Page 53 of Lips of an Angel

My voice quavered as violently as my hands. I swallowed the feelings, the tightness in my throat making it hard to breathe. “He was laughing. Fuck, I can’t get his laugh out of my head. It was… hollow, uncontrollable. Sarah was the first to notice. She was buzzed too, but I could see the moment that she sobered up. Sitting behind Austin, I couldn’t see what she saw, but she confronted him. Things got loud, then…” I trailed off, then forced out the words. “The next swerve sent us into oncoming traffic. We hit a minivan head on. Sarah wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and she crashed through the windshield.”

I choked down the bile that had risen in my throat. The memories of that night came slamming into me. I could practically feel the heat of the fire, the sound of crunching metal that was sorealI found myself looking around the apartment for the source. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“Austin and Sarah died on impact. Angel flew out of my lap when the car flipped.” My stomach roiled again as that sickening crack echoed through my mind. You’d think something like that would’ve been drowned out by the sounds of squealing metal and the screams of our friends. It wasn’t.

I rushed through the rest of the story. “His neck broke when he hit the roof, separating from his spine when he fell back into my lap. The car landed upside down. I managed to get myself out and pull Angel with me, but flames broke out before I could get to Noah and Ollie. They survived but died later from full-thickness burns. Angel spent six months in the hospital.”

“Atlanto-occipital dislocation,” Eli muttered from behind his hands.

“That’s what they called it.”

“Angel never told me more than that he hurt his neck.” Eli pushed a hand through his hair. “That type of injury is nearly impossible to survive.”

Pushing aside what I now knew, I nodded. “He was a miracle case. Even more so, considering how quickly he healed.”

“What about you?”

“Me?” I sniffled, barely keeping tears at bay. That wasn’t me. I didn’t cry, ever. “What do you mean?”

“There’s no way you came out of that uninjured.”

“I hit my head on the window. When the glass shattered, it cut me here, in my hairline.” I pointed out the scar. Then I lifted my shirt, tracing the outline of long-healed bruises, now covered in tattoos to mask even the faintest memory. “I had bruises all over. They faded in a couple of weeks; the cuts took longer to heal. You can’t see the scars because I covered them with tattoos, but I’ll never forget them.”

I dropped my shirt and tugged it back into place, suddenly feeling exposed. Eli sat quietly, the silence stretching between us. As this was his show, I sat back and waited. The apartment was so quiet that I could hear the tap in our bathroom dripping. I counted the drops that splattered to the porcelain: fifteen before Eli spoke again.

“Do you realize that in that story, you talked about yourself last?”

I shrugged. “I was the least injured.”

Eli stood, pacing the length of the kitchen. My heart picked up speed. What was he building toward?

“I always knew you and Angel were close,” he finally said. “That was something I accepted early on. From the minute we moved into our dorms, he was all you talked about. Then I met him and I finally understood. On the night that I made a move on him, I fully expected him to turn me down. At every turn, every single milestone in our relationship, I expected him to toss me to the curb. But he never did. I kept telling myself that I was the luckiest man in the world. Turns out, that spot’s already taken.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting back in my seat and crossing my arms over my chest.

Eli sat back down, and he looked at me with glossy eyes. “It’s you.”

Did he know what we had done? Had Angel told him out of guilt? No… Ryder was the only other person who knew, and I trusted him to keep it to himself.

Carefully, I did the only logical thing anyone could do: I played stupid. “Whatis me?”

“I wasn’t surprised when Angel asked for time to think after I proposed. The man doesn’t decide what T-shirt to put on in the morning without considering every option. I was happy to give him that time, but it was unusual for him to go an entire night without texting me. When he showed up at the hospital the next morning, I noticed something. Angel had a mark.” Eli circled a spot on his neck, below his ear. “Here. It was faint, and it was nestled between two tattoos, but when you spend so much time memorizing someone, you notice the smallest of changes. Then he said yes, and I chose to ignore my suspicions because he’d chosen me. Whatever happened that night, he’d gotten it out of his system.”

“I’m—”

“Save your apologies, Raleigh. I’m not finished.” Eli wiped his eyes, then continued. “I know I fucked up with the fellowship in Seattle. I changed the plan. We always thought we’d settle in Vegas, but I had to take the opportunity, I might never get another like it again. God, I thought it would be the biggest fight we’d ever have. But in the end, it wasn’t even a fight. Angel walked away. When he came back, he’d made the decision to come with me. I was too elated to recognize that he wasn’t running away with me toward something new.” He swallowed hard. “He was runningfromsomething.”

“I’m not following.”

“Angel looks at you like you hung the sun, moon, and every star in the sky. For years I’ve wondered why he never looked at me that way. Now, I feel like I’ve woken up. I can see it.”

Frustrated, I rubbed my temples. I’d never been any good at implication and subtlety, and Eli was talking like the old wizard in a fantasy movie. “Seewhat?”

“He’s in love with you.”

Oh, Christ. Not this again. “He’s not in love with me, Eli. He’s marrying you.”

“He’ssettlingfor me. But only because he thinks he can’t have you.” He held a hand up to stop me when I opened my mouth. “He loves me, I don’t doubt that for a second. I’ve never been the one to claim his whole heart, though, the only person he would sacrifice himself to save.”

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