Chapter 26 #2
Behind us, the city glows and twinkles against a velvet black sky, the stars barely visible. If someone had told me I’d be crossing off bucket list item #72 with Rafael Vela, I would’ve laughed in their face and immediately gone to erase the ridiculous item from my list. That and #44.
We listen to the waves in silence, Rafael gradually relaxing beside me.
“Truth or dare?” I ask, surprising myself. And Rafael, whose eyes widen.
He pretends to think about it. “Truth.”
I consider all the questions I’ve collected in the last twenty-four hours. I consider the answer I want to know the most. The question comes easily. “What happened with Charlene?”
Amusement flickers, disrupting the intensity in his gaze. “Can I get a pass?”
“No,” I say. “The truth and nothing but the truth.”
His throat bobs. “I met her for the first time when I dropped off the files for the Dalton account a year ago.” He’d dropped them off because Dana had trusted no one else and I was out with a virus that had me feeling like I’d been chewed up and spit out.
I opened the door with the hope it was highly contagious (it wasn’t).
“We took the elevator together. She asked me out for coffee, and because she seemed like someone I’d enjoy having coffee with, I said yes. ”
“You’ve been known to wear a person down.” I grin.
“I was a gentleman through and through.” He dips lower into the water. “She wanted something more than I could give her, so I didn’t pursue it.”
“Too serious for you?” I try to keep my tone light, even though I feel relief that it was never more. I’m a terrible person, I think.
“Not what I was looking for,” he says. A wave hits the side of his neck, drenching his hair. He pushes the hair from his face, slicking it back. A rivulet of water snakes down the side of his face, and I have the urge to wipe it away. Wishful thinking and all.
“Your turn, Pope. Truth or dare?” His eyes tell me dare. I think about what I’d be willing to do in the middle of the night. About him daring me to take off the rest of my clothes (and me not completely hating him for it).
“Truth,” I croak.
“Coward.” His eyes glint, and I know I would’ve been right. I’ve played WWRD plenty of times.
“You took the easy route first,” I say pointedly.
“I got into the water, didn’t I?”
“Ask before I change my mind.”
He turns thoughtful. “Why Stevie?”
“Ohmygod,” I groan into my palms, feeling like memory lane is the last place I want to go down.
“It’s so not you.”
I drop my hands to glare at him. “It isn’t me. Not anymore.” I make a face, and Rafael’s amusement flickers. I refuse to let my past kill the moment. “I don’t think you deserve to know.” I feign indignation, crossing my arms over my chest.
He narrows his eyes. “Backing out of the game?”
“Never,” I say, but really thinking we should stop.
“My mother was obsessed with music. Stevie Nicks was one of her faves, right after Annie Lennox. That’s the Stevie and Annie story.
” Or the very short, nighttime-swim-appropriate version, because my mother and past don’t have room out here. “Truth or dare?” I go next.
“Truth.”
I peer up at him. He’s watching me the way I want to touch him—with intent, with care, like I’m breakable and burning all at once. “Do you still hate me?”
Rafael laughs with his entire body—and for a moment I falter, wondering if I’ve wasted a truth. I swallow, resisting the urge to take it back. “Raf.”
He stills. “I never hated you, not for a single moment.”
The weight of his words sinks in, sending a hot shiver through me.
Drawing me nearer and nearer. I’m close enough I can count water droplets on his skin and watch them slide down the lean planes and dips of his muscles.
One droplet pools in the hollow of his neck.
Another sits atop his upper lip. I find myself feeling jealous of them …
their ability to caress his skin so openly and intimately.
If I could, I’d touch him in all the places the water’s touched.
I’d be bold and brave, and I’d snake my arms and legs around him, like a jellyfish.
I hate this ghost thing.
“Do you? Still hate me?” he asks. The shift in his tone catches me off guard. The lightness gone. The game paused.
I swallow. “I do …” His eyes shutter for the briefest moment, but they remain dark and intense, as if he’s peering into my soul.
Seeing beneath the defenses, the games and the fake truths.
“I hate you for making me want something I can’t have,” I whisper, feeling bold enough to lift my finger to his collarbone, to bring it to his skin.
Rafael’s muscle shudders beneath my almost-touch.
“That’s cheating,” he rasps. I trace up along his neck and the lines of his face.
“Not being able to experience this is cheating.” I hate that I can’t feel the softness of his skin and taste the lake on his lips. Mostly, I hate myself for not seeing him—and the truth—sooner.
Because I don’t think I ever hated Rafael.
My fingers stilling their path along his chin, I shove the frightening, world-shifting realization deep down for examination another time.
“No,” I answer honestly. “I don’t hate you. Not even a little bit.”
“Good. Because I need to tell you something,” he says. Something tentative lurks beneath his words, and it has a sobering effect.
I search his eyes for a clue. “Is it a good something or a bad something?”
“I hope it’s a good something.”
I want to know and not know. I imagine his good something has to do with another crazy solution for fixing me, and while I know I should be doing everything in my power to get me back to my life, nothing about Evie’s Second-Chance Checklist has a place in this moment—this beautiful, perfect moment.
Almost perfect.
“The thing is, E,” Rafael begins.
Before I can overthink it, I hold a finger up to his lips, shushing him. “Save it for tomorrow. We need to save a few good somethings for tomorrow,” I say. His lips part to speak. “I have a good something too.”
Only my good something hinges on him not seeing us as rivals when tonight’s over, so I silently will the moon and stars to hang out for a few hours longer, just in case.