Page 180 of Wicked Angel
It would’ve been really nice if, when we went home, he explained everything and it all neatly made sense. This was all just a misunderstanding, and we made up and made love.
But it didn’t happen like that.
Instead, Lamar drove us home and he had to help me get Johnny upstairs and onto the bed. After Lamar left, I undressed him as best I could. He was barely awake. I tucked him in and then lay beside him, on top of the covers, watching over him for a while to make sure he was okay.
Who knew what those girls had fed him? Not coke, probably, or he wouldn’t be such a drunken slug right now.
I texted my sister to let her know I’d brought him home and to thank her for telling Merritt to call me, and also to thank her for not getting involved.
When I finally slid under the covers with him, Johnny stirred. He draped his heavy arm over me and muttered, “You’re such an angel.”
I sighed. At least he knew who he was in bed with.
I knew he was suffering. I wasn’t dense.
I had eyes and a big, squishy heart.
But I couldn’t let him shit all over it, or break it, no matter how broken he was.
I knew I had to talk to him about this shit tomorrow when he sobered up.
Better yet, I probably should’ve woken him up right now and given it to him.
But a funny thing happened, sometimes, when you were back in the bed of someone you knew you were falling in love with, someone you feared you might’ve already started to lose… and you felt how much they still needed you when they curled their body around you in sleep.
You gave in.
Sometimes… you just fucking gave in.
“You’re an angel, too, Johnny O’Reilly,” I told him, stroking the soft hair at his temple as he slept. “You just don’t realize it.”
ChapterThirty-Two
Johnny
“Have you thought more about the door? The one in the fortress?”
I was pacing around Rory’s courtyard again, surrounded by his plant/pet obsession. This time, there were a couple of frogs chirping somewhere and he was tending to an array of orchids. Like, dozens of them.
“Yeah, I’ve thought about it,” I grumbled. I was uneven today. Wildly uneven. I’d come straight to see him, first thing in the morning. Before Angeline woke up.
Because the thought of having to look her in the eyes after what I did last night…
I didn’t fuck anyone. I didn’t cheat on her, technically.
But I also wasn’t with her, wasn’t communicating with her, wasn’t treating her or myself well. I’d probably been putting her through hell, if she cared about me at all.
And I fucking knew she cared.
Pretending otherwise, or that she deserved to be treated otherwise, was bullshit. Even I knew that much about relationships.
Lucky for me, when I arrived, Rory was up. He’d probably been up all night.
That made two of us.
I’d spent most of the night awake in bed, just watching Angeline sleep with a sinking feeling bottoming out in my stomach.
“Did you find it?” Rory asked me.
