Page 164 of Never Fall for an Angel

“No.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Would you prefer I leave you to wallow in your self-pity?”

Her jaw ticks, her eyes narrowing to slits.

All the while, I can’t help but wonder how hot that broth is and how bad it’s going to sting if she throws it in my face.

“I’m not wallowing. I’m working through it.”

“By wallowing.”

She huffs, shaking her head.

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand what happened perfectly. I also know you’re stronger than it. Letting it defeat you proves nothing.”

“It’s . . . not . . .” her voice trails off, and she shakes her head because she knows it’s a lie. “I just . . . every time I close my eyes, he’s there.”

Fuck, I wish I could take her pain. I’d do it in a fucking heartbeat if it meant the light in her eyes was still there.

“And he’ll continue to be there for the rest of your life. Some part of you is always going to know what happened. You’re going to have moments where you feel it like it was just yesterday and moments where it couldn’t be further from your mind. He didn’t kill you three weeks ago. Don’t let him do it now.”

She stares at me a beat, tears burning in her gaze, but they don’t fall. They don’t slip past the threshold, glistening in the glow around the edges of the curtains.

“I . . . finished it.”

She sits the mug back on the nightstand, and I’m glad to see some color in her cheeks, even if it’s only a small step. She may look alive. She may be breathing.

—She’s still a ghost.

I nod, rising from the seat by the bed and taking the mug.

“I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be okay,” I murmur. I can’t look at her because if I do, I’ll reach for her, and that’s the last fucking thing she needs right now. My touch. Aman’stouch. “That depends on you. I can tell you, your mother’s worried about you. Your siblings . . . I’m worried about you.”

Finally, I glance in her direction and the tears finally give way. I have to clench my fist to keep myself from wiping them from her cheeks.

“The rest is up to you.”

Forcing myself to leave the room, I find Monica and Bob hovering in the hall. Monica’s so elated that she’d eaten something that she starts to cry. Of course, she cries all the time, these days.

It’s not until that night when I’m lying awake in my room across the hall that I hear the shower kick on. Getting up, I go and change her sheets. I don’t know why. It’s just something that I need to do.

I failed her as a man. As a husband.

I won’t make that same mistake twice.

CHRISTIAN

Place is a fucking shithole,” Levi grunts as we walk up the broken sidewalk of the little bungalow in Santa Ana, California.

We’ve been in California for a week, tracking down traces of whatever happened that night. The house was easy to find. There are only a handful of houses that have basements in this state, and from Mila’s recollection, it was pretty easy to narrow down the few that could be.

A happy birthday banner still hangs over the front door from whoever vacated this place a long fucking time ago. In the frontdrive, a broken-down car sits on cinder blocks, forgotten just like everything else on this block.

Most of the houses are empty; some burned so badly they should be torn down. The one we’re at has boarded-up windows, but it hasn’t stopped anyone from getting in through the wide-open front door.

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