24. Diana
The wind rattles Michael’s house, heavy sheets of water sluice over the shingles and fall onto the bushes below the windows.
The rain coming down is too hard to even be considered relaxing white noise.
If anything, it’s one of three reasons why I’m finding it impossible to sleep tonight.
Why I’m so restless. The others being, of course, that I’m not at our place and that Michael, this amazing man who made sure my daughters and I were okay today, is just outside in the living room, snoozing away on the couch, when I very much want him in bed beside me. Or on me.
Either way.
Most of all, though, I want to talk to him.
There hasn’t been an opportunity to do so yet, what with the girls around.
We spent all night trying to hide the chemistry from them—or at least I was.
After we made it to his place, I was able to calm down a bit.
In his house, surrounded by him, I felt safe. Feel safe. I feel at home.
It was difficult repressing the urge to flirt back whenever he’d say something that made me blush or touched me so gently and subtly it drove me within an inch of madness, but I made it work. Thankfully, I don’t think any of the girls noticed.
And now, lying in his bed, surrounded by his scent of smoky citrus, my brain can’t help but run a marathon around itself, searching for answers and comfort.
Frustrated doesn’t cover what I feel right now—physically and emotionally.
I want him, yes. But I also need to talk to him.
Explain why I flipped out. So with a heaving sigh, I pull the comforter off and tiptoe out of the bedroom in search of him.
“Michael?” I whisper from the living room’s doorway, suddenly incredibly aware that I’m only in my PJ shorts and tank top set.
His head pops up over the back of the couch, his blanket sliding off his chest—his bare chest—when he sits up. “Diana? What are you doing up? It’s two A.M. Is everything okay?”
“I—I’m so sorry. I’m so stupid. You’re sleeping. Of course you’d be sleeping; I don’t know how that didn’t even occur to me.” I groan and turn to go back to the bedroom, but not before he stops me.
“Wait!” he whisper-yells. “Come back. I wasn’t asleep; I was playing sudoku on my phone.”
I snort and turn back to him. “I didn’t take you for a numbers guy.”
He’s fully sitting up now, feet on the floor, a goofy, sleepy grin on his face. Even in the darkness, I can see his dimples beneath his stubble, the way his eyes shine with happiness at me even if I am showing up in the middle of the night. God, he’s so adorable.
I tiptoe over to the couch before taking a seat on the coffee table in front of him. It’s nearly impossible not to get distracted by the muscles of his chest, nearly impossible not to remember how his skin feels beneath my fingertips, but I manage to keep it together.
“I’m not a numbers guy—pretty sure I failed math in school—but I find the game… stimulating.” We both chortle like children when he wiggles his brows, taking care not to raise our voices enough to wake the girls.
“You have such a dirty mind.” I shake my head, a grin spreading across my face.
“I meant mentally stimulating. You’re clearly the one with the dirty mind if you understood something different.” His smile is mischievous, and it makes my heart do that pirouette thing it loves to do around him lately.
He reaches out to hold my hand, staring down at it. “I was really worried about you today.”
I sigh, squeezing his hand in mine. “I know. But you came for me. You came and got me right before the power went out, and things got worse.”
His brows pull together, and he shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, sure, yes, I was worried about your and the girls’ physical wellbeing. But it wasn’t that. Your voice over the phone…” He sighs. “That’s what I was worried about. You seemed so scared.”
There’s a heavy pause between us as I look out the window at the pouring rain and think of what headspace I was in when it all went down.
“I was.”
“You said you don’t do well in storms?”
I inhale deeply, gathering my strength so that I can tell him this story, hoping he doesn’t think I’m being ridiculous.
“It may sound silly without context, but heavy rain like this is a bit terrifying to me. When I was a kid, I went to something kind of traumatic—very traumatic, actually—and it sort of scarred me. I still remember every detail.”
“What happened?” Michael’s voice is cautious, which I appreciate it. Nothing in his expression reads impatience or insistence. All he wants is for me to come to him, to open up, on my time. And it makes me want to do it even more.
“I don’t know if you even remember this, or whether they even aired it on the news in the US.
But when I was four years old, over the course of almost two weeks, the state where we lived in in Venezuela was affected by torrential rain.
This all led to incredibly dangerous flash floods which ended up killing tens of thousands of people as well of the disappearance of whole towns.
We managed to make it out alive—just barely—but…
” I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut.
I don’t remember much about being four years old, but there’s no way I could ever forget that day.
“I remember my dad pushing me onto this aid truck, and my parents and I scrambling in and—” The currents of mud destroying everything in their path, homes disappearing into the dark waters, entire families displaced and crying…
“Are you serious?”
I open my eyes and nod. “The Tragedy of Vargas went down as the deadliest mudslide ever recorded. It led to a complete infrastructure collapse, and took the state years to recover. It’s why my family ended up moving to the capital.
We didn’t have clothes or a house or—” I feel myself choke on my words, the stinging in my eyes threatening tears.
The tremble in my voice is clear, and I hate it.
I hate that I can’t be stronger than this.
It happened almost three decades ago in an entirely different country, and yet my body still remembers.
“Hey, it’s okay.” He brings my hands to his lips and presses a gentle kiss to my knuckles. “You’re safe now.”
“It’s dumb. It happened so long ago and I was so young. But I remember.”
“Of course you remember. Traumatic is an understatement. You were a kid and your whole life got turned upside down.”
I laugh once, watery. “It seems that’s always been the theme in my life, then.”
He raises a brow at me, displeased. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s not all bad. You turned my life upside down—but in a good way.”
His smile is so buoyant, I swear it could light up the whole house in this rainy darkness.
“Thank you for not thinking it’s dumb.”
Michael frowns as he laces his fingers with mine. “Why would I?”
“I don’t know. In the past, not everyone has been as understanding as you. Some people think it’s just me being dramatic and that it shouldn’t be a big deal.”
“Who the hell would—” His expression shifts from confusion to anger. “Are you telling me all those years you were with your ex, he never once understood that living through a natural disaster could’ve had long-term effects over your psyche and he just, what, didn’t take you seriously?”
I shrug, embraced.
“I want to fucking punch him out.”
My laugh is soft. “It wouldn’t be worth the effort.”
Michael drags the back of his fingers slowly down my cheek, down my neck, before landing it on my exposed knee.
“Your fears are valid. But I get the feeling that there’s more to it now.
Something more? And it wasn’t just that you were scared of the storm, but of being alone, too. I think… you’re lonely.”
“I’m not lonely,” I say, a bit taken aback.
“I don’t mean lonely, exactly. But maybe just tired of dealing with everything on your own?
A little overwhelmed?” He grimaces, as if terrified of offending me.
“Please don’t be mad—I don’t mean anything by it—but I just want us to be honest. I wanted to make sure you were okay and felt supported because I get the feeling you rarely get that.
And… as I’ve told you before, I care about you.
I don’t know…” He scratches the back of his head in that way he does when he’s bashful or insecure.
“I want you to know that I’m here. For whatever.
Not because I want sex or anything—though believe me, I’m trying really hard to control myself because holy shit these PJs of yours are filling me with all sorts of ideas—but because I care about you. ”
My lungs have stopped working, Michael’s words rendering them completely and utterly useless. I feel the stinging in my eyes build, the space in my chest that holds my heart shrink, and the way I want him grows tenfold. “Michael,” I whisper, the ache in my voice surprising us both.
“I’m serious.” And there’s so much weight to those two words, so much meaning behind them.
With a sniff, I stand. “I know.” I use my grip in his hands to tug at him, wordlessly leading him out of the living room and into his bedroom.
I stop at the foot of the bed, eyes locked on Michael’s bare chest. When my hands hesitantly reach up to touch him, to feel his pecs beneath my palms, a smattering of chest hair tickling me as I explore him, he inhales sharply.
Even in the stormy darkness of the bedroom, I can tell his eyes have grown fierce, his hands at his side flex and release over and over again as if wanting to reach out and grab me, too.
We’ve done this before—kiss and more—but, for some reason, this feels like everything. Like a defining moment in who we are and what we could be together.
Michael brings his hands up to cup my face, moving even closer to me, our lips brushing as he says, “I never knew I could feel this way, Diana.”