Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 44860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 224(@200wpm)___ 179(@250wpm)___ 150(@300wpm)
Eight mornings in, she craved it.
His hands moved lower, from her hair to her shoulders, kneading the tension there, and then lower still, beneath the water, to the place on her left thigh where the muscle knotted after long days. She hadn't told him about it. She hadn't told anyone except her physiotherapist, who found it with clinical fingers and worked it out with clinical pressure and asked her to rate the improvement on a scale of one to ten.
Olivio's fingers found the same place, and he worked the knot with the same thoroughness he'd given her hair, and Chelsea had to press her lips together very hard because the sound that wanted to come out wasn't pain. It was the opposite of pain. It was the sound of a body that had spent three years being handled by professionals finally being touched by someone who wasn't wearing gloves, wasn't timing the session, wasn't going to hand her a feedback form afterward.
Her eyes stung.
She blinked it away before he could see. But his arms tightened around her, just slightly, as if he'd noticed anyway and was choosing not to mention it, and that was worse, that was so much worse, because it meant he was paying attention to parts of her that she hadn't even shown him yet.
His hands moved lower still, and the memories came with them, arriving the way they did in warm water, loose and weightless and out of order.
Their first night together in this house, in this bed. How he had reached for her again and again, each time with a different quality, urgent, then slow, then desperate and almost tender in a way that had wrenched sounds from her she hadn't known she was capable of making, until she had lost count entirely. She had passed out in his arms, her body simply giving out before his hunger did.
On the second night, he had oh-so-casually informed her that his family and friends were coming over.
They will love you, tesoro. Trust me.
Chelsea had panicked. She could laugh about it now, barely, but at the time, her reaction had been immediate and total, and Olivio had only chuckled, pulling her close and kissing her forehead with the amused patience of a man who found her panic endearing rather than inconvenient, which only made her panic worse, because how was she supposed to calm down when he was being that?
But to her surprise and wonder, what he said turned out to be true.
Miguel and Selena healed something in her that she hadn't realized was still bleeding. She couldn't explain it any other way. Miguel had the eyes of a man who had walked through fire and come out the other side with more gentleness than he'd gone in with, and Selena looked at Chelsea with such warm recognition that the wound in Chelsea's heart, the one that had never stopped hurting since losing her parents, the one she had thought was as healed as it was ever going to get, eased. Just a little. Just enough for her to breathe differently.
And the others. Aivan and Sienah, so beautiful together that it was impossible to imagine they had almost ended their marriage. Adriano and Shayla, who could have entire conversations with just their eyes, their gazes meeting across the room and communicating things that words would only have gotten in the way of.
Please, God. Let us have what they have.
On the morning of the third day, Chelsea had her scheduled appointment at Stanhope Medical Center, and she was fully prepared to go on her own. Edgar had always taken her before, and she didn't want to bother Olivio with something so routine—-
But when she stepped out of the bedroom, he was already waiting.
Dressed. Coffee in hand. Keys in the other.
"D-Don't you have a meeting?"
"You and your godfather are remarkably similar in the way you wound me with your preconceptions," he mocked. "Am I really such a monster in your eyes that you would think I'd prioritize business over your well-being?"
"I just didn't want to—-"
A finger over her lips.
The touch short-circuited everything she'd been about to say, and all she could do was stare up at him while her heart did something that would've had the smartwatch flashing warnings if she'd remembered to put it on.
"It is my most cherished duty to look after you, but your refusal to depend on me will make me think that you have no confidence in my capacity—-"
The words had her so horrified that she was already shaking her head. "No, no, it's not that at all!"
"Then will you promise to depend on me from now on?"
"Absolutely, I swear!"
Olivio knew that if he had simply told her to depend on him, she would've been too shy to do so. But if he were to frame it in such a way that her independence would end up hurting him?