Page 31 of Price of Angels

Feeling bold, unable to wipe the grin off her face, she said, “You have the worst manners, you know that?”

“Yeah? You’re the one who stripped naked in front of a total stranger.”

She held up a finger. “One, I wasn’t naked. Two” – a second finger – “you’re not a total stranger.Strange, maybe,” she said, suppressing a giggle, “but not a stranger.”

He sighed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m teasing you. Isn’t that what friends do?” She felt her brows pluck together, felt the awful surge of true curiosity. The only friend she could claim was dead, murdered in the alley of this bar. “I want us to be friends,” she said, softly.

His brows lifted over the frames of his Ray-Bans.Why?

“Do you have any?” she asked. “Because I don’t. And maybe, if nothing else, we could be that. I think it’d be nice.” She sent him a hopeful smile.

He stared at her, projecting bafflement, though he probably didn’t want to. “You’re weird, you know that?”

It was her turn to lift her brows.And you’re not?

He sighed, and shrugged. “Fine.”

They drove out of town, at his direction, Holly shocked she was the one behind the wheel, Michael watching through the window with unruffled calm.

“This is your car?” he asked as they turned off Main and headed out of town.

“Yep.”

His eyes slid over, unreadable behind the lenses of his shades. “Did you steal it?”

Holly felt her palms grow damp on the wide plastic steering wheel, but she laughed. She didn’t know why, but being alongside him today, in the sunlight pouring through the tint-free windows, had lightened her somehow. Left her feeling buoyant and happy.

“I’m serious,” Michael said. “Did you steal it?”

“What, you’re going to turn me in?”

“Just wondering.” He sounded sincere.

Holly sighed, felt herself deflate a little as they took the next turn. “It’s mine,” she said. “After…well, after everything…I think I’m at least owed a car.” Not a lie, and almost the truth. “Maybe I’m wrong, though,” she mused. “Maybe nobody ever deserves anything. It’s just about who takes what.”

She glanced over at Michael’s hard profile. “What do you think?”

His lips pursed. Thinking face. Dear God, he took her serious. He was actually listening to her, considering what to say.

Delight streaked through her. For the first time in so, so many years, sheer delight.

“ ‘Deserve’ is a tricky word,” he said, finally, sunlight striking like white fire off his face. “Like there’s somebody up there” – he pointed at the headliner, the sky beyond – “keeping track of rights and wrongs.”

“Not a man of faith, then?”

“Didn’t say that. Just said it’s tricky.”

“Hmm,” she agreed. “My mom was a believer,” she said, surprised, as she said the words, that they’d come up her throat. She tried not to think too hard about her mother, because it hurt too badly, but she couldn’t talk about church in relation to her father, no matter how many bible verses he’d spewed at her. No, that wasn’t the God that Mom had talked about. How could it be? How could Lila’s gentle, loving God, of sweet forehead kisses and prayer books open in the sunshine be at all related to the God that Abraham carried on his bourbon-soaked breath, when he’d pulled the ropes from the cabinet?

“I believe in God,” she continued. “Most of the time, anyway. I’m not sure how to put that belief in any kind of box, though.”

“You don’t need a box.”

“You don’t think?”

“Nah.”

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