Before I could retreat again, his hands found mine.
I froze.
Not out of fear this time.
Out of uncertainty.
He simply lowered my arms with steady, deliberate patience, as if undoing a defensive habit he understood too well.
One of his hands stayed on mine, grounding. The other slid to my waist.
Then he pulled me in.
I should have resisted.
I didn’t.
My body collided gently with his chest, and suddenly there was no space left between us at all.
No distance to think. No barrier to hide behind.
Just him.
Solid. Warm. Real.
His heartbeat pressed against my cheek when I tilted my head slightly.
Steady and unshaken.
And I—
I broke.
Tears came without warning, hot and unstoppable, sliding down my face and soaking into his shirt.
I didn’t stop them. I didn’t try to hide them. I hadn’t realized how long I had been holding everything in until that moment, until something in me finally gave way under the weight of it all.
His arms tightened slightly around me—not possessive, not forceful.
Just there.
I stayed inside the moment, trembling against him as the worst of the storm passed through me in violent, quiet waves.
Rafael’s hand moved slowly along my spine, a deliberate, grounding stroke that felt too controlled to be accidental and too intimate to be safe.
Possessive, yes—but not rough.
His voice dropped lower, steady against the quiet tension between us.
“Four weeks ago,” he began, “Bruno maxed out a credit card meant to last him a year—in a single day on a gambling site. The idiot genuinely believed luck was a skill.”
A small, involuntary breath left me.
“I was furious,” he continued. “I tracked him down immediately—to your apartment. And the moment I walked in and saw him trying to hurt you...”
His hand paused briefly at the middle of my back.
I stiffened at the memory he was describing. I couldn’t see it, but I remembered it too well—the fear, the chaos, the suffocatingmoment Bruno had cornered me, furious that I fought back after he slapped my ass.
