Page 56 of All's Hell That Ends Well

At his low murmur, I turned around, magicking my wings away to make the maneuver easier. “You did?”

His face was solemn, his stormy eyes holding the pain of wounds old and new. “I requested to see her, and we met on Earth.”

Inside me, the echo of what he was feeling touched my soul—there was heartbreak there, the kind of hurt that punched the air out of one’s lungs. The hot spike of anger, too.

Oh, I was right there with him.

“Tell me,” I said, laying one hand on his face.

He turned his head and kissed my palm, and then he described his meeting with Naamah.

I didn’t know what I had been expecting from this confrontation that I’d known was coming, but I knew it wasn’t this. I’d wondered about the why behind Naamah’s actions, though I wouldn’t have guessed the truth as she’d explained it. As I listened to him telling me what she’d said—verbatim,thorough as he was—the knot of anguish and betrayal inside me loosened more and more.

When he came to the end of their terrible fight, to the part where the old hurt had surfaced, I sucked in a breath at the raw pain that flickered through the bond. God, that kind of talk would have wrecked me.

He rubbed a hand over his face and said, “And then I left her there, devastated and sobbing.”

I made a sound of distress and slung my arm around his shoulder to pull him to me for a hug. He clutched me tight, turning his face into my hair and inhaling deeply. The connection between us throbbed with pain and love and helpless comfort.

When he let me go, I caressed his face and placed a soft kiss on his lips. “I’m so sorry. I know that must have been really rough for you.”

He closed his eyes, his power vibrating, a sharp note underneath. “I’m still working through it.”

I chewed on my lower lip and laid my hand on his chest, working through some thoughts of my own.

He peered at me and tilted his head. “What is it?”

“Hm?”

“I can see those wheels turning.” He made a circling gesture with a finger pointed at my head. “You’re having some big thoughts. I want to hear them.”

“Do you?”

His brows drew together in question.

“It’s just…you mightnotwant to hear them.”

He shifted so he fully faced me, grabbing my chin and catching my gaze. “I always want to know your opinion. Even more so if it’s one that challenges me or makes me uncomfortable. The last thing I want is a life partner who onlytells me what I want to hear. That’s the quickest way to lose touch with reality.”

I blew out a breath. “Okay, that’s good to know. Because…I think you’ve been too harsh on Naamah.”

Lightning flashed in those thundercloud-gray eyes of his. “Elaborate.”

“You know I’ll always have your back,” I began, stroking his chest, “and I’ll always support you. But I think you may have overreacted just a touch. I know you were agitated going into this—and Hell knows you had every right to be—and all of that anger and pent-up hurt may have made you not hear what she actually said.”

He withdrew a bit to give me an intense look. “Are you saying I hadstrong emotions that clouded my judgment?”

A small smile snuck onto my face at his exact quote of the words he’d told me that night when we’d come back from my mom’s after I’d learned that she was dying of cancer. My fear of losing her and my need to hold on to her had overridden my common sense and made me try to push her into selling her soul just so I could keep her around a while longer. Obviously, I hadn’t been in my right mind in that moment, not realizing I was acting on selfish impulses.

Azazel had set my head straight, and he’d been right to throw that in my face, even though I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

I gave him a sheepish look. “I mean…yes?”

“Turning the tables now, I see,” he murmured, but there was the tiniest glint of humor in his eyes.

I raised a brow. “Doesn’t feel so good, does it?”

He scratched the side of his neck. “A little uncomfortable.”

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