Page 56 of Lips of an Angel

“Hey, I never heard any complaints.”

With that, Eli shut the door and left me alone in his bedroom. I looked back at the suit bags hanging on the door, then at Raleigh’s hanging on the bed. Instead of the overwhelming sense of dread I’d had when they’d been delivered, I felt lighter. A weight had been lifted from my shoulders, one I hadn’t realized I was carrying.

I still had a challenge ahead of me, but I was no longer stringing anyone along with me. That hadn’t been my intention with Eli, but I had to face the facts as they were: I’d made bad decisions, and people were hurt in the process. I was lucky Eli was as forgiving as he was.

As I pulled myself from the bed and dressed, I made a mental list of everything I needed to do. It wasn’t fair to make Eli tear the whole wedding apart when he’d spent so much time putting it together. No, I had to be the one to do it. It might mean sending a million emails back and forth and arguing with people I really didn’t want to argue with, but Eli had enough on his plate. He had to plan a move all on his own—ah Hell, he’d already been doing that, hadn’t he?

To say I’d been useless lately would be an understatement.

Step one: contact our guests and the officiant. Then the florists, caterers, the church…

That was one aspect I hadn’t expected. Eli was adamant on getting married in a church, and now? It was all I could do not to laugh about it. When you put the three of us together, including Raleigh, the amount of sin in that building was liable to send the place up in flames.

Shit.Sin.

I’d nearly forgotten all about it. Raleigh’s virtue had been tested recently, and it was all because ofme. He was being put to the test, and though I’d realized it, I hadn’t known what it meant. What it was leading to.

Raleigh had always been… carefree, but lately it seemed everything was sex and drinking—but that made sense. EvenBilliestarted to make sense. Each sin, resolving itself. The seventh and final nail in the coffin was sloth, and in throwing himself into work, Raleigh had overcome the trial.

Seven deadly sins. A tale as old as time, one that had been debated for centuries. Some said that to combat them, you had to follow the seven virtues, but like angels, that was far from the truth.

The only thing that broke through the seven deadly sins was the gift of a new heart. One who acted in accordance with a love as pure as God’s. In other words: an angel.

To earn that, Raleigh needed to prove himself. He’d been challenged time and time again, and now he was ready.

As it turned out, webothneeded to wait until we were spiritually ready for each other. Once we were, my powers forced Raleigh to prove himself.

I grabbed one of the empty boxes in the corner of Eli’s room, speed-throwing all of my things into it. At the last second, I gathered the suit bags and threw them in too. Something could probably be said about all my stuff fitting into a single box after spending a decade with someone, but I wasn’t going to dwell on it.

Things were falling into place now, and I needed to see them through.

The Cure

Chapter 21

RALEIGH

Hours later,I was still reeling from Eli’s visit. I still had a shit ton of questions. The most important one being: What about the wedding? He hadn’t said outright that it was off. We were only three days out from the big event and canceling at the last minute would be a nightmare.

I was sitting on the couch staring at an unopened bottle of tequila on the coffee table when the door opened. Angel stepped in, juggling a box. When he set it down on the floor, I saw our suit bags poking out of it. He had come to deliver my suit in-person. Shit, either Eli hadn’t talked to Angel yet… or the wedding was still on.

“Hi,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper.

Angel gave me a sweet smile and approached slowly. He gestured to the bottle on the table. “Are we drinking?”

“I was going to.” I eyed it again, then sighed and dropped my head into my hands. “But I’m not feeling it.”

My stomach was already churning. Adding copious amounts of tequila to my current state would end badly—even if I did have an angel to heal me.

“There’s something I’ve got to tell you,” I muttered, throat tight. I still hadn’t completely come to terms with it myself, but this was my last chance to tell him. If everything went to hell, I wanted to be able to say I tried.

A hand found my shoulder, and I looked up into Angel’s piercing blue eyes. “Me first?”

Thank fuck. I nodded, and he sat down. “Eli called off the wedding.”

“He did?” Though I had to admit hope flared in my chest. “Wh-why?”

Angel laughed and shook his head. “So,somany reasons. I’m not in love with him.”

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