Page 20 of The Devil’s Feather

His brows raised. “You do not seem ready to run yet.”

Every instinct yelled at me to hug him. I shushed myself. “I mean, it’s unusual, sure—but nothing you’ve told me is that hard to avoid. It sounds like you’ve been through some truly awful shit, and I’m sorry. Do you always get violent when you’re triggered?”

“If it is minor, I may become agitated or unresponsive.” Rafael took a deep breath. “You might as well know the whole story. My parents were killed in an accident when I was a baby. I grew up in an unregulated orphanage in Istanbul with several other kids.” His eyes grew glassy and distant. “The woman who ran it beat and starved us. Her string of abusive boyfriends raped us at will. To this day, I do not know what happened to the others after I got out.”

My heart clenched. Jesus. No wonder he was so guarded and asocial.

He blinked once, and those cold eyes landed on my face. “Do not blame this on the culture of Türkiye. If the neighbors or teachers had known how bad it was, they would have intervened, but she made us fear for our lives if we told anyone.”

“I understand.” That commitment to protecting his culture warmed me through the chilling things he’d said.

Rafael continued as though speaking to the air. “I do not know my exact age, but I faked an ID to join the military early for my mandatory service somewhere around sixteen, and took a professional contract to remain a soldier for a few years after that.” His eyes lit on my face again. “Yes, I have killed people on deployment. No, not since then. Yes, I have severe PTSD. Probably always will. Music is my escape. Music and fighting. I am very good at both.”

His frigid expression chilled me to the core. Those were definitely eyes that could watch the life drain from someone’s face with no remorse. Combined with his strength…I suppressed a shiver and waited.

Little by little, he thawed.

“I take it that ‘bleached blonde with dark roots’ relates to your trauma.”

“Same woman, yes. She couldn’t feed us, keep the rain off our heads, or even attempt to protect us from her fucking demonic boyfriends, but she always had her hair done. She beat us if we dared to say anything. Not a fan of hot pink fingernail polish for the same reason, and she wore a cheap lavender perfume that sank into my hair and clothes. If you genuinely love blonde hair and pink nails, I will do my best to cope, but I draw the line at lavender.”

“That’s not my vibe, don’t worry.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I defaulted to what I hoped was a concerned, compassionate look. Sometimes, my facial expressions conveyed something other than what I meant.

He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I have had extensive therapy, but it has not helped much. Apparently, I am ‘too smart’ for therapy—that is always the excuse for firing me as a patient—and medication makes the music stop thanks to my weird brain chemistry.” He shook his head. “I cannot survive that way.”

Damn. I pondered options. “What about alternative stuff like psilocybin?”

A weird light sparked in his eye. “Me on hallucinogens is not a good time for anyone, I promise you.”

“I hate that so many bad things have happened to you. It sucks about the medication, too. I can’t write without mine because otherwise I’d spend all my energy trying not to drown in depression. Love my therapist too. I only do check-ins once a month now to maintain my meds.”

He nodded. “There is a darkness in your book that only someone who has suffered it understands.”

I scratched my arm. “I didn’t mean to make this about me.”

“Maybe you should. You deflect, but you have such a vivid interior life. I want to explore it.”

Tempting to bask in the compliment. “I have a feeling you still have more to tell me.” Something tickled the back of my mind—a mention in one of the rare articles about him. “Didn’t you throw a chair at an exec during a meeting fairly recently?”

Should I try to make it work with this man? No suspicious patches in the drywall that I’d noticed, but he could easily hide them behind paintings.

Rafael snorted. “Gerald Hightower, that fucker. I threw the chair through the window, thank you very much. He tried to insist that I incorporate fucking AI slop into my music for a ‘better return on his investment’. I usually play nicer with the bigwigs, but he got in my face. So we had a little reeducation that day—in front of his entire board. I bullied Hightower into paying for the damages.” An evil grin spread across his face. “Miraculously, no one has mentioned AI to me since.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “Ok, that makes me like you even more.”

“You still say that after everything I just told you?” His brows raised.

“Maybe I’m terminally stupid. I don’t know, but I genuinely like you.” I blew out a breath. “Look, even if this dating thing doesn’t work, I’d still really like to be friends.”

A taunting smile curled his lips. “I would be a terrible friend.”

“How so?”

“I am not nice enough to mask my ulterior motives.” His eyes slid over my body, lingering long enough on my boobs to make my face burn. “There is such sensuality in the way you interact with the world. You make these blissful, almost orgasmic expressions when you enjoy something. I want to discover what expressions you will make for me.”

My jaw fell open. “Sir.”

Rafael laughed under his breath. He propped his elbows on his knees; yet again staring into my eyes for an uncomfortably long time without blinking. Peeling away each layer of my soul as his fingers tapped invisible keys.