Page 140 of When She Falls (The Fallen)
“What’s wrong? You don’t like it?”
“Are you kidding? This looks amazing.”
“What is it then?”
I lick the sauce off my bottom lip. “I would never be allowed to eat more than a tiny bit of this back home.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mamma has this thing with food. She’s always been concerned about my weight. I was a little chubby in my early teens, and it drove her crazy. She wanted me to be thin.”
He leans back in his chair, his eyes narrowed. “She controlled your eating a lot?”
“It came in waves, depending on her mood. She could go months without saying anything, but then we’d go shopping or out for lunch with her friends, and something would just switch on. She’d monitor everything I ate for a while afterward. Then the cycle would repeat. At some point, I just learned to monitor myself, I guess. It was easier than anxiously waiting for her to snap at me.”
Ras’s brows furrow. “I remember how she talked to you when you were in Ibiza. As soon as lunch ended, I went to the kitchen, got those rolls you wanted, and dropped them off at the guest house.”
My eyes widen. “That wasyou?”
He gives me a crooked smile and nudges my chin with his finger. “I wanted you to know that there was at least one person who thought she was being ridiculous.”
Warmth spills inside my chest. Back then, I’d been so wrong about him.
Ras stands up, walks over to me, and squats down by my chair. His gaze pierces right through me. “Peaches, you are in no way lacking. There isn’t a single thing I’d change about you. And anyone who’s ever told you otherwise is either an idiot or the type of person who has to put others down in order to feel better about themselves.” He lifts his knuckle to my chin. “Erase their words from your mind.”
A strange emotion comes over me, something soft and vulnerable and weepy.
He pulls me into his arms. I let my head fall against his chest, my eyes growing wet. We stay like that for a while, holding each other.
We get back to our meal, and I eat until I’m thoroughly full. He smiles at me from time to time, his eyes warm and filled with a fierce happiness that suits him so damn well.
I can’t believe I ever hated him. Maybe this is why he always pushed my buttons, because subconsciously I knew that he could see the real me. The flawed girl I worked so hard at hiding.
“Peaches, you are in no way lacking.”
I’ve always been lacking in one way or another. Always.
But for the first time, I wonder if maybe I could be just enough for him.
* * *
On the morning of our fourth day in Crete, I ask Ras to let me talk to Vale.
“You mentioned yesterday we could call her,” I remind him while we’re having coffee out on the patio.
I get why Ras hasn’t wanted me to talk to Cleo—after all, anyone of Papà’s men could be monitoring her phone—but he also doesn’t seem too enthused about me calling Vale, and I don’t understand why.
He puts his mug on the table, and something in the way his lips twist makes a bad feeling materialize inside my gut.
“What’s going on?”
He swipes a fallen leaf off the surface of the table. “There’s something I should probably tell you.”
My heart rate picks up. Did something happen to Vale? “Ras, what is it?” I ask, panic creeping into my voice.
He props his elbows on his knees and sighs. “Dem and Vale don’t know we’re here.”
I frown. How is that even possible? “What? I thought all of this was yours and Dem’s idea. Didn’t you talk to him while I was with the doctor?”
