CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Rosie
“I have no idea if I got this right,” he said from behind me, his hands covering my eyes.
After leaving the restaurant, Lucas had ushered me into the elevator—the one inside the building where Zarato was located—and took us up to the top floor.
Before the doors opened, he told me to close my eyes and laid both hands over them, saying, “For good measure.”
We walked very slowly now, Lucas guiding me forward. His legs tangled with mine, and I grasped both his wrists to keep myself from falling.
“Is this really necessary?”
“Yes,” he confirmed, bringing me to a stop. “Cosmo said that the element of surprise was very important.”
“Cosmo?” A bark of laughter left me. “As in Cosmopolitan, the magazine?”
“What’s so funny?” he asked, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Nothing.” I let my hands fall from his wrists. “Just that you sound like a guy from a chick flick from the noughties.”
His hands shifted so only one palm was covering my eyes. Then when I felt his other one at my waist, tickling my side.
“Hey!” I squealed, breaking into a fit of giggles. “What was that for? That’s a compliment. It doesn’t get better than 2000s Matthew McConaughey.” I waited for his laughter, but it didn’t come. “It was all innocent teasing.”
“Nothing innocent about it, Rosie. You know how much I like it,” he said. And before I could utter a word, his arm wrapped around me, the tips of his fingers making contact with the bare skin of my back. “Careful with the step,” he added before lifting me up in the air.
And just as swiftly, I was placed back on the floor. And I… was too stunned, distracted, to even say thanks.
Lucas chuckled darkly as he guided us forward again. “Just so you know, I used other sources that weren’t magazines.” We turned to the right, and then stopped again. “Hold on one sec. Keep your eyes closed. I’ll be right back.”
I heard his steps as he walked away.
“I watched a few movie endings,” he said in the distance. “Classics, for the most part. Until I discovered that people put together grand gesture compilations on YouTube.” His voice grew closer, and then, his hands were back on me. On my waist this time. “And I also had your book.”
My heart pounded.
“The ending was a pretty good reference. Insightful.”
My book’s ending. That I’d written. Lucas had read it. He—
“You can open your eyes now.”
As if on autopilot, my eyelids lifted.
And I… Oh God. I wished I never had. I wished I hadn’t opened my eyes to something like this.
Because whatever I had been feeling a few seconds, minutes, hours ago had been nothing, nothing, compared to what was flooding my chest now. My body. I felt so light, so elated and moved, that I could take flight and float into the dark, stormy night.
“Lucas,” I whispered.
His hands trailed up to my shoulders, his palms warm, so warm, against my skin and he said, “What do you think?”
We were on the rooftop of the building. Half of it was a greenhouse, flowers of all colors scattered around us, while the other half was open and exposed to the overcast November sky, that now seemed lit by strings of fairy lights that crisscrossed above us.
It was a beautiful place. Magical. Transcendent. It felt like a moment you know will become a memory before it’s even passed.
Dad’s words came back, Remember to pick the boy that will plant a garden for you instead of just getting you the flowers, Bean.
“I’m not sure if I did this right,” Lucas said. “This is my first grand gesture.”
Battling against the emotion clogging my voice, I shook my head.
“You did. It’s perfect, Lucas. This is all so beautiful, I…” God, I needed to keep it together. I couldn’t let him know how much I was feeling in that moment. “I wouldn’t change a thing. Not one.”
“You flatter me, ángel. But this is not all. This is not what I hoped I got right.”
He dipped his head and brushed his lips over my cheek very softly, surprising me at how different this felt compared to every other time he’d done that. Breaking my heart, too, because I wanted so much more than a simple kiss on the cheek.
Lucas grasped my hand, pulling me forward with him. We stopped only when we reached a bench where he had laid a blanket, a Bluetooth speaker, a bottle of wine, and a pink box with a ribbon.
He pulled his phone from the pocket of his suit and tapped on the screen. Music filled the space around us. “You said you wished we’d met at Aaron and Lina’s wedding,” he said, his expression turning grim. He took one determined step toward me. “I thought that tonight, for this one last date, we could pretend we were doing that. Meeting for the first time.”
The thrumming in my chest resumed. Louder. Bigger. Overcoming me with an emotion so powerful I found it hard to breathe.
Lucas smiled, and it was one of those rare bashful smiles. “What do you think? Is it… Is it grand enough?”
This selfless, considerate, good man, openly anxious over something like this. Over me liking his grand gesture. Me considering it grand enough.
I wanted to scream. At the world for being so unfair. At him, for going after my heart like this. For making it his in such a short amount of time.
Because he’d made it his, hadn’t he? He’d made me his without even trying. Not really. Without my knowing when exactly it had happened.
God, I loved him. I had fallen in love with Lucas Martín.
And I knew it with a certainty that made my chest tight.
I had never stood a chance, not really.
I stood there, breathless, motionless, the realization rocking my body, as I watched Lucas’s hands come to the front of his slacks and running his palms along the fabric covering his thighs.
He cleared his throat before speaking. “I know this is not even close to a garden with a view of the Bay of Biscay, so… I also have this.”
He knelt and fumbled with something below the bench. A beam of light appeared, illuminating the wall behind us. Photos of Lina and Aaron’s wedding flashed on the smooth surface. The venue, the ceremony, Aaron’s and Lina’s happy faces, Abuela, Lina’s parents, little snippets of that day played across that wall.
And I… I just… couldn’t do this.
With him. With the knowledge that his presence in my life had an expiration date.
A blanket was thrown over my shoulders, and it was only then that I noticed I was shivering. “Say something, Ro.”
Ro.
He’d never called me that on a date. That was his name for every other night.
“I—” I breathed. There was nothing I could say to make him understand what this meant to me. How wonderful this was. How deeply I had fallen in love with him. “I can’t believe you did this. That you thought of this. For me. You’re just…”
Perfect.
Amazing.
The best man I could ever ask for.
Lucas angled his body so he was all I could see, and then, he brushed the back of his fingers against my cheek.
“Rosie.” He said my name tenderly, so tenderly, that I wanted to beg him to take it back. “Had I been at the wedding,” he continued, and my heart stopped beating all over again when he met my gaze, “had I spotted you across that hall, I would have thought wow.” He paused, his face lighting up. “That girl takes my breath away, she’s so beautiful. And she sure looks like she loves cake.”
An airy chuckle escaped my lips, dazed by his words.
He reached for the box that sat on the bench and threw the lid open. Inside, a single slice of strawberry and cream cake sat on a little plate. And I recognized it immediately. It was the same kind that had been served at Lina and Aaron’s wedding. But—how?
Lucas extracted the plate and held it in his hand, placing the box by his feet. Then he said, “I would have crossed the busy hall, cake in hand, and I would have approached you with a dashing smile.”
God.
All those women that had had him at some point in the past and let him go had been so stupid. Crazy.
“And I…” I trailed off, my voice thick with emotion, needing a few more seconds to collect myself. “I would have looked at you up and down with a frown,” I told him, doing exactly that. “And I would have thought, hmm, he’s a total weirdo, but at least he brought something sweet.” I took the plate from him and when he laughed, I added, “And he has a good laugh, and a handsome smile, so I guess… I guess I’ll stay. Accept the cake.”
His gaze warmed as it roamed over my face. “Because I am a weirdo, I would have asked if you were going to share. That’d be the least you could do, after I made it all the way to you with the cake, dodging drunk uncles and inquisitive aunties that wanted to know if I was going to stay single forever.”
Not caring about not having a fork, or a napkin, I bit into it. It was sweeter, softer, far better than the one served at the wedding. And I knew without a doubt that he had baked it. Lucas had baked this cake.
My next words barely made it out. “And I… would have probably told you that maybe, you were single because you went around offering cake to women you knew nothing about.” With shaky hands, I held the plate in front of his face. “But that maybe, just this one time, this girl who might or might not be available, and who might or might not like you, would share some.”
Lucas leaned down, taking a bite from the other side and licking the cream off his lips. He savored it, exactly like I knew he would, keeping his eyes on mine as he did. He swallowed. “And after thanking you, I would have respectfully disagreed.” I tilted my head, watching all lightness leave his expression. “Because I would have known then”—Lucas stepped forward, his chin dipping to look straight into my eyes—“that I’d been single only because no one had ever stolen my attention, scattered my thoughts so effortlessly. So completely. Not the way you did.”
His words danced around us, waltzing straight into my heart.
The energy shifted as we stared into each other’s eyes, a hundred thousand unsaid things hanging between us.
The air around turned thicker, heavier, and I thought I heard thunder in the distance, but I’d been sucked into a vacuum. I couldn’t care about anything but him. Us.
Lucas snatched the half-eaten cake from me. Then he removed the blanket from my shoulders, took my hand in his, and placed his other one on the small of my back.
“And then,” he told me in a voice I had never heard from him. One that I’d never ever forget. “I would have begged you to save me a dance. Or two. Or every dance until the night was over and our feet hurt. And after that, I would have begged you to please let me take you home with me. To my bed. Into my heart.”
I felt myself expand, float away and up into the stormy sky. Adrift if not for Lucas’s arms holding me back.
As if he had known, he pulled me closer, starting to move along to the music, and in silence, we danced. We spun and swayed, his arms around me and my cheek coming to rest on his chest. And I swore, in that moment nothing, not a single thing in the world, could have taken me away from him. Not a thunderclap, not the place bursting into flames, not even the apocalypse or King Kong climbing the side of the building we were in.
Not one single thing.
Because I was in Lucas’s arms, and I knew how ephemeral this moment was. How soon I would lose this, him, his body around mine. I’d have nothing but a memory. An imprint that would fade.
That was probably why, when the sky was lit with a lightning bolt, I didn’t find it in me to care. To let go of him.
And when the clouds above us shook with a peal of thunder, I remained in Lucas’s arms.
Not even when the sky opened and water started pouring on us, did I move to leave his arms.
It was Lucas’s chest that shook under my face with laughter and a curse. “For Christ’s sake.”
I shook my head, my arms tightening around his waist. “I don’t care about the rain.”
“You’re getting drenched, Rosie. We should go.”
“No,” I told him, looking up so he could see my face. “I’m okay, right here. I don’t want to go.”
Another thunderclap roared, as if the sky was trying to prove a point.
Without giving it any thought, Lucas took off his jacket as best as he could with my arms around his waist and held it above my head. He met my gaze. “Rosie, please. You’re going to get sick. You can’t get sick, what about your book? Your deadline is in less than three weeks. You’re on the clock. Let me take you home.”
There he went, with my heart again. Putting me first. Making it even more impossible for me not to love him the way I did.
“What about you, though?” I shook my head, feeling my hair stick to my cheeks because the jacket above my head was now dripping water, too. “What if I want to take care of you, too?”
Lucas swallowed.
“What if you’re important to me, Lucas?” I told him, because he was. He needed to hear it. I placed my palms on his chest and said very slowly, “What if I wanted to be the person you let take care of you, too?”
Lucas’s expression changed, morphed. As if he couldn’t compute my words.
Which was probably why I continued, “You’re always watching over me, taking care of me. Helping me.” I watched his eyes close, his head shake. “Giving me everything without asking for a single thing in return. And I… I want to give you things, too. I want to give you everything. I want you to want that from me, too.” I felt my chest heaving, heart racing, daring me to ask the question I knew I shouldn’t. “Do you want that from me, Lucas?”
Lucas stared at me as if my words had been nothing but a blow to his chest. As if I’d just hit him, punched him, and knocked him stunned. He remained silent as water fell in rivulets down his face and gathered at his jaw.
“You understand what I’m saying,” I said, everything I had so carefully kept together slipping away. “Yes, you do, and that’s why you’re looking like that at me.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw.
No answer.
My hands fell to my sides in defeat. “Well, it’s on me,” I murmured. “We said that things wouldn’t change between us, and I let them. I… I’m sorry I did that, Lucas.”
I turned around and gathered our belongings on the bench, my face turned so he wouldn’t see how big of a fool I felt. How much lay underneath my confession. In how many pieces he was breaking my heart.
“Rosie.” His fingers wrapped around my wrist.
I shook my head. “It’s okay.”
He turned me around. Water dripped from his hair, falling down his face. “You’re crying, Rosie.” A sound escaped his lips, and he pulled at me again, wanting to bring me to him. “Ángel, por favor. Don’t cry. Don’t do that to me.”
“I’m not crying,” I lied. “It’s just the rain. I’m okay.”
His fingers cupped my jaw and he tilted my head upward until I met his gaze.
“You’re lying. You’re crying and it’s breaking my heart,” he said in a desperate voice. “Rosie, preciosa.” He moved closer, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Tell me what to do to stop this.”
I tried to keep it in. Not to let it out, but that Rosie, that preciosa, did me in.
And everything just… escaped.
“Want me,” I said, and God, how desperate it was to beg for something like this. “Want me like I want you. Because these glimpses of what we could be are killing me, Lucas. That’s why I’m crying, because I’m frustrated, devastated, by the fact that I can’t have you. That I want you and I can’t have you.”
Lucas was so still. He had remained unmovable under the rain, but it was only then, when my last words rang, that his whole body came alive. Like a match thrown into a fire, something roared alive inside of him.
He pulled me closer. “You think you can’t have me?” His breath fell on my mouth. “Am I the one making those tears fall down your face?”
My heart surrendered then. “I’m crying because we’re just friends, because none of this is real. Because maybe all I am to you is that. Your roommate. Ro. Graham.”
His palms went to my cheeks, cupping my face, and I could feel them shaking, trembling. Another thunderclap cracked in the distance. “Rosie,” he said. And the sound of my name rivaled the roaring in the sky. “Every single time I’ve called you Graham, I’ve done it to remind myself that I couldn’t want you the way I do. Every time I’ve taken you on a date, I’ve had to tell myself that it was part of an agreement. And every time I’ve said I wanted to be your best friend, all I’d wanted was to take from you as much as you could possibly give me.”
All the air in my lungs left my body.
“If you want anything from me, you only have to ask.” Lucas’s forehead came to rest against mine, his breath now leaving him shakily. “Don’t you see that I’ll break my back to provide anything you could possibly need? Have I not made myself obvious?”
“You can’t mean that. You—”
“I mean it with everything I am.”
Fighting my own fear, the certainty that this couldn’t be really happening, because how could it be? I said, “If you do, if you really mean it, then I want you to kiss me, Lucas.”
One second Lucas’s hands were around my jaw, and the next they were slipping behind my head, inside the locks of wet hair.
His lips took mine like he was fighting for his last breath, like the rain falling around us signaled the end of the world. Lucas kissed me like this was our first and last kiss, as if this was the only chance he had to give me what I had asked of him. And that should have alerted me of something, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t care when his mouth was against mine, parting my lips and devouring mine. Devouring me.
His body stepped into mine, one of his hands leaving the nape of my neck and trailing down my spine until it curled around my back. A groan climbed his throat when I went willingly, without any kind of resistance because how could I resist when his fingers splayed over the small of my back, holding me firmly to him, his hips pressing into my belly, my breasts against his chest.
Desperate for more, I linked my arms around his neck and rose to my tiptoes, wishing the heavy and soaked layers of fabric between us hadn’t been there. Wishing I could strip him naked, so I’d have as much from him as possible, as much as I’d be able to memorize.
His mouth left mine, his lips trailing down the side of my neck and soliciting a whimper from me. The sound fueled him, encouraging his hands to grab the back of my knees and hike me up his body.
As if it had been choreographed, my legs clamped around him, and he secured me against him again.
“Lucas,” I breathed out, pulsing with a new surge of need, letting my fingers into his hair. “You—” His teeth nipped at the lobe of my ear. “You can’t—”
“I’ll be careful,” he said, rearranging me around him, the new position making me know, feel, how big and hard he was. “There are things more important than that. You. You wanted a kiss.” He met my gaze, a feral expression contorting his face. His mouth. Hunger flooding his eyes. “What else do you want from me?”
Everything. “Another kiss. A second one. And a third. And a fourth, and—”
His hand returned to my hair, fisting it in his fingers, pulling at it so I’d expose my neck. “Is that all you want?” he said against my pulse, nipping at my skin with his teeth.
No, I wanted to say, but then, he was cupping my head and bringing our mouths together. Then, his hips were punching up, right against the junction of my thighs and he was so hard, so hot against me that I—
“Lucas,” I whimpered, my lids fluttering shut.
“I asked you a question,” he rasped even when his breath seemed to catch, too. “I said I’d give you whatever you asked. And you wanted my mouth. A kiss. And now.” He stopped himself, rearranging me around him, the friction feeling impossibly good and not at all enough at the same time. “Now I want to give you more. Now I don’t want to stop at your mouth, Rosie.”
I was the one who shifted next, sliding down along his pulsing length, bringing the same expressions of delicious pain to both our faces. I pulled at the hair at the nape of his neck when I expelled my next words, “Then, don’t stop. Give me more than that. Give me what you promised me at the Masquerade Ball.”
His throat worked, his eyes darkening with a realization, with a thought. “You had to be perfect, didn’t you? You had to be capable of taming and pulling at everything that’s inside of me?”
Yes. “Everything. I want it all.”
Lucas’s expression changed, and God, he looked ready to succumb, to give me exactly what I had just asked of him, and I wanted to let him. So, I took his mouth that time, encouraging him. He groaned deep in his throat and… a ringtone sounded.
I barely registered it as mine at first. Not until it rang again and infiltrated our bubble, making us come up for air.
Lucas’s voice was barely a rasp, but he said, “That’s your phone, preciosa.”
Still dazed, I fought against the remnants of the fog while the incoming call stopped and started again.
Lucas placed a kiss on the corner of my mouth, then another one on my forehead and placed me back on the floor. He walked us where we’d left our coats, back at the entrance to the roof. Fishing for my purse, he opened it and extracted my ringing phone.
I checked the screen—unknown—and answered the call.
“Rosie,” I heard. “I’m ready to go home.”
“Olly?” Every single cell in my body that had been burning scalding hot just seconds ago turned to ice. “Where are you?”
My brother didn’t answer, not right away, but I could hear the noise in the background. Music. The nightclub.
“Text me the address,” I told him. “Do you hear me, Olly? Text me where you are. I’m on my way.”
There was a curt, “Thank you.” And then, the line went dead.