Chapter 46
46
I trail my fingers through the sea of bubbles dancing on the surface of the bath. Steam flushes my cheeks and chest, thawing out my frozen bones, and I feel like I’m wrapped up in a warm, buoyant embrace.
After everything that happened this morning, I’m still not exactly sure what to think or feel.
Does Angel truly love me the way I’m hopelessly lost to him? That kiss left me rendered speechless, boneless, melted beneath the weight of all his unspoken promises and passionate confessions. Yet, I also have no idea which way is up.
What I discovered on his phone is still true, even if the way he chased me down and damn near claimed my soul is also the truth.
Two things can exist at the same time, and both be correct. Even if I wish to hell it wasn’t the reality of my life and how I’ve ended up here.
Am I more upset that I discovered it was ultimately Angel’s doing when something so calculated is more the behavior I might have anticipated from Grey or Hawke? Or am I consumed by a fear that I opened my heart to someone for the first time, and look where it has gotten me?
Perhaps I'm most shaken up because of all of that… that was my Angel, the man I know who possesses such tender eyes and careful hands, and it’s the last thing I expected of him.
Once again, I’ve been given a pointed reminder that nothing is ever as it seems in this world.
As if I’ve silently called for him, my giant appears in the bathroom, giving me an unreadable expression. He’s still saturated and coated in mud, but has taken every effort to look after me since the forest. Once more, carrying me all the way back to the house, before running this bath, and then leaving me in here on my own for the past while.
That stung a little more than I want to admit—watching his back turn and disappear through the doorway—but I suppose it’s also given me some space to think, for my thoughts to drift around and around in circles. My mind is a wild creature pacing its enclosure as I try to make sense of what any of this means.
When I look his way, Angel steps right up to the edge of the tub, and holds out his phone in one big paw.
I drop my eyes to the water and rising steam and furrow my eyebrows. “You can’t bring your phone in here, what if it gets wet—”
I’ve hardly said the words before he bends down and goes to dunk the damn thing below the surface.
“Wait—what—ok, ok, I get it, it’s waterproof, I guess?” My fingers fly to catch his wrist and stall the highly unnecessary demonstration of drowning his phone just to prove a point.
He nods, then studies me for a long moment. His eyes fall to the device clutched between my fingers, and he taps the screen to illuminate what is there.
I’m guessing what awaits is something he has prepared… a message for me.
Angel proceeds to move around the bathroom, not staying by my side to tap out replies—no, this isn’t a conversation. He leaves me with the phone, undresses, and walks into the shower. Between running after me through the rain and the woods and fucking on the forest floor, he’s drenched and coated in mud. We both were.
As he soaps up and rinses off briefly, my attention shifts to whatever it is I’m supposed to read.
This time, it isn’t in the series of message bubbles. It’s been typed out in paragraphs, forming a long note. He must have been getting all of these words written down for me while I’ve been soaking in this very bath.
I’m immediately swallowing a lump because it’s so much longer than anything he’s written in those other texts to me. It must have been incredibly difficult for him to do this, and I’m terrified at what this message might reveal.
My teeth pinch the inside of my cheek as I let my eyes run across the screen.
Your biological parents were part of the elite members of Elysium House. I won’t say that they were your mom, or dad, or family because they were none of those things. Those people do not deserve a label that attaches itself to you because you’re far too good for their kind.
All I will say is that they met their end some years ago, and dare I say it, the world is a better place. If you want to know more about them, all you have to do is ask, and I’ll tell you everything. You want to know? I won’t ever hide the truth if one day you wake up and decide that you want to find out.
They held power. Your bloodline is the continuation of theirs, too. In the Anguis, there are some who are besotted with blood lineages and the perceived power they hold. It’s why you were chosen for all this, and I’m so incredibly sorry for the part I’ve played.
I did what I had to do, what I’ve always had to do, but I can’t even begin to explain how it fucking killed me, slowly. Day by godforsaken day. You have to know that. I’d rather take a hail of bullets or a hundred stab wounds than be forced to repeat the events of this past year.
Watching your every move and then creeping around, worming into your life without your knowledge after I’d done so many awful, calculated things? After I drugged you? After I was given orders to lure you to Noire House?
There’s no one that can hate me more than I do.
Poe, I deserve your anger, I deserve your disgust.
What terrifies me the most, in writing this—in trying to put words to something I can’t give a voice to—is that it’ll never amount to enough. Saying that I’m forever sorry for what I did, or that I wish there was a way to erase myself from your life in order to try to make amends, none of it will ever be enough.
The depths of how sorry I am go deep beyond my rotten core. Every morning I wake up and wish there was a way to undo time, to pull it apart and give you back a life of peace, and one that exists without my fucking fingerprints all over it.
I kept those awful, poisonous messages because I wanted to show you how much you’ve turned me upside down since day one. All of those words poured out of me at the time, and I couldn’t stop them. At first, it didn’t make sense, and then I realized why they wouldn’t stop flowing.
Seeing you, it opened a door to emotions I’d never felt before. I fell for you, Poe, and it twisted me to the point that I said horrible things to try and convince myself otherwise.
Then, after you came here, I almost deleted everything. I’d lie in bed at night and hover over the option to erase it all and pretend none of that existed. But I wanted to sit down with you and explain everything. To confess everything.
Except you found it first, before I had the chance. I’m going to forever be in agony that you might not know just how deeply in love with you I am, and have been since the very beginning .
If I can ask for one last ounce of your kindness, even though you have every right to tell me to fuck off out of your life—just let me have this final chance to hold you, please. Even if you never let me touch you again or never let me see those soft eyes, I meant everything out there.
I’m so in love with you, it aches. I’ll forever be in love with you, my beautiful girl.
By the time I read that final line, my throat is thick with emotion. All my tears have already soaked into the forest floor, but if I had any left, they’d be slipping down my face right now.
My sweet, gentle, mountain of a man comes to me, and I immediately reach for his hand to guide him to join me in the bath. Angel slips into a position at my back and circles me in those strong arms as I breathe out shaky exhales and blink furiously to contain all of that swelling tide of heartbreak and tortured love currently fighting to coexist within the cavity of my chest.
As I re-read over everything, with trembling hands and a fluttering heart that wants to crawl to curl up inside his, he brings those lips to my neck and softly kisses my damp skin.
“I forgive you.” My whisper echoes around us.
Saying the words out loud, I mean them with my entire being, and Angel lets out a ragged breath against the side of my throat. His arms band tighter, squeezing me against his torso in a way that tells me how entirely consumed with guilt and remorse this man is.
“You’re not the man they made you be. I know your heart, and I’ve seen parts of your soul up close. Please trust me when I say that I might hate the Anguis, the people who ordered you to do those things, your brother for what he did to you… but I could never feel anything but love for you. ”
Pressed against my spine, I feel his heartbeat thudding rapidly, as he allows me to talk.
“What I saw wasn't for my eyes. Those were messages you needed to share with me when you were ready, and I broke your trust because I let my desperation to know your thoughts win, and I made the wrong choice. It shocked me, and reading it without context scared me. I'll be honest, that fear was so real, at that moment I didn’t know what else to do.”
He nods a little against my neck and kisses that patch of skin so softly I want to weep.
“It scares me how much I love you, Angel.”
Those big hands reach for the phone. He takes over holding it and types out a reply for us both to see.
A part of me is terrified of my love for you, too, but the thought of losing you is a hell I don’t want to end up in. Let me be strong for both of us, and I promise I’ll keep you safe from anything or anyone who tries to take you from us.
“How do we get through this?” I know what he’s saying, but I also don’t see how any future can happen where he doesn’t end up getting himself executed for going against orders.
Leave me to worry about that.
As he finishes typing, a text comes through from Hawke to say we need to be at the club by six p.m.
“Are you ok if we go tonight?”
Behind me, I feel Angel agree. On the screen, he adds more words of reassurance.
This is how we’ll make it through. The four of us play by their rules until you find the chink in the armor. I don’t deserve your trust, but let me be the man you deserve to have by your side for all your mornings, my sweet girl.
After giving me a moment to read what he’s typed on screen—successfully leaving my stomach turning into a fluttering mess of butterflies as he does so—he tilts my chin to turn his way. Angel kisses me so damn slowly, leisurely, like I’ve got nowhere in this world to be except for this bath and his lips. The rasp and scratch of his beard is everything sure and sacred and precious as we sit here in silence. This right here is finally a moment where we can forget anything that exists beyond this bathroom and simply be with one another.
This man might have stolen my life, but has ultimately secured my heart in the process.