by Selena Scott
He’d, more than once, had to be called back to attention by a member of his family that day. Only Bauer suspected the real reason for his empty-headedness. The rest of them just assumed it was because he was amped over having successfully shifted last night. Which he was. Just not quite as amped as he was that he’d made out with Natalie.
However, when it came time to go home and shower, Raphael had found himself swamped with a very unusual case of nerves. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had butterflies like this. But there he’d been, standing in his bedroom, frowning down at two different ties in his hands, his stomach flipping, because he was going to see Natalie in an hour.
He was suddenly feeling extremely underprepared for seeing her. He should have spent more of the day planning what he was going to say to her. He should have thought much more academically about this situation and less emotionally. Because what was going to happen if she walked into his mother’s house for the rehearsal dinner and frowned at him? What if she avoided him? What if she’d fully changed her mind? What if she’d made up her mind and decided that it wasn’t in the cards for them?
Shouldn’t he be prepared for any outcome?
But try as he might, he couldn’t tame his mind to do anything but feel nervousness, punctuated, of course, by the occasional daydream of kissing her again.
Confused, worked up, and a little irritated at himself, Raphael had just chosen one of the ties at random and driven to his mother’s house. The house had begun to fill up with guests. Normally the most social of his brothers, Raphael found himself out on the back porch with Seth and Jackson, avoiding the crowd for a minute.
He’d heard Natalie coming into the house and instead of going to greet her, found he needed just one more moment to himself. If this was the last moment he was going to have before she told him that the whole thing was a terrible idea, well, he wanted to relish it.
But then, he’d looked up and seen her standing in the kitchen.
Jesus, she’s literally glowing.
The warm light from the kitchen overheads set her dress alight, making her look like a sunny autumn day. In an instant, his nerves evaporated like a drop of water on a hot pan.
Because he’d forgotten one thing in the last hour. This wasn’t a random person he was freaking out over. This was Natalie.
And even better than that, it was Natalie, the other version of her who had kissed him stupid on his kitchen floor last night.
And then he let gravity take over and he was gone, across the porch, sliding past the glass door, and weaving past a few people to stand directly next to her.
It was almost perfect. It was almost exactly what his body wanted him to do. It was everything except for the part where he wanted to wrap his arms around her and bury his face in her neck. He wasn’t sure how well that would go over in this room full of people who had no idea they’d kissed last night.
“Hi,” he said, his voice lower than usual, his hands in his pockets.
“Hi,” she smiled up at him. It wasn’t quite her usual smile. There was a tiny bit of nerves at her edges. Her eyes dropped to his chest. “Nice tie.”
“Thanks.” He stroked a hand over it and then looked down. “Oh. I didn’t realize I’d chosen this one.”
She sucked her lips into her mouth to keep from laughing at him. “You mean that you didn’t intend on wearing a Kermit tie to your brother’s rehearsal dinner?”
He laughed. He’d barely looked at it, as flustered as he’d been. He’d waffled between two green ties because Natalie had once told him that he should never not wear green with eyes like his. He hadn’t looked too closely when he’d settled on this one, apparently.
“Raph, I think we need more drinks from the garage. You mind grabbing them? Hi, Nat, honey. You look lovely.” Elizabeth leaned in between them and kissed Natalie on the cheek. As she leaned in, she knocked into Raph which made him realize just how close he’d been standing to Natalie.
“You got it, Ma. Nat, come help.” He grabbed Natalie’s hand and dragged her across the kitchen and out to the garage. His hand tightened against the current of energy that had begun to flow between them. He didn’t dare look back, feeling like he’d just gotten away with something and not wanting to give away his secret by glancing back at her.
He stepped out into the garage and immediately closed the door behind them, drowning out the party noise. It was cool and slightly damp in the garage. They were immediately swamped with that chilly, metallic smell that all garages seemed to have. His mother’s car was parked and dark and all manner of party supplies were piled up against one wall, directly under where their old bikes still hung.
He spun Natalie under his arm, like a dance move, and turned her to face him. She squeaked and laughed and ended up with her back against the car.
“Hi,” he said, looking down at her.
“Hi,” she said again, looking up at him. She wrinkled her nose. “I think we’re repeating ourselves.”
Goosebumps had risen up on her sleeveless arms and he couldn’t resist moving in toward her, giving her a bit of his heat. He planted his palms against her shoulders and ran his hands down to her elbows and back up.
“You’re cold.”
“And nervous,” she admitted.
“It’s just me, Nat. No need to be nervous.”
She reached up and fiddled with his tie. For some reason, just the sight of that, her delicate fingers tugging on him, made him instantly and incredibly aroused. His boxer briefs were starting to pull tight away from his leg.
“Well, I mean… it’s you and also it’s not you, you know?” she asked him.
“Sort of?”
She laughed, smoothing his tie out and pausing. He knew her well enough to know that she was gathering her words. “It’s almost like last night happened in another dimension or something. It created two new versions of us. And now I guess I’m trying to figure out which version I am and which version you are.”
He understood her instantly and completely, the way he always did with her. “Totally. Like, right now, are we the old Nat and Raph who watch bad movies and do our Christmas shopping together?”
“Or,” she cut in, “are we the new Nat and Raph who dry hump each other?”
He laughed. “Right.”
Smoothing a hand over her wavy hair and relishing the glassy smoothness of it, Raphael took a chance and tugged her a little bit closer. Not close enough to grind his boner into her, but close enough for it to qualify as holding her.
“Nat… is there any chance that maybe we could be both versions of ourselves at once?”
She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and his eyes got trapped there for a moment. “I’ve been asking myself that question nonstop for, like, twenty-four hours.”
“Have you come to any conclusions?” Raphael’s heart was beating in his chest like it was trying to get her to hear it from where she stood. Like it was trying to knock its way out of his ribs.
She shrugged, her doe eyes huge and nervous. “Have you?”
“All I know,” he said slowly, “is that I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Me neither.”
He realized then that one of them was going to have to take charge. Knowing them, they could be dancing around this topic for days, just waiting for any indication of what the other one felt. And it wasn’t because of indecision. No. It was because what the other one wanted was indispensable information. Really, how could he know what he wanted without knowing what Natalie wanted? She was too important to him. How she felt was too important to him.
But it followed that she was feeling exactly the same way. She was over there, just two inches away from him, feeling like what he felt was too important for her to just blurt out how she felt. One of them was going to have to take a leap. And he was brave enough for it to be him. He could do this.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, Raphael lowered his head toward her. He wanted to make his intentions clear, but he al
so wanted to give her enough time to pull away from him if she wanted. He let himself complete the gravitational pull of Natalie, to truly fall into her the way he’d wanted to when he’d seen her through the glass door of the kitchen. He hitched his arms a little tighter around her waist and he pressed his face into the crook of her neck.
He didn’t kiss her as much as he just nuzzled her, catching that familiar scent of hers, letting his stubble scrape gently against the sensitive skin of her neck.
Her chest expanded and contracted against him, her fingers found their way to his shoulders and hung on.
And then, thank the good Lord, she leaned slightly into him.
He took the plunge.
“I’m thinking,” Raphael said against her skin, lips moving against her collar bone, “that this whole thing is a really, really excellent idea.”
“Brilliant, even,” she gasped.
“A Nobel prize winner.”
Celebration bells clanged in his chest at their banter, at her proximity, at the brakes that neither of them were putting on this situation.
He firmly planted his hands on her hips and hoisted her up onto the hood of his mother’s car. Her dress rode up and she gripped his shoulders as her legs automatically hooked around his waist.
She was gripping him tightly with her legs, her head tipped to one side to give him better access to her neck.
“Raph.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re in your mother’s garage.”
“Right.”
He continued to kiss a path up to her ear, huffing her scent as he went.
“Maybe,” she said, speaking through a little gasp. “Maybe we should pause this?”
He froze. She wanted to pull back on the reins?
He held her tightly in his arms, telling his body to let her go, but somehow he wasn’t listening to himself. “You don’t want to do this?”
“No, no! That’s not what I meant. I just meant that the rehearsal is about to start and I thought maybe we could pick this up later? Maybe later tonight?”
His heart resumed beating in his chest. She wasn’t calling it off. In fact, she wanted it to keep going, later tonight.
“Hell, yes. Perfect. Yes. I’m there. My house? Your house? One of our cars? The ground? In a bed of snakes? I don’t care. I’m there.”
Nat laughed. “Jesus, you must be really hard up.”
He frowned.
He hadn’t had sex in over a week, but that wasn’t why he was gripping her to him, whispering in her ear, doing everything he could to make sure this wasn’t over. It was her. Her taste, the feel of her, the rasp of her hair against his face.
She knocked her hand twice against his shoulder and he took it to mean she wanted to get down.
Raphael stepped back and she hopped off the hood of the car.
“Hold on,” he murmured. “You’ve got dirt on you.”
What started as a brisk patting of her dress to make sure she was clean, ended in long, luxurious feels on her backside.
“You done back there?” she asked, biting back her smile.
“I like this ass,” he told her ass. “This is a nice ass.”
“I’ve always thought so.”
Inwardly, he was marveling to himself that he’d never really paid attention to Natalie’s ass before. It must speak to the strength of their friendship that he hadn’t been ogling her every time she was close enough to ogle, because the ass in his hand was damn near perfect.
She stepped out of his grasp and hoisted a flat of soda up, balancing it on her hip. “Why don’t you grab those six packs and balance a few sparkling waters on top of this soda for me. And grab those wine bottles, too.”
He followed her directions to a T and they were just turning back when the door to the garage flew open unceremoniously and there stood Elizabeth.
Wow. If she’d opened that door twenty seconds earlier she would have seen his hand on Nat’s ass. Any earlier and she’d have gotten an eyeful of him backing Nat onto the hood of the car. He could feel Nat’s tension at almost having gotten caught.
“Is this what you were wanting us to get?” she asked Elizabeth in an almost-normal voice.
Elizabeth came over, grabbed a few more bottles of wine. “Yup. Perfect. I think we’re about to start the rehearsal in a few minutes. So we’ll need a lot of drinks to keep everybody else occupied inside.”
Raph re-entered the party. But it was different this time. He laughed and joked with Seth and Sarah’s closest friends and neighbors who’d been invited to the rehearsal. He was no longer nervous. He was light. Filled with hope.
***
Nat was filled with nerves as she stood on Raph’s front porch. She’d dropped Kaya at home and changed her clothes. She didn’t even have to evade any questions from her sister because Kaya had been unusually quiet, closing herself into her room as soon as they’d gotten home and going straight to bed.
So, Nat had had no one to answer to as she’d slipped into yoga pants and a T shirt, zipping up a hoodie and toeing into some fake fur-lined boots. She’d piled up her hair on top of her head, reasoning that the best thing to do in this scenario was to be comfortable. Besides, Raph had already seen her in every single version of a hot mess that she’d ever been. At this point, he knew whether or not he found her attractive, and she didn’t think straightening her hair and putting on date night clothes was really going to change matters much.
She was about to push open his front door, the way she always did, when she nearly jumped out of her skin as her phone rang.
She frowned down at it. It was Paul.
Because she’d pretty much been at Paul’s beck and call for the last year and a half, her stomach bursting into butterflies whenever he reached out to her, she answered the call on autopilot.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Nat, it’s Paul.” His use of her nickname kind of bothered her.
“Hi.”
“I was just calling to see how things were going for you.”
“Since Tuesday?” That had been the day he’d broken things off with her.
There was a short pause. “Um. I guess. How have things been since Tuesday?”
The door to Raphael’s house swung open, making Natalie jump again. Raph stood there, obviously drawn to his porch by the noise of her on her phone. He squinted into the darkness, beckoning her to come inside.
She was relieved to see that he’d changed into athleisure wear as well. He wore the type of boy sweatpants that reminded her of European soccer players—the ones that were tight at the ankle—and a T-shirt. His hair was messy from where he’d yanked the shirt over it, and he was barefoot. In one hand he held a half-eaten slice of cold pizza.
“Who is that?” Raphael mouthed, pointing at her phone.
“Paul,” she mouthed back and realized that she’d just missed something that Paul had said.
“What was that?” she said into the phone.
Raphael closed the door behind her and she kicked off her boots. “Is there more of that?” she whispered, pointing to the pizza.
A frown on his face that she rarely saw, Raphael nodded and beckoned her to the kitchen.
“I said, I was just checking to make sure that you were doing all right and that our conversation on Tuesday… was okay.”
Something pinched in Natalie’s gut. Ugh. How many times did this guy need to twist the knife? Wasn’t this basically just calling to break up with her again? How many reminders did she need that he really wasn’t into her and he didn’t want to date?
“Don’t worry, Paul, really,” she heard herself reassuring him, wondering why she was going out of her way to make this whole thing easier for him. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t have feelings for her, but she’d made her feelings pretty damn clear about a year ago and he’d been leading her on since then. She looked up at Raph in time to grin as he jammed a slice of pizza into her mouth. She chewed and swallowed. “Actually, things have been really great. It’
s been a really good couple of days.”
She accidentally caught Raph’s eye in time to see that strange little frown lessen by a few notches. Now, he was just sort of neutral.
“Oh. That’s—that’s great, Nat. I’m really glad to hear that. Do you think you’d want to get lunch next week?”
Nat took another bite of pizza and considered her answer. Usually, when people asked a question like this, they were assuming that the default answer was ‘yes, I want to go’ and they were really asking about whether or not the person was available to go. But Nat got the distinct impression that Paul was legitimately asking if she’d want to. Because as much as he’d led her on, he was a good guy at heart and he did not want to break her heart anymore. She softened toward him.
“I think that’d be all right. I’m free Wednesday. Around noon?”
“Perfect!” He almost shouted it in her ear. He really was eager to keep her as a friend. “Callie’s?”
His favorite restaurant. She’d eaten there quite a bit over the last year and a half. She made a face. “No, I’m sick of Callie’s,” she heard herself say. Last year she never would have said something like that to Paul. She’d have instantly acquiesced to whatever he wanted. “How about Jaja?”
“Oh. Okay. See you there.”
She hung up the phone only to see Raphael frowning again. She was about to ask him what was wrong when he rocked back on his heels and jerked his head toward his living room. “Movie?”
Her stomach flopped hard to one side. She knew what ‘movie’ was code for. She just never thought she’d be ‘movie-ing’ with Raph.
She finished her slice of pizza and swallowed. “Sure.”
“You grab the ice cream, I’ll get the movie started.”
She joined him out in the living room a minute later and blinked around in confusion. “You… cleaned.”
He shrugged. “I had a bunch of energy after the rehearsal dinner and I didn’t want it to be a total pigsty when you got here.”
Natalie was touched. She was really, really touched.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand now she was nervous again. He took the tray of ice cream down from her hands and set it on the coffee table. But he was looking at the television screen and not her face.