Chapter 19
RAPH
Driving back to the motel, I see a mini mart and park in the lot, knowing we need to restock on some items. All the money Michael left us in the trunk should keep us fed for at least thirty years.
Stepping out of the car, I keep my head down as I enter. Spotting sunglasses in a spinning stand, I grab two and put one on, then pull out a cart, heading for the frozen section. I throw a bunch of boxed pizzas she loves and White Castle cheeseburgers, which have also become her favorite.
Walking toward the register, I spot a camera in the corner.
“Hi there,” an elderly woman, maybe in her seventies, greets me. “Is that all today?”
“Yeah, plus these sunglasses,” I tell her.
“Sure.” She presses a few keys. “That’ll be forty dollars and sixty-two cents.”
She looks to me with kind eyes, wrinkles deepening at the sides of her pale green eyes.
Silently, I hand her the cash, darting my gaze to the right, noticing a small corner with bouquets of flowers.
“Are those fresh?” I gesture toward them with my chin as she looks that way.
“Oh, yeah. I grow them myself.” She stares fondly at them. “My Johnny used to grow them, and every morning, like clockwork, he’d leave a red rose on my pillow before heading to work.” Tears shimmer in her eyes. “Now, every morning for the past two years, I’m at the cemetery, leaving one for him.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, feeling her anguish. “Was he your husband?”
“Of forty years, he sure was.” She grins proudly. “You got a lady?”
“I don’t know.” I sigh on a chuckle, handing her the money. “I’m not sure what she is.”
“By the look on your face, I say you do.” She laughs. “So how about you grab a bouquet, on me, and you tell her how you feel. Might make you feel better.”
I snicker, rubbing a palm down my face. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“I think it is.” Her lips thin into a knowing smile. “And being that I’m old, I don’t have many good ideas left, so I say you run with it and see what happens.”
I exhale a short breath of laughter. “All right. Add the bright pink roses to my total. I’ll be paying for them.”
“Sure thing. It’s ten.”
I hand her one hundred. “Thank you. Keep the change.”
“Are you sure?” Wide-eyed, she stares at the bill, then at me. “This is one hundred. Not ten.”
“I’m sure.” My mouth tips up and I head toward the flowers, picking up the roses and inhaling their scent.
They remind me of her shampoo. I wonder if she’ll like them. Then I wonder if she’ll wonder why the hell I’m getting her flowers when half the time I’m pushing her away.
But I want to be like Johnny. I want to wake up beside her and leave a red rose on her pillow. I want her to know she’s loved. And I want to be the one who loves her.
So maybe this woman is right. Maybe I should just tell Nicolette I’m in love with her and that I want us to be together.
Or maybe I’ve lost my mind. But right now, it doesn’t even matter.
“You be sure to tell me if you win her over, you hear?” the woman says when I go back for the rest of my stuff.
“Will do, ma’am. Have a great day.”
The door chimes as I exit, and I start for the car, dropping the bags on the passenger seat before getting back on the road. It’s only a couple of miles to the motel, and I park right in front.
Items in hand, I enter our room, and as soon as she sees me, she sits up on the bed and smiles.
My heart flips in my chest, and the more I stare into her eyes, the more it does.
And I remember the woman’s words all over again.
I never once felt this way with Bianca. Not when we met, not after I married her, not even as we tried for a baby after her supposed miscarriage.
I wanted a child more than I wanted her, but we couldn’t have any.
The doctors didn’t understand why. We did all the tests, and we were both fine, but it was like the universe was kicking me in the ass, trying to tell me to leave.
And I should’ve. After I found out she had been lying about being at work, I should’ve told her I wasn’t in love with her, and I should’ve left.
But my father…he’s always had this hold on me, and I couldn’t let him shame me. Instead, he was fucking her behind my back.
“What do you have there?” Nicolette rises out of the bed with her long, lean legs, hair gleaming like the goddess she is.
My hand balls around the bag and flowers, because this woman makes me see the impossible—a future I once only imagined. A life full of love and family and all the things I didn’t think were attainable for a bastard like me.
But right now, with her pink-stained cheeks and that grin on her face, all I want is to confess all my truths and erase all the lies I’ve ever told to survive an existence without her.
“What’s wrong?” Her brows furrow, her hand clasping my wrist.
“I’m just…” I drag in a breath, my pulse slamming in my ears.
Just say it. Tell her. Show her. Fuck everything else. She makes you happy. That’s all you need to know.
“What is it, Raph?” Her other palm falls tenderly to my cheek, and concern weaves and deepens in her gaze.
She glides her fingertips over my stubble, and every part of me catches fire—engulfed, breathing in the smoke. My throat closes and my eyes shut, drifting to a place where she is mine and I am hers.
Tell her how you feel. Might make you feel better.
She was right, that woman at the store. Because right now, all I want is to tell her what she does to me.
What am I truly afraid of? Of losing her? Of becoming my father? I’m nothing like him. I can’t be. The way I feel for her…there’s no way my father ever felt an ounce of that for any woman, let alone my mother.
In a flash, I drop the bags and roughly grab her face with both of my palms.
Her widened gaze captures mine.
“Raph?” she whispers. “What’s going on?”
And I don’t know. I have no answers to that question except that all I want in this very moment is to kiss her and never let go.
It’s as though I’m moving on autopilot, my heart doing all the talking now. The way it should’ve been from the very beginning. But I was too busy drowning out the words, letting the noise in my head win.
Her chest shudders with her hurried exhales and mine are equally heavy, storming out of me in waves.
I drag my knuckles across her jaw.
“Touching you like this…” I drop my forehead to hers. “You feel mine. Always were,” I breathe.
“Are you feeling okay?” Her whispered voice swims with surprise, and I can’t help but let out a small laugh.
“I’m more than okay, tesoro mio, and that’s because of you.”
Her mouth begins to move, but nothing manages to come out of it.
Raw emotions stitch up my throat as I pitch back while her eyes search mine, filling with questions and unspoken words she’s afraid to say.
I return my other hand to her cheek, cradling her velvety skin, our eyes holding on to one another in a sea of chaos, and I let the truth seep from the depths of my heart.
“You’ve always been the one for me, Nicolette. No matter how many years have passed, no matter the distance between us, you own me. You’ve owned me since the moment you kissed me. Because since that moment all I’ve ever thought about was you. I never quite figured out how to stop.”
Tears gradually fill her gaze.
“And all I could do was suffer in silence wanting you the way I did, knowing I couldn’t have you.”
“You felt something when I kissed you?” Disbelief clouds her features, and my mouth jerks into a smile.
“I felt a lot of things, little one. All of them equally profound and equally dirty.”
She rolls away from me, mouth popped wide. “But you stopped talking to me. You told me you were happy. With her.”
“I lied,” I admit, remembering that day well. “I was miserable. I whispered that you belonged to me. I knew you couldn’t have heard it, but part of me wanted you to.”
“I heard you,” she breathes. “I thought I was only hearing what I wanted to.”
“No.” My mouth tics up. “I meant it then, and I mean it now.” My heart tightens in my chest. “I’ve missed you so damn much. I never felt lonelier than I did without you in these years. I’ve missed talking to you. Just being around you. It was never like that with her.”
My rough hands tighten around her face, my mouth drawing nearer. I slide a single hand to her nape, fingers slicing through her soft strands, and she sighs out a throaty moan. My cock jerks, the sound making me want to show her just how badly I want her.
“Is this real?” she asks in a whisper, her soft fingertips climbing up my back, weaving through my hair.
“We’ve always been real.” I lock her eyes with mine, my gaze deepening with hers.
My thumb traces her heart-shaped lips, and with every pounding beat of my heart, I do something I should’ve done from the moment she walked back into my life: I kiss her.
Wildly. Roughly.
There’s nothing gentle in the way I take her. Taste her. My teeth tugging, passion dripping through my veins. God, I’ve wanted this for what feels like centuries and lifetimes in between.
I love on her mouth like she’s the fire keeping me warm. Like a man lost who’s found his compass. Because that’s what she is. She’s always been pointing me home. But I was too stubborn to believe. Too afraid to live my life for myself.
I’ve spent my existence looking for my worth in places it would never exit. Searching for my purpose in things that would never truly fulfill me. But her? She gives me all of that. With her, I realize I’m no longer broken. That I’m capable of feeling for a woman the way I feel for her.
She proved to me that it simply takes the right woman to make you feel…everything.
I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I can keep her safe, but there’s no way she’s going to be anyone else’s but mine.
I fist her hair hard and slant her head sideways, my tongue tracing the seam of her lips before I slip between them.
Her palms run up and down my back as she hums out a moan, sounding so damn good, just how I imagined she would when I’d picture us this way.
I nip her bottom lip, my mouth coasting down past her jaw, teeth grazing, tongue tracing the contours and the valleys of her throat.