Page 129 of Angels Are Falling

I’d heard Stefan make the accusation but was sidetracked by Kai’s injuries. The emotional weight from this afternoon felt heavy on my shoulders. I loved Stefan’s parents like they were my own, but this sounded insane.

“How is that possible?” I asked, barely steadying my voice.

“His parents were in the other car when my parents died. Kai claims it was a coincidence, but I know he’s lying.”

He was still high. He didn’t know I could see it, pupils blown wide, his jaw grinding on nothing, the fine tremor in his fingers he kept flexing away. And he believed all the insane things he was spouting.

“You said his parents were driving the other car when the crash happened,” I said carefully. “I remember that day, along with the terrible weather. The roads had iced over. Of course, it was an accident.”

“If that’s true, why did he hide it from us?”

“I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Whatever questions I had about that crash, I’d ask Kai about them myself. Because if I had to guess who a reliable narrator was between the two, my money would be on the guy who saved Bella, not the man who nearly caused her ruin. If Kai said that it was an accident, then I trusted him. But I didn’t trust Stefan. I would never again make the mistake of trusting him.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he continued. “And it was making me fucking crazy. That’s why I used, just so I could confront him. I know—I know how that sounds. I don’t want to make excuses. I’ll never touch that stuff again. I’ll change, Am. Things will be different from now on.”

Things will be different from now on.

He’d made that promise before, along with many others he never kept.

I’ll be there Saturday.

I’ll make it up to you.

It won’t happen again.

I used to be optimistic that it’d be different the next time. The moment I saw him with Ruby in Beirut, I knew it’d never be different. Stefan wasn’t the same man I once loved, and I needed to stop pretending otherwise.

Somewhere along the way, I had stopped grieving the broken promises and started grieving the boy who used to keep them. The boy who took the bus for months just so I could have a ring. I would have forgiven that boy for anything. But that boy wasn’t the one standing in front of me. This man hadn’t even noticed that I’d stopped wearing his ring weeks ago.

I stood still.

He kept glancing at my hands, waiting for them to move. I talked with my hands. I paced when I fought. He was watching for the wife he knew, and I understood, distantly, that my stillness was frightening him.

I was sorry for that. Genuinely, quietly sorry. Just not sorry enough to perform a fight we had already lost. I couldn’t give him the reaction he wanted because arguments were for relationships that were still alive. That still had a chance. Looking at him now, I didn’t recognize the boy I had once loved. I had no idea when he had become this, a person who’d bring drugs around his little sister.

He couldn’t be near the kids, at least not without supervision. The decision arrived quietly but with absolution. It wasn’t punishment. It was protection. It turned out a heart could break for someone and still stand guard against him. Mine was doing both.

“Say something. Please,” he pleaded.

We were at the glass door, him on the outside, me in the kitchen, the door track between us like a border on a map. He didn’t cross it. Some part of him already understood he was on the outs now.

“He’s dangerous.” Stefan dropped his voice like the house was listening, desperate to turn me against Kai. “I had a PI investigate him. The girl he told us about at that dinner, the one that got away. It was you. He’s been stalking you for years, Am. Since college.”

He delivered it like a detonation and stood back to watch the building come down. He was too late.

“I know,” I said quietly.

“You know?” His voice was flat.

“Kai told me.”

I had no idea what compelled me to lie. For some reason, it felt like a betrayal if I kept letting Stefan think the worst of Kai. Or perhaps it was because I had spent my whole life waiting to be somebody’s first choice, and Kai had chosen me before I ever knew his name.

Since Rose let slip that Kai had been in love with me for years and had sponsored my college scholarship after my family went bankrupt, I had been trying to process my emotions. The information should have sent me running. But that wasn’t what was going through my mind. There was something seriously messed up with my brain because all I felt was relief. I could finally breathe a sigh of relief about not having to compete with the one that got away anymore.

Except relief was too small a word, and I had known it for weeks. Somewhere between Beirut and this kitchen, I had fallen in love with Kai Cavendish. Not the bartered, grateful affection I had braced myself to settle for. The real thing. I wasn’t the girl who’d been spared from competing with the woman he loved. I was the woman he loved. And I loved him back.