And I needed to keep the lines between us very clear.
When I got to the school, Nicole picked up on my not-so-great mood. “What happened now?”
“He fixed my car.”
“The nerve of that jerk! Want me to lay into him?” Her sarcasm implied that I was overreacting. She didn’t have all the details about my past.
I was usually the one doing things for other people. So I probably should have been fine with Rafe doing stuff for me. But I had worked so hard to be independent. To stand on my own two feet after having every moment of my life controlled by someone else. I understood that Rafe wasn’t trying to control me. He was just being kind. But something inside me instinctively reacted negatively whenever he did things after I told him not to.
We were standing on the stage where they had just finished putting together the balcony for the Romeo and Juliet scenes. Sarabeth was in the process of climbing up the back side of the scenery to get onto the balcony, though the set appeared wobbly.
“Is that safe?” I asked Nicole.
“Technically speaking? Maybe. But it’s okay. We’ve got someone coming to help out with building scenery.”
From her evasive tone I knew who she was talking about. “He’s a prince. He doesn’t know how to build sets.”
“You know I can’t turn anyone away. We need all the help we can get.” She walked off with her clipboard, telling Sarabeth to come down until they could get it properly tested. Sarabeth looked crushed. She was performing a scene with Malcolm Schroeder, and he was the most popular boy in the entire county. She looked at him the way I used to look at Rafe.
And speaking of Prince Fibbing, my entire body knew the second he entered the auditorium. Like I was attuned to his presence and every piece of me stood at attention when he came into a room. All of the teen girls on stage turned to watch him walk down the aisle. He jumped up onto the stage, greeted everyone, and came to stand next to me. “What play are you doing?” he asked. He seemed oblivious to his newly formed fan club.
There were so many things I wanted to say to him. I wanted to let him know he couldn’t send me flowers and fix my truck. That it wasn’t okay for him to be living in my guesthouse and to basically be infiltrating my life. That he was turning into a stalker. A gorgeous, tasty, brilliant, charming stalker, but a stalker nonetheless.
Mostly, I wanted to ignore him, but Sylvia had raised me better than that. “They’re doing scenes from Romeo and Juliet, and some other plays. Love stories and fairy tales, that kind of thing. And it’s not just scenes from plays. It’s a talent show, so there’s singing and dancing and other stuff.”
He was standing too close. I swear he did that on purpose. “What’s wrong with fairy tales?”
So he’d picked up on the disdain in my voice when I’d said those words. “There’s nothing realistic about them. If you lose your shoe at midnight, you’re just drunk.”
For a second I thought he was going to put his arms around me. I must not have been far off because he put his hands in his pockets instead, like he was making himself not touch me. Or maybe I was wildly conjecturing. It had been known to happen. “You didn’t used to feel that way.”
His voice sounded pained. But he was right. It was unfair that he knew practically everything about me, even my deepest, darkest secret. But the reverse was not true. I hadn’t even known who he really was.
Sarabeth had apparently worked up enough nerve to approach us. She stared at Rafe for a moment, and I couldn’t blame her for her nervousness or her adoration. Finally she blurted out, “I, uh, know, um, who you are.”
“So do I,” Rafe responded, his lips rising up slightly at the corners. I could see from her expression that that was not what she had intended to say or how she’d intended to say it. He so dazzled her that she’d stumbled over her words. I had so much empathy for her, because it still happened to me and I was around him all the time.
“Oh. Okay then.” She appeared flustered. “Uh, Miss Brady sent me over here to get you.” Nicole stood by the balcony set and waved Rafe over.
“Duty calls,” he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. That sensation traveled down to my heart, squeezing it too.
Stop it, I told myself for the billionth time. He hurt me. He humiliated me. My traitorous heart still sported the scars from his betrayal and lies.
Nicole put Rafe to work on a different set. I saw him pull out his phone, and if I had to guess, I’d have said he was on YouTube looking up how to hammer in a nail. Because there was no way he had ever done that before in his life. Instead he put on some music, plugging in his earbuds. Then he went to work on that scenery like he had been building things his whole life.