa.”
“I know. Although I don’t understand why.”
“Why doesn’t matter. It’s simply how it is.”
The irritation digs its claws deeper into my skin. “Do you never ask why?”
“I do when it matters.”
“Well, the why of this matters to me.” I stop my wheelchair next to him and look up. “You say you and your brother have no relationship, but I see the way you look at him sometimes when you think no one’s looking, like you want to talk to him and figure out whatever mess happened between you two. You notice that I want to dance and find a way to make it happen. You say you’re not capable of feeling even as you demonstrate that you are on a regular basis. I don’t understand why you keep insisting otherwise.”
Silence falls between us, broken only by the distant sound of traffic. Then, at last, he speaks.
“Gavriil and I have never been close. He thinks that’s because I chose not to forge a relationship with him, that I’m incapable of doing so. He’s right. But at one time, I wanted things. Family, a friend.”
Foreboding forms a hard ball in the pit of my stomach. “What happened?”
“When Lucifer told me I had a brother and that that brother was coming to live with us, he also issued an ultimatum. He told me that if I attempted to befriend Gavriil, he would make life extremely difficult for both of us.”
The awfulness of what Lucifer inflicted on his sons slices through me.
“I imagine it’s the same speech he gave my mother. When I was around five years old, she withdrew. Turned into a cold woman who never showed me an ounce of affection. For the longest time, I assumed it was me.”
Five. When he was five years old and lost the love of the one person he still had in his life.
“I was so angry with her that I shunned her. She eventually moved to Madrid, and only visited occasionally until she passed right before I graduated from university. It wasn’t until after her death that I realized Lucifer had probably given her the same talk he had given me about forging a relationship with Gavriil.”
I press my lips together to keep the tears at bay. This isn’t about me. It’s about Rafe and the horrible manipulations of a cruel, selfish man who forced him into this state of existence, one where emotions had been suppressed to the point he now believed himself no longer capable of experiencing them.
He moves away, just a couple steps, but clearly putting distance between us. He sits down on a lounge chair and leans back with a casual arrogance.
“Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of feeling. But I’ve lived so long in this space devoid of emotion that even when I do feel something, I don’t know what to do with it. Usually,” he adds with a slight smirk, “the emotions are not positive ones. A flash of fury. A burst of anger. Emotions that are better left under wraps.”
I approach the lounge slowly. As I look closer, I see the subtle signs of how deeply the past is gripping him. The tightness in his jaw. The pulse throbbing in his temple. The cold flatness in his eyes that now seems more like a man trying to hold himself back than someone who simply doesn’t have a heart. That he left the gala and came back home after his disagreement with Gavriil is a hint that he cares far more for his brother than he’s ever allowed Gavriil to see. Perhaps even more than he’s admitted to himself.
I put the brakes on my chair and slowly ease myself from it onto the end of the lounge. I scoot closer to Rafe, bracing myself for him to tell me to leave. But he doesn’t; he simply watches me. When I’m close enough, I reach up and lay my fingers on his temples. He stiffens beneath my touch, then gradually relaxes as I start to massage his skin.
“Sometimes I dream about my accident,” I murmur as I rub at the tension beneath the skin. “How frustrated I felt that Mom was spending all of her time with Katie. Even then, she tended to focus on one thing or one person, pour most of her attention on the new baby. Maybe that’s why my father was always working. My grandfather and aunt barely paid him attention. Neither did my mother. He had nothing but work.” I shift my fingers slightly, continue to rub soothing circles as I talk, the activity calming me hopefully as much as it’s comforting him.
“I remember seeing Mom asleep on the couch. I knew Katie was in her room napping. Mom had promised me that she would take me outside to play that afternoon. But she told me the same thing the day before, and it hadn’t happened. So I went out on my own.”
I smile slightly. “We lived in a beautiful stone house. We weren’t that far out of Dublin, only thirty minutes or so. But to me it felt like we lived in the wilderness. There was a stone wall at the back of our yard. It dropped off on the other side down to a creek. I remember my heart slamming into my ribs when my foot slipped. I remember a sharp pain that cracked through me right before I slipped into a blissful blackness. My next memory isn’t until a day or so later, when I woke up in my hospital room to my parents arguing.”
I can hear the echoes of that argument. The fury vibrating in my father’s voice. The helpless anger in my mother’s.
“My father was accusing my mother of not watching me closely enough. My mother was accusing him of not being around enough to help, let alone care about his family. When they realized I was awake, they stopped talking. It’s the last time I heard them say anything about the accident, unless we were talking about a surgery or physical therapy.
“To this day, they blame each other. I know my mother also blames herself.” I pause, swallow hard. “Her tendency to become hyperfocused turned into hypervigilance. That turned into control. Controlling where I went, what I did. Everything to keep me safe.” Despite my anger, I feel a twinge of sympathy. “She once told me she would never fail me again. Toss in my feeling guilty that I disobeyed her in the first place and went out to play when she was asleep, and you have a family that has been living on guilt and blame for the past twenty-one years.”
“Is that why you stayed?”
I can feel the hum of his voice beneath my fingers as I continue to massage his skin.
“A large part of it. I felt responsible. For years, I went along with what my mother said because…” My throat tightens. “I wanted redemption. If I listened now like I hadn’t before, maybe one day I would make up for all of the trouble I had caused.”
“You were a child, Tessa.”
“I was.” I mentally push away the guilt that tries to surge up. “Something I’ve come to accept. I made a mistake. So did my parents. Although I can’t blame them for all of it. I didn’t stand up for myself.”
“Again,” Rafe repeats as his eyes capture mine, the intimacy of our locked gazes making my breath catch, “you were a child.”
“Until I wasn’t.” I smile sadly. “Guilt and fear kept me trapped just as much as my mother’s control issues and hypervigilance.”
He leans forward and captures my face between his hands.
“Yes, it’s a part of you. But look at what you’ve done. You,” he says with an emphasis that makes my eyes grow hot. “You started up a new business, you’re living on your own, scuba diving,” he adds with a slight shake of his head and a small smile, “learning how to navigate a new city, a new language. Your life is far richer than mine has ever been.”
I grab on to his wrist. “The reason I share all of that with you, Rafe, is because you can still make a choice. You don’t have to let the guilt over what happened with Gavriil keep you in this prison you’ve created for yourself.”
He starts to pull away. “Tessa, I’m happy that you have found so much joy. But not everyone does in this life.”
He leans down and kisses my forehead in such a way that I know he’s preparing to send me back to my room. I inhale, then slide my hands up his chest and around his neck with a boldness I fake every step of the way.
His eyes darken almost instantly. “Tessa.”
My name is a warning. One I ignore as I lean up and kiss him. For a moment, he doesn’t respond. But when I tease his lips with the tip of my tongue, he groans and hauls me against him, plundering my mouth with lips, teeth, tongue. He devours me, leaves me speechless.
“Tessa.”
My body ignites as he growls my name, the sound reverberating through my lips. Every cell attuned to his every breath, the beat of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest.
I pull back just a fraction, still close enough I can feel his breath feathering across my lips.
“I’ve waited long enough.” My hands slide up into his hair. “Make love to me, Rafe. ”