106. Rafe
Chapter One Hundred Six
Rafe
“ S pending Inanna’s Day with someone is a big deal, Rafe,” Summer admonishes me as we head toward the canteen for lunch. “Are you ready to take that step?”
I blink. Why is she talking about Inanna’s Day? Must have something to do with Annabeth. It’s not like we are casually dating, and we are exclusive. At least I think we are. I’m pretty sure that’s what she meant when she called me her boyfriend out of nowhere last week.
“We’ve been dating for over a month,” I say with a shrug.
“What about Mira?” Alice asks.
Just the sound of her name snaps my anger to the surface.
It is now even more ready to go than it was when I was an angel, and as a demon, it is even more dangerous.
They should have let me get a muzzle like I asked.
There have been no incidents yet, but there have been a couple of close calls.
Weirdly enough, Anna distracted me enough during one to get the demon settled slightly.
It was the first time I’d noticed her. Or really anyone except her.
“She blew me off,” I snap, my tone harsh enough that it prompts Alice to hiss back at me.
“We don’t know she blew you off, Rafe,” Summer says as she opens the canteen doors, and I don’t miss the way her eyes dart around the room. She’s always the peacemaker, at least between Alice and me.
“She did,” I insist. “I showed you the texts.” At least the ones I sent in the beginning, not the hundreds I sent after she didn’t answer. That was between the Runic Network and me.
“Something could have happened,” Summer adds. “Maybe someone kept her from replying.”
Kept her from replying? Someone did this to me on purpose? The demon within me snarls and rakes its claws against my soul, malevolence springing to the fore.
“What happened to the agreement about not talking about Mira?” I ask through gritted teeth as I beat the demon back, looking between my sisters. They glance at each other, then back at me.
All right?.?.?. They’re without a doubt hiding something from me.
“I don’t know, Rafe. I just think?—”
I roll my eyes, intending to tune them out, but my head snaps to the side when a shock of red catches my attention.
My gaze locks on her, and the air is sucked from my lungs.
She looks just as I remember, from the freckles on her face to that mane of fiery hair.
She’s not wearing a cover-up or a bikini like she often does when I daydream about her.
This time she is wearing a uniform, an Avalon uniform, but that can’t be right.
I have never imagined her in school clothing.
I’m across the room in an instant, approaching the mirage.
When I try to touch her, I know she’ll vanish, just like she’s done every time I’ve seen her over the last four months.
Despite knowing this, I reach out, but this time my hand collides with her arm.
The familiar scorching heat of her skin sears into my palm, and on instinct, I curl my fingers around her warmth, craving more of it.
“You’re real,” I blurt out, tightening my hold on her.
The embers that always smolder in her eyes flare and burst into flames, setting her irises aglow. Real? She would have vanished by now. So she has to be real.
“How are you real?” I ask, my claws starting to lengthen and dig into her arm, terrified she will vanish from my sight the second I release her.
Chase. Pursue. Keep. Even the demon recognizes her? It never did when I hallucinated her.
“I?.?.?.” she starts, but stops when her lips tremble. Her voice is throaty and silky smooth, just like I remember .
I squeeze her arm again, reassuring myself that she’s actually here, and that it is truly her. No substitute, no illusion.
“Happy Inanna’s Day, pookie wookie bear!
” The shrill, grating voice makes me tense, my body going rigid when Anna’s body collides with mine.
Her arms wrap around my neck, and she presses a kiss to my unresponsive lips, seemingly completely unaware that I still have a hold of Mira and that my gaze hasn’t left the phoenix.
Oh, that must be why Summer mentioned Inanna’s Day earlier. Fuck.
Anna slowly pulls back, finally noticing my hold on Mira. “Oh! You’ve met my new roommate!”
“Roommate?” I ask, my claws digging deeper into Mira, my gaze never leaving her.
I am truly terrified she will disappear again, but she doesn’t even try to pull away.
Thankfully, phoenixes are immune to all poisons and venoms, especially demonic.
I didn’t know that my claws are poisonous until after Paradis— thanks for the heads up there, Sum! Better late than never.
Anna nods, and Mira rips her arm from my hold, my fingers curling into a fist at the loss of her warmth.
“Rafe, this is Mira. Mira, this is my boyfriend, Rafe!” Anna cheerily introduces. The title sounds discordant, rankling with its wrongness. It’s even worse with Mira present to hear it.
“Nice to meet you.” Mira’s smile is brittle, and the embers in her eyes that I so love have been extinguished. She looks away, and I immediately mourn the loss of her attention. “See you at home, Anna.”
Mine! Chase. Chase! Chase!
Mira turns and hurries away.
“I forgot I have to meet with Professor Chase for something. I’ll be right back,” I say, taking precious moments to disentangle from Annabeth. She smiles at me, giving me another kiss before bouncing away, leaving me free to pursue Mira.
She’s not even made it to a table in the canteen before I give in to the demon’s need to chase her down through the halls of the school. She won’t be getting away this time.
“Mira, stop,” I snap, following after her, tracking her flame-colored hair like a beacon. “I will catch you. You know I will.”
She stops reluctantly and turns to face me. Her eyes are still dark and desolate, with no flames to be found, all her fire completely extinguished. The sight makes my stomach churn with unease.
She waits for me to close the distance, and the other students filter into their various lunch spots, leaving us thankfully alone by the time I finally reach her.
“Are you all right?” I ask, cupping her cheeks, that familiar heat flooding me, soothing me.
Surprise is clear on her face at my touch, but she doesn’t pull away. “You didn’t?.?.?.” Hurt flickers like dull embers in her eyes. “Why didn’t you?.?.?. ?”
“Are you all right?” I ask again. “Did someone hurt you?”
Did someone keep you from replying to me? Someone keep you from me? Decimate, devour. Again, the demon and I are in agreement. Any who kept her from me will find I’m ready to let out the most feral side of me.
She winces, but the embers start to smolder. “You.”
The word is laden with venom, enough for me to drop my hands from her face. I knew it. It was because of me. That’s why she blew me off. I hurt her. I was too rough, too demonic, too me. “Is that why you never responded?”
I don’t know why I ask. Of course it is. She just said I hurt her. What more do I need? More torture of what would never be? More of how I’m not what someone needs in their life? I’m too different, too abnormal, too angry, too sad, too intense, too much .
“Respond to what?” she hisses. “Nothing?”
Wait what? Nothing? I pat my pockets for my phone, pulling it out and finding the text thread of unanswered messages I’d sent over the past four months.
They started as innocuously as possible, but there was anger, confessions, and even vulnerabilities in the messages I’d sent over the last four months.
It became hopeless and more of a journal for myself.
She grabs my phone, scrolling through them, and I struggle not to flush knowing what I had written. “Rafe?.?.?. I never received these?.?.?. any of them.”
“Isn’t this the number you gave me?” I ask, pulling up the picture I took of the note from Paradis, comparing it to the number I’d sent all the texts to.
“No, that is supposed to be a six,” she says. Her eyes grow distant, like she’s having to reconsider everything she’s thought for the past months. So am I.
I tuck my phone away. So she never blew me off.
I was just texting the wrong number. If Mira weren’t standing in front of me right now, I’d be a bit embarrassed about the recipient of all those texts reading them.
She wanted to see me, and she was upset that I hadn’t reached out.
She also really needs to learn when to stop the loop on the number six when she writes it, because it clearly looks like an eight.
I move in closer and brush some of her hair over her shoulder.
“Back to what I asked. Are you all right?”
“I thought you’d?.?.?.” She blinks and clears her throat. “You didn’t forget about me?”
I chuckle at the absurdity of that question, and I need to fucking touch her. Pressing my forehead to hers, I savor the way my horns warm at even that slight contact with her. Grab them, Mira. “I thought you blew me off, or something happened and you got hurt.”
And I hurt you, like you said.
She shakes her head, staring up at me, her eyes sparking again. Far better than the extinguished embers of a moment ago.
“I thought you’d left and decided you weren’t interested,” she whispers.
The confident woman of Paradis seems so vulnerable now, and it makes my heart ache.
It can’t be for me. I am not worth this kind of insecurity, but I still want it to be for me.
More than anything, I want her to have missed me as much as I missed her.
“I thought I hurt you, and you changed your mind,” I whisper back.
Her words in Paradis had not filled me with confidence.
They were noncommittal, and it almost seemed like she expected never to see me again.
“I tried to go to Pyrrhos, but Alice and Summer talked me out of it. I would have needed to make a deal with my uncle, so it was probably a stupid idea.”
“Do not ever go to Pyrrhos. Even for me,” she says, grabbing my lapels and looking up at me, fear bright in her eyes. Another emotion from her that took me off guard.
I cup her face, noting that her fire is back. Even her hair is sparking with it, the full force of it kept at bay by the school’s wards.
“I won’t,” I lie, knowing I would follow her anywhere.
Her lip trembles, and after a moment’s hesitation, she steps in close to nuzzle against my chest. I wrap my arms around her, burying my face into her hair, remembering her scent and letting it seep into every part of me.
Finally, I feel grounded and alive again.
I only feel like this when she is near, her presence burning through my past and anger, leaving nothing behind but the person I could be.
The demon purrs, wanting to bathe in her comforting flames.
“Rafe?.?.?.” she moans softly, clinging to me, and somehow pulling away at the same time. Not yet. It’s too soon.
“You sure you’re all right?” I rasp, still holding her to me. I need to know she’s okay. The demon needs to know, and I need to keep it from rampaging. I am pretty sure I will lose all control if something happens to her.
She nods.
“I need to go talk to Anna. Will you come to my place tonight? It’s on the map, called Morningstar House.
” It isn’t right to string Anna along when Mira is here.
Thankfully, Max and I already talked about what I should say to end the relationship, and hopefully, I will avoid being cursed by a Kitsune.
She pulls back completely. “Rafe, no. Fuck. I have to go. Forget you saw me. Forget this happened.”
It would be easier to fix the damage we did to the beach in Paradis than to forget she is here.
“Let me clear this up,” I say, grabbing her arm. “I am breaking up with her for me. Because I’m not right for her, and she’s not right for me.”
I dated her to be normal. I thought maybe Mira just awakened something inside me that could be replicated with someone else, but I was wrong.
It is Mira. I am not normal. I am not like my brothers or parents, or maybe I am, and Mira is it for me.
She has been mine since I demanded to know why she was staring at me across the room in Paradis.
Maybe this is what Connor and my father meant.
Maybe I’m different in every way but this one.
She shakes her head. “Break up with her if you want, but I can’t be with you.”
“Why?” I ask, my heart stuttering painfully. No, I can’t be imagining this. I can’t be alone in this. It’s not possible. She’s with me. She feels this.
“She’s my roommate.”
I wait for more reasons, and when none come, I easily dismiss this one.
“Then move in with me.” I shrug. “Problem solved.” We certainly have the room. Specifically, my room has more than enough space for the two of us. Then she won’t have to worry about her roommate. Why didn’t I think of this immediately?
“We hardly know each other?.?.?.” True, I don’t even know her last name. Still, it’s Mira. What more do I really need to know at this point ?
“My father knew my mother was his after a single look, and my brother was the same. If you think about it, I’m a bit behind in comparison.” I can’t lose her again. The last four months without her have been horrible, and I won’t go back to that. I refuse.
The bell rings, making me jump. How long have we been standing here?
“I have to go. Don’t do anything stupid,” Mira demands.
What did that mean?
She hurries away, and I harden my resolve, recalling all the lessons and knowledge Max insisted on teaching me about breaking up with someone.