Page 42 of Love In Translation

No, she didn’t. Her heart stumbled around her chest, and a lead weight sat in her stomach. She’d hurt him—she could see pain under his irritated expression, in the frostiness of his eyes. Hot shame and cold remorse made her body temperature irregular.

A truck slid into the parking space a few yards from them, and another car slid into one farther up. Gilmartin was waking up, and she didn’t want to beg forgiveness on the sidewalk.

She placed her hand on his arm and Rheo winced when he yanked it away. “If I have to explain—”

“Oh, you do,” Fletch assured her.

“Then can I do it at home?”

He stared at her, obviously debating whether to demand an answer right now or whether he could wait. Fletch eventually nodded, turned, and walked in the direction of the Pink House.

Rheo half ran to match his long-legged stride, and she was puffing by the time they reached the gate of the Pink House.

“You could’ve slowed down,” she complained as they walked around the house to enter the kitchen via the back door.

Fletch ignored her, standing back after opening the door for her. “Look, I’m too pissed to have a rational conversation with you right now. I’ll find you when I’m ready,” Fletch informed her and stomped back out the door.

Right.Shit.

A few hours later, in the Pink House’s empty kitchen, Fletch leaned against the counter by the coffee machine and crossed his arms. He was still seriously pissed off and had been since Rheo made her comments about him living in a van. Somewhere along the line, she’d assumed he’d stumbled from country to country, living hand-to-mouth. That she hadn’t looked further, or asked him, annoyed him even more.

And her ability to piss him off pissed him offmore. He cared far too much about her and her opinion. He never gave a crap about how people viewed him; he didn’t spend a moment worrying about shit like that. People either liked him or didn’t, accepted him or didn’t.

Hedidcare what Rheo thought...

Fuck.Not good.

Fletch reached for an apple from the fruit bowl and crunched down. He was—cliché or not—a lone wolf and had been for most of his life. His parents weren’t overly involved. Their aim was to make themselves superfluous to him as early as possible and insisted on him becoming independent from a young age. They never did anything for him he couldn’t do himself, and it made him self-sufficient. But there had also been a level of disengagement between them, and he carried that detachment into the other relationships in his life.

CFS had made him feel vulnerable, a sharp contrast to the independence instilled in him by his parents, and he avoided relationships that required him to expose his vulnerabilities. He had friends, like Carrie, Seb, and the senior members of his crew, but he didn’t easily let people in. Few people knew he had his own production company and that his company owned the rights to his adventure documentaries, as well as producing other travel shows. He left the day-to-day running of the company to his capable CEO and staff. In his industry, despite him owning a tiny house and wearing old jeans, he was a success.

He only ever indulged in brief sexually charged relationships and never allowed anything serious to develop. Falling for someone was something he refused to do, because commitment would limit his freedom and tie him down. He was close-ish to Carrie, but that was only because she chased freedom as hard as he did, and there wasn’t a dash of chemistry between them.

Rheo rapped on the door frame of the kitchen. She’d showered and pulled on a short flower-print sundress. She stood on one bare foot, the other tucked behind her calf. Rheo’s blue eyes met his and her remorse dropped his anger a notch. But she wasn’t off the hook yet, not nearly. He still needed, and deserved, an explanation.

“Can I come in?”

He nodded and continued to eat his apple. She pulled a chair from beneath the wooden table and sat. “As I mentioned, my parents lived in a van before it became a thing,” Rheo explained. “I lived with them until I went to high school.”

“You make it sound like they sentenced you to ten years in a penal colony,” Fletcher coldly stated. “A lot of people would consider yours a fantastic childhood.”

She pulled a face. “I hated every minute of it,” she told him.

He heard the crack in her voice and his attention sharpened.

“I hated not knowing where we were, where we were going, or what it would look like when we got there. I hated the changing view. We often broke down. And because we lived on top of each other, I heard every discussion between my parents and listened to them fighting about money, how little they had and how to get more. They were always short. It didn’t help that they were into fishing and hiking and rock climbing while I hated getting dirty and sweaty, and I have a fear of heights.”

Fletch tossed his core in the trash and sat opposite her. To a teen with CFS, hers sounded like the dream childhood—everything he wanted to do all the time. But he could admit that if Rheo didn’t enjoy the lifestyle, if she craved security and stability, if she hated what her parents loved—and it sounded like she did—then living in a van would’ve been hell.

But he still didn’t understand how her past related to her assumptions about his financial status.

“Why did you make those assumptions about me? Because of your parents?”

Rheo looked away, her focus on the marks left on the wooden table by countless Pink House dinners. “My parents are useless with money. Their old van is held together by duct tape and prayers, and I have no idea how they manage to afford to keep it and themselves on the road. I witnessed money sliding through their hands. You live in a tiny house, you don’t wear fancy clothes, we’d just been talking about them...and when your credit card was declined—”

He sighed. “You thought I was like them.”

“It was a gut reaction...and so wrong of me. I’m sorry.” She did look mortified, and he knew she was sorry.

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