Page 182 of Love Unwritten
Tonight, I pretend that tomorrow won’t ever come.
Mi estrella: My star.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Rafael
Morning comes all too soon, although I stayed up for as long as I could before I took Ellie back to her room and tucked her into bed.
I linger nearby, watching over her and sulking about how, come later today, she will be officially moving out. Last night, I tried to shut her idea down, but once she explained her reasoning, I reluctantly agreed.
She wants to take things slow and give us space to figure this out without getting Nico’s hopes up, and deep down, I know she is right.
Over the next two weeks, Ellie will still come over to help Nico so he can slowly adjust to life without her, but she will no longer be spending her nights here. She claims it would be too tempting to stay here forever, and I’ve yet to see the issue with that.
While I don’t want her to move back into her parents’ house, I understand that to move forward, we can’t keep clinging to the way things used to be.
For Ellie’s sake, I hope Nico takes the news about her job well, but I genuinely have no idea how he will react. Last night, Ellie and I agreed that she would lead the conversation about her new job, so even if I want to interfere, I told her I wouldn’t.
When the temptation to wake Ellie up becomes too great to ignore, I exit her room and head toward the kitchen to make breakfast for the three of us.
An hour later, Nico enters with a yawn. Ellie follows behind him, dressed in another pair of shorts that throws me back to last night, when her legs were—
“Buenos dias, Papi.” Nico comes over to give me a hug.
“I made breakfast.” I motion to the round table underneath a window that faces the backyard deck and the small pond in the distance.
My son sits at the nook and grins like the pancakes with a smile made of fruit. Ellie and I take seats beside each other, and the three of us enjoy each other’s company.
We swap stories and laughs throughout the meal, and it is somehow ten times better than Hawaii, slightly due to being in the comfort of my own home but mostly because of everything that happened with Ellie last night.
She was…everything.
A pressure in my chest builds at the idea of no longer waking up to this, but I promise myself that it won’t be for long.
Buenos dias, Papi: Good morning, Dad.
I won’t allow it to be.
Once we all clear our plates, Ellie looks over at me and nods. I reach for her hand underneath the table and interlace our fingers without Nico noticing.
As much as I want to hold her hand out in the open, I’m not ready for that step with Nico, and neither is she.
Let’s take it all one day at a time, she said last night while I held her in my arms.
How am I supposed to take you on dates if you’re spending five weeks in Europe? I asked.
We’ll just have to get creative. She grinned up at me, and that was that.
Ellie takes a shallow breath. “Nico, I wanted to talk to you about something.”
Nico puts his glass of orange juice down. “What?”
“Remember how I was writing a song for Cole Griffin?”
“Yeah?” His furrowed brow reminds me so much of my own.
“Well, he loved it.”