Page 119 of In Love and Revenge

Chapter 31

Aurora

Packing shouldn’t take me this long. I don’t have many things. It’s the fact that I have to keep stopping to wipe my eyes that’s dragging out the process. Everything in this room smells of him. It’s torturing me. Reminding me of what almost was. But I’m being ridiculous. It was never going to end well between Rafael and me. We’re too different. And he’s so closed off. I barely know the man beneath the surface, despite how physically intimate we’ve been together.

This is for the best. He can buy companies for his next girlfriend. Maybe she’ll be into that.Girlfriend. The word brings a lump to my throat. I wasn’t his girlfriend, I was ... I don’t know what I was to him. A mistake? A fleeting itch to scratch? A mere sexual attraction for a woman he clearly held so much disdain for until recently? An attraction even he couldn’t understand?

I huff as I pull the lid of my suitcase down and reach for the zip.

‘Don’t leave.’

I whip my gaze up and it collides with rich, molten bronze, glittering with emotion. Rafael stands in the doorway to his bedroom, looking at me like he’s watching the end of the world happening right in front of him.

‘Please.’ The single word is hoarse, exhaled with a ragged breath like he ran here.

I turn back to my suitcase. ‘I have to. We were never meant to happen.’

Rafael runs his hand around the back of his neck, hovering in the doorway like he’s waiting for permission to enter his own bedroom. ‘I’m sorry, Aurora. I’m not good at this.’

‘Good at what?’

‘Dating.’

‘We’re not dating,’ I fire back, regretting it as Rafael’s eyes pinch.

‘Spending time together, then. And talking about what we both want. I’m not good at it. At navigating these ...feelings.’ He screws his face up. ‘Arguing with my ...’ He exhales slowly, leaving me wondering what word he was going to use to describe what I am to him.

The bratty version of myself that he called out earlier in his car surfaces, reacting before I can rein it in.

‘You’ve spent time with plenty of women. I’m sure you can conjure up some advice from your memory. Didn’t you argue with Seraphina?’

I fiddle with my suitcase zip.Now who sounds like the jealous and insecure one?

‘Not like this,’ Rafael says.

‘Dove said she threw a drink in your face,’ I continue, like I’m picking a scab that should be left well alone.

‘And?’

‘And that sounds like a big fight.’

‘I didn’t think of it as a fight. More an overdue end to something I should have stepped away from a long time ago,’ he says, his voice all deep and delicious and doing things to my core that it shouldn’t be.

I shrug. ‘Yet here you are, home from work in the middle of the afternoon, thinking about our fight.’

A glimmer of something passes over Rafael’s face. Hope?

‘Yes, I am here. I’ve never had a proper fight with a woman before, because I haven’t ever cared enough to argue back. But not only am I here, Aurora, I’m prepared to bloody beg on my knees if I have to in order to convince you to stay.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you.’

No hesitation. Just spoken like it’s a fact.

‘What?’

He still hasn’t entered the room. Still hasn’t crossed the threshold. Yet he’s dropped that bomb, delivered so matter-of-factly, like it was inevitable and should have been obvious to me.