Chapter Sixteen
Cece
Morning in Miami has zero fucking mercy.
Sunlight cuts through the gap in the hotel curtains and lands directly across my face, warm and bright enough that pretending to still be asleep stops being an option.
Somewhere beyond the glass, traffic moves steadily along the street, a horn sounds in the distance, and the air conditioner rattles like it’s fighting for its life against another ninety-degree day.
When I open my eyes. I immediately remember last night and immediately close them again.
Our daughter.
Ay, Dios mío.
Beside me, Revel is still asleep on his stomach, one arm shoved beneath the pillow and the sheet hanging low across his hips.
His hair is too short to really suffer from bedhead, just slightly flattened along one side, and the morning light catches across the tattoos covering his shoulders and running down both arms.
He looks ridiculously peaceful for someone who spent last night saying the most unhinged shit anyone has ever said to me during sex.
Fantasy vacation sex.
That’s what I’m calling it.
We’re in Miami. There’s a hotel involved. We’ve done tourist shit, spent too much money, eaten nothing remotely nutritious and jumped out of a fucking plane.
Close enough.
Whatever happened last night stays here.
Including the part where my stupid body apparently found the entire imaginary-baby situation significantly hotter than my brain would like to acknowledge.
I slide toward the edge of the mattress.
“You’re thinking too loud.”
His voice is rough with sleep.
I glance back. One blue eye is open.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”
“Bullshit.”
I grab his shirt off the floor and pull it over my head. “Go back to sleep.”
His gaze drops lazily over me as I stand, and that stupid little smile starts.
I head toward the bathroom and shut the door before he gets the chance to say anything else.
By the time I come back out showered, dressed and significantly more prepared to deal with life, Revel is awake and sitting on the edge of the bed in black shorts, checking something on his phone.
“I need coffee,” I announce.
“Well shit, good morning to you too, Mama.”
“I said what I said.”
He stands, grabs his shirt and pulls it over his head and his phone buzzes again.
Revel looks down at the screen, and I stop halfway through putting in my hoop.
“What?”
“It’s the shop.”
That gets my attention.
He opens the message.
“The part came in this morning. They’ve got your car up now and they’re starting the install.”
“Oh, thank fuck.”
“They said they’ll update me once everything’s in and they’ve tested it.”
The relief is immediate.
I love Miami, but I would also like to stop living out of a suitcase and wondering whether my Honda is going to financially ruin me.
He holds both hands up. “Didn’t say, but I doubt it. It’s not an easy install, Mama.”
I sigh and drag a hand down my face. “Fine. One more day. But if that car finds one more reason to keep me here, I’m setting it on fire myself.”
His mouth twitches.
I grab my purse before he can encourage me.
“Now, we get coffee.”
The heat hits the second we step outside.
Miami is already fully awake. Cars crawl through the intersection beneath tall palms, music spills out of an open storefront across the street, and the sky is painfully blue above rows of white buildings.
The ocean isn’t visible from here, but I can smell it beneath the exhaust and somebody’s breakfast cooking nearby.
We find a café a few blocks away with little tables beneath striped umbrellas and fans turning overhead.
Revel gets our drinks while I claim a table in the shade.
When he comes back, he sets mine in front of me and presses a kiss to the top of my head before sitting down across from me.
I take a sip and pull apart a piece of toast while the city moves around us, watching Revel across the table. He’s relaxed, sunglasses pushed up on his head, eating like there’s nothing complicated about any of this.
Meanwhile, I’m noticing things I really don’t need to be noticing. Like how my coffee showed up exactly how I like it without him asking, again. How easy sitting across from him has started to feel.
How somewhere along the way, spending every day together stopped feeling like being stranded and started feeling suspiciously normal.
I take another sip and glance at him over the rim.
“Last night was vacation sex.”
Revel looks up from his plate, one brow lifting. “Oh, is that what we’re calling it?”
“Yes.”
His mouth curves around a slow, annoying grin. “Cool. Big fan of vacations, apparently.”
I give him a flat look. “I’m talking about the shit we were saying.”
“Ah.” He leans back in his chair, looking entirely too entertained now. “The part where you got all hot and bothered over me knocking you up?”
“?Cállate!” I hiss, kicking him under the table as I glance around the patio. “Cono, Revel. The entire fucking restaurant doesn’t need to know.”
“What? You brought it up.”
“I brought it up because I’m clarifying.”
“Right.” He takes another bite, nodding like this is all very serious. “Vacation sex. Vacation rules. Vacation babies.”
“There are no vacation babies.”
“Probably for the best. Customs would be a nightmare.”
I stare at him and his grin widens.
“Are you done?”
“Not even a little bit, Mama.”
“Of course you’re not.”
I reach for my coffee, mostly so I have something to do with my hands. Revel lets me suffer for another second before some of the amusement finally leaves his face.
“I do know the difference, Cece.”
I glance at him over the rim of my cup.
“Between talking shit when we’re worked up and actually deciding to have a kid,” he says. “I’m not completely fucking stupid.”
“Debatable.”
His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t run with it. “I meant some of it, though. I’ve thought about having a family before, and apparently my brain really fucking likes putting you in the picture.”
My stomach does an annoying little flip.
Fucking traitor.
“But that’s in my head.” He rests his forearms on the table, gaze holding mine. “Anything real would be something we both wanted. I’d never make that choice for you or assume I get to just because I’m, apparently, developing a very specific fucking problem where you’re concerned.”
A laugh slips out before I can stop it, but something in my chest loosens with it.
Not because I genuinely thought Revel had walked out of that hotel room with a five-year reproductive plan and a list of baby names.
It’s that he understands there’s a line between fantasy and reality without making me draw it for him. He can want something, joke about it, get entirely too fucking excited by the idea of it, and still understand that anything involving my body isn’t a decision he gets to make.
“Okay,” I say.
He studies me for a second, like he’s making sure I actually mean it, then reaches for his coffee and moves on.
Just like that.
No pushing. No trying to turn it into something bigger because I gave him an inch.
And somehow, that makes the tightness in my chest ease even more.
****
We spend the afternoon walking with absolutely nowhere to be, which might be the first time since getting to Miami that nobody is trying to throw me out of a plane, strand me in the ocean, or kill me with adrenaline.
Revel’s hand stays wrapped around mine as we move down the sidewalk, his thumb brushing over my knuckles every so often like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. I do realize. Unfortunately.
The streets closer to the water are packed, all bright storefronts, little cafés spilling tables onto the sidewalk, souvenir shops crammed with neon shirts and shit nobody needs, tiny boutiques with dresses hanging in the windows that cost more than my monthly grocery bill.
Palm trees throw broken patches of shade across the pavement, and every time the breeze comes in off the ocean, it carries salt and enough relief from the humidity to stop me from bitching for at least thirty seconds.
Probably.
Revel, meanwhile, has apparently decided this is a motorcycle sightseeing tour.
He stops for every fucking one.
Parked outside restaurants. Cruising past us. One ancient thing chained near a curb that looks like it survived three hurricanes and a felony.
I stare at it. “That is literally tetanus with handlebars.”
“It has potential.”
I roll my eyes, shaking my head but in typical Revel fashion, he pulls out his phone and takes a picture anyway.
I tug his hand and keep walking. “Come on, Bob the Builder.”
He laughs and lets me drag him along, only to turn his head when another bike passes two seconds later.
“Ay, Dios mío. Do you need to stop and sniff the exhaust too?”
“Depends what it is.”
“You’re so embarrassing.”
“Says the woman holding my hand in public.”
I look down at our joined hands.
Then back at him.
“Yeah well, I seem to have had a temporary lapse in judgment.”
“Been having a lot of those lately, Mama.”
I squeeze his fingers hard enough to make the point, and he just grins.
So fucking annoying.
But this version of him is different from the one I first met at the garage. He’s still cocky as fuck and, apparently, incapable of letting a motorcycle exist near him without conducting a visual inspection, but he isn’t performing for me anymore.
He doesn’t keep pushing for reactions the way he used to. No constant little comments just to see if he can get under my skin, no hovering around waiting for me to look at him.
He doesn’t have to anymore.
Somewhere between Tampa and Miami, I stopped making him work for every scrap of attention.
Now I’m walking beside him with our fingers laced together like this has somehow become normal.
It kind of has.
We duck into shops whenever the heat gets annoying. I buy sunglasses I don’t need. Revel finds the ugliest tourist shirt in Miami and actually considers it.
“If you buy that, I’m walking ten feet behind you.”
“You try it and I’m throwing you over my shoulder.”
I put it back for him.
Eventually, I spot a pet store and somehow Guac ends up with a tiny gold collar with an avocado charm, more treats, and a ridiculous pair of sunglasses Revel slips onto the counter.
“You do know he’s going to hate those.”
“Probably, but still worth the picture.”
Unfortunately, I agree.
Outside, the afternoon heat has softened and the breeze coming off the water finally makes walking bearable. Revel takes the shopping bag from me, and a few blocks later, he suddenly disappears into a little antique store.
“Hold up, Mama. Stay right here.”
I stop. “Why?”
“Two seconds.”
Before I can ask anything else, he disappears inside the jewelry store.
Suspicious as fuck.
A few minutes later, he comes back out with a small box in his hand.
I look at it, then at him. “No.”
His mouth twitches. “You haven’t even opened it.”
“Exactly. Still no.”
He holds it out anyway.
I stare at him for a second, then take it.
Inside is a delicate gold chain with a tiny wave hanging from it.
My thumb brushes over the charm.
“Why a wave?”
“Figured it could remind you of getting in the ocean even when you were scared as shit.” His expression softens. “If you can do that, you can handle a lot more than you think.”
My chest tightens.
“And if I can’t?”
His fingers close around mine.
“Then I’ve got you.”
Fuck.
I look back down at the little wave, suddenly very interested in it so he doesn’t see what that does to me.
The problem with Revel isn’t that he’s good at grand gestures.
It’s that he pays attention.
I can defend myself against grand gestures.
This shit is harder.
I take the necklace from the box and turn my back to him, lifting my ponytail out of the way. “Put it on me.”
His fingers brush the back of my neck as he fastens it, warm against my skin. When I let my hair fall, the little gold wave settles beside Abuela’s locket.
I look down at both of them resting together against my chest.
Yep, that gets me.
When I turn around, Revel is watching me with that softer look he gets sometimes, the one that never feels like he’s trying to get anything out of me.
So before he can ruin it by opening his mouth, I grab the front of his shirt and kiss him.
Slow. Sweet and just because I want to.
When I pull back, his grin starts.
“Don’t.”
He laughs under his breath and takes my hand again.
Later, we end up walking along the water.
The sun is lower now, turning the buildings behind us gold and scattering light across the ocean. Boats move farther offshore, white against all that blue, while the beach beside us is still crowded with umbrellas, towels, music and people trying to squeeze the last bit out of the afternoon.
A little girl runs through the sand near the walkway, squealing when a wave catches her ankles before racing back toward the blanket where her parents are sitting. Her mom catches her around the waist, laughing, while her dad already has a towel waiting.
I watch them for a second longer than I mean to.
Something about the little girl running back to her parents catches at me in a place I usually keep buried.
Which is ridiculous, considering my dad was gone before I was even born.
He heard ‘pregnant’ and disappeared.
That was it.
I don’t have memories of him walking out because I was never there for the leaving part. What I grew up with was the empty space after it.
My mom doing everything herself.
Me knowing there was a man out there who chased her for years, made her feel like she was the center of his world, then vanished the second that world came with responsibility.
Funny how someone I never knew still managed to leave that big of a mark on me.
Maybe that’s why I’ve never been impressed by men wanting me too loudly.
Wanting is easy.
Chasing is exciting and promises sound good when nobody’s had to prove them yet.
Now, staying is the only part I actually believe.
My fingers tighten slightly around Revel’s and his phone buzzes a second later and breaks the moment.
“Is it the shop?” I ask.
He checks the screen. “Yeah. The part’s installed. They’re just running some diagnostics and taking it out for a test after. Said they’ll update me again once they know everything’s good, but we should be able to pick it up in the morning.”
Relief should be the only thing I feel.
Instead, there’s this stupid little drop in my stomach right behind it.
Because morning means my car is fixed. My car being fixed means we leave, and considering I spent half this trip bitching about being stranded here, I should probably be a lot more excited about that.
Apparently, my feelings missed the memo.
We keep walking while the sun sinks lower over the water, everything turning warm and gold around us. Revel’s hand stays wrapped around mine.
Up until this morning, all I wanted was my car fixed so I could get the hell back to Tampa.
Now that it’s actually happening, I’m not nearly as excited as I should be.
Because somewhere in the middle of all this, Miami stopped feeling like somewhere I was stuck and started feeling like a place I didn’t want to leave.
Not because of the city, but because here, with Revel, I stopped waiting for everything between us to fall apart.