“No need to fret any longer, my sweet Danary, for Benedict is here to save the day!”
His voice echoed from far down the hallway way before the front door swung open to reveal the owner of the voice. Although he seemed to be overflowing with energy before arriving, his face instantly fell when he caught sight of Rafael and me on the ground right in front of the door.
He paled as his eyes raked across Rafael’s unconscious but panting, half-naked figure lying on the ground.
With my hand still soothingly stroking Rafael’s hair, I looked up at Mr. Serman with a weak smile and shakily greeted, “T-Thank y-you for c-coming.”
His eyes widened as he took in the sight. When he finally came to his senses, he whisper-yelled, “What happened to him?!?”
“F-Fever, but h-he r-refuses to go to the h-hospital.”
Mr. Serman pinched the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh and nodded in understanding.
“C-Can y-you h-help me c-carry him to b-bed?”
His eyes nearly fell out of their sockets as he stared at me incredulously. “You realize that he’s literally 280 lbs of pure muscle, right? As flattered as I am that you think I could be strong enough to lift such a behemoth, the best I can do is drag him a couple of yards.”
“T-Then I-I’ll t-try to w-wake him u-up s-so it’ll b-be e-easier.”
Before Mr. Serman could even attempt to protest, I gently shook Rafael’s shoulder and called out his name. It took a few tries, but he started to wake up when I brushed my thumb on his cheek. Mr. Serman nearly jumped out of his socks when Rafael cracked one of his eyes open.
He looked up at me, squinting slightly, and asked, “Danary?”
I nodded and gently wiped the sweat off his face, trying to ignore how hot his skin still felt under my fingers. “Y-yeah, it’s me.”
He tried to sit up but failed and fell back down on his side, barely catching himself with his left arm. Propping himself up with arms, he hazily glanced around his living room and asked, “What… am I doing out here…”
“Y-you have a very bad f-fever and c-collapsed out here.”
With Rafael still stuck in a slightly dazed state, I silently motioned for Mr. Serman to help him and reached out to help hold him from the left side. Mr. Serman quickly caught onto my gesture and warily draped Rafael’s right arm over his shoulder as he painstakingly helped lift Rafael’s heavy body off the ground.
I worriedly glanced up at Rafael from under his left arm as he unevenly trudged back into his bedroom with a lot of help from Mr. Serman. His temperature must’ve been running very high since he was still staring at his apartment without much recognition.
Once we reached his bed, Mr. Serman released him, making him ungracefully flop down onto the mattress with a small oomph. Rafael was so tired that he didn’t make a single sound of resentment and left himself haphazardly sprawled out on his bed without any care as he dozed back off.
As Mr. Serman struggled to straighten Rafael back out on his bed, I scurried out of the bedroom to pick up the damp towels and bowl of water off the ground. I quickly refreshed the basin with new cold water before returning back to the bedroom.
Even though I was gone for less than a few minutes, I came back to a heavily exhausted Mr. Serman slumped on the edge of the bed next to a dead-asleep Rafael. I set the basin down on the nightstand quietly and leaned over the bed to place a newly dampened cloth over his scorching forehead.
When I finished tucking him back into his sheet, I stood back up and walked over to Mr. Serman to thank him.
He tiredly ran his fingers through his hair and replied, “It’s fine. I know how much a pain Rafael can be when he gets sick. He doesn’t usually get sick because of how strong he is, but every once in a while, he’ll work himself to the point of over-exhaustion, where he just completely collapses like this. Although, I haven’t seen him this bad in quite some years already.”
I fidgeted with my fingers. “I-I t-think i-it’s because h-he’s been w-working extra l-lately. He’s b-been k-kind of t-tired a-all w-week, b-but he a-always d-denies it w-when I ask.”
Mr. Halow nodded understandingly. “Do you want me to stay and help take care of him? Even though he’s too stubborn to let me, I’ve taken care of him while he was in this state a couple of times in the past already. He’s always a pain in the ass and snapping at me when I was only trying to wake him up to get him to eat something for his own good, but that’s nothing new, and I’ve already gotten used to his prickly attitude.”
I smiled nervously at him, unsure if he was describing the same Rafael that I knew. “U-Um, i-it’s o-okay. I-I think I-I c-can h-handle it n-now.”
“Mk, just let me know if he takes a turn for a worse, and I’ll come back over.” He stood up from the bed and started to make his way out. Before he left the bedroom, he stopped for a moment at the doorway and called out, “Also, just to let you know, he’s insanely resilient. He’ll bounce right back by tomorrow morning, so don’t worry yourself over it too much.” Then he walked out of the bedroom and left the apartment with the soft thud of a door closing behind him.
Now that I was left alone, the unnerving feeling created by his dead-silent apartment washed over me. I didn’t get a chance to get a good look the last time I was here, but every inch of his apartment exuded wealth despite its minimalistic style. The high ceilings. The dark walls. The enormous window lining his walls from top to bottom. Every piece of application or furniture was arranged in his room with the utmost precision.
And yet it still felt strangely empty. There was not a single picture or piece of memorabilia anywhere in his apartment. Not even a single piece of loose trash in sight. Each surface was impeccably clean, almost as if no one lived there.
I glanced back over at Rafael’ unconscious body.
The only thing that showed that this place had an owner was the man lying on the bed. He was still panting softly as he continued to sweat profusely underneath his sheets.
I had known him for years before he first spoke to me. On the first day of my job at Serman Incorporation, I accidentally ran into him when I was looking for Mr. Serman. He was just sitting in Mr. Serman’s office by himself with an irritated expression plastered across his face, and I ended up immediately running out of the office before he could spot me.
He seemed so scary at the time with his broad frame that could easily fill up an entire doorway and the passive cold look that never left his face except for the occasional scowl. My fear of men had been worse then than it was now, so it didn’t help that he was much larger and exuded much more power than any male I had ever seen before.
I quickly found out that he and Mr. Serman were very close to each other. He would always visit Mr. Serman at least one week, if not more, so I always made sure to stay out of sight whenever he came for a good three years until now.
If anyone at the time ever told me that I would be left alone in Mr. Cordova’s bedroom with him, I would’ve thought that they must’ve hated me to the core of my being for suggesting such a thing. I never would’ve imagined that I would be willingly staying in his room, sitting on his bed with this ginormous man who was laying half-naked.
Maybe it was because I now knew of his gentle nature hiding behind his cold exterior, but he didn’t seem as scary as I once thought.
I watched as he unconsciously leaned into my hand, nuzzling his nose against my palm before releasing a contented sigh. To think that he would naturally react so sweetly from my mere presence.
I fell for his kindness… His caringness… His respect for others… All of him… He showed me how it felt to be treated like a princess when I didn’t even know how it felt to be seen as more than a piece of meat by others at that time.
And, sometimes, it just seemed too good to be true, to have someone as successful and powerful as Rafael want me of all people. I felt like I was taking advantage of his kindness and selfishly tying him down to me, not letting him find someone else who was actually worthy of staying by his side.
I slowly pulled away my hand, trying not to wake him, but he almost instantly reacted to my movement and caught my wrist in his hands before I could go any way.
His thick fingers easily wrapped around my wrist, covering almost half of my forearm. Although his grip was firm enough to stop me mid-track, it still held a sense of gentleness that one would not have expected from such a muscular and ginormous man.
His eyes held a glimmer of panic as a shakey whisper slipped passed his lips. “Don’t go… Please…”
Startled by his sudden consciousness and his unusual sense of panic, I reflexively stiffened as I tried to think of what to do next.
He must’ve noticed my tenseness because he started to lightly tug on my arm, trying to pull me down toward him. “Please… Just stay… It’s all I need…”
He seemed slightly dazed by some sort of unknown anxiousness and the overwhelming heat of his fever. His eyes were barely focused, but he was adamant about making me stay.
I reached up to gently stroke his hair, trying to calm him down. “I’m not going anywhere. I just need to step out to get you-”
He stubbornly shook his head and pulled harder on my arm until I collapsed onto him, making nearly my entire weight fall onto him. I managed to prop myself up with one arm to not apply too much pressure on his shallow breaths, but he only pulled himself closer to me.
He painstakingly shifted himself into my lap with much effort, breathlessly puffing for air as he leaned his head into my stomach. He wrapped his arms tightly around my waist as he pulled himself even closer to me, if that was even possible, nuzzling his face into my stomach with a shakey breath.
“Please don’t leave me… I’ll give you anything you want, even the world if you ask for it. I have everything anyone could possibly want, and it can all be yours if you just stay here with me… It doesn’t matter to me if you have already given your heart away… I only want you to stay… Please…”
My eyes widened, unable to comprehend why he was begging me to stay with him so desperately. It was as if he thought I didn’t care for him at all…
He flinched when I tried to cup his cheek with my left hand. His jaw tightened as his eyes dropped down.
He closed his eyes with a slight grimace and turned his head away, mumbling, “Do you still love him so much that you won’t allow yourself to be seen with me? He’s not even here anymore, but I… I’ve stayed by your side, no matter what happened. I had always put you first and will always continue to do so. Thinking about your feelings. What you may be craving. What you might like. Everything about you. All I can think about is you these days. So please tell me what I should do to make you want me instead… I don’t know what else I can do to show you how much more I could care for you than he ever could.”
It broke my heart to see him begging like this. His usual kept-together appearance only continued to fall apart more piece by piece with each erratic breath. His entire body was glistening with sweat from the onslaughter of negative emotions pouring over him, and it was only making him sicker.
I tried to reach out to him and wipe the sweat off his brow, but he only flinched away from my hand again. Did he not want me to touch him?
Instead of trying to reach for his face, I skimmed my hand down his broad shoulder and settled for rubbing little soothing circles on his rough back, but he only tensed up under my hand once again.
It hurt me to see him like this. Why he was acting like this and saying all these things? I didn’t know what to say to try to calm his nerves. I barely even knew what he was trying to tell me.
When my left hand drifted up his back just below his neck, he suddenly buried his head deeper into my waist, pulling his body away from my hand. He stuttered softly, “S-stop t-touching me w-with y-your ex-husband’s r-ring… p-please…”
Ex-husband’s ring?
I looked down worriedly at him, tracing over his scrunched-up face up to his eyes that were squeezed shut as he continued to lean away from my hand. Then, I glanced at the ring on my left hand.
I had forgotten that I had been wearing it all this time…
I gently nudged his head out of my waist and tenderly brushed my thumb over the tops of his cheeks until he hesitantly cracked one of his eyes open to look at me. I smiled reassuringly and explained, “This ring doesn’t belong to another man. I never had a husband or boyfriend before. You’re the only one I’ve ever accepted.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek as his eyes darted to my left hand skeptically and then back at me. He pursed his lips and continued to study my facial features for several minutes silently.
Then he suddenly blurted out, “I saw the picture in your bookcase.”
The picture in my bookcase? I stared at him in confusion for a moment before I finally realized what he had meant. I never expected him to have found that, but I guess I should’ve told him about my past beforehand before everything had gotten out of control like this.
He had already told me about his family and parts of his past before. He had been patient with me, but I never told him anything.
I never liked to talk about my past because it held no rainbows. But now I felt guilty for making him feel so anxious, to the point of becoming completely overwhelmed by the mixture of inexplicably conflicting emotions I had never meant to conjure up inside of him.
To think that I had been shying away from others in an attempt to hide it from some past lover when I was actually just scared of what others would say about him for choosing such an insignificant girl as his partner. But now I knew that my hesitance was only causing him more harm than anything.
Taking in a deep breath, I started, “That was my older brother… He died a couple of years back and gave me the ring. It’s the only thing I have left of my family…” I paused momentarily as I reminiscently glanced down at the ill-fitting ring. It wasn’t much. Just a thick band of either white gold or silver without any decorations except for a few intricate etchings.
“Liam found it one day and forced me to wear it to try to decrease the number of people who would try to harass me, but I don’t really need that anymore with you by my side.” Maybe it was too soon, but I carefully pulled the ring off of my finger and placed it in his hand. “Instead, I want you to keep it. It’s an heirloom that has been passed down from the men in our family for generations.”
A flurry of emotions fluttered through his eyes, ranging from guilt to sympathy to anger to happiness, then confusion, and finally pure shock. Maybe it was the haziness of his fever, but his emotions were displayed quite explicitly on his face today.
When he finally registered my words, his eyes widened comically large, and he stammered, “I-I c-can’t take this from y-you. I-It’s the last piece of your family, a family heirloom, your heirloom.”
Watching him flounder with the tiny ring in a panic as if it was some sort of priceless treasure, I knew that I had already fallen hopelessly in love with his clumsy behemoth of a man. He had been the first one to show me what it was like to be loved by someone else, to be cared for by someone else, to be put at the top of someone’s priority list. To be protected and shown what it meant to be alive. To cherish the little things even when everything was at his fingertips.
He patiently drew me out of my little nook to the point I no longer shied away from his touch and worked tirelessly to gain Liam’s approval. Something that most other people would never do with someone as traumatized as myself or someone as closed off as Liam. All I could do was be grateful that he came into our lives and show him that I wanted him just as he did with us, to remove all clouds of pain and doubt from his head that he never deserved to suffer from in the first place.
Before he could stuff it back into my hand, I quickly snatched it out of his hand and slipped it onto his ring finger, just barely fitting around his thick digit. I interlaced our fingers together to prevent him from pulling it off and pressed a chaste kiss on his knuckles like he always did with me, reassuring him like he had always done for me.
I had a light blush on my own cheek, slightly take aback by my own forwardness, but I pushed it aside and reassured him, “You aren’t taking it away from me as long as you stay with me, and you said that you’d stay with me forever, right?”
He stared up at me in pure silence with his mesmerizingly grey eyes. It was times like these when I could finally get a chance to take in his devastatingly handsome features. How his midnight black hair fell perfectly over his eyes. How his sharp jawline perfectly framed his high cheekbones. How his plump lips had the perfect amount of pinkness to draw any woman in.
Breaking me out of my trance, he lowered his eyes and muttered, “I’m supposed to be the one to propose to you…”
I couldn’t help laughing at how adorable he looked. “Then I’ll be waiting for a grand proposal.”
He pouted childishly, “I’ll make it so grand that people will talk about it for the next century.”
I wasn’t sure if he really meant it or he was just stuck in the daze from his fever, but my heart still fluttered at his words.
Cupping his cheeks in my hands, I leaned down and pressed my lips right under the corner of his eye. I pulled back slightly with a smile and leaned back down to nuzzle his nose in an Eskimo kiss tenderly.
“I look forward to it, Achilles.”
A hum of pure contentedness purred out of his chest as his eyes slowly fluttered close, most likely out of exhaustion from today’s events. His temperature finally started to die down as he dozed off in my lap.
I lightly brushed my fingertips across his temple.
There was still so many things that I hadn’t told him yet. I knew that that I had to tell him eventually, but he needed to rest first. As cute as he was from receiving a ring in his hazed-out state, I could only hope that he would remember all of this tomorrow when he wakes up.
For he was my sweet little adorable behemoth of a man and I wouldn’t change that for the world.