Scoffing, she asks, “Please. You think I’d let some asshole take me for a ride? Been there, done that. I learn from my mistakes, thank you very much. No, this is a business thing. Nothing shady. Anyway, my coffers aren’t exactly overflowing, and I feel weird asking, but—”
He shakes his head dismissively, drawing out his wallet. “Coffers. What are you, Scrooge McDuck? Nobody says coffers. How much do you need?”
“I mean, I could use somewhere in the neighborhood of $300, but I’ll take literally anything you can give me.”
He counts out a lot of bills—definitely $300, maybe more, I don’t keep track. “Will that suffice?” he asks her.
“I would hug you if it wouldn’t be weird. Thank you,” she tells him, smiling at the cash, then up at him.
“No problem,” he tells her, sliding his wallet back into his pocket, then coming over and draping an arm around my shoulders. “Next time wait for my damn order.”
I wait for Rafe to say he’s going out, but it never happens. Of course he chooses tonight to stay in. He goes upstairs and takes a shower, and comes back down shirtless and with pajama pants slung low on his hips.
“Do you want to watch your show?” he asks casually, clicking on the TV.
I shake my head. “I’m not really in the mood tonight.”
Since we left the restaurant, I haven’t been able to stop worrying. A stray thought occurred to me and I couldn’t shake it. Sin told me everything changed tomorrow. I took that to mean he would act tomorrow, but what if he acts tonight? What if he even told me tomorrow just to throw me off, and his real plan is to sneak in tonight and kill Rafe?
We’re supposed to be on the same side of this situation, but I’m struggling with keeping to my side of the line. I want to straddle the line. I want to protect both of them.
I can’t rest easy, and Rafe is so relaxed that I ache with how completely he would be taken off guard if Sin showed up tonight. It’s all I can think about through every channel change. It’s not like I want the fight to be fair anyway, it’s not like I want Rafe armed and knowing what is going to happen, because while I want Rafe to be okay, I need Sin to be okay, but man… betrayal is not for me. I’m not cut out for it. It’s low-down, dirty, and not right.
Since Rafe can’t read my mind as he channel surfs, his lips curve up faintly. “You know, I sort of had my own Smallville,” he tells me.
“What do you mean?” I ask, glancing over at him.
“Your sister made you start watching it, right? That’s how you got hooked? My dad had a show like that. Watched the hell out of it when I was a kid, and we’d always watch it together so I came to feel like I liked it, too.”
“What show?” I inquire.
“You may not even know what this is,” he says dryly, looking over at me. “You’re such a baby.”
I can’t help rolling my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m the baby you knocked up, Humbert. What’s the show?”
“Walker, Texas Ranger,” he tells me.
“The Chuck Norris one? Yeah, I’ve heard of that.” Pointedly glancing at my nails in a haughty manner, I add, “I mean, I’ve never watched an episode of it because I’m not 80, but I’ve heard of it.”
“You little shit,” he says, reaching over and catching me around the neck, yanking my head into his side.
“No roughhousing with the pregnant chick,” I tell him, trying to sit up, but he keeps me locked in.
“I’m just going to leave you right here for the rest of the night,” he informs me, casually turning his attention back to
the television as he continues to flip channels. “Jesus, I have a lot of channels. I almost never watch TV, surely I don’t need this many.”
I huff out a sigh and claw at his arm, trying to free my neck so my face isn’t stuck against his pectoral muscle. “Let me go, jerkface.”
He doesn’t. “What should we watch?” he inquires, casually as ever. “Can you see the TV from down there? I’ll let you out of the chokehold if you wanna earn your freedom.”
His tone alone tells me his dick is involved in that scenario, and my blood turns to ice water in my veins. Sin telling me not to let Rafe kiss me floods back into my mind, and with it comes a wave of remorse.
To Rafe, this is just another night of tomfoolery, and once more I’m hit with the guilt of this terrible thing I am participating in. Just by keeping my mouth shut, I am participating, but there’s no palatable alternative. If I came clean to Rafe now and warned him, I would be signing Sin’s death warrant. I don’t have to think like them to know that—it’s common sense.
For the briefest, most horrible moment, I run through what that would mean. Sin would be dead, that’s the gut-wrenching part. That’s the part that causes feelings to clog my throat so I can scarcely breathe. I would have no one to distract me from Rafe, so maybe I could grow feelings for him. I probably could. He’s much more likable tonight, and that’s even knowing whatever it is he knows. He has so many secrets locked away inside his head, it’s impossible to know how impressive it is that he can be so nice to me right now, that he can play around with me like nothing is wrong when he knows everything is wrong.
Then earlier tonight at the restaurant flashes through my mind, him going to find Marlena. That was incredibly annoying. I knew he wouldn’t find her, but his interest strayed to her as a direct result of my pissing him off, and I am going to piss him off in the future, even if Sin isn’t in the picture. I’m not cotton candy, I’m a person with substance and my own thing going on, and all people clash sometimes. At the first clashing of horns, will he be casual and friendly at home, then go fuck some piece of cotton candy to get his frustrations out? I struggle to envision a future where Rafe wouldn’t cheat on me. I don’t think he would be cruel about it, I don’t think he would even let me find out, but then I would live in a constant state of paranoia. Every time a woman looked at him with lust—which will happen—I’ll wonder if that’s the one he’s fucking when he goes out to a club and I’m at home rocking our baby to sleep.