Chapter 8 The Bookstore #2
My cheeks flush instantly. I can still feel his breath near my ear as he read those lines. I quickly turn away, trying to hide my burning face. “Not unless the twist is that he turns out to be a serial killer.”
The clerk joins us at the register, interrupting us. Once I’ve spent this month’s grocery budget in books I won’t get to read for weeks, Rafael effortlessly grabs the two large paper bags like they weigh nothing and heads for the exit.
Oddly flustered, I trail after him. He’s making this seem so easy. Too easy. Like he was born to chauffeur me around and act like my personal shopper. Like doing things for me comes naturally.
Outside, he places the bags in the trunk of his car, then turns to me with that same bright, disarming charm. “Should I take you home, Freckles?”
“Sure, yes,” I respond automatically, even though my mind is a mess of jumbled thoughts.
I have a podcast episode to rewrite, yet I already know the man standing in front of me is all I’ll be able to think about.
The ease of being around him and the terrifying consequences of getting used to his presence.
I slide into the passenger seat, feeling the click of the seat belt as I buckle in. I wait for the engine to start, but Rafael leans back against the headrest.
“Everything okay?”
He exhales slowly. His hair’s all messy curls, a few strands falling over his forehead. The silver hoop in his nose shines in the dashboard light. “Yeah. I had a great time. Did you?”
His words catch me off guard. A great time? I enjoyed myself, but I can’t fathom how he could’ve had a good time, let alone a great one.
I nod, though it feels more like a reflex than a conscious response.
Turning his focus to the road, he sighs. Black ink curls into the shape of a snake winding around his left forearm, its head resting just above his wrist. He adjusts his grip on the wheel, the heavy silver ring on his middle finger glinting in the faint streetlights. “The funeral’s tomorrow.”
I blink, surprised he brought up the topic. So far, he’s hardly mentioned his father, and I didn’t want to pry. Will he want me to attend? I wasn’t planning to—I didn’t even like the man—but that was before… well, before Rafael came back. Before the last few days. “I know. How are you doing?”
After a moment of hesitation, he snickers. “I’m good. And awful. It’ll be packed, won’t it?”
The funeral of the owner of the only pub-bar-café-club in town? “Afraid so.”
He tightens his grip on the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening. “I hate this. All of it. The thought of standing there, pretending I know what to say when people come up to me with that tragic look on their faces, telling me how sorry they are.”
“Oh, that’s easy. You say, ‘Thank you for coming.’ When they ask you how you’re holding up, you say, ‘One day at a time.’ And to people who want to know what they can do for you, you ask them to light a candle in honor of your dad.”
A long exhale, then he says, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for your parents’ funeral.”
It wasn’t his fault, of course, but I wish he’d been there, too. It remains the worst day of my life, even worse than the day they died. It was at their funeral that it sank in that they were really gone.
“How was it?”
“The funeral? Uh… depressing. And long.” I fidget with a lock of hair.
“I kept shifting between being annoyed at what people said—like they didn’t have the right to grieve because they hadn’t lost as much as me—and wishing they’d keep talking about Mom and Dad, because it felt like it kept them alive a little longer. ”
I glance down at my hands, twisting them in my lap. “And after, I just felt… empty. Like I’d lost any sense of purpose. There wasn’t the funeral to keep up appearances for anymore, and I was completely… alone.”
Shit. Way to make it easier for him.
I quickly backtrack. “But it probably won’t be the same for you.” His gaze stays steady on me, and I catch the faintest glint of amusement in his expression. “Because I’ll be there. If, um, you want me to. And I’ll do what I can to help.”
“No,” he says, his expression darkening in an instant. “I don’t want you to go.”
I swallow, looking away. “Oh. O-okay.”
Great. Now I feel like an idiot for offering.
“Because I won’t go either.”
I turn to him again. He won’t attend his dad’s funeral? My mind stumbles over the thought. Rafael Gray skipping his saintly father’s funeral would be the talk of the town for years. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“You think it’d be terrible of me.”
“No, I don’t. All that crap about funerals helping with closure is just that—crap. You shouldn’t go if you don’t want to.”
His fingers pause their drumming, and for the first time since we started this conversation, his shoulders seem to relax. He pauses, as if testing the thought out in his mind. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why were you alone?” he asks, turning his head just enough to look at me. His gray eyes are steady, almost too clear. “I mean, after the funeral. Your brother went to live with your grandparents, right? Why didn’t you?”
“Uh…” I laugh, a humorless sound that echoes uncomfortably in the quiet car. “Depends who you ask. My brother thinks I abandoned him. According to my grandparents, I preferred my own space.”
“Well, I’m asking you.”
“I…” My throat tightens, and I clench my hands into fists in my lap, nails digging into my palms. “I never felt welcome with my grandparents.”
He frowns, his brows pulling together as he waits for me to continue.
“I’m not actually related to them,” I say eventually. “Drew adopted me when I was two, but they never really saw me as a granddaughter.”
“I didn’t know he wasn’t your biological father.”
“He might as well have been,” I say, rubbing my hands together. “No one knew. It didn’t matter to him, and it didn’t matter to me.”
“But it matters to your grandparents.”
“Not that they’d ever admit it.” I press my nails harder into my palms. “But they never liked my mom. And she was the one driving the car that…” My words falter, and I swallow hard, my throat thick.
“It wasn’t her fault, of course, but they only saw it as confirmation of what they already believed: My mom was a bad seed, and I was part of her. ”
“So when your mom and dad died, they sent you packing?”
“They kept insisting I wanted to be independent,” I say with a bitter edge.
“Craved to ‘spread my wings’ and ‘head into the world on my own.’ It became a little statement for me to parrot, and every time someone asked, I’d say that I’d decided to live in the house.
That I wanted to drop out of college, take over my parents’ mortgage, bounce through minimum-wage jobs. ”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. What I wanted was every bit of family I could catch.”
His fingers brush mine as he moves his hand from the emergency brake.
He cups my hand like he’s holding something fragile, yet also like he’s afraid I’ll slip away if he doesn’t hold tight enough.
It’s such a simple thing, but it drags all the restless, darting pieces of my thoughts into something still that makes me feel uncomfortably exposed.
As if he’s touching more than just my hand and has reached into that place I keep locked up tight.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. I mean, I talk to them every few weeks, and my brother texts back sometimes, so…”
He squeezes harder. “Scarlett?” I meet his gaze. “That sucks, and I’m sorry.”
I watch our hands, joined between us. I can’t help myself—I trace the small tattoo inked across the back of his hand, a tiny black star just below the knuckle of his index finger.
My thumb moves over it slowly, feeling the faint texture of the lines, trying to focus on that instead of how raw and seen I suddenly feel.
“Yeah, it does suck. But at least I had Celeste.”
“Celeste?”
“My boss.” My lips twitch into a faint smile at the thought of her. “She was a good friend of my parents’, and after their death, she took the one thing she knew could help me and turned it into jobs for us both.” I shrug. “Books.”
He huffs out a surprised breath. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. She made me pick up a bunch of books, then told me to write out my thoughts like I was talking to a friend. Then she made me do it again and again. At first she’d badger me about it, and after a while, it started being fun.”
His thumb rubs over my first knuckle, the soft contact making my stomach do somersaults. “And the rest is history.”
“Right.” Heat creeps up my chest. “She, uh, she used to work at the library when we were kids.”
“Oh my God.” His eyes bulge out. “She’s Mrs. Morgan?
Shit, she was terrifying. If you ever returned a book late, she’d add your picture to the wall of Library Delinquents.
You know, she suspected I’d drawn a penis in a book, so she told me books had better memory than people and remembered who disrespected them.
Scared the hell out of me, especially because I totally drew that penis. ”
I laugh, rolling my eyes. “She mellowed out. Mostly.”
“Does she still smell like honey?”
“Oh, yes. It’s her perfume—she always smells like summer.”
I can’t look away from our hands, still together, even knowing full well I should pull mine back. Hell, I should at least want to. “Anyway, that’s my sad story.”
“And that’s not the version your brother heard,” Rafael says, tilting his head slightly as if trying to read me better.
“No.” A bitter taste rises in my throat. “And he never forgave me for it.”
“So why don’t you tell him the truth?”
Because the truth is worse than my lie. Knowing his grandparents all but kicked me out would leave him stranded in a house full of bitterness. “I guess I’d rather have him hating me than the people he depends on.”
He exhales deeply. “That’s a hell of a thing to carry alone.”
“Some things are easier that way.”
There’s a pause, and then he shifts slightly, angling his body toward me. “Okay, it’s probably not my place, but… don’t you think he deserves the right to choose?”
“He’s just a kid, Rafael.”
“Wrong.” His lips quirk upward, though his eyes remain serious. “As the president of that club for eighteen consecutive years, I know how to recognize a fellow member.”
I frown, confused.
“He’s not just a kid, Scarlett. He’s a miserable kid.” He leans back, starting the car with a soft rumble. “And something tells me the truth could help with that.”