Page 79 of Angels Are Falling

Kai continued two steps before he realized I hadn’t followed. He turned.

I was staring at the placard. My throat bobbed involuntarily. The full inventory of grievances dissolved without ceremony.

Beirut. He was taking me to Beirut. My favorite childhood memories. My grandmother’s street. Za’atar drying on the rooftop in summer, its smell filling the whole building for weeks. My parents’ church, the stone warm and golden in the afternoon light. The Corniche.

“You—” I looked at the placard. Then at him. Then back at the placard. The sentence wouldn’t finish itself. “What did you do?”

“You said you missed Lebanon.” His voice was even, careful, as he watched me.

My eyes teared up without my permission, and I pressed my lips together. He stood there with my bag over his shoulder and a patient, unreadable expression.

My brain was still angry with him, but my legs had minds of their own. I closed the two steps between us and wrapped my arms around him.

He went still, just for a second, like a recalibration. Then his arms came around me.

I hugged him, with my face against his jacket, furious and grateful in equal measure, hating that both things could be true at once.

“You shouldn’t have published that article without my permission,” I said into his lapel.

“Okay.”

“And you can’t pay my coworkers to call me Mrs. Cavendish or to get me out of a shift.”

“Noted.”

“And you can’t throw your money around to make people not speak to me when you get jealous.”

“Noted,” he said again in exactly the same tone. Not dismissive, just immovable.

I pulled back and looked at him. “Thank you for this.”

He stared back at me, his composure breaking a fraction before it reassembled. It happened so fast I might have imagined it.

I didn’t think I imagined it.

“Let’s go home, Princess,” he said.

And that was exactly what we did.

Chapter

Twenty-Four

AMELIE

I pressed my fingers to the window like a child, peering at the passing scenery as if it were my favorite movie.

“You probably mapped out the entire trip in your head during the flight, didn’t you?” Kai asked, watching Beirut move past the window.

“I have suggestions,” I said vaguely.

The corners of his mouth moved. “Whatever you say, Princess.”

I turned to look at him. “A suggestion is something you can decline. If you don’t like my ideas⁠—”

“I’ll love them.” He was watching me with the easy posture of a man with no pressing concerns.

But there was one concern tormenting me. Although I shouldn’t be thinking of him while I was with Kai, thoughts of Stefan plagued me anyway. I hadn’t mastered a way to turn off my feelings, especially since I’d told Stefan we’d visit Lebanon together one day.