Chapter 21 #2
I jump away as she replaces me, her hands curving around his shoulders.
His arm wraps around her waist, pulling her close, making me feel a pang of an emotion I refuse to acknowledge.
Rafael’s gaze connects with mine, his lips move, but Alma whips him away before I can decipher whatever he’s mouthing.
They move to the other side of the room as she projects her voice.
“Now, for the next part of the dance, we are going to focus on spinning our partners.”
I stare in awe as Rafael turns, then dips her in one smooth movement. Martha clutches her pearls. Alma smiles with pride. The audience oohs and aahs and claps. I join them, smiling from my corner of the dance floor. There’s clearly more in his charmsenal than even I know about.
The lesson continues, and I stick to my corner, where I dance on my own.
But for once in a really long time, I don’t feel quite so lonely.
Not for the first time, I think I made a mistake asking Rafael to do the bucket list. Even though I had more fun than I’ve had in a while, I’m not so sure it’s working … but it is succeeding in making me feel even more desperate to figure this out.
The lesson was far from what I imagined when I penned take professional dance lessons, but in the best way.
There was something special about being surrounded by couples who were so wholly absorbed in one another instead of their phones and social media accounts.
There was so much life in that room that for the span of sixty minutes, I felt almost alive again.
All because of Rafael, who forced me to practice along with Alma and snuck in another dance between wicked winks and secret smiles.
Who roped his cousin into this whole chaotic mission to “fix” me.
Who Vela’d me into tackling more of the bucket list, including beginner Spanish lessons.
We covered numbers, colors, and basic greetings.
He praised my pronunciation. I asked him to repeat the words where he rolls his r’s. Tres. Miercoles. Yo quiero.
And then he left me to get takeout.
I’m sitting at his dining table, alone for the first time in days—and the quiet taunts me, giving my thoughts space to play a game of tug-of-war.
Part of me can’t stop thinking about today, and the other can’t stop thinking about two days from now, when I’ll be moved to a care facility.
One of the best days of my life pitted against what will arguably be one of the worst …
if I even make it that long. The dull pain at the base of my skull doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy about my prospects, which only makes me question if the bucket list is the answer.
If I’m focusing on the right unfinished business.
The not-knowing sharpens the pain, sends it shooting down into my chest.
With a groan, I drop my head into my hands, my eyes locking in on the chaos atop Rafael’s table.
A familiar image stares up at me. The skull with the finger to its lips, the words La Clandestina written beneath it. The logo is plastered on more of the documents on the table. Presentations. Budgets. Sketches of blueprints.
I recognize the chicken-scratch writing as Rafael’s. Squinting, I try to make sense of it. The words take shape. The Secret’s Inside. Take this secret to your grave. Taglines.
The physical pain twists into something much worse.
I don’t need to scan more of the documents to know these are part of a business plan.
The marketing proposal. Social media plans.
Even local ad placements. I recognize the templates he’s using because they happen to be ones I created for Media Lab. This is one of Rafael’s accounts.
My headache turns dizzying.
He said he hadn’t been to work, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been working.
I know that game; I perfected it. Working on weekends and days off, like a virus I couldn’t kick, and it looks like I wasn’t the only one infected.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised.
One, because Rafael doesn’t go out of his way to bring work home.
And two, because he fooled me again when he said he wasn’t working.
Pre-Coma Evie would be shifting through the papers, trying to figure out if the account is up for grabs, if I can snatch it from his hands.
But Coma Evie, this ghost me who has seen a different side of Rafael, who has blush-inducing, heart-stopping thoughts of his fingers trailing against my skin, caressing and lighting me on fire—well, that version of me is unsure how to feel about him hiding this.
I shouldn’t care.
I don’t care.
In fact, I promised to help him with Dana and the promotion when this all started, and we haven’t even talked about it.
I know I should be grateful, but if Rafael hasn’t brought it up, it means he might not actually need me to help him, and while he’s not entirely wrong, it can only mean he doesn’t trust me.
And if he doesn’t trust me, it can only mean nothing’s changed for him.
I feel like I’m going to be sick.
What if it’s only me feeling these strange symptoms? The pressure. The inability to stay focused and in control and in rival mode. What if this is only one sided and I’ve been spilling my guts to him while he’s been … Vela-ing me?
Oh God.
I’m a walking bundle of anxiousness when Rafael returns twelve minutes later, a plastic bag of Tham’s Thai in one hand—a very late lunch—and a six-pack of beer in the other. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his brow creasing as he sets the beers on the table and runs into the kitchen to wash his hands.
“Nothing,” I say, the tightness in my chest disagreeing. “I mean, besides the obvious.”
Rafael watches me as he returns to the dining table, shoves the papers aside, and begins to remove the food containers from the bag, enough to feed an entire family.
He opens the lids, licking the sauce from his fingers as he goes.
While I haven’t felt hungry in as long as I’ve been a spirit, I feel pangs for something that has nothing to do with the noodles and everything to do with the man eating them.
“Something’s bugging you.” He settles into his chair, choosing one of the containers.
“Is it?” I ask, clearing my throat. My anxiety crackles.
“You tell me.” Rafael twists a fork into his carton of pad thai and takes a bite, sighing with pleasure.
I stall my pacing, long enough to watch him lick the sauce from his lips.
“Evie?”
I mentally kick myself for getting distracted, which is precisely my problem. I’m getting distracted by him when I should be getting answers.
“I know about La Clandestina,” I say, a little too forcefully.
Rafael chokes on his food. “You don’t have to lie or hide or anything.
It’s all there … in my templates.” I gesture to the paperwork he shoved to the end of the table.
“I realize you don’t have any reason to trust me, but you don’t have to hide your accounts.
I mean, would it have pissed me off before?
Sure. But now … we’ve spent the last few days basically connected to one another, so I thought that perhaps you would maybe …
” I didn’t think I would do such a terrible job of getting everything out, but I’m surprising even myself.
“What I mean is that as reformed rivals, you could’ve felt comfortable telling me about it. ”
Rafael sets his fork back in the carton. “Is that right?”
I shrug, increasingly unsure about going down this path, maybe discovering that he’s still very firmly planted in Evie vs. Rafael territory when I’m … not.
Somehow—terrifyingly—he’s managed to throw me so far off familiar ground these last few days that my checklists will need checklists to get me back on track. But Rafael? He seems fine—more than fine.
I can’t dwell on it. I won’t.
“I mean, I get it—why you didn’t want to say anything—but I can’t steal an account from you like this, Raf.” I gesture helplessly to plasma me, chuckle awkwardly, and wish I could disappear when he doesn’t respond.
The chairs scrapes against the floor as Rafael pushes from the table, circles around it, and stands so close we’re sharing the same air. I swallow, peering up into his too-intense eyes.
“Evie,” he says, my name on his lips like the roll of thunder on a summer night.
I need to hold on to something, because the way he’s looking at me makes me feel even more unsteady.
I press my hands together instead. “Rafael.”
“It’s not a secret, and it’s not what you think.”
I don’t even know what I think … because my thinking glitches. I think he’s beautiful, especially up close. I think he makes me feel too many things—and forget how to think. And mostly, I think I regret not taking him up on the promise of that kiss when I had the chance.
Rafael continues, “La Clandestina has nothing to do with Media Lab.”
“Oh.” I blink, feeling a blush creep up my neck, feeling like I’m doing a shitty job of not letting him be my distraction. His nearness is to blame. I find myself inching closer.
“It’s a family business, and I’m working on the marketing plan for it. For the launch,” Rafael says a little sheepishly, burying his hands into his pockets, looking at me like he’s expecting me to tear into him at any moment—and I want to, just not in any of the usual Evie vs. Rafael ways.
I swallow past the lump in my throat and nod.
“I was using your templates because they’re fucking helpful and have made my life easier since Media Lab shared them. Also, I wasn’t keeping anything from you—not on purpose, at least. It wasn’t relevant to this.” He gestures between us.
I still don’t trust myself to speak.
He wasn’t hiding anything, and while it’s relief I should feel, the urge to ask the other questions barrels into my throat, onto the tip of my tongue.
Does he feel this thing I’m feeling? Has it shoved itself somewhere between his ribs and his lungs, and is it making it impossibly difficult for him to breathe and think? Is he distracted too? Is it just me?
I feel breathless—and a little lightheaded—with the need to know, and this plasma me might be brave enough to ask, because if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I might not have tomorrow.
And if tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, I need to do the brave and stupid things I didn’t do before, things I penned on my bucket list and things I’ve only begun thinking about, and asking my question feels like the brave and stupid thing I need to do right now.
My heart thumping so loudly I can barely hear past it, I take a deep breath and tangle my fingers to keep them from shaking. “Rafael?”
His name is barely a whisper on my lips, which feel parched. I lick my lips.
As if tethered to them, his gaze drops to my mouth and lingers there, long enough that my lips part.
I attempt to drag in a breath of air.
“Evie,” he says, his voice warm and husky. He’s so close I can push up on my feet and relieve my lips of the curiosity of what his mouth might taste and feel like.
He leans in closer.
I imagine I’m physical me, who can feel the press of his body against mine, warm and hard and wanting something I haven’t asked for. Yet.
The intensity in his dark gaze is a dare. Ask, ask, ask, it implores.
I breathe in a shaky breath.
“I think—” I start, heart thundering so loudly I stall.
The room tilts.
“Catch me,” I say, feeling myself fall.