She marched over to the bathroom door and banged.
“I’m sorry, I…We need to talk,” she said through the door.
He opened the door—God, still with that towel—standing next to the sink with a washcloth in his hands. “I thought you were going to wait?”
“I was. I am. But…I…” She looked at him and all the blood and dirt on his face, then snatched the washcloth from his hands. “Here,” she said, entering the bathroom and wetting the washcloth under the shower spray before bringing it up to clean his face.
He turned, resting his backside against the sink. They spoke not a word as she swabbed the cloth across his skin. He winced when she dabbed near his eye, clearly having been punched again. It would be silly to ask who’d blessed him with this most recent marking. She thought about making a joke about whether he’d graced Hunter with a poem, but the remorse in Rafa’s eyes signaled he probably wasn’t up for her nervous witticisms.
Slowly, she cleaned his face, rinsing the filth from the cloth as needed. Returning him to all his handsome glory.
“Why are you being kind to me?” he finally asked.
She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, debating how to answer. “You were too hideous to try to have a conversation with, that’s all,” she said, hoping to get a smile out of him. Something to temper the sadness in his eyes.
The slightest upturn in the corner of his mouth ticked. She’d consider that a win.
“You’re too good for me,” he said.
“I know.” This time she smiled, giving him permission to do the same, but his face remained steady. So she resumed wiping his face in silence, and he finally spoke.
“I didn’t know my father was Pierre Vautour,” he said.
Miri nodded. Given the way Rafa had reacted when they’d faced Vautour and his gang, that was the one thing she was confident in.
“But youweretrying to keep me from succeeding. You lied to me. From the moment we got here,” Miri said, not as a question.
“Yes,” Rafa said, closing his eyes and dipping his head.
“I trusted you.” Her words came out shaky and not at all with the confident voice she tried to muster. “I told you things I’ve never told anyone, and you used that to play me for a fool.”
“No,” Rafa said, taking both her hands in his, squeezing the washcloth with them and dripping water onto the floor. “I never took you for a fool. Honest to God, Pringles.”
“How do you expect me to believe that? How do you expect me to believeanythingyou say? I mean, what the fuck, Rafa? Are you even a journalist forGlobal Geography, or was that a bunch of bullshit, too?”
She snatched her hands away, clenching her fists.
“Yes. Everything I told you about that is true. My job. My resignation. My dad’s involvement inGloGeo. I learned of this assignment at the same time I tried handing in my resignation. My boss then called my dad, and he convinced me I needed to complete this mission for my mother.”
Miri furrowed her brow and ticked her head to the side. “Your mother?”
“He said…he said she was a member of os protetores. That they met when he was here over thirty years ago searching for the Moon City, and that she was sent to stop him, but that they fell in love. He said he made a promise to her that he’d spend his life protecting the city and that I needed to carry on her legacy by doing the same.”
“Do you think that’s true? That she was one of them?”
Rafa shrugged. “I mean, that’s what he told me, but now? Well, I have no idea. And I have no way of finding out. Knowing him, or rather, knowing Vautour, it probably was a bunch of bullshit. But I wanted to believe him.” He paused and looked away. “You don’t understand. Something’s been missing my whole life. Knowing who I am. Where I came from. I craved that connection. He knew what I needed to hear. How to manipulate me.”
A sickening feeling sank into Miri’s gut.
“And is that what you were doing to me? Duping me? Telling me whatIneeded to hear?”
“Pringles, no,” he said, clasping his hands tightly in front of his chest. “I told him I couldn’t do it. I told him I…” He paused and held back whatever it was that was on the tip of his tongue.
“What? What did you tell him?”
“I…I told him I was falling for you.”
Miri folded her arms and took a step back. His words roiled through her head, mixing with flashes from the night before. His lips. His hands. His eyes.
