Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
TWELVE DAYS AFTER (EARLY, EARLY MORNING)
Rafael says we have one stop to make before we go home, but he doesn’t tell me where the Uber is headed.
We’re dropped off near the Adler Planetarium. Rafael guides us right past it. Past the food stand not too far from it. He continues walking, to the beach, across the sand, motioning for me to follow—and because I haven’t had a rational thought since I’ve been knocked out of my body, I do.
“Where are we going?” I shout, following him like we’re tethered together. In some divine, inexplicable way, we are. How else do I explain waking up at his place each morning? Or him being the only one able to see me? Or the way I internally combust from the way he looks at me?
“You ask too many questions!” He laughs, the sound caught by the wind and the waves and carried into the night.
I roll my eyes and rush after him. “Rafael!”
I almost barrel into him as he slows to a stop, hands on his hips. The wind ruffles his hair, and the moonlight makes him seem younger than his (newly) thirty-five years.
A blush creeping up my face, I turn my attention to the water.
Lake Michigan is beautiful in daytime, but at nighttime, there’s something almost frightening about its enormity.
Unlike Rafael, I love the water, the way it makes me feel, like I’m connected to all the other people who stand in it.
Big and small, all at once. Now I wish I could dip into it, will its cool depths to soothe me.
“What are we doing here?” I ask.
Rafael turns a positively wicked gaze in my direction. He rubs his palms together. The wind attempts to braid his hair into knots. And yes, I’m also jealous of the wind.
“For someone who’s devoted her life to obsessing over me, I’m surprised you haven’t caught on,” he says.
“Obsessed with you?” I balk.
“I won’t tell a soul.” He winks, standing oh-so-close to me, and my breath hitches in my throat. His lips lift to one side, and the feeling of imploding spreads.
“You’re ridiculous when you drink.”
He leans closer, his eyes dark orbs. “I think you mean ravenous.”
“I—no,” I begin to say, but his hands move to the hem of his shirt and begin to pull upward, revealing bits of tanned skin.
Alarm makes me stumble backward, and I’m not sure if he’s talking about him or me being ravenous.
I gawk at him, mouth dry.
“What are you doing?” My voice rises in pitch as he tugs the shirt over his head and tosses it onto the sand.
“Undressing.” He begins to unfasten the belt at his waist. His bare waist.
“Undressing?”
“Sí.”
I’m feeling hot and cold, confused and aroused. Someone’s pulled my hormonal fire alarm, and it’s going haywire. I hold a hand to my head and breathe in and out. It sounds like wheezing. “Why?”
He stops midway through unzipping his pants and considers me like I’m the one who’s undressing on a beach in the middle of the night.
“Your bucket list.” He holds my gaze as if willing the list to telepathically transfer to my brain.
It’s hard to think about all the items on the exhaustive list when all I can focus on is the lean muscles of his torso.
The sugar skull tattoo wrapping around his toned bicep.
The tanned skin stretched taut over his thighs (and all the way to the other side of them).
And then it hits me, like being knocked over by a powerful wave or a lightning bolt, either of which would be much appreciated at this moment.
Bucket list item #72.
Skinny-dipping in Lake Michigan.
A bucket list item born of too much cabernet sauvignon and originated by the perpetrator of all troublesome ideas: Gemma.
“No, no, no,” I say, stumbling backward with my arms thrown out, needing him to stop from going further.
His pants drop to the ground.
Oh. God.
If there’s ever been a moment for me to finish dying, it’s now.
Or maybe in a minute.
I assess the length of his body, trailing my gaze over the lines of his lean muscles because my conscience has joined my body on that hospital bed. I force my eyes to focus on his face. His smug face.
Rafael’s hands are on his hips, on which his boxer briefs hang very, very low. He watches me expectantly. “Well?”
“Please … put your clothes on,” I choke out, past the fiery knot in my throat, while Rafael’s standing in the sand like one of Michelangelo’s Davids.
His left eyebrow arches. “Evie.” I hear the challenge in his voice, which is rolled up with amusement and something dark and molten.
Rafael—even when sober—barely has a poker face, doesn’t bother to conceal his emotions or to mince his words.
But left wholly unfiltered—thanks to tequila and the aftermath of celebrating his birthday—he’s an open book with the pages fluttering in the wind. Pick a page and read your heart out.
I’m trying to grasp at my traitorous (high-definition, palpitation-inducing) thoughts and shove them back into their compartments. Close the Evie Pope book firmly shut, lock it in a chest, and toss it into the lake.
No way we’re doing this.
No. Way.
“We can keep our underwear on.” He tugs on the elastic band of his boxers as if to reassure me. I don’t know why I look, because looking makes me flustered, and feeling flustered doesn’t line up with making sound, safe decisions.
I’m a grown woman, who is going to turn away while he puts his clothes back on.
I’m a ghost, who might not wake up tomorrow.
I toe the line between doing one of the most impulsive things I’ve done in my entire life … and regretting not doing it.
Not dropping my gaze from his, I suck in a deep breath and begin to unzip my dress. “Consider this your birthday gift.”
Rafael’s eyes spark with surprise, even in the moonlight, and I shiver despite not feeling a bit of the breeze that’s kissed his skin in goose bumps.
His eyes follow my movements without an ounce of shame, and though I never dreamed I’d be stripping in front of Rafael Vela, I shrug off the dress and let it fall into a pile of cotton and rayon at my feet.
With only the cover of moonlight, I’m standing in my dust-pink bra and satin hipsters on the beach, in the middle of the night, with the person I’ve often dreamed of holding underwater until the bubbles stopped.
It’s insane. I want to throw my hands over the bare parts of my skin, which tingle and burn as Rafael’s eyes take stock, roaming over every dip and curve of my body.
I’d be a hypocrite to deny him when I was doing much of the same a minute ago.
“It’s my favorite one yet,” he says, his voice a husky purr.
“Favorite one?”
“Gift.”
“Oh,” I breathe, very much wanting to cover at least my midsection or my cleavage, because I feel exposed. I curl my hands into fists and straighten, mimicking Rafael’s nonchalant, non-self-aware stance.
“Don’t you even think about covering up, E. You’re breathtaking.”
“I—”
He steps nearer. “No argument.”
My heart skips like a stone across water. I swallow, knowing it’s a bad idea to participate in this very dangerous challenge of his. “I wasn’t going to argue.”
His dark brow arches. “Oh?”
“I was going to tell you that you’re not so bad yourself,” I say from low in my throat. “But I don’t want it to go to your head.”
Rafael throws his head back with a warm laugh. “Thanks for your relentless commitment to keeping me humble.” His words make me smile, but his eyes make my toes curl as his gaze inches downward. “It does look like a wing.”
My hand moves to my right thigh. His gaze sears my skin. Feeling about to combust from his attention, I face the lake. “Are we going to do this or what?”
I don’t wait for his answer as I rush for the water with a squeal, stopping where it laps at my feet. Rafael slows beside me. He shivers. “Cold?” I ask, glancing sidelong at him.
“No.” He shakes his head.
“Afraid?”
“A little.”
“I guess we’re both crossing something off our bucket list, then.” Taking a deep breath, I cross the water’s edge and wade into the lake, arms at my side. The sensation can only be described as having a paintbrush dipped in oil paint dragged across my flesh. It’s not unpleasant. It’s not familiar.
The water splashes as Rafael walks in after me, taking slow, tentative steps into the lake; he stops where the water reaches his knees, but I wade deeper into the lake until it covers my hips, then most of my chest. “There aren’t sharks in the lake, if that’s why you’re spooked,” I say over my shoulder.
He scowls, gliding through the water until he’s beside me, the water hugging his hips.
“Such a baby.”
Rafael stands rigidly. “I almost drowned on a fishing trip when I was thirteen.”
My smile slips. “Oh. I’m sorry.” I cringe inwardly at my idiot mouth. “We can go back.”
“No need. If you can be so brave about everything you’ve done these past few days, I can get this far into the water.” His tense shoulders tell another story. “You can’t be the only one getting over her fears.”
“I wouldn’t call it getting over my fears. It’s more like succumbing to them and hoping for the best.”
He chuckles, his hand very tentatively dragging through the water. “That’s very Evie of you.”
I snort. “Very Evie of me?”
“Taking everything—goals, plans, fears—dissecting them, taking them apart, and making them less indomitable than they actually are. It’s what you do.
Your ambition is … infectious.” It’s not my body I want to cover but my face as a flush creeps up my neck.
He continues, “It’s fascinating. Nothing seems like too big of a challenge. ”
“Except for you,” I say. “Haven’t figured you out yet.”
His hands draw circles in the dark water. “I’m an open book.” With lots and lots of chapters.
“If you say so.” I slip deeper into the water, letting it come up to my neck, wishing it could cool my burning skin. Rafael follows suit, slowly submerging himself to my level. We’re close enough we could touch.