"Hopefully we will see you soon, Isa," Thiago said from his mother's other side. "Family should not go so long between visits."
My heart clenched, thinking of my own family, and wondering if I would ever see them again. Rafael hadn't forbidden it, but my life with them seemed a world away. I seemed a world away from the girl they knew.
"Allow Thiago to come with you. Perhaps there is something he can do to help you find the answers you need," Andrés said, clapping Rafael on the shoulder.
"There's no need. For now, we're going home to sort through what remains of my father's belongings. Perhaps the answer has been right under my nose all this time, and I just needed the last piece of information to snap into place before I knew where to look," Rafe said, but his face was solemn. I didn't need him to speak to know he wasn't hopeful that it would be so easy.
"You can't honestly think it will be so simple?" Sebastian asked with a smirk.
"Nothing worth having ever is," Rafe answered, his voice dropping low. My toes curled in my sandals against my best intentions. His deep timbre was so similar to the tone he used when inside me, and the same as when he’d spoken to Maxim in the middle of torture.
There was something wrong with me.
Stepping away from his uncle finally, Rafe held out a hand for me. Giving me the semblance of a choice, and I smiled as I took it, knowing without a doubt there had never been a choice for either of us. Something deep had pulled us together from the moment he first saw me. Something rooted in our past and the history we had very little chance of ever coming to understand, coiling around one another like the vines of a climbing rose, thorny and dangerous even in its beauty.
"Take me home," I murmured, letting him guide me toward the back doors of the house.