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“I’m fine.”
Beth heard the slowness in her syllables, the unnecessary volume change from shout to whisper that betrayed how not fine she was.
“Totally fine,” she insisted.
Bryan kept ignoring her from behind the bar as he tapped away at his phone. She was still on the same stool Rio left her on a few hours before. The bourbon bottle he’d donated was also in it’s same spot next to her, just a lot emptier now. And Bryan, who’d grabbed her purse from her with the fast finesse of someone who’d done it dozens of times before, insisted on getting her a ride home.
“I’m fine. Really. Look.” Beth began her own sobriety test, attempting to touch her finger to her nose but mostly missing, making her giggle so much she snorted.
When Bryan finally looked up from his phone, he revealed a small sympathetic smile before turning away.
“I didn’t mean drink the whole bottle, Elizabeth.”
The unexpected familiar voice came from behind Beth. She didn’t turn around, didn’t want to see him. Telling Rio about the secret service was the truth, but also a lie. It was all so confusing but the ending was clear. She was betraying him, using him, to get Dean out of jail. To keep her family together. It’s all she ever wanted. She was hoping the bottle of bourbon would ease the tight squeezing ball in her chest. Instead, it just turned it into a sloppy thick sludge.
“What are you doing here?” Frustration made her tone sharp, but not enough to break through the slur of her words.
“My boy is good at his job,” Rio said as he settled onto the stool next to Beth. “You booze, your cruise, you’ll loose.”
“There’s Uber, you know.” Beth hurled the words to Bryan’s back. “Maybe that’s why this place is always empty. If you had more people in here you’d know about good customer service.”
Bryan ignored her as he wiped down the bar. Realizing she was never going to get a reaction from him, she turned her attention to Rio. Even though he was a little blurry around the edges, his expression surprised her, disarmed her. Serious, a little smug, but something sweet in his eyes too.
“You can leave.” Beth finally said quietly but defensively. “I’ll call Annie.”
The kids were sleeping over Ruby’s, a much needed distraction from their dad being in jail. Annie would understand, maybe even have a commiserate drink or two with her. With more effort than it should have taken, Beth stood up from her stool. Her footing was shaky, suddenly there was less oxygen in the air and the room spun a little bit. But it was always like that around Rio so she couldn’t fully blame the alcohol.
“You sure? My car’s right out there.” Rio nodded to the exit, waited patiently for Beth’s decision.
All these choices, always up to her, him always in the middle of them. Suddenly defeated, Beth threw up her arms.
“Can we get White Castle on the way home?”
“I don’t do fast food.”
But Rio went anyway, made sure to get her extra fries, even ordered chicken nuggets for himself. They ate in comfortable silence, Beth sharing her fries, dipping Rio’s nuggets in barbecue sauce for him as he drove. Satiated with food, fuzzy from the alcohol, Beth didn’t realize where Rio had driven until he parked on an unfamiliar street.
“Why did you stop?”
“We’re here.”
“Where?”
“This is my place.”
“What?” His answer was so unexpected it shocked some of the inebriation out of her body.
“You wanna sleep this off on your cheap air mattress or a proper bed?”
Beth started to retort that he was the reason she had an air mattress in the first place, how did he even know about that anyway, and that she had a fancy new tropic-inspired bed now, but it all died in a breath of air when she saw the grin tugging at his lips, the charming glint in his eyes. Everything was falling apart around them, partly her fault, partly his too, and still he looked...content, like he thrived off it all. Her knight in shining armor and fiery dragon all in one complicated, exhausting package.
The thought of a soft, comfortable bed just steps away, a sudden overwhelming drowsiness that made her limbs feel like heavy cast iron, made any resistance fade away.
“Fine. But I’m not sleeping with you,” stabbing her finger at Rio for emphasis as they got out of the car.
“I’m not asking you to,” Rio laughed. “You’re a frisky drunk, huh?”
Rio kind of liked drunk Beth. The pink in her cheeks, the giggles when nothing was funny. It was amusing to see her like this, revealing. The veneer of happy housewife perfection washed away by the bourbon. He’d seen glimpses before, rare windows into what was really going on in that stubborn mind of hers. Lifting up her dress for him in that bar bathroom, offering him a sandwich, admitting she hated baking those cookies. Little satisfying nuggets that he was right about her, who she was, what she wanted to be, what they could be together.
“That’s not what I meant,” Beth rolled her eyes. “I’m not sleeping in the same bed with you.”
“Only when you want it, huh?”
He held her gaze firmly with his question, staring her down as they reached the door to his building, refusing to let her look away. Like it always did with them, somehow their conversation took on a deeper meaning than the chit chat they pretended to have. The simplest of words flinging them back to memories and moments they were both so determined to forget, ignore.
“Why do you always have to be so difficult.”
“Funny.”
“What is?”
“I’m not the difficult one in this relationship of ours.”
Rio opened the door to his apartment, carefully watching Beth to make sure she didn’t stumble, very aware of what he was doing. Letting Beth into his home after he promised himself he’d never do that again, never let the lines blur between them again. But still, his immediate reaction when Bryan texted him to ‘come get your girl’ was to grab his keys.
“Do I get a grand tour?” Beth asked with a dramatic sweep of her arms.
“You get to go to bed.” He pointed to the neatly made bed in the corner. His apartment looked a lot like his last one with most of the same artwork and furniture, just arranged differently to fit this new studio layout. But Beth didn’t seem interested in snooping around like the time they played twenty questions. Instead she threw off her jacket and made a beeline for the chaise lounge along the wall by the TV. It was armless and curved and Marcus loved playing spaceship on it.
Wordlessly she snuggled into the chaise, resting her head on the pillow. Rio was going to tell her to move, that the point of him bringing her here was for her to sleep on the bed, he’d take the couch. But her eyes were closed and she curled up tighter, firmly settling in, and he knew it was a lost cause.
Grabbing a bottle of water from his fridge, he placed it on the nearby table, in Beth’s line of sight when she eventually woke up, and covered her with the cashmere throw blanket he kept at at the foot of the chair, draping it over her shoulders, making sure to get her feet too.
“Thank you,” she managed to say through droopy eyes before finally succumbing to the deep sleep of alcohol.
Rio watched her for a moment, trying to reconcile the image in front of him. Beth in his house, at his invitation, and he liked her being there. Even though his sixth sense was telling him not to trust her, that something wasn’t quite right with her story about the secret service. He seemed to have no defense against her, no matter what he tried.
With a last look over his shoulder, Rio turned off the lights and quietly got into bed himself, the steadiness of Beth’s quiet breathing lulling him to sleep.
****
Beth shifted, blinking awake slowly. Disoriented by the darkness, she struggled to understand where she was and why her mouth felt like cotton and why she was sleeping in all of her clothes that were hot and pinching at her. Slowly, her mind sifted through the night before. Blurry images of the bar, and a bottle of bourbon and Fitzpatrick’s headshot and Rio. Rio.
Beth sat up and immediately regretted it, a wave of nausea hitting her - from the alcohol, from the crystal clear memory of handing Rio that envelope, the lie she’d told, him coming back, driving her home. His home.
Beth took a few deep breaths as dots connected, waited for her mind and body to catch up to each other. Grateful for the bottle of water on the table, she took three big swigs before tip toeing in the general direction of where she thought the bathroom might be. Her first guess of the door near the bed was right.
She splashed some water on her face and inventoried her reflection in the mirror. Her mascara was smudged, her skin a little splotchy. She’d had too much to drink but she knew this hangover was from more than just bourbon. The lies, the deceit were finally catching up to her.
Rummaging through the medicine cabinet, a sleek mirror that matched the modern minimalism of the rest of the bathroom, Beth found what she was looking for and popped two Tylenol to help with her pounding headache. Feeling a little more human, Beth tiptoed back into main room hoping to find her bag and quietly leave.
“You okay?”
“Jesus Christ,” Rio’s quiet question startled Beth she jumped, having almost forgotten he was there.
“You banged around so much getting to the bathroom I thought you were trying to wake up the whole building.”
“Sorry. I’m fine.”
“Go back to sleep, okay?”
There was no command or demand in Rio’s request. Just soft concern, so delicate it stopped Beth in her tracks. He was covered in darkness, only a touch of moonlight streamed in from the row of narrow windows along the ceiling. But it was enough to see he slept shirtless, to see the gorgeous, enticing contours of his muscles, to immediately remember how they felt under her hands. Beth felt her mouth go dry, her heart beat pick up. She recognized what was happening. These familiar sensations storming up from the depths of her body were her warning sign that she should turn around and walk away.
That was the plan after all. To leave Rio far behind, move on from all this crime and danger. But instead she wiggled out of her jeans and socks, leaving them in a pile on the floor. Her sweater was still on and she was hardly naked but she felt stripped bare standing in front of Rio.
She watched him watch her, could feel his gaze on her even in the darkness. They stayed like that for a moment, then another. Until finally Rio lifted the corner of the blanket that was covering him in a silent invitation. Beth took three steps that brought her to the edge of the bed and paused. She had every reason to stop, but none that was stronger than her immediate desire to crawl into bed with him. She’d never understand this ache she had for him.
Only after she was fully on the bed, did Rio pull her next to him, settling them comfortably together, almost naturally. They’d laid like that once before after all. Her head on his shoulder, his arms wrapped around her, her breasts pressed into his chest, her smooth legs brushed up against his rougher ones.
Beth let the anxiety and tension from night before, the week before, the months before drain from her body. Let it float away into the air. Or maybe Rio was the one absorbing it all, taking it in for her so she didn’t have to. Isn’t that what she always asking him to do? Make everything bad and hard go away?
But she wasn’t going to think about any of that. Right now, in this moment, she was warm and safe and happy. She was with him.