More Than Words(78)

Nina ran her fingers up his chest and around his shoulders. “Me too,” Nina said. “I’d rather look at you.” She kissed her way down his stomach and then unbuttoned his pants and pushed them down along with his boxer briefs. Her mouth was on him, her legs up on the pillow next to his head.

As she ran her tongue up and down, she felt him unbuttoning her jeans, pulling down her underwear, and then his mouth was on her. Her body was guided by instinct, awash in pleasure. Far too soon, she felt herself climaxing, her muscles constricting around Rafael’s tongue at the same time that the salty taste of him filled her mouth. She rolled away from him and swallowed, then propped herself up on her elbows. They were facing each other, and she was smiling. Rafael wasn’t, though. His face looked . . . she couldn’t tell how it looked.

“What is it?” Nina asked. She was worried all of a sudden. It was the house. It was her. She’d done something wrong. Wanted too much.

“Truth?” he asked.

“Truth,” she answered, scared to hear it, but knowing she needed to. “Always truth.”

He sat up, away from the pillows. “I’m . . . I’m afraid,” he said.

Nina cocked her head sideways. She didn’t know what to make of that. “Of me?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Of losing you,” Rafael said. “Of you breaking my heart. Seeing you in this house . . . I don’t know how I’d ever be able to keep you.”

“What do you mean?” Nina asked.

Rafael sighed. “Do you know the story of my divorce?” he asked.

Nina was trying to follow his train of logic. She was supposed to know how his brain worked—it had been her job. But now, she wasn’t sure where he was going. “Something about a helicopter?” she asked.

Rafael smiled. “That’s the part everyone always remembers. I did take her on a helicopter ride around Manhattan for our third anniversary, but it was because I knew I was losing her. I knew she wasn’t happy. And when we talked the next morning, she told me there was someone else.”

“Oh,” Nina said, moving so that her head was next to Rafael’s. So she was holding his hand. “I’m so sorry.”

“It nearly destroyed me,” Rafael said. “I took leave from work. I drank too much. I watched Law and Order marathons. I felt like an idiot. Like a failure. And I couldn’t figure it out. How could she do that to me?”

Nina listened, her heart breaking for Rafael, angry at this woman who had hurt him so badly, but jealous, too, that he’d cared so much about her. And then wondering if in the future, Tim would be telling someone the story of their relationship, and she would be the villain, the woman who had hurt him like that.

“I blamed the other guy. That asshole for taking her from me. But then I realized, her affair wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t the disease, just the symptom. And then I was able to take a step back and see all the problems in our relationship. All the infections that were brewing deep in its vital organs. And I got past what she did. I got over it. But I don’t want to have to do it again. Now that I’ve seen the world you grew up in . . . how could I ever think I could make you happy?”

“First of all,” Nina said, “the two of us being happy together has nothing to do with the way either of us grew up. And second of all, infections can be treated, can be healed. We’ll just have to be on the lookout. Make sure we catch them early before they have a chance to spread.”

Rafael grabbed Nina’s other hand and faced her. “Can you promise me we’ll do that?” he said.

Nina took her right hand out of Rafael’s and held it up, palm out. “I promise,” she said. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

“I don’t want to be either,” Rafael said.

She kissed him. The top of his head first, then his nose, then his lips, so glad that he was still there. So glad that she hadn’t scared him away. He was the eye in the middle of the storm. He was her strength, her center, her fuertrado. “I was going to take you to my room,” she said. “But it’s down in the other wing of the house. How about if we sleep here tonight?”

“Works for me,” Rafael said. “As long as I get to wake up next to you.”

Nina climbed under the covers. “I promise,” she said again.

Rafael fell asleep in her arms, and she watched him breathe. He had a glamour, she realized, just like her father. The confidence, the charm, the megawatt smile. Inside he was just as broken as everyone else. Maybe even more so.

She thought about her dad. His affair wasn’t the problem, it was a symptom. There was something deeper there. Something that made him act that way. That was the case with Manxome Consulting, too. It was just a symptom of a different kind of disease. He felt the same pressure she did, Nina realized, inherited along with the family name: to appear to the outside world as if everything were perfect, even when it wasn’t. To swallow your own feelings. To be afraid of failure, not because you wouldn’t recover, but because of what everyone else would say. Pressure like that, it could break a person in so many ways. And it had broken her father. Nina knew it now.

With that realization, the anger she had been feeling toward him dissipated. She couldn’t accept what he’d done, but she could at least try to understand his actions, put them in context. And make sure she didn’t end up the same way.