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I was going to find them.

And… I didn’t know what. Could I beat someone up? I’d never done it before. Not for real—not outside of rehearsed wrestling matches or fake, scripted beef for the audience.

I looked over at Rafe and watched him carefully pull the tissue out of his nostril and peer down at it to see how much his nose was still bleeding. My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth would shatter.

Yeah. I was pretty sure I had it in me to beat the shit out of them.

“Want to watch a movie?” Rafe asked, unaware that I was silently seething with fury. “I saw the trailer for a new rom com I thought you’d like the other day. I wrote the name of it down on my phone so I wouldn’t forget.”

My heart squeezed tight, making it hard to breathe for a second.

Seriously, how could anyone ever hurt him? He was just… He was so…

My throat grew a little clogged when I remembered that I’d hurt him before. Not intentionally, but I had. When I took off right after the first time we fooled around. How could I have been such an asshole to him?

Remembering it kind of made me want to cry, even though he was fine now. We were fine. We were great.

What the fuck was wrong with me?

Realising I hadn’t answered him, I nodded and croaked, “Sure. Sounds nice.”

“Are you going to sit back?” he asked, sounding amused. “Maybe get comfortable?”

I stiffly leaned back, my knee still bouncing until Rafe chuckled and rested his hand on it. He shuffled closer, curling his legs up under the blanket, and kissed my cheek. My throat grew clogged once more, and I swallowed convulsively.

“I’m fine,” he said yet again, still sounding amused. “Relax.”

I exhaled slowly and tried to do just that, wrapping my arm around him and tugging him into my side as he draped the blanket over my lap. He grabbed the remote and quickly found the movie he’d mentioned, resting his head on my shoulder after hitting play.

I stared at the screen with unseeing eyes, still tense. I wasn’t taking in the movie as it started, too busy silently trying to come up with a plan. Maybe Holt would give me Frank and Beans’ address. I doubted it, but I could ask.

I knew a gargoyle who was a PI. Maybe I could ask him to start looking for them. But that would take too long. I didn’t want to wait.

I could stake out the street Fauntastic Foods was on. That had to be where they’d mugged him—I’d spoken to Rafe on the phone while he was still in there, and he’d said he was coming home straight after. I wasn’t good at sitting around and doing nothing, but something told me I’d be perfectly fine waiting as long as needed until I saw them. Whether it had been an accident or not, they’d hurt Rafe, and trying to mug him definitely hadn’t been a fucking accident.

I mulled over my options, gradually relaxing as the decision to track them down cemented in my brain and made it feel like I could do something to help. I mean, logically I knew it would achieve nothing, but I was still going to fucking do it.

I forced my shoulders to relax as I pressed my lips to the top of Rafe’s head and breathed him in. Right now, I was with him. I wasn’t going to waste these moments thinking about those two assholes. It could wait until tomorrow.

Eventually, we ended up lying down, with Rafe curled up into my side and his head on my chest. He slipped his hand under my shirt and rested it on my stomach, growing lax on top of me as we watched the movie.

I sensed him fall asleep midway through, his breaths evening out as his body relaxed fully. My chest squeezed unbearably tight again as I combed my fingers through his hair, savouring the feel of him against me.

He’d kept saying he was fine, but it had to have been scary when he thought they had a gun. The thought of him scared and alone somewhere without me there to protect him made my eyes burn again. I held him tighter, pressing my nose and mouth against the top of his head, breathing him in.

I wanted this, I realised in a rush that made my heart pound heavily. Not just sex. This. The other stuff. With him.

I wanted to hold him like this all the time. I wanted to fall asleep with him every night. I wanted to see him laugh and smile, knowing I was the one who’d made him happy. I wanted to do boring shit together, like go grocery shopping and complain about work and bicker over whose turn it was to empty the dishwasher.

Oh god. I was becoming… monogamous.

Vince would never let me live this down.

But when Rafe shifted a little in his sleep, letting out a tiny sound and sliding his hand higher under my shirt to rest on my chest, I realised I didn’t care. I didn’t give a single fuck if Vince teased me about it for years.

I wanted Rafe. Only Rafe.

Mrs. Tupper had been right. I was ready to settle down, now that I’d found the right person.