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I shook my head, my arms tightening around his waist. “I don’t care about the rain.”
“You’re getting drenched, Rosie. We should go.”
“No,” I told him, looking up so he could see my face. “I’m okay, right here. I don’t want to go.”
Another thunderclap roared, as if the sky was trying to prove a point.
Without giving it any thought, Lucas took off his jacket as best as he could with my arms around his waist and held it above my head. He met my gaze. “Rosie, please. You’re going to get sick. You can’t get sick, what about your book? Your deadline is in less than three weeks. You’re on the clock. Let me take you home.”
There he went, with my heart again. Putting me first. Making it even more impossible for me not to love him the way I did.
“What about you, though?” I shook my head, feeling my hair stick to my cheeks because the jacket above my head was now dripping water, too. “What if I want to take care of you, too?”
Lucas swallowed.
“What if you’re important to me, Lucas?” I told him, because he was. He needed to hear it. I placed my palms on his chest and said very slowly, “What if I wanted to be the person you let take care of you, too?”
Lucas’s expression changed, morphed. As if he couldn’t compute my words.
Which was probably why I continued, “You’re always watching over me, taking care of me. Helping me.” I watched his eyes close, his head shake. “Giving me everything without asking for a single thing in return. And I… I want to give you things, too. I want to give you everything. I want you to want that from me, too.” I felt my chest heaving, heart racing, daring me to ask the question I knew I shouldn’t. “Do you want that from me, Lucas?”
Lucas stared at me as if my words had been nothing but a blow to his chest. As if I’d just hit him, punched him, and knocked him stunned. He remained silent as water fell in rivulets down his face and gathered at his jaw.
“You understand what I’m saying,” I said, everything I had so carefully kept together slipping away. “Yes, you do, and that’s why you’re looking like that at me.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw.
No answer.
My hands fell to my sides in defeat. “Well, it’s on me,” I murmured. “We said that things wouldn’t change between us, and I let them. I… I’m sorry I did that, Lucas.”
I turned around and gathered our belongings on the bench, my face turned so he wouldn’t see how big of a fool I felt. How much lay underneath my confession. In how many pieces he was breaking my heart.
“Rosie.” His fingers wrapped around my wrist.
I shook my head. “It’s okay.”
He turned me around. Water dripped from his hair, falling down his face. “You’re crying, Rosie.” A sound escaped his lips, and he pulled at me again, wanting to bring me to him. “Ángel,por favor. Don’t cry. Don’t do that to me.”
“I’m not crying,” I lied. “It’s just the rain. I’m okay.”
His fingers cupped my jaw and he tilted my head upward until I met his gaze.
“You’re lying. You’re crying and it’s breaking my heart,” he said in a desperate voice. “Rosie,preciosa.” He moved closer, as if he couldn’t help himself. “Tell me what to do to stop this.”
I tried to keep it in. Not to let it out, but that Rosie, thatpreciosa, did me in.
And everything just… escaped.
“Want me,” I said, and God, how desperate it was to beg for something like this. “Want me like I want you. Because these glimpses of what we could be are killing me, Lucas. That’s why I’m crying, because I’m frustrated, devastated, by the fact that I can’t have you. That I want you and I can’t have you.”
Lucas was so still. He had remained unmovable under the rain, but it was only then, when my last words rang, that his whole body came alive. Like a match thrown into a fire, something roared alive inside of him.
He pulled me closer. “You think you can’t have me?” His breath fell on my mouth. “Am I the one making those tears fall down your face?”
My heart surrendered then. “I’m crying because we’re just friends, because none of this is real. Because maybe all I am to you is that. Your roommate. Ro.Graham.”
His palms went to my cheeks, cupping my face, and I could feel them shaking, trembling. Another thunderclap cracked in the distance. “Rosie,” he said. And the sound of my name rivaled the roaring in the sky. “Every single time I’ve called you Graham, I’ve done it to remind myself that I couldn’t want you the way I do. Every time I’ve taken you on a date, I’ve had to tell myself that it was part of an agreement. And every time I’ve said I wanted to be your best friend, all I’d wanted was to take from you as much as you could possibly give me.”
