Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
“So. Adam?”
That was how it began: Lillian with a wooden spoon, Bea with a knife, and poor Adam, blissfully unaware he’d just been summoned to trial in absentia.
They’d agreed to two housemate dinners together a week. It was Lillian’s turn to be head chef. “What about him?”
“You’ve been together, what, ten months now? You can’t dodge a status update forever.”
“What do you mean?” Lillian kept stirring. “Our status hasn’t changed.”
“Status, Lils,” Bea said significantly, pouring them both a glass of sparkling water. “How is it? Is it what you expected?”
Lillian blushed almost as red as the pasta sauce. “I…it’s fine. It’s not exactly what I expected, but it’s not bad. Like a nice way to cap the week off.”
“Once a week?” Bea echoed. Her brows rose. “That’s the rhythm?”
Lillian nodded. “Is that a lot?”
“Uh…” Bea honestly didn’t know. She’d only had one boyfriend, and in their year and a half together, once a week would have been cause for an intervention. “I think whatever works for you guys is fine.”
“Adam’s…steady. You know how I was always so nervous around men before? He doesn’t make me feel that way.”
“He makes you feel safe?”
Lillian nodded, putting a couple of bay leaves into the pot and closing the lid. “There’s no guessing. He doesn’t leave me hanging. We do the same things, at the same time, in the same way. For some people that might be boring but for us, it works.”
Bea tried to picture it: a neat grid, all the squares filled in, everything penciled and planned. Predictable. Wholesome.
“Will he go with you to Isabel’s gala?”
“Yeah, but he’ll hate it.” Lillian had a sip of water. “He’d prefer a quiet night in than a big night out.”
“That’s fair,” Bea said.
Lillian gazed askance at her. “Are you ready to talk about Rafael?”
The knife slipped, almost catching Bea’s finger. “Come on, Lils, it’s zucchini hour.”
“In his defense,” Lillian said, emptying a packet of pasta into boiling water, “even though he is El Jefe and owns our gym, he didn’t use either of those things to manipulate you.”
Bea grunted, reluctantly acknowledging that. “Well what about the recent thing? What was he thinking?”
“Okay, yeah. Warning off every man in Northgate could be interpreted as manipulative.”
“Right?” Bea chopped basil leaves with a little too much force.
“But it was also…protective. He warned everyone off. Including himself.”
Bea pulled out two plates from the cupboards. They were suddenly heavy in her hands. It was true he hadn’t just marked the perimeter to keep others out, he’d also drawn the line for himself. And kept it.
“How do you feel about him?”
She leaned against the counter, unsure if at this point she really didn’t know the words or if saying them would make them real.
“I…don’t know.” Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “Fascinated,” she admitted, thinking of the way she felt the timbre of his voice under her skin. “Nervous. Cornered.”
“Maybe that’s what works for you guys.” Lillian dropped the zucchini in the pot and closed the lid.
“What do you mean?”
She looked at Bea, as if deciding whether it was the right time to say the words. “You’re different with him. You always have been,” she said softly. “I used to think you were uncomfortable because he liked you and you didn’t. Now I wonder if it was the opposite.”
Bea froze. “You mean, while I was with…”
“No. No, no,” Lils hurried to assure her. “Not because you liked him back. Because even when you didn’t want to, whenever he was around, something in you…lit up.”
Bea’s chest squeezed. “I loved Gage,” she said quickly, sharper than she meant. “That was real. That was everything. Rafael had nothing to do with it.”
“I know that,” Lillian said without hesitation. “He knew that. Everyone did. You never blurred those lines, Bey. That’s not what I’m saying.”
The guilt ebbed, but only slightly.
“It’s just…” Lillian continued. “There’s that person that’s undeniable. The one who pulls you in.”
Bea pressed her palms into the counter. “And you think Rafael’s that for me.”
“I think you’ve been trying to outrun it for years. And that’s why you feel cornered now—because there’s nowhere left to run.”
The kitchen was silent except for the sound of simmering.
“Are you going to ask him to be your date to the Lumen gala?”
Bea shook her head. “He’d take it the wrong way.”
“What’s the wrong way, if you like him?”
“I didn’t say I like him, Lils.”
Lillian cleared her throat, a smile playing at her lips.
“Fine. I like him.” She said it as much to herself as to Lillian.
“I like him way, way more than is sensible.” She picked up a sprig of basil, twirling it in her fingers.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m ready for him.
Or that I can handle him. I haven’t worked out any of that yet, and until I do, it’s probably wiser not to. So. Gala. Table for one.”
“Isabel wants symmetry,” Lillian reminded her.
Bea drained the pasta. The steam fogged around her eyes for a moment. “I’ll ask Jaxon.”
Lillian turned off the bubbling sauce. “You sure that’s a good idea? He’s a little too handsome and eligible, Bey. And he probably likes breathing, too.”
Bea remembered the exchange outside the basketball stadium. “He’ll be fine. He’s just a handsome and eligible but purely platonic friend.”
Right. Because Rafael Griffin gave the impression of a man who’d take that nuance well.
The look Lillian gave her was dubious in the extreme.
There were a heap of important things she needed to be thinking about. Mid-semester exams were looming, evidenced by the textbooks currently colonizing her dining table. Her capstone project was only half complete.
Instead, Bea was psyching herself up to ask her classmate to escort her to Isabel’s party so she didn’t end up being the sad beige friend.
“Question,” she said, tapping the end of her pen against her cheek. “Do you like…galas?”
Jaxon continued working on the columns of numbers blooming across the screen as he replied, “Define like.”
“As in, would you sit through one night of champagne and billionaires with me so I don’t end up being the tragic cautionary tale in the corner?”
That earned her a glance. He considered her with calm amusement. “A pity date? Sure. I’ll even wear a tie.”
Bea slumped back into her dining chair in relief. “Great. You’re a lifesaver.”
Jaxon tilted his laptop screen down. “For the record, you know Griffin will hate this.”
She clutched her pen tighter. “Have you…been warned?”
“Not directly.” A smirk tugged at his mouth. “But it’s gone around.”
What, precisely, has gone around? How far around? Was it, like, a newsletter?
But all of those questions were too dumb to ask the class genius. “How do you feel about it?” she asked instead.
Jaxon clicked his pen closed, then set it down. “About what? Being your friend, or being the guy you drag to galas?”
Bea winced. “Both.”
He studied her for a moment, then shrugged. “You’re easy to hang out with. And your syntax might be better than mine, which is useful for the written work.”
As far as compliments went, that wasn’t bad.
He went on. “But, don’t take this the wrong way, you’re not my type.”
“Too short?” she joked weakly.
“Too taken.”
Her pulse spiked. “I’m not—” she started, then faltered.
Jaxon’s gaze was steady, unflinching. “You are,” he said simply. Then, after a beat, “At least, that’s how it looks.”
“Looks to whom?”
He gave a faint, knowing half-smile, and shook his head. “Come on, Bea. I think we earned a break.”
She blinked. “Where are we going?”
“For a drink.”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“Good. Neither am I.” He tugged her coat off the back of her chair and tossed it at her. “Let’s find somewhere the cocktails aren’t thirty dollars.”
They’d walked a solid twenty minutes before choosing a place. Glass-fronted but dim inside, with scuffed floors and old ironwork light fixtures.
It was buzzing with people, the energy immediately making her smile, reminding her of a pub back in Toronto. The air smelled of chips and lager. A couple of flat screens hummed with the football, commentary drowned by the rumble of laughter.
Jaxon went to wrestle with the crowd at the bar, so Bea staked out a small empty table for them.
Her heart leapt to her throat at the sight of Rafael in the corner, caught in the copper glow of a crooked lamp, amongst men who appeared as though they’d just walked off a site—mud on their boots, plaster dust at their cuffs, smudges of mud or paint on their faces. Builders, foremen, Northgate crews.
With him were Laurent Duret and another man Bea didn’t recognize but who had the uncompromising lines of someone who won arguments for a living. Probably a lawyer. Or maybe his private consigliere.
She snorted quietly to herself. As if there were a difference.
Rafael overlooked the whole room from the spot he’d chosen.
Her table was along the wall, and there were enough bodies crisscrossing between them that he probably wouldn’t spot her.
Yet she tucked herself even smaller into her corner, stomach knotted with a mix of nerves and thrill, already jittery at the idea of him catching her gawking like a schoolgirl with a crush.
Again, he hadn’t bothered shaving, the small rise of his Adam’s apple enough to send a reflex through her.
His jacket was gone, sleeves rolled high, forearms carved with strength she couldn’t ignore.
Each casual movement was a lure. The play of vein and muscle was so incontestably male that soon she needed to shrug off her coat.
She didn’t have to observe long to realize Rafael didn’t just tolerate this crowd, he belonged with them.
Elbows on the table, listening with the same focus he gave to anything that mattered.
Then, at just the right beat, a comment—quick, sharp—pulled the group into laughter.
Someone shoved his shoulder. A pint made its way into his hand; he tipped it in thanks and drank deep.