A sob cracked in my chest, feeling like a cavern spreading through me as I leaned into his embrace. His strong arms wrapped around me, one hand cupping the back of my head as my tears touched his bare chest. “I know you want to stand on your own, and I want that for you too,” he murmured, fingers running through my hair gently, “but I will always be here to carry you when you need it,mi reina.”
He punctuated the words by sliding his hands down to my thighs and lifting me into his arms. My legs wrapped around his waist instinctively, clinging to him as I tried to push back the crushing weight that came with the knowledge that my father may not even have a body to bury. He would never get to set eyes on his wife again. There’d been a time when I couldn’t understand how monumental that kind of loss would be.
But when I tried to picture Rafe suddenly...gone, a yawning chasm ofnothingstretched out in front of me.
I would rather fight a hundred arguments with him than have any other man smile at me, and I knew down to my bones that would never change. If that was how my father felt about my mother, then I didn’t know how he would keep going.
Rafe sat on the edge of the bed, positioning me on his lap and holding me. My gaze fell to the phone on the bed, staring at it with mounting dread of the conversation that would follow. Everything my father had lost in a single moment overwhelmed me, especially because all of it had been meant for me.
“I don’t want to carry myself anymore,” I whispered, feeling his body tense beneath me. His grip tightened, pulling me closer until my face pressed into his neck and I breathed him deep. He surrounded me, holding me through the stark realization that I was only ever a single moment away from losing him.
He felt like an unstoppable force, an inhuman being who could never be killed, but I’d seen him bleed. I’d felt his blood on my skin when he’d been shot.
“You never have to again,” he murmured against the top of my head. Even knowing he meant every word, every syllable that he spoke with everything he was, I tasted the lie in the air. He couldn’t make such a promise without a thread of doubt, not with the life he lived.
There was every chance that the day would come when he wasn’t there to carry me, and when that day came, I wasn’t sure I would be strong enough to carry on. “I love you,” I murmured, my lips grazing against his skin. The sudden urge to make sure he knew exactly how I felt couldn’t be denied, roaring in my blood as if summoned from the depths of my soul.
This man was everything to me: my devil, my savior, my husband, my heart.
“Te quiero con toda mi alma,” he said, his voice hoarse as if he was overcome with emotion right alongside me. Had I ever said it first? Had I ever told him I loved him without prompting from him?
I didn’t know that I had, and I knew I hadn’t done enough to show him how I felt. Even knowing I had good reasons for that, that the guard around my heart was justified considering all he’d done and would likely continue to do, I let all of it wash away.
I no longer cared what had led us to where we sat with his arms wrapped around me; all that mattered was that he was my rock.
My everything.
Staying seated on his lap, I pulled my head out of his neck to look at him. My vision blurred as I watched him, raising a hand and stroking gentle fingers over the strong line of his jaw. “What does that mean?” I asked, resting my forehead against his. His eyes filled my sight, that unique stare all I could see as I waited for his answer.
“It means, ‘I love you with all my soul,'” he said, reaching up a hand to cup my cheek. His thumb pushed through the wetness of my tears, wiping it from my skin and just watching me process his words.
We sat in silence, me sniffling back the tears in my throat and him holding me through it. Carrying me, when I didn’t feel like I could do it alone. Once my breathing calmed and my heart steadied, he reached for the phone lying on the bed. Placing it in my hands, he touched the screen to make the call before I could hesitate.
I lifted it to my ear, listening to the ringing as Rafe leaned forward and touched his lips to the corner of my mouth. “Nohsehsaeh?” my grandmother's tremulous, exhausted voice said as the call connected.
“It’s me,” I confirmed, swallowing back the tears that came from the sound of her voice.
“Isa,” she said, her voice catching on the word. “Are you hurt?”
“Nothing severe. I’ll be okay,” I said and there was a pause as the sound of my grandmother blowing her nose came over the phone. “How is he?”
Silence again. “Rafael arranged for specialists to treat him, but your father refuses to cooperate until you’re home safe. He wants to go looking for you.
“We’re not coming home,Nohkomach,” I said, touching a hand to my eyes and clenching them closed to fight off the sting of more tears. How was I supposed to tell my grandmother that my sister would probably never come home again? That it would never be safe for me to see her after everything she’d meant to me all my life?
“What do you mean you aren’t coming home?” she asked, her voice a harsh whisper. I heard her rustling around, shifting and undoubtedly standing to pace. “You have to.”
“Ican’t,” I pleaded, unsure how much I could really tell her. I decided on the truth, the simplest version of it and in the end, the only one that really mattered. “It isn’t safe.”
“Whatever your husband is involved in, we can—”
“No,” I said sternly. “Even if I wanted that, it’s too late. I’ll only put you in danger by coming home, and there’s been enough suffering because of me, don’t you think?”
“Nobody blames you for what happened. You have to stop shouldering the blame for the actions of other people.”
“I’m not,” I sighed in exasperation. “I know that I didn’t...that I didn’t kill her. I didn’t set that bomb in the car, but it’s just a different kind of responsibility. My choices led us here—”
“Did they?” my grandmother asked. “Or were they your husband's choices? Chloe was not lying or being dramatic about the kind of man you married, was she?”