Page 109 of Angels Are Falling

“I missed you. It scares me how much.”

For a moment, she was quiet, and I let myself believe the quiet was her deciding to turn over.

“You’ve been traveling all day,” she said softly. “Get some sleep.”

It was the kindest possible way to say I don’t feel the same way, and it was my own doing. She’d taken the reason I gave for needing her and made it the reason I should leave her be.

She pulled the blanket to her shoulders and went still. I turned off the lamp and lay down behind her.

For a while, I didn’t move, listening to her breathe. Then I did the thing my body remembered before my mind could talk myself out of it, I shifted closer and curled around her back, fit my knees behind hers, slid my arm over her waist the way I had on a thousand nights in a house that no longer existed.

She let me. That was the worst of it. She didn’t pull away, nor did she pull me closer. She used to reach back half asleep and drag my arm tighter across her, used to tuck her perpetually cold feet between my calves, and sigh as she’d finally arrived somewhere safe. Tonight, she did none of it. She lay in the circle of my arm and simply allowed it, as if she were waiting patiently for it to be over. Her body was warm and familiar and a thousand miles away from mine.

I held my wife for the first time in weeks.

I had never in my life felt farther away from her.

Chapter

Thirty-Two

AMELIE

My eyes blinked open.

There was a man standing over the bed. I thought I was dreaming, a dark shape at the foot of the mattress, motionless, watching, until the shape resolved into a face I knew better than my own.

Kai.

He was supposed to be in Los Angeles. Hundreds of miles and a morning meeting away. Instead, he was here, in Stefan’s room, standing over the bed I was sleeping in. Over the arm Stefan had draped across my waist in his sleep.

For a moment, neither of us moved. The only sound was Stefan’s slow, even breathing beside me, oblivious to all of it. Kai didn’t look at Stefan. He looked at the arm, then at me. In the dim light, I watched his face do the one thing I had never seen it do. It broke, just slightly, before it went very, very still.

That stillness was worse than any shout.

I didn’t know what came over me. I slid out from under Stefan’s arm, and I ran.

I didn’t remember crossing the room. I remembered the cold tile under my feet, the click of the bathroom door, and then, before I could think to lock it, Kai was inside with me, filling the small space, and there was nowhere left to go. I backed up until the towel rail bit into my spine.

I had never been truly afraid of Kai. Not really. Not even the times I should have been. But the man in front of me now, jaw carved from stone, eyes red from a sleepless night, chest rising too fast under a suit he’d clearly driven through the night in, was someone I didn’t recognize, and every instinct I owned told me to hold very still.

“Kai—”

“Don’t.” One word, barely above a whisper, landed harder than a slap.

He watched me like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“He texted me.” His voice was steady. “Amelie’s staying on my side tonight.” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “He implied you were fine with it.”

“Kai, I⁠—”

“I called you.” He took a step. “Forty-eight times.”

Forty-eight times.

“It rang, and rang, and went to your voicemail, and I drove hundreds of miles, leaving you message after message, while you slept in his bed.”

The phone. On his side of the house, on the kitchen counter, where I left it. Get it tomorrow, Stefan had said, and I’d listened. Why had I listened?