Chapter 24

I’m not above biting someone to win an argument.

-Janie’s secret thoughts

Janie

“There are some things I’ve been dying to know.”

Rafe’s eyes were closed.

He had butterfly bandages all along the length of his cheek. Seven in total.

We were talking. About nothing really in particular, but neither one of us had really gotten over today yet.

It’d been bad.

It’d could’ve gone way worse than it had, and we were lucky that all had turned out as it had.

Though I was still quite baffled about Elspeth.

Plot twist.

“What do you want to know?” Rafe asked.

I smiled.

“I want to know what makes you tick. I want to know why you’re so complicated. I want to know why there are shadows in your eyes. I want to know everything there is to know about the mysterious Raphael Luis,” I whispered.

Rafe’s eyes opened and went soft.

“I’m a simple man, Janie. I’m a man that lives hard. I’m a man that plays hard. And I’m a man that loves you.”

My mouth fell open, but he wasn’t done.

“I’m mysterious because by being mysterious, it gives me what I want faster. People always wonder about me, and that makes them careful. Careful means they’ll think twice before they fuck with me. And I don’t want to have to fuck anyone up. I’m over those days. I just want to be me. I want to live a life where I don’t have to look over my shoulder. I want to be Rafe Luis. Not Raphael the douchebag’s son that scammed hundreds of people out of their life savings.”

I swallowed at the pain I read in his eyes.

“Rafe, you were a child,” I started. “When I was three, my father shot a guy that was holding a man hostage. That man had a son who was with him, but that son was cowering in the corner right along with the woman and child he was holding at gunpoint. Do you think that kid is responsible for what his father did?”

“That kid didn’t live off of the money the father made while those families went bankrupt,” he countered.

I narrowed my eyes. “You paid every cent back that your father stole.”

His mouth fell open. Obviously, he didn’t know that his sister had shared that information.

I grinned.

“Raven’s been talking,” he surmised.

“Raven and I have been talking,” I acknowledged. “But it’s literally one of the only ways I learn about you.”

He moved so fast that my breath caught in my throat.

“Anything you want from me, all you have to do is ask,” he said. “And I’d appreciate it if the next time someone tells you something’s wrong with me, that you share. Just like I’d want you to share something about you if you knew it.”

My brows rose. “I honestly thought that you did know.”

He sighed. “I don’t have any idea how that was kept from me by goddamn everyone. For fucking months. But it would’ve been nice to know that was why you were rushing rushing until life was no fun.”

I rolled my eyes. “That was another song from before my time, old man.”

He grinned. “’I’m In a Hurry’ by Alabama is good stuff. Which, you obviously know seeing as you understood the lyrics I spouted.”

I moved my hand up his side, and then stopped when I reached his armpit.

Then another familiar bout of nausea rose up, and I pushed him. “Oh God. Get up.”

He moved fast, looking around the room for the threat.

I launched myself off the bed while he was searching, and then nearly tripped over both dogs that were lying on my side of the bed.

I made it to the bathroom but didn’t make it to the toilet.

Unfortunately, I threw up on the towel that he’d laid down to dry up the water that had dripped off of us after our shower together.

“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?”

I smiled, despite feeling another wave of nausea hit me. “Your dinner of pizza and breadsticks doesn’t agree with your baby.”

“My baby?” he drawled. “What about your baby?”

I shrugged and stood up as the wave left me.

Moments later, I squatted down and gathered the towel, folding it in on itself, then placing it in the hamper.

I’d take care of it after I brushed my teeth and washed my hands.

Only, when I finished those two tasks, I found myself turned around with my ass sitting on the wet bathroom counter.

“When were you going to tell me?” He moved in until his mouth was inches from mine.

His eyes were full of desire, and happiness.

So happy.

I felt my eyes well with tears.

“I didn’t know until my dad suggested I get it together. I walked into the bathroom after you were gone, came back out, and Elliott teasingly asked me if I was pregnant to lighten the mood.”

Rafe’s face transformed as a brilliant smile took over his face.

One that quickly fell.

“I don’t know how to be a good dad. I didn’t have one to show me how,” he admitted.

I waved him away.

“I got a good one. You have a few months to learn from him.”

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my nose.

Moments later, I had my legs around his hips as he carried me to his bed, laid me down, then proceeded to make sweet love to me.

Hours later, as I was drifting to sleep, I felt something cool and hard slip on my ring finger.

“You’re supposed to ask, silly.”

He snorted. “Asking would imply that there was an option for you to say no. There’s not.”

I snorted.

Then fell off into sleep, happier than I’d ever been in my life.

Which was saying something, because I had a lot of happy.