Chapter 11 #2
To become something closer to calm than what I actually felt, which was an uncomfortable mix of anticipation and fear I didn’t want to name.
I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for anymore.
“Hi, Rafael,” I greeted, keeping my voice steady even though my chest tightened as I spoke.
There was a pause.
I could imagine his eyes moving over the room—the table, the carefully arranged plates, Tess sitting quietly beside me, the symmetry of what I had tried to create.
“Hey.”
One word.
Always like that with him.
I swallowed, my fingers shifting under the table, twisting together without permission.
“Um...” I started, then stopped briefly, recalibrating. I hated how uncertain I sounded, but I pushed forward anyway. “You said the last time that we should start having breakfast together. And... doing things as a family.”
The word family felt strange on my tongue when applied to him.
I continued anyway.
“Playing games. Building routines. But so far, you haven’t initiated anything.”
A pause.
I heard him move slightly—just enough for fabric to shift, just enough to remind me he was fully present, listening.
So I forced myself to finish.
“So I decided to take the first step.”
My throat tightened, but I kept going.
“I prepared your favorite food—Jamón Ibérico—for us tonight. As a way to begin this ritual. I hope...” My voice dipped slightly, softer now, more uncertain despite my effort. “I hope we can keep it up. Daily, if you’d like.”
Silence stretched between us, growing heavier with each passing second, until I could hear everything I wasn’t meant to notice—Tess’s steady, quiet breathing, the soft hum of the house at rest, and a distant ticking I couldn’t identify but couldn’t ignore either.
My fingers tightened under the table.
Had I misstepped?
Had I misunderstood him entirely?
A familiar fear crept in, slow and invasive—the one I always tried to keep buried.
That I was not something chosen.
Just something placed.
A convenience. A responsibility.
A caretaker for his daughter.
Nothing more. Nothing deeper.
But then—
Memory interrupted fear.
The way he had held me that day.
Firm, unshakable arms around me as if the world outside them didn’t matter.
The steady beat of his heart beneath my cheek.
And his voice.
Saying things like they were truths instead of suggestions.
I exhaled slowly, forcing myself not to retreat inward.
I had taken a step out of my darkness tonight.
Now it was his turn to decide whether he would meet me there.
The scent of Jamón Ibérico still lingered in the air—rich, smoky, carefully prepared, a meal that had once felt like hope and now felt like something dangerously close to regret.
The longer he said nothing, the more the food seemed to mock me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked finally, my voice thinner than I intended. “Did you change your mind? Don’t you like the food?”
I immediately regretted how small it sounded.
When his voice finally came, it wasn’t what I expected.
“This was Zara’s favorite to prepare for me.”
My heart didn’t just drop.
It fell.
Like something inside me had lost its footing and couldn’t recover.
Zara.
The name landed between us like something fragile breaking.
“She would make sure I ate it every Saturday morning,” he continued. “The only thing this dish does... is remind me of her.”
My throat tightened painfully.
For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
I hadn’t expected this. Not at all.
My mind had been so focused on connection, on ritual, on the fragile idea of us, that I hadn’t stopped to consider that he was still a man held captive by the death of his late wife, unable—or unwilling—to move beyond it.
Humiliation crawled up my neck and spread into my cheeks and ears, heat rising in a way I could feel even without seeing it.
My hands, resting near the plate, suddenly felt foreign—like they belonged to someone else entirely.
I had tried to build something tender.
Instead, I had stepped directly onto something sacred and broken.
“I...” My voice faltered, then steadied itself through sheer effort. “I didn’t know.”
Of course I didn’t.
I was blind in more ways than one.
“I just wanted—” I stopped again, swallowing the rest of the sentence because anything I said now would sound like an excuse. Or worse, like ignorance dressed as innocence.
Across from me, Rafael didn’t respond immediately.
Then his voice returned—softer, but not less controlled.
“How I wish she were still here,” he said quietly, each word measured as though anything stronger might shatter him. “I did everything I could... everything. I spent so much money, so much time, believing I could stop it. I was ready to give my own life if it meant keeping hers.”
Each sentence carried the weight of something unhealed.
Something untouched by time.
Something that had never stopped bleeding, only learned how to stay quiet.
I heard a sharp sound—knuckles tightening, maybe against the table, maybe against himself.
The restrained crack of pressure held too long.
I flinched instinctively at the sound, my blind gaze turning uselessly toward where I thought he was.
My chest ached in a way that had nothing to do with embarrassment now.
“I know you must feel disappointed by how I reacted to the food,” Rafael said finally.
“I can’t help it. I can’t even bring myself to eat it.” His jaw tightened briefly. “But I see what you were trying to do... trying to create something between us.”
He stopped there, as if anything further would expose too much.
Then he turned, and I heard his footsteps retreating.
He was moving away from me instead of toward me, and each step echoed through the dining room like a door being shut from the inside.
His footsteps continued until they faded into another part of the house—away from me, away from Tess, away from the meal I had thought might mean something more than it did.
My jaw parted slightly.
No sound came out at first.
My throat felt too tight, too full of everything I hadn’t said correctly.
I shifted my attention toward the part of the table where Tess sat, though I couldn’t truly see her, only sense her presence the way I always did.
Even without sight, I imagined her watching me.
I swallowed, forcing my voice into something softer than what was inside me.
“Sweetheart,” I said gently, turning my face toward her space at the table, “when you’re done eating, Miss Maria will come take you to bed, okay? I’m... tired now. I need to rest.”
My words sounded controlled, but my chest felt anything but.
I waited for a sound.
For anything that told me she understood.
But there was only the faint shift of cutlery against porcelain.
The small, careful movements she made when she was still processing something internally.
I couldn’t see her expression. I couldn’t read her face. I could only hope I wasn’t leaking too much of myself into the space between us.
Because Tess always absorbed things.
I stood slowly from the table.
The chair legs scraped faintly against the floor, the sound sharper than I intended in the quiet room.
My hands found the edge of the table again out of habit, grounding myself for a moment longer than necessary.
Anger was there.
But deep. Pressed down so tightly it became something heavier than rage.
At myself.
At Rafael.
At the way I had stepped into something I didn’t understand and shattered it without meaning to.
I pushed the feeling down and turned away from the dining room slowly.
My fingers lifted, trailing along the edge of the table until they found air instead of wood. Then the familiar wall beside it.
I followed it.
Step by step.
Counting unconsciously in my mind.
Left turn ahead after six steps.
Then the slight dip in the floor where the marble shifted near the hallway.
Then the echo change that meant open space near the staircase.
I was almost at the hallway when something inside me shifted.
A small, defiant spark that refused to settle into quiet obedience.
I stopped.
One hand still on the wall.
My breath steadying, then tightening again.
I wasn’t going to go to my room.
Not like this.
Because if I did, I knew exactly what would happen.
I would sit in silence.
And I would replay every word Rafael had spoken until it hollowed me out from the inside.
I turned on my heel abruptly, the movement sharper than anything I had done all evening.
The world tilted slightly as I reoriented myself, but I didn’t hesitate.
Instead of heading upstairs, I walked toward the front of the house.
The floor shifted beneath my feet as I left the dining area behind.
My hand slid along the wall until the texture changed, signaling the approach of the main hallway.
Then the door.
I found it with careful certainty.
The metal knob was cold beneath my fingers, grounding in its solidity.
I turned it slowly, feeling the resistance, then the release as the lock gave way.
And I stepped outside.
Night air greeted me immediately.
Not harsh. Not cold.
Just open.
It carried the faint scent of the estate’s gardens.
I inhaled.
My shoulders loosened by a fraction.
I followed the only path I had memorized without needing help—the wide, smooth walkway that led toward the garage.
I knew it by texture underfoot, by the absence of uneven stones, by the way sound changed when I stepped on it.
This was the route I took every morning.
To the car.
To the office.
I had taken maybe ten steps when I heard it.
Footsteps behind me.
“Miss Loretta, are you going somewhere? It’s getting quite late.”
There was concern in his tone, but also caution.
I turned toward his voice.
My chin lifted slightly, as if he could see the expression I was trying to form.
“Yes, I’m heading out. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” I replied without thinking.
I could almost feel his hesitation.
“Out?” he repeated. “Miss Loretta, the driver is already off duty for the night unless Mr. Rafael —”
At the mention of Rafael’s name, something inside me tightened again.