Rafe groans affectionately. “Mamá.”
“What?” she says, laughing. “You are always hungry.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
His dad brings drinks—water, soda, something warm smelling like cinnamon.
We sit.
I realize my palms are sweating the second I stop moving. Rafe sits beside me on the couch. Close enough that our thighs brush. His mother takes the chair opposite, his father beside her.
Four people. Two truths. One of them big enough to change everything.
His mom watches me with the same kind eyes as before. “So,” she says, and there’s a sparkle in her gaze now, like she’s enjoying herself, “I saw the reports.”
Rafe exhales through his nose. “Of course you did.”
“I am your mother,” she says like that explains everything. “And I have eyes.”
His dad huffs a short laugh, amused.
Rafe glances at me, a quick check-in.
“The kiss,” she says, lifting a brow. “And the… knife.”
My stomach flips.
“It looked worse than it was,” Rafe says quickly. Too quickly. “Everything was handled. Security moved fast. No one was hurt.”
His dad studies him carefully. “You said that on the phone too.”
“I know.” Rafe nods. “It reads dramatic online. It wasn’t?—”
He hesitates, flicking his gaze to me. And I see it. Not dismissal but panic. Because he doesn’t want me to think he’s minimizing what happened. Doesn’t want me to believe he wasn’t terrified when that blade flashed toward me.
Fuck. He was scared.
His fingers squeeze mine, and then he lifts our joined hands and presses a soft, almost absent kiss to my palm. The gesture is instinctive. Unplanned. It knocks the air out of me.
“I’m okay,” I murmur.
His eyes meet mine, searching for cracks.
“I know,” I add quietly. “You don’t have to pretend it wasn’t scary.”
His jaw shifts. Something vulnerable moves there, an emotion he doesn’t often let anyone see.
“I wasn’t pretending,” he says under his breath.
I squeeze his hand. “I know.”
He holds on tighter.
Then his mom clears her throat lightly, the mood shifting again, gentler this time. “And I was expecting Oliver,” she adds, voice light.
Something in my chest loosens a fraction. She isn’t angry. Not yet anyway.
