Page 124 of Burn for You

He sighs. The look on his face isn’t what I thought it would be.It’s not angry, it’s not pissed off, it’s worried. It’s fear mixed with relief. “There you are.”

He’s looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something.

“You can’t be in love with me,” I blurt out.

He smirks as he kneels down in front of me, ignoring the chair beside me to kneel in the grass. “Still trying to tell me what to do, even now.”

I flare my nostrils instead of smiling.

“Tell me why it is exactly that I can’t be in love with you.”

My breath gets caught in my throat. I wasn’t expecting him to get me to list all the things that are wrong with me, all the reasons this can’t work. But he’s looking at me patiently, waiting for me to do it with the ghost of a smirk on his face. He’s trying his best to be serious when he thinks this is funny. It’s not funny.

“Because I’m brash.” He nods in agreement, and it pisses me off. He’s not supposed to be agreeing with me.

“I’m frustrating, and I’m rude.” He raises his eyebrows, and it just makes me angrier. “I’m flighty, and I’m noncommittal. I’m loud and I’m a bad cook!”

He doesn’t fight back his smile anymore. “That you are.”

I smack his arm and that pulls another smile from him.

“I’m cautious, and I’m untrusting…”

He pulls my hand out of my lap and presses a warm kiss to the top of it.

The butterflies in my stomach don’t go crazy, they don’t flutter, they’re settled. I feel warm. I feel safe. I think I have always felt like that in Rafael’s presence, ever since that night that he walked me out of the flames of my burning cottage. He’s never given me one singular reason to doubt him, and yet I still do.

This idea is ingrained so deep inside of me that even when I try, I can’t lift it away. I can’t dig it out and dump it on this grass, letting it grow roots here instead of in the deepest parts of my instincts.

“All the things you just listed, those are all the things that made me fall in love with you.”

I lied. The butterflies are going crazy now.

“They’re what make you, you. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if you weren’t a little bit crazy. If you weren’t strong and rude. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you if you had tripped over yourself to get my attention. The way you acted so uninterested towards me was maddening, and it’s what made me want to keep coming back for more, even when I hated you for it.”

I shake my head.

“Don’t shake your head. I love you, May, more than I ever thought was possible. Screw whatever unwritten rule is sitting between us where we don’t talk about how we feel for each other.”

I feel a tear slip down my cheek and a second later, Rafael is reaching up to wipe it away.“I’m just going to be another number on the list of people that have hurt you.”

“Hurt me! Please, I beg of you to hurt me! If you telling me how you feel is going to hurt me, then grab the knife and run it through. It hurts more to think that you don’t even feel a semblance of what I feel for you.”

He brings both of his big hands to push my hair out of my face. “Do you want to know what I love the most about you?” I shake my head in his grip.

He chuckles. “Tough luck, I’m going to tell you, anyway. I love how stubborn you are. How strong you are in your opinions, and how you don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Unless I’m in between your legs, that is.”

I laugh this time, and it comes out steady, strong.

He smiles. “But that stubbornness is currently getting in the way of my girl telling me how she feels about me.”

I reach my hand up and place it over his. I don’t know what to say, so I just twine my fingers with his.

“I’m going to give you some time,” he says.

My stomach drops. “What?”

“You need time to figure your head out, and me being around trying to make you feel how I do isn’t going to help. It needs to come from you.”

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