The words are quiet, spoken into the air between us. There is so much here I don’t understand, and yet that part of it makes total sense. He’s messy. Just like I am.
Someone pounds on the door, and I jolt. A voice speaks through the wood, in Italian. Rafe calls something back and let’s go of my braid.
“We have to go,” he tells me. “They need the room.”
“Are you okay? I mean, can you?—”
“I’m fine,” he says, and grabs his duffel bag. He pulls on a shirt. “Stay close to me until we’re in the car.”
“Okay.”
He opens the door and wraps an arm around my shoulders, tucking me against his warm body. It feels like heaven when we emerge into the cool night air, on the path away from the house I’d tried to get a closer look at.
His Porsche is at the end of the street. I parked around the corner, farther away, and reach for the car keys in the pocket of my jacket.
“I stole the Ferrari,” I say. “Not the BMW.”
“You borrowed it,” he corrects. He’s walking fast, despite the exhaustion clear in every line of his body. “Leave it.”
“But—”
“I’ll have someone pick it up tomorrow.”
“Is this a safe neighborhood?”
“I don’t care,” he says, and his hand finds mine. “You’re riding in my car home. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”
CHAPTER 37
RAFE
Our old Latin teacher at Belmont, who never liked how my Italian pronunciation slipped into the Latin, had a quote by Ovid framed in our classroom. James translated it flawlessly in an early lesson.
Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you.
It fit Belmont.Through Hardship We Flourish,and all that, with the Latin motto emblazoned on our uniforms. I hated the saying then, as a fourteen-year-old boy waking nightly from dreams of drowning in snow and exaggerated my rollingRs to make Mr. Yates even more frustrated with me.
But I understand it now, as a grown man.
Because the pain pulsing through my ribs from Fabrizio’s hits last night is useful. It always has been, on the days after my fights. I focus more easily, my senses are sharper, and the hum buzzing beneath my skin is gone.
It helps me handle the memory of seeing Paige between the two guards, in a place that she has no business being. The fear that shot through me at the sight. And then her trembling hand against my cheek. Her deep-brown eyes.
Are you scared of me?
No.
After we arrived home, I showered away the blood and sweat, then found her sound asleep in bed. Now that I knew she’d been faking it earlier, I could tell the difference. There was a relaxed looseness to her limbs that wasn’t there before.
In the morning, I kiss my mother goodbye. Karim and Wren leave, too, and the only guests remaining are my friends. They get up late and one after another end up sprawled out around the pool.
I’m grateful the sunlight and hangovers make no one question my sunglasses. There’s a bruise shaping up beneath my right eye. One of Fabrizio’s punches I didn’t manage to dodge.
Be patient, for one day this pain will be useful to you.
It was from Ovid’s collection of love poems, if I remember correctly.The Amores.It would be ironic if it wasn’t so fucking on the nose. The ache across my ribs is a constant reminder that she knows now.
She knows, and there’s no way she can ever unknow.
