Page 103 of Angels Are Falling

“I didn’t expect a four-page spread days after you left the country,” Matt was saying. “But you must’ve known this was coming.”

“What do you mean?” I asked with more hostility than I meant.

“It’s just, e-er, y-you know⁠—”

“Don’t stutter. Just tell me what the fuck you meant.”

Matt’s head reeled back. He held up two hands. “Dude, chill. I get you’re upset that other people will now see Amelie as Kai’s wife, but you must’ve known this was coming. You kind of signed up for it.”

“What the fuck?”

“You gave up being Amelie’s husband to become the magazine’s president.”

I went cold. I couldn’t even argue with him because I had done exactly that. Kai made me the president of his magazine as a reward for letting him become my wife’s legal husband. I’d been so busy admiring the price that I never looked at what it cost.

He stared at me, his gaze imperceptible. “My bad. I-I didn’t mean it like that. Maybe it’s best if you have a minute to process all of this. I’ll leave you alone.”

Matt practically ran inside.

I sat with the coffee going cold and the Mediterranean doing its vast, indifferent thing below the balcony.

People were bound to find out. That was true. There was nothing I could do about it. Kai and Amelie were legally married, and the world would eventually know that, and there was no version of this arrangement in which I remained the acknowledged husband in any public sense.

That was what I had agreed to.

And yet.

The publication date sat in my mind. Right after I left. Not before. Not during the time we were living together in that house.

The timing sure was odd.

I couldn’t get the article out of my head.

Kai Cavendish and his wife, Amelie.

Matt’s voice: You gave up being Amelie’s husband to become the magazine’s president. The flat, neutrality of it.

I packed up and told everyone we were flying home the next day. By the time the plane landed, I had practiced the apology so many times that the words were starting to mesh in an odd manner.

The car took the long way through town. I saw myself before I understood what was happening. My face on a bus bench outside the farmers market, three-quarter profile, under a headline that said Darster’s Rising Star.

My publicist’s doing. Lucy had emailed me mock-ups, and I’d approved them from a hotel bed without really looking. I had hired her at Ruby and Kai’s urging. They said I desperately needed to fix my image so people at the magazine and our investors would take me seriously, rather than accuse me of nepotism for how I got the job. Lucy had proposed to market me as The New Prince of Darster because she said I had the ‘marketable face’ for such a title, whatever that meant.

At the time, I’d laughed because who’d see me as a prince? I didn’t have the breeding. Seeing my face plastered around town, I couldn’t argue that her tactic was working. It seemed like everyone was buying it, and Kai was no longer the only man in this town whose name was going up on things.

There was another one on the digital board by the marina, rotating between a watch ad and me. I should have felt ecstatic. A few months ago, I would have. Instead, I filed away my rising fame and practiced the apology in my head for the hundredth time.

I’d bought half of Istanbul and Dubai for Amelie and the children. The trunk was full of proof. A hand-knotted rug I’d watched a man finish over three days, because Amelie loved things you could see the hours in. A scarf in the exact blue she always preferred. Bracelets, earrings, necklaces, with all shapes of rubies and diamonds. Boxes of sweets for the twins from a shop that a vendor swore was the best in the old city, rose water, and pistachio. A new hat for Bella that I had to fight another man over.

I’d spent the whole flight arranging the speech in my head. The part where I took full responsibility. The part where I called myself a coward before she could. The part where she forgave me.

I kept imagining my homecoming. The door opening. The kids spilling out. Amelie behind them with her arms crossed, still angry, but eventually giving in because we could weather any storm together.

When I let myself in, the house was quiet in a way that didn’t match the picture in my head. I had texted Amelie as soon as I’d landed. I assumed everyone would be here, waiting for me.

“Hello?” My voice went out across the marble and came back smaller. “I’m home.”

Nothing. The grand entry of the house sat there, gleaming and unbothered, the way it always did, like a hotel lobby waiting for guests who lived elsewhere. I set the bags down by the stairs and went looking.