Page 47 of Raff
So I didn’t lean in.
I didn’t take the opportunity I’d been waiting for for years.
The disappointment unfurled slowly, like smoke, as I rolled onto my back, then climbed off the bed.
“Well, I better get to bed. Some of us actually need our beauty rest,” I added, making my way to the door.
I saw the confusion on her face as she watched me.
“Bright and early breakfast, so we can get on the road to do your fifteen-mile walk.”
“Oh, right.” Her brows were still pinched, her lips gently parted.
“Feel free to dream about me. And if you screw up and dream of someone else, wake up and start over, okay?”
She rolled her eyes at that, but I saw the twitch in her lips. “Goodnight, Raff.”
“Rafe.”
“Hmm?”
“My name is Rafe.”
Her eyes widened at that.
“Oh. Well, goodnight, Rafe.”
“Goodnight, pretty girl.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lula
I thought he was going to kiss me.
We’d both done the triangle thing with our eyes. We were close and cozy. His gaze was scorching.
Then… he just climbed off the damn bed. Like I wasn’t moments away from stripping naked and riding him.
Now, was the rational part of me happy that he’d missed the signals? Yeah. Because hooking up with Raff would have been a huge mistake.
It already felt like a mistake to know his real name. It made him, I don’t know, more of a person and less of a caricature to me. He wasn’t just some crazy, tattooed biker with a silly road name. He was a man with a real name, with a past, with hopes and dreams, and an extensive knowledge of sex toys.
Rafe wasn’t just a hot guy who constantly woke up under a pile of hot, content women. He was a name you could scribble on a wedding invitation. Or beside yours on a deed. He was a name on an emergency contact list. He was someone on the school log book to call to pick up a sick kid.
A sigh escaped me, making Raff look over.
“Tired of being in the car?”
That wasn’t it, not really.
The road trip had been the most at-ease I’d been in years. It had been more fun than I’d known longer than that.
We’d spent the last two days looking at Spanish moss draping from live oaks, listening to cicadas. We ate too much Cajun food in Lafayette and took a ghost tour of historic downtown Tallahassee. We’d stayed in two more luxury hotels. I’d enjoyed another spa package.
The thing was… Raff seemed intent on keeping us around other people and busy.
We went midnight bowling, did one of those wine and painting events, and had every meal in a restaurant.
