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The second time she seeks him out, he’s at the park, keeping a watchful eye on Marcus —who progresses across the monkey bars with a feline-like grace closely resembling that of his father’s— with a prideful glow in his expression. Elizabeth keeps her own expression solemn as she approaches him, fearful of overstepping boundaries that she’s created as a consequences of her actions. He’s set forward in his seat, his elbows resting against his knees and his hands clasped between them, only made aware of her presence by the clink of metal on the bench beside him. He shifts his head a fraction to the left, registering the presence of a familiar silver key before resting his gaze on her.
Her hair brushes past her shoulders in delicate waves, and it only just occurs to him that it’s longer than the last time he saw her. He doesn’t think he’s seen it shorter since that night in his loft, and he subconsciously wonders if there’s any significance between that and the phone call they shared when he caught her breaking in for the second time.
“Figured you’d want it back.” is all she supplies, offhandedly gesturing with her right hand. Rather than requesting that she elaborate, Rio finds himself inspecting said hand when her motion draws attention to it. Worry etches itself into his features as he clocks the harsh crimson line disrupting her alabaster skin from the top of her thumb to her mid-wrist.
Her brows furrow at his lack of a response before following his line of sight. She smooths her other hand over the cut defensively, her eyes darting across the park in an effort to avoid his intense gaze.
Elizabeth doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going through his head as he shakes it, attempting to dismantle the incessant thoughts urging him to take her hand in his own and plant gentle kisses across the gash.
“Thought’chu said the money was cooked,” He inquires after a beat of thick silence. There’s numerous questions taking up valuable space in his head that he’d rather ask than that one, but he senses her comfort level isn’t up to par to answer them.
“I did,” she states, her tone not giving any of her secrets away. “Everything is still there; I didn’t move any of it. I’m guessing you have a home that still needs furnishing.”
The consideration present in her statement is slightly disarming, yet not uncharacteristic, and Rio finds himself carefully scanning the features of her face as he responds with a drawn-out, distracted, “Right.”
She shuffles on the spot slightly, her collected façade rippling under the intensity of his gaze. Another beat of silence passes between them as he tilts his head to the side thoughtfully.
“You sleepin’ any better these days, mama?” He questions softly, testing the waters with the term of endearment he’s taken a liking to more and more since it first rolled off his tongue.
And when her expression shines with an unwitting vulnerability, he knows he’s got her dancing the line between walking off from this conversation that she so evidently wasn’t prepared for turning so intimate and divulging every grievance tugging her shoulders down.
“Dean has the kids two nights a week and every other weekend, so…” she trails off with a weary sigh, and he knows that she isn’t being completely honest. That she’s still holding the lid down on her emotions in an effort to keep them from overflowing.
He thinks that drowning doesn’t seem so bad.
“That ain’t what I asked,” and he knows he’s pushing, he knows it. It’s just that he can tell she’s so close to opening up, to allowing herself a moment to be vulnerable, to transferring some of the weight she balances on her chest to his for a few minutes and it hits him that this must be what she feels with him every day since she met him.
She raises her hands, shakes her head, opens her mouth; closes it, lowers her hands, looks away. She doesn’t know what he wants from her, but at the same time, she knows exactly what he’s looking for. She knows him.
“Would it make a difference if I wasn’t?” She resigns with another sigh, her shoulders sagging, and her answer is loud and clear in her body language. She’s exhausted, the bone-tired kind of weary that is relentless regardless of rest and tolls heavily on the mind.
He sees right through her, and she knows it all too well.
Rio’s gaze softens a fraction as it returns to her injured hand, and just that is enough to make her falter.
The wind picks up, ruffling the leaves in the canopy of trees above them and casting her strawberry blonde waves across her face. When her gaze finds his again, he finds himself having to suppress the urge to reach out and brush it away from her eyes. There’s something indecipherable in them now; remnants of a shield broken to silver bits.
“Take care of yourself, yeah?” He drawls out, and just like that, the spell is broken. Elizabeth clears her throat, nodding her head sharply and casting her gaze out on the playground while Rio pockets the key still resting on the bench. He rises to his full height, and she’s minutely caught off-guard because she’s somehow forgotten the way he towers over her when she isn’t wearing her heels.
When he shoves his hands into his pockets and strides off towards the monkey bars instead of moving into her space like he’s done so many times before, she does her best to tamper down the unwelcome disappointment settling low in her gut.
||
If Rio is being honest with himself, he doesn’t have a single excuse for visiting Elizabeth again that passes for anything short of his own lack of control. He’s already failed miserably at convincing himself that the past month of radio silence doesn’t bother him.
So he strolls along the side of her house like he’s done far too many times before with no preconceived plan nor explanation for his being there. He merely hopes that his desire to be in her presence is matched by that of her desire to be in his.
Interpreting the absence of childish chatter as reassurance, he rounds the corner, the wooden paneling of her back porch coming into view. It’s nearly dusk, the sun settling along the horizon and casting golden slices of sun to mark the green of her yard like jagged shards of stained glass. Rio merely blinks when he registers her presence, her familiar form slumped against the picnic table with what appears to be a throw blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
Not wanting to startle her and not having the once-frequent desire to get a reaction out of her at the moment, he takes a few declarative steps straight towards the center of her yard. Enough of a warning for her to scan her surroundings and providing a vantage point to where she can recognize him without needing to flee. The crack of his sneaker bending a fallen branch is what causes her to whip her head to the left, and he can sense the tension radiating from her immediately.
He commits to memory the way the tension leaks from her muscles when her eyes meet his, her shoulders sagging and her eyes fluttering closed for a few seconds as he closes the distance between them with purposeful footsteps. She doesn’t open them again until he’s directly adjacent to her, practically towering above her, and he won’t deny the surprise that morphs his previously impassive expression at her lack of curiosity regarding his arrival.
She simply observes him, scanning the creases and lines of his face as if she were studying from a textbook she had already read ten times over.
He wordlessly drops down onto the bench next to her, her eyes following him as he does so until their interlocked gaze becomes so intimate with his proximity that she diverts her own to the expanse of the yard before them.
Neither of them speak in the moments following, both seemingly content in the other’s presence without need for preamble or commentary.
Then, “Why did you hand me the gun?”
And then it’s his turn to observe her, his gaze swiveling to the side as he takes in her delicate features. He doesn’t have to ask her to elaborate on her question, but he doesn’t supply her with an answer immediately, either. She holds his gaze, more bravado in those ocean blue depths now than there was last time they met, and he chews on his thoughts before deciding that the right answer simply doesn’t exist.
“You make a mess, you clean it up. Ain’t nothin’ else to it,” he tells her softly, lying through his teeth because of course there’s more to it; there always will be. Hidden intentions and deceitful affection behind every encouragement and tender touch that he swears on his life would be nothing but genuine if the circumstances were different. If he hadn’t had a business to run, workers to keep in line, a reputation to uphold, and a lifestyle that made ingenuity a weakness.
The moments between them where he allowed his walls to crumble at his feet just because it had felt so incredibly right — she would never be able to discern from the deceptions after all they’d been through.
And so he allows himself to be a tad bit dishonest, because explaining the intricate reasoning and motivation behind his selfish actions would only distance her further.
She doesn’t respond to that, allowing his half-admission to sink in as she chews on thoughts of her own. A gust of wind curls her hair around her head like a halo and she tugs the blanket around her shoulders tight with one hand. The hand she uses, Rio realizes, is the one he had seen painted with a bright ugly gash when they met all those weeks ago. He figures it was a fairly fresh wound the day he had seen it, because now there’s merely an outline where it had been.
He instantly regrets not asking her about it that day, not seeking reassurance that she had been taking care of herself. And God forbid, he thinks with a pain in his chest, had she done that to herself purposefully.
These festering thoughts are what fuel him to reach out for the hand currently clutching at her blanket, and she allows him to pry her hand away with a gentle grip around her wrist. In a motion that freezes the air around them as well as the seconds ticking by, he gingerly draws her hand up to his lips, planting a feather-light kiss on the faded scar where it begins at the tip of her thumb. He hears her breath hitch before he feels a shiver works its way down her spine, and it spurs him on as he places an identical kiss where the joint of her thumb connects with her palm.
By the time he places one last kiss where the scar ends on her wrist, her breathing has escalated rapidly but her focus is still strictly on Rio. She licks her lips once, wetting them discreetly, and he finds himself doing the same in a more predatory movement.
Rio swipes his thumb in a soothing pattern over the top half of her scar, the brush of calloused skin causing goosebumps to erupt along the flesh of her arm. And it’s there, familiar and magnetic as ever, hanging heavy in the air. The invisible rope tying them together made taut by the placement of his lips on her marred skin.
The escalation of their interactions are inevitable given how quickly they’re able to turn a spontaneous meeting intimate, and he can sense where this one is going. And no, Rio thinks, grappling with the want muddling his common sense and suppressing the sorrow threatening to drown him with the thought of walking away from Elizabeth again. Not tonight.
Ruefully, Rio lowers her hand back to her lap, the loss of warmth freezing him to the core when they separate. The rapid rise and fall of her chest is mesmerizing, and he has to force his eyes to meet hers as they both attempt to think clearly again. Rio thinks he might be losing his mind to this bruja, the way he can forgo his own inhibitions without a single word being uttered.
“Get inside soon, mama. It’s cold out,” he instructs her gently, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear before leisurely tracing a line down her cheek. He feels her sway towards him, her eyes fluttering closed at his touch. Rio can discern the exact moment his thin layer of resolve ruptures, and he forces himself to his feet before he can make any more decisions he can’t take back.
Elizabeth doesn’t open her eyes until he’s striding off the way he came, his hands buried deep in his pockets and burning where his skin had come into contact with hers.