Chapter 23
RAPH
A few days later, we’re at a secluded park, no one here but us. I found it by chance, driving by it when I was getting us some food at a hole-in-the-wall gas station. I try not to go to the same place more than a few times. I don’t want anyone asking questions.
I hate that I have to feed her garbage. I miss cooking for her. I know how much she enjoys it. Can’t wait to get back to our damn life. It’s been so long, I don’t even know what normal is for me anymore. I don’t know what normal with Nicolette is either.
My arms grasp her tighter, her back to my front, sitting on the towel we stole from our motel room. We may be running, but if I’m honest, being together like this feels a lot like being home.
Maybe it’s her.
Maybe it doesn’t matter where you are when you have the right person beside you.
Or maybe I like it here because I don’t have to face all the reasons we shouldn’t be together. Because they’re still here, invading our space.
And maybe in the end, she’ll be the one to leave me, realizing that the kind of life I live is too much to bear.
I pinch my eyes shut and take a deep breath. I’m with her now. That’s where my focus should be.
Picking up a strawberry from the paper bowl to my left, I place it against her lips.
“Open your mouth,” I softly say, bringing it closer to her.
“I’m really not that hungry.” She sighs, like there’s a cloud looming above her.
She’s barely been eating these last few days. It’s why I decided to get her out of the motel. Risk be damned. She’s silently hurting, and I need to lift up her mood somehow.
“Come on. Just one.”
Strawberries were once her favorite fruit, yet right now, she doesn’t even look at it. I drop it back into the bowl, grabbing her hips, and with a yelp, she comes to straddle me, wrapping those thighs like a vise.
A flicker of a smile pulls at the corner of her lips. My heart quickens like it does whenever I get the chance to look at her, really look.
It’s kind of crazy what a smile from the right person can do to someone, and hers? It makes the impossible seem possible.
“Hey, baby…” The back of my hand strokes down her cheek.
“Hi,” she breathes, her lashes fluttering, her chest rising higher.
“There she is,” I whisper, knuckles tracing the underside of her jaw. “You haven’t been yourself in the last couple of days. I want you to talk to me. If you’re hurting, I am too.”
“It’s nothing.” She shakes her head, but it’s bullshit. I can read her just as well as she can read me.
“Don’t lie to me, Nicolette. I know you better than that.”
She drops her forehead against mine and sighs.
“I’m just tired,” she admits quietly. “Tired of everything.” She finally looks back at me.
“Tired of running. Tired of being the one who has to look over my shoulder when I did nothing to cause this. It’s all her.
It’s always been her. I’m just sick of it.
And I swear…” She snickers. “If my parents find out about everything Bianca did, they’ll make up some excuse for it while I’ll be shunned for not telling the police that your father killed her. They’ll blame me.”
Painful emotions swallow the light in her eyes.
“They’ll disown me for it.” Her chin trembles. “And why do I still care?”
She laughs tearfully, melancholy wrapping around each word.
“Not like they ever cared. But at least I had a home, you know? What will I have when they abandon me? I have no place to live. I didn’t even finish college. I literally have nothing, Raph, and it’s all her fucking fault. I hate her,” she cries. “I hate a dead person. What does that make me?”
She narrows a gaze, and I listen, letting her get it all out.
“A bad person. That’s who,” she answers her own question. “I’m a terrible person, aren’t I? Worried about stuff like this when she’s dead. She’s never going to get older. She’ll never have anything. And I’m here complaining.”
She openly sobs now, and my arms circle around her, bringing her to my chest. Those tears pound through me like the pain is mine as much as it is hers.
I had no idea that was what she’d been thinking about all this time. I just assumed she’d be with me.
“You’re a good person,” I remind her. “Who else would think about their sister when all she did was hurt you? I can tell you Bianca would never do that. And as far as school and a place to live, I’ll make sure you get everything you need.
” My palm rides up and down her back reassuringly while she continues to cry.
“You’ll never be alone. I’ll always be here for you. I told you that.”
“How do you know?” She sniffles and wrenches herself away. “How can you promise me that? How do I know you’ll be alive long enough to promise me anything?”
“I’m dying now?” I chuckle tensely, but it does nothing to change the sorrow appearing like a cloud before her eyes.
She’s right about it all. I could die and leave her alone to fend for herself. The thought nearly kills me.
“You know what I mean. Between all the danger and you being who you are, how do I even know that this could work between us?”
I release an unsteady exhale. “What are you saying? You don’t want this anymore?”
My pulse fills my ears. There’s no way I’d ever let her go willingly. I’m not capable of it.
“I’m not saying that.” Her chin quivers. “I’m just scared, okay?”
“I know you are.” I tuck her jaw in my palm, my chest expanding with a harsh breath. “It’s going to be over soon, and then we’ll figure this thing out between us. But I can tell you one thing: you’re never getting rid of me.”
She laughs, tears leading a shaky path down her cheeks.
“I don’t ever want you to let me go, Raph,” she professes, staring into my eyes, like she’s searching into my heart and finding that it only beats for her.
Small hands come around to hold my face within them.
“Back then, you gave me so much. Your time. Your attention. You cared, Raph. No one ever did.” She smiles softly. “And slowly, that young girl I was became infatuated with you.”
My mouth pulls up. “Are you still infatuated?”
She shrugs. “Maybe…” She bites her bottom lip.
“Fuck, baby. That lip bite is going to send me straight to hell.”
“I hear it’s fun down there.” Her carefree nature returns, and she throws her arms over my shoulders. “How about a one-way ticket for the both of us?”
Her voice turns sultry, and my cock likes the sound, growing harder with every second that passes.
“And how do we get there?”
“Like this.” She circles her hips on my lap, her breaths growing raspier.
I lean into her, my nose tracing down the side of her throat, fingers slipping into her hair, pinning her mouth to mine.
“I want you to fuck me right here,” she breathes. “Out in the open.”
“My dirty girl.” My teeth graze right behind her lobe, and she moans, driving her fingers into my back.
A hand lowers, and she reaches down and grabs the head of my cock through my sweats. And before she can slip inside, I hold her to me and flip her down beneath me. When she gazes up, stealing every single one of my breaths, the urge to tell her I love her grows until it’s insurmountable.
But instead, I toss her onto her stomach and fuck her on all fours with everything I have.