Page 72 of Resilient Love

Her eyes begin to flutter, and when they open, landing on me, the edges of her lips curve into a smile that knocks the wind right out of my fucking lungs.

“Good morning,mi vida.”

“Morning,” she says, pressing a chaste kiss to my lips before rolling over, arching her neck to look at the clock on the nightstand. Her eyes widen, and she kicks off the covers, flying out of bed.

“Where are you running off to?” I ask, watching in amusement as she works to shove all of her items into her duffle bag.

“We have five minutes before we’re supposed to check out!” she shouts, and suddenly, I’m out of the bed, packing my own bag.

“I trust that your stay was enjoyable?” Mrs. Greene asks.

“It was wonderful, thank you so much,” I tell her, a knot twisting in my gut as I hand her the key. She takes it from me, nodding as she rounds the desk and makes her way up the stairs.

My eyes dart to Elise’s wide ones, her cheeks flushed.

I grab my wallet out, pulling out all of the bills I have and tucking it inside the cover of the book the woman had been reading. I tug on Elise’s elbow and drag her out of the doors just in time.

We know the exact moment she’s entered the room we’d been in. It’s not hard to tell from the shriek she releases.

We bolt out of the doors, laughing and gasping for air as we yank open the car doors and slide inside, thanking the driver as he pulls out of the driveway and heads toward the train station.

Elise peers over at me after a few long moments of silence. “I feel bad that we broke half of her furniture. That could’ve all been family heirlooms,” she whispers.

I shake my head. “They weren’t. I felt bad, too, and checked the furniture last night. Everything was from Cox & Cox.”

She blows out a breath, slumping further into her seat, and rests her cheek on my shoulder. “Thank fuck.”

I chuckle lightly, my hand finding hers as we near the railway.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

SATURDAY, MAY 24

“When I was a kid,I loved riding the train,” I tell Rafael, seating myself over his lap and resting my palms on his chest.

“Where would your family take you?”

“Everywhere.” An ache settles into my chest as the memories start to filter through the cracks in the walls I’ve spent so much time building and repairing. “On the rare weekends when I didn’t have a game, my parents would take Rachelle and I on a day trip or sometimes for the whole weekend. Mymamanwould pull out a map and draw a circle around the area we were allowed to pick from. It was usually something just a couple of hours away. We’d take turns with each trip, one of us picking a random location within the boundaries.”

Rafa smiles, his dark eyes glinting, crinkling at the corners as he listens to me. “What kinds of places did you end up visiting?”

“It was sort of a mix of everything. After we figured out where we were heading,Mamanwould start planning. She’d pick out a place to stay or a park to visit. Sometimes there were concerts or theatre productions we’d wind up at. As long as the weather was nice, we were always outside.Mamanwould bring her kit, and she’d set herself up wherever we were, painting an image of Rachelle and I playing, reading,arguing,” I tell him, a sad, wet sounding laugh slipping past my lips.

Rafael reaches up with both hands, pushing the fallen strands out of my face and tucks them behind my ears. “I wish I’d gotten to meet her,” he admits, and my heart can’t take it. It crumples, dissolving into dust in my chest.

“She would’ve loved you.” My voice is watery, and my chin quivers.

“I hope so,” he whispers.

We spend the next hour sharing stories about past family trips, and the little pieces of Rafael I’ve been collecting feel like treasures.

It’s like when I was a kid and I’d collect shells by the shore or take flowers from a field home to press and dry inside books. It felt like I was taking these tiny bits of a whole experience with me to remember, setting them aside to look back at later and marvel in their beauty.

And as much as I want to believe we’re good for each other, and that these feelings we have growing will last, it’s really difficult to feel confident in that. I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life. Is it the newness of it all that’s heightening these feelings? My heart says a firm “No”, but what if my intuition is wrong?

It wasn’t long ago that we were at each other’s throats. My dad used to say that the best love is one formed from passionateflames that continue to burn like flameless embers. Low and slow. Always present but never dying.

I take a deep, calming breath, forcing the sudden jumble of anxious thoughts to clear like cobwebs from my mind, but the spider is quick to rebuild them.

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