Raf helps my mom out of the car and leads her to the door. I shuffle out after them and he doesn’t give me a backwards glance. It stings a little, the way he can go so hot and cold.
Maybe this won’t be an issue at all…if he’s a jerk, it should be no problem.
Chapter Nineteen
Raf disappears once my mom is settled in the living room. He was completely attentive, getting her a drink, asking her if she needed anything, and making sure she was comfortable…barely glancing at me to see if I’m okay. Which is fine. I need him to treat me the shitty way he’s capable of—anything to help me forget the way he worshipped me last night.
My skin flushes again and my mom frowns. “Gabi, I’m worried about you. You don’t look so good. Why don’t you lie down, sweetheart? Stefen will be back and I need to talk to him about all of this.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Well, let me know when you decide because I don’t know which lies I’m supposed to hold onto and which secrets I’m supposed to reveal.” My words come out much angrier than I intended and her eyes widen before getting watery. “Mom, don’t cry. Okay?” I groan. “I want to go home.”
“You can’t. We can’t. Not yet. Not until it’s safe.”
“But this is so uncomfortable,” I whisper. “I don’t even know where to be right now. I’m supposed to be out of the way when you talk to Stefen. You’ve put me in a house with my bully and expect me to make myself at home.”
“Raf was being so sweet earlier,” she says under her breath, not quite speaking as low as I think she should. “I think he’s sorry for how he’s treated you.” She smiles hopefully. “Aren’t you getting along better now?”
“You know nothing about Raf,” I mutter, my eyes getting watery too with the anger I feel. “You know what? I didn’t get any sleep last night, so I’m going to find a place to hide and take a nap.”
She starts to say something and I hold up my hand, cutting her off.
I go into the kitchen and past that is a sunroom with a cozy chair and a wicker loveseat. It doesn’t scream nap to me, more of a place to catch up on a book, but I curl up in the chair, and the next thing I know, I feel something in my hair. I jump and Raf leaps back.
“I didn’t mean to scare you. Your mom wants to talk to you and I told her I’d find you. Sorry to wake you.” He stares at my mouth while he’s talking and the things he did to this mouth play in slow motion in my brain. I shake my head, trying to rattle myself awake.
“Ow.” I hold my head. “Okay.” I sound groggy and wonder how long I’ve been asleep.
“You need to take something for your head.”
I ignore him. When we walk through the kitchen, Stefen and my mom are sitting at the table with pizzas, clinking their glasses of wine.
“Isn’t this cozy,” I say under my breath.
“Tell me about it,” Raf mutters.
He drags a chair out across the hardwood, letting it scrape longer than necessary. His dad narrows his eyes at him and Raf sends daggers back, as if daring him to say anything about it. So Raf isn’t happy about our parents any more than I am. That’s reassuring.
“We would like to talk to you both,” Stefen says. “Have some pizza, Gabriela. I hope you’re feeling better after your incident this morning.”
Raf slides over a bottle of the prescription I was supposed to fill but didn’t because we rushed home with my mother. “I filled this for you while you were asleep. Your mom said it was okay.”
“Thanks. I’m feeling fine,” I tell Stefen.
“Your mom and I have been talking, and I’ve extended an invitation for you both to stay here with us as long as necessary. She’s filled me in on…some of the things I was missing…but we’re looking into all the possibilities for your mom’s accident, as well as yours.”
“I haven’t talked to the police—have you, Mom?”
She shakes her head.
“Well, that’s weird. Why are we supposed to just trust Stefen to take care of us?” I stare at my mother, but she won’t look at me. She’s looking at Stefen like he holds her entire world in his hands. I turn to him. “Is it true you’re working with Luke?”
My mom turns to me so fast, I think it makes her dizzy. She holds her temples. “It’s not what you think, sweetheart.”
“It seems someone has been speaking out of turn.” Stefen directs that to Raf and the tension is so thick I’m afraid one of them is about to turn the table or something else equally as destructive. “Let me worry about the details, okay, Gabi?”
“It’s Gabriela to you,” I snap. I stand up from the table and put a piece of pizza on a plate. “Where can I go so I don’t have to have this conversation right now?” I take a bite and I’m not hungry so I regret even eating that much. I force myself to take three more bites so it’s not wasted and set the plate down.
“Sit down, Gabi,” my mom says.
I ignore her. She exchanges a look with Stefen and shakes her head slightly. I can’t believe my mom is trusting this guy when we hardly know him. I’d go to Ashton’s just to get out of the same house as Raf, but I can’t leave my mom here alone with them.
“We’re going to keep you safe,” Stefen says. “Both of you have nothing to worry about. My best guards are watching the place, as well as yours, and I can walk through the security system with you after dinner, if you’d
