Page 130 of Angels Are Falling

Perhaps Stefan realized how I felt even before I did.

“Then why are you—” He shook his head like the facts were furniture he kept walking into. “He’s your stalker, Am. You’re not safe with him.”

“Funny, because the only person I don’t feel safe around is you.”

Minutes ago, I’d knelt in front of a seven-year-old and checked her tongue for remnants of cocaine that Stefan had brought into this house. Safe had left this house the moment he entered it. If it wasn’t for Kai, who knew what could have happened today? The only person I felt safe around was Kai.

“Am, listen to yourself. He’s got you so turned around that you can’t tell what’s real anymore. What he’s doing⁠—”

“Don’t.” It came out quiet. “Don’t tell me what I have with him isn’t real. Not when it was you who sold me to him.”

Stefan froze, as if I had hit the bull’s-eye. We’d never phrased it that way, but that was the blunt reality. He convinced me to marry Kai, claiming it was best for us when it was really for himself.

He hung his head. “You’re right. I was blind with greed, and I persuaded you to marry a fucked-up person.” He stepped into the doorway, palms open. “I’m so sorry, Am. I’ll fix it. I’ll give everything back to him. All of it. The magazine, the accounts, this house. I’ll sign everything back to him tomorrow, and then you’ll know that I don’t give a shit about any of this if it means putting you in harm’s way.”

The saddest part was that he meant it. It was comical. Stefan wanted a better life, so he convinced me to marry Kai. Now that he no longer wanted to pay the price of this arrangement, he wanted me to leave Kai. Just like that. And I was supposed to indulge his every whim. Sleep with a stranger when he wanted to be rich and then leave the man—the man I was in love with—because Stefan decided he was ready to be in a loving, committed marriage again.

“But you’ve already put me in harm’s way. You left me with him, a person you knew nothing about, while you lived out your best life.” Though, let’s be honest, the only danger Kai had ever posed me was how much I’d stopped wanting to be rescued from him. “Not only me, but you also put the kids in harm’s way. I hope you find your way back, Stefan. I want that for you, even now. But until you do, you can’t be around them anymore. I won’t budge on that, and you shouldn’t want me to.”

“Please, Am. I’m sorry. I lost my mind. Let’s just leave, okay? You and me and the kids. I’ll get my old job back, and I won’t do drugs again. I’ll work three jobs if that’s what it takes. You wanted us to have a normal life. Leave him, and we can still have that.”

There it was. The offer, arriving like a rescue boat after I’d already drowned. The entitlement that he could barter me away or keep me when he pleased was the reason I didn’t feel safe with Stefan. I’d wake up every day not knowing what the day held, and not in a good way.

“I’m never going to leave him.” It came out gently because it wasn’t a weapon. It was just the truth. Loving Kai was the one thing in this whole arrangement nobody had negotiated for. It was mine. I had given it freely, and I wasn’t taking it back.

“Am—”

“You sold me.” I said it so gently that it surprised us both. “I sat in a conference room while ten lawyers negotiated what my body owed by the week, and I kept waiting for you to put a stop to it. Even the first time Kai and I… I kept thinking you’d somehow save me. But you never came.”

My voice wasn’t angry. It sounded almost kind. That’s what an old wound does. By the time you show it to the person who gave it to you, it’s all scar, and you can press on a scar without flinching.

I pressed.

“You traded me for all of this and told me you did it for me.” My hand moved, taking in the house, the view, the marble. “And now, you’ve changed your mind, and so I have to, too?” I shook my head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Don’t say that. We can work through this. We’re the unbreakable couple.”

“Yet you broke us.”

“Amelie, I love you more than anything in this world.”

“Yet you sold me.”

He closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “I know you’re angry with me⁠—”

“I don’t feel any anger, Stefan. Not anymore.”

He took that as his cue and moved to hug me. I stepped back before he could.

“I don’t feel anger, Stefan. But I don’t feel love for you, either.”

Pain swept over his face. “How can you say that? You are my wife.”

My wife. It sounded wrong coming from his mouth. Because the words lost meaning the moment he gave me to someone else.

“No. I am his wife. Because that’s what you wanted.”

“You’re his wife,” he agreed. “But you’re mine too.”