by Selena Scott
She sighed. She loved Raph fresh from work. He was always warm and loose, sweaty and tired. He always smelled of soil and whatever he’d been planting that day.
“What’s up?” he asked. She heard his keys in the door.
“I wanted to talk to you about something.”
She heard him go completely still. The lazy tenor of his voice went a bit more rigid. He seemed immediately nervous. “Okay. Ah, shoot.”
“I want to tell Kaya about us.”
Raph let out a long breath and what could only be characterized as a relieved laugh. “Wow. Yeah, sure. Go ahead.”
Natalie frowned. “Just like that? You don’t even need to know the reasons I want to tell her?”
“I’m assuming that keeping it from her is starting to feel like a lie. And you’ve never liked lying to Kaya.”
She frowned more. Sometimes it was annoying how well he knew her. “Hmmph.”
He laughed again. “Nat, it’s totally fine with me. Tell away. Unless… are you wanting me to be there with you? Are you nervous about it?”
Nat smiled. “I’m nervous, sure, but it’s not like this is bad news. I’m sure it’ll be fine telling her.” Nat sucked her lip into her mouth and thought for a minute. “Is there anyone you want to tell?”
He was quiet for a minute, and then, “Honestly, I’ve been kind of wanting to tell everybody. Like even randos I meet on the street.”
Nat laughed, a foreign giddiness rising in her stomach. She’d known that Raph was into this. But the way he was talking… it suddenly occurred to her that maybe he was really, really into it. “The sex is just that good, huh?” she joked.
“Nat, the everything is just that good.”
The giddiness both expanded and contracted in her stomach, making her feel almost ill. She so, so wanted to just surf the wave he was obviously surfing. To just feel all the feelings and move faster and faster toward some new shoreline.
But there were his words in her head again.
Men want what they can’t have.
And right now, she was still a secret.
Well, telling Kaya was step one toward not being a secret anymore. At that point, she’d gauge Raph’s interest. She might have a better idea of whether or not he still wanted her.
“As long as you’re sure it’s not a problem to let the cat out of the bag…” she finally replied.
“I’m sure. And man, what a screwed up saying that is. Like, who keeps a cat in a bag? I’m not a cat person, but that’s just cruel.”
Nat laughed. “My question is, how the hell did someone get the cat into the bag in the first place? You know how hard it is to get a cat to do anything?” They both laughed for a long minute and when her mirth wound down, Nat found she had more questions. “Are you going to tell anyone, Raph?”
“Not without talking to you first. I get the feeling that we should take this little by little. It’s like bringing a really big boat into harbor.”
“Right.” There was another question on her lips. What are you going to say when you tell them? But she couldn’t ask Raph without having an answer herself. And she had no idea what her answer was.
She had no plan for what to tell Kaya. She was just going to give her the bare bones information and let her sister ask questions and see where that got them.
Nat could feel Raph hesitating on the line and she knew, somehow, that he was vibrating with the same question that she was. But he didn’t ask it, and she wondered if they both refrained for the same reasons.
“Well,” he said after a minute. “Good luck. Call me after?”
“If it’s not too late. You know that Kaya and I can talk to one another forever. Especially about something this juicy.”
“You consider me juicy?”
“The juiciest.”
“Will I see you tomorrow?”
This was another first. So far, through the course of their romantic relationship, they’d taken it day by day, calling one another up twenty minutes before they wanted to see each other. They’d made no plans. But here he was, casually asking for a plan.
“Yes.”
Nat winced when she remembered that she’d also made plans with Paul tomorrow, but there was no reason she couldn’t see both of them.
“Good.”
“Night, Raph.”
“Night, baby.”
Natalie hung up, an electric feeling arcing over every inch of her skin. She had the feeling that if she looked in the mirror, her hair would be standing on end. Sure enough, when she stepped across the carpet in her bedroom, static shock zapped her big toe.
Suddenly stuffy and restricted in her work clothes, Nat yanked everything off and tossed it in the hamper. Her heart was pounding a mile a minute.
She shoved herself into some pajamas from her drawer and scraped her hair into a bun on the top of her head.
The last time she’d felt this particular kind of electricity racing over her had been in Raph’s kitchen the night they’d kissed for the first time. The night that everything had changed.
And here she was, about to change everything again. Their affair, situation, whatever, was about to be cast into the light. And there was no telling if it would survive it. But Nat knew that it couldn’t live in the dark any longer.
“Sink or swim,” she muttered to herself as she came out into the living room to join Kaya.
Kaya wore her glasses and had started reading an old, worn mystery novel in the time it had taken for Nat to make the phone call. She was sprawled on the couch and did an almost comical double take when she got a load of Nat.
“What is wrong with you? You look nuts.”
That did not surprise Nat. She turned and looked at herself in the hallway mirror and outright laughed. She didn’t look great. Her color was high, her eyes were wider than usual, her hair was, in fact, standing up in static arcs from the messy bun she’d tossed it into. Plus the pajamas she’d chosen at random were the flannel teddy bear ones that Seth had bought her as a joke for her birthday last year. She’d kept them because they were comfortable, but she had to admit they made her look like a four-year-old. The gigantic slippers on her feet probably didn’t help matters at all.
She did, in fact, look nuts.
“Drinks,” Nat said. “I think this requires drinks.”
“Ooh, it must be really juicy gossip if you can’t tell me without whiskey.”
Nat shuffled back a moment later with two juice glasses and a bottle of whiskey. “It’s juicy.”
She poured herself a half shot and took it immediately and then refilled her glass and poured Kaya a shot.
“Apparently.” Kaya’s eyebrows were up in her hair. “It’s nothing bad, is it?”
“No. It’s actually really good. It’s actually really, shockingly, freakily, terrifyingly good.”
“Put me out of my misery!” Kaya threw herself backward on the couch, nearly upending her whiskey. “Who the heck are you sleeping with?”
“Um. Raphael?”
Kaya froze, her body splayed on the couch, and her whiskey glass held in the air. “Raphael.”
“Raphael.”
Kaya’s head popped up. “Raphael Durant.”
Nat cleared her throat. “Raphael Durant.”
“You’re sleeping with Raphael Durant and it is ‘really, shockingly, freakily, terrifyingly good.’”
“Ah… ten-four.”
Kaya took her shot of whiskey, set the glass aside and tackled her sister right off the couch and onto their living room rug.
“Kay!” Nat spilled her drink all over herself and got a wad of her sister’s hair in mouth. “Oh my God, you freak!”
Kaya was hysterically laughing. Almost screaming. She was hugging the crap out of Nat and kicking her feet.
“You’re the freak! The super freak! You and Raph sitting in a tree. Oh my GOD, Nat, you bumped uglies with Raphael Durant. You’re sleeping with Raph!”
She sat up and leaned against the couch, but Nat, more th
an a little dazed by her sister’s reaction, lay on the floor, the empty whiskey glass still clutched in her hand. “Believe me. I’m well aware.”
“How did it start, what’s it like, how long has it been going on, oh-my-sweet-Jesus-gimme-the-details!” Kaya smacked her hands against the couch cushion with each word.
“If you’re done pile-driving me, I’d be happy to change out of my sopping wet whiskey pajamas and tell you the story.”
Kaya jumped to her feet, pulled Nat along with her and danced the two of them down the hall to Nat’s room. She flung herself onto the bed and bounced like a little kid for a minute.
“I would have thought you’d be a little more skeptical about all this,” Nat said, stripping out of her pajamas and putting on a new pair.
“Well, yeah. I suppose my natural state is caution and skepticism. But this is you and Raph. You and Raph! I mean, you two read each other’s thoughts. You feel each other’s feelings! I don’t know another pair of people who love each other as much as you two do. I mean, Seth and Sarah are probably tied with you. And they’re, like, deeply in love with each other.”
The words ‘in love’ triggered that painful giddiness in Nat’s gut. Was that what was happening? She’d tried so hard not to give much credence or energy to the idea. But it was true that it kept popping into her head. Ever since her dinner with Paul, somewhere in the back of her head, Nat had been wondering if she would have said yes to him if not for her feelings for Raph. Which mean that her feelings for Raph must be pretty strong. Which meant… Well, that could mean a lot of things.
Nat sat on the bed and covered her face with her hands.
“Wait.” Kaya’s arm went around her shoulders. “You’re not happy. Am I totally misinterpreting this? Is this not a good thing?”
“I don’t know.” They flopped back onto Nat’s bed together.
“Why don’t you start from the beginning.”
And so that’s what Nat did. She told her about their conversation after Paul had rejected her. About Raphael’s decision not to sleep with a woman until he was certain they could be together. About how they’d come to realize that they really needed each other. She told her about the first kiss. How bad it had been. And the second kiss. How freaking incredible it had been. She told her about the make-out in the garage, the sex in the attic, the random rendezvous they’d had since then. And then she told her about dinner with Paul. How he’d turned everything on its head and how much Raphael had not liked hearing about it at all.
“Of course he didn’t like hearing about it. He wants you for himself,” Kaya interjected.
“Maybe,” Nat agreed cautiously, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth. “But in the same breath he flat out told me that men want what they can’t have.”
“But Raph has you and he still wants you.”
“No. Raph partially has me. We’re a secret. We’re just fooling around. If he really had me, the whole shebang, who’s to say he would want me anymore?”
“Natalie.” Kaya rose up, her hands on her hips. “Get ahold of yourself. Where’s that natural self-confidence of yours?”
“It’s not natural, Kay. It is very much learned. And practiced.”
Kaya frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that confidence is something I taught myself over the years. Coming from the type of family that we did, well, it took a toll on me when we were younger. I spent a long time building up the kind of confidence it required to live in a world with the Durants. With their perfect family and money and good looks.”
Kaya tried to interject but Nat lifted a hand.
“I’m not saying that I’m not confident. I am. But it’s hard won. And I’m just worried that I’ve put too much on the line with Raphael. Like I served myself up on a platter or something. If this goes south with him. I… I think I’m gonna be destroyed. And not like I was with Paul. I mean I think I’m going to be legitimately devastated.”
Kaya sat back down, slowly. “Are there any indications, besides the men-want-what-they-can’t-have thing, that it might go south?”
Nat thought for a long minute. “No. He’s… really, really constant. And affectionate. And gives me pretty much all of his attention.” Nat’s stomach did a backflip. “I’m pretty sure, from like our first kiss, that he hasn’t really thought about other women. I’m pretty sure that the whole ‘wife’ thing is totally gone from his head.”
Kaya’s eyebrows raised, like she maybe could see something that Nat couldn’t but she didn’t say anything.
“So… what’s the freaking problem here? Why are you frowning and holding your knees on your bed right now? Is it Stapler Paul?”
“No,” Nat said absently. “It’s not Stapler Paul. I mean PAUL!”
Kaya burst out laughing.
“It’s not because I want to be with Paul. It’s because Paul gave me this really clear evidence of a man only wanting me when I was somehow unattainable. And I guess I just need a little time to shake that.”
“Well, I’ll never begrudge you time, Nat. You deserve all the time you need. But just remember that even though Paul is giving you evidence of one thing, Raph has been giving you his own kind of evidence. And I really don’t think it would be wise to confuse them.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Durant family and Bauer were eating dinner together the following night when they heard an animal scream from the woods bordering their property.
Kaya was working, Nat had called to say that she wasn’t coming over until later, and Sarah was at the archery range, so it was just the boys and Elizabeth.
All three of her sons pushed their chairs back all at once at the high-pitched, bleating wail.
Elizabeth, even with her human ears, could tell that it was an animal, not a person, making that noise, but it still chilled her to the bone.
“An animal attack?” she asked the room.
But no one answered her. The boys and Bauer were all jamming their shoes and coats on, bounding out the back door. She tossed Jackson a flashlight and watched from the porch for a second before she changed her mind about waiting behind.
Before Bauer had come into their lives, she’d been the head honcho around here. And she still was, in many ways. But if he wasn’t around, she’d be the one charging into the woods with her sons. In some ways, it was a relief to get to stay behind, but in other ways, it was a loss of identity to be the woman who waited with bated breath in the kitchen. She jammed her boots on, grabbed a spare sweater from the hook in the back room and jogged after them.
Elizabeth caught up to them at the edge of the woods and looped her arm through Seth’s. He looked like, for a moment, he wanted to tell her to go back, but then they heard Jackson gasp and they rushed forward.
Elizabeth’s stomach dropped out at the sight before her. There was a doe on her side, one of her back legs broken and a great steel trap around part of her chest and neck. She was bleating in fear and pain even as the life leaked out of her. The fallen autumn leaves were slick and black with the liter of blood she’d already lost.
Jackson fell to one knee beside the animal, her eyes rolling in fear, and with the shiny flash of a knife, dispatched her with a neat cut at her neck. The veterinarian couldn’t let an animal suffer so terribly. The beautiful deer fell still.
Tears sprang up in Elizabeth’s eyes and movement at the corner of her vision showed Raphael wiping tears from his cheeks. None of them ever wanted to see an innocent animal go like this. It was too cruel. Too painful.
“You ever seen a trap like this before?” Jackson asked Bauer.
Bauer shook his head. “It’s handmade. Look.”
He pointed to some of the soldered joints.
“It’s so strange.” Jackson continued studying it. “It’s almost like the teeth of the trap are supposed to look like…”
Jackson’s face went white.
“Help me unlock the mechanism. Help me get the deer free.” Already, Jackson’s hands were slick w
ith the deer’s blood as he stepped on the trap and tried to yank it from the deer’s flesh. The doe’s body flopped down in a sad, ugly way.
“Jacks,” Raph said, stepping forward.
“Just help me!” Jackson shouted in a vicious whisper, his eyes darting around the woods. “It’s important.”
Bauer was the first to bend over the trap next to Jackson, studying the mechanism. “Here. Let’s pull this pin here. And step on that part. Now pull.”
Jackson, Raph and Bauer yanked the trap free of the deer while Seth and Elizabeth grimaced from a few feet away.
“Shit.” Jackson said, staring down at the deer. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” Seth asked. “I mean, aside from the obvious.”
“Look.” Jackson held up the teeth of the trap. “Does that remind you of anything? Look at the wound it left behind.”
“Jesus,” Bauer growled. “The trap is meant to emulate a wolf bite.”
Elizabeth felt the blood leave her face. “Someone made a trap to make it look as if a wolf had attacked a deer on our property?”
“There’s something blinking there.” Raphael studied the half of the trap that was still on the ground.
Sure enough, there seemed to some kind of sensor attached to one side of the trap. Raph brought the heel of his boot down on it, smashing it to bits.
“Someone laid this trap and is trying to pass it off as an animal attack,” Seth mused.
“Let’s not talk about it here,” Bauer muttered, his eyes everywhere. “Let’s just bury the animal and get on with it.”
It took the men about twenty minutes to dig a hole deep enough for the animal to be protected from scavengers. None of them could say exactly why they wanted to give the deer a proper burial, but they did.
They hauled the remnants of the trap into the garage, making sure that the sensor was completely disabled, and then they hosed off in the backyard, all of them completely silent, their minds whirring.