Page 72 of Never Fall for an Angel

“I can’t believe everything she told me was a lie.” She shakes her head.

“Not all of it.”

She pauses, turning over her shoulder to face me.

“You were there?”

“Reading the paper in the back.”

She gawks at me.

“How long were you planning on kidnapping me, then?”

I push her to face forward and resume braiding.

“Since the moment you left, though . . . I must admit, I didn’t think it would take that long.”

“Good,” she huffs. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice you.”

“No, but you never did, did you?” I smirk because I feel her stiffen in front of me. “You were never alone, Mila. I was always there.”

She shakes her head, hugging her knees tighter.

“I’m sure my mother sent you. Did it ever occur to you that maybe I wanted to be alone?”

“Your mother had nothing to do with it, Mila.”

She falls silent, watching the flames in front of her while I work on her hair.

“I always thought I’d adopt,” she says quietly after a while.

It’s the first time I’m hearing it.

“You never told me that,” I murmur, repeating the words she’d said to me the other night, and she shrugs.

“You never asked.”

We fall silent, me braiding and her watching the fire.

“Why should Christine have chosen the Phantom?”

“What?” she asks softly.

“You said Christine should have chosen the Phantom. Why?”

A shiver runs down her spine when I brush over the top of the scar that peaks out from under the collar of my T-shirt she’s wearing.

Scars I haven’t been able to get out of the back of my mind since that first night I bathed her.

“The Phantom was dedicated,” she whispers as if saying such a thing is treason. “He was obsessed with her, yes, but he knew the parts of her soul that no one else did. The pain of losing her father. The loneliness of her childhood.”

“He murdered a fair few people if I remember correctly,” I point out.

“He did,” she concedes softly. “He also loves the dark, ugly parts of her. Raoul loved the idea of her, based on an image hecreated in his head. Not the real her. The real Christine is much more complex than he can imagine.”

I finish her braid, tying it off at the end and smoothing it down her back.

“So you’re saying love transcends violence?” I ask when she stands, lightly running her hand over the braid.

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