Chapter 7
Venice stared at his phone while he waited for Ronan to join him on their patrol.
Normally they all patrolled alone, but Brody had suggested the occasional team-up, and Venice had been happy to have the dragon along.
He and Sierra had been a welcome addition to the force since their clan had come to town.
Before that, Venice and Brody were on call constantly.
Venice hadn’t seen Tessa since Saturday, but they’d been texting and had spoken on the phone Sunday. As he re-read their texts, he rubbed the space over his heart with his fingers, the ache dull and present since he’d left the cottage. And her.
“Hey,” Ronan said as he opened the truck and sat down. “Brought you some kind of nonsense coffee that Lyra made. It’s caramel…I don’t know.”
He set two travel mugs in the console holders and buckled up.
“Thanks,” Venice said. “Lyra likes making coffee?”
“She wants to convince Zay to let her sell coffee and tea in the bookstore, but Zay’s not on board with it yet. I think with Tessa starting today, Lyra believes she’ll have more time to do things like make coffee for patrons.”
At the mention of her name, Venice’s chest went warm.
He pulled out of the familiar adoption center’s parking lot where he’d met with Brody pre-dawn, and cleared his throat.
“You’re toast, man. Burnt and buttered.”
“What?” Venice asked, turning onto Main to begin their patrol.
“I mentioned Tessa’s name, and your face went red. You’re gone.”
He bristled. Not in denial, because he was most definitely gone when it came to her. But because he wasn’t comfortable discussing things when he hadn’t really figured out what he wanted to do himself.
He could feel Ronan looking at him, so he said, “I am seeing someone, I guess.”
Ronan snorted so hard he coughed. “You guess? Everyone in town knows, man. Sable Cove is not a keep-things-to-yourself town. I know that you and Tessa are a thing, that she’s your truemate. Why are you being weird?”
The word truemate sent a bolt through Venice, not unlike the fiery sword that cut off his wings. “I don’t get one. I don’t get to hope.”
“Are you serious?”
Venice stopped at a light and looked at the male. “Angels don’t have truemates.”
Even as he said the words, they rang hollow. Because he knew how he felt, he just didn’t know how she felt. And after what he’d been through when he fell, he just flat out didn’t trust himself. His heart had lied to him before, giving him tunnel vision, so he missed all the red flags.
“Absolutely untrue, dude. Angels fall because they have the capacity to love. So why wouldn’t you get a truemate?
Every other supernatural creature on the planet has a truemate out there somewhere.
And yeah, sometimes the two never meet, and that’s a shitty situation.
But for the ones who do meet? You’d better grab on with both hands. ”
The light turned green, but Venice didn’t press on the gas right away. His hands clenched on the steering wheel. Was what Ronan said true?
Someone honked, and Venice pulled forward, crossing the intersection and taking a side road to drive along some of the back roads that bordered the town and to ensure there was nothing out of the ordinary going on.
“What if I’m wrong?” Venice asked.
“About what?”
“That she’s my…truemate.”
The word was rough in his mouth, like it was coated in sandpaper and glue.
Silence filled the truck, and that made Venice feel worse about what he’d said. The words just hung there like wet laundry on the line.
The streets blurred from one to the other, until he stopped at a stop sign and had to look at the street sign to figure out where he was.
“You can’t protect yourself forever. And the reality is that if you don’t trust her with the truth of what you are, you’re just telling her that you don’t trust her. And girls don’t like that.”
Unspoken was another hard truth: if Venice kept everything from Tessa, he was sure to lose her. So what was the bigger risk? Telling her or keeping silent?
Something furious gripped his heart at the thought of losing her.
He didn’t even really have her right now; they’d only shared a day together and a fantastic tumble in the sheets. But he knew what he felt, and it was so very different from what he’d felt when he fell. That was shadows and mists, but Tessa was all things bright and warm.
Ronan changed the topic to the summer festivities that would bring in tourists to the seaside town, and Venice liked having some space to think about other things.
When their shift was over, and he’d dropped the male off at the bookstore and handed over the walkie to Sierra for her shift, he didn’t go home.
He went to see Tessa and lay his heart bare for her.
He saw her car next to the cottage and knew that meant she was most likely home after her shift at the bookstore. He got out of the truck and walked boldly up to the front door, and then he hesitated.
He was going to cross a line he couldn’t cross back over if he told her everything. Right now, things were in limbo, but if he told her all his secrets, they’d never be in limbo again.
She was worth the risk, though.
He needed her to know his truths.
He knocked and took a step back from the door, inhaling slowly to calm his flying pulse.
The door opened, and Tessa smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners the way he adored.
“Well, hey, there. Come on in.”
“How was your day?” he asked as he stepped inside.
“Fun! Everyone is so nice here.”
While the temptation to keep the small talk going was strong, he ignored the urge to keep things light and decided to come right out and say what was on his mind and heart.
“I need to talk to you.”
Her brows lifted. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes. No. Well, yes. But I need to tell you about myself so that you know where I’m coming from. I don’t want to leave you in the dark about my past.”
She sat on the edge of the couch. “Is this about you being an angel?”
His mouth went dry. “Yes.”
“Okay, I’m all ears, Venice.”
He told her about being an angel, the heavenly mission of watching and guarding, and the overwhelming feelings he’d developed for a human woman he’d been assigned to guard.
“I didn’t really know anything about human emotions. I thought she really cared for me. I trusted that she wanted something more with me, so I chose to fall. When I showed her the scars and told her I’d fallen because of how I felt about her, she was so dismissive.”
She’d told him in plain language that she’d only been curious about him, and without his wings, he was just another guy, and she didn’t want anything to do with him.
He pulled on his tie to loosen it, then undid the buttons of his uniform shirt.
Slowly, he stripped off his shirt and undershirt and then turned away from her so she could see his scars.
He knew she’d seen them when they’d been in bed, and he’d gotten up to get dressed, but that had been an inadvertent reveal. This was with purpose.
He felt her fingertips gently touch the tops of both scars, and he exhaled sharply.
“Do they hurt?” she asked softly.
“No. They ache sometimes. But actually, since I met you, they haven’t bothered me.”
“Why?”
She swept her fingers softly down the scars, and he tensed as his whole body reacted to her touch. Were his scars an erogenous zone? Shit.
He tilted his head back and closed his eyes as she gently explored the scars. And then he turned to face her, opening his eyes and lowering his head, knowing this was the moment he’d come here for.
“You’re my truemate, Tessa. Until I met you, I wasn’t even sure that fallen angels get truemates.”
“But you’re a supernatural person. Why wouldn’t you get a truemate?”
“Because I fell.”
“And?” She tilted her head, her gaze searching.
“What if falling meant that I don’t get the chance at love? And I thought I knew what I was doing when I fell, but I had misread every damn thing about that woman and what she thought of me. I was a fool, and I don’t think fools get rewarded.”
“I’ve only been in town since Friday. That’s four days,” she said.
“I wasn’t looking for anything but a fresh start when I came here.
But when I drove into town, I knew this place was different.
When I met you on the beach Saturday morning, I didn’t want to put it into words at the moment, but I knew I was meant to meet you.
I never considered that I might be someone’s truemate.
Humans don’t really have them. Unless they’re the truemate of a supernatural person. ”
She stared up at him, her dark eyes wide and full of trust.
“I’m scared to get hurt again,” he said. “But I’m more afraid to lose you than I am that my heart might get broken.”
“I think you’re brave, actually. I think love is about taking risks.
And my past is messy too, and I wasn’t looking to start up anything romantic when I came here, but fate is a funny, fickle thing, and I don’t think we can control when love shows up.
” She went onto her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“I’m showing up for you, Venice. If you’ll show up for me.
We don’t have to make any decisions right now, we just have to know the one basic truth. ”
“What truth is that?”
“That we’re truemates. Everything else can come in time. No secrets, no worries. Just you and me, getting to know each other. And maybe you could take me out on a date?”
He exhaled with a smile. “I would love to.”
Lowering his head, he kissed her. Sweetly, softly.
They might have met on Saturday, but things were just now getting started between them. And he was ready for it.
Emboldened by the kiss, he pulled her closer and let himself go into the kiss until they were both gasping for breath and holding onto each other. The truth of what he’d shared with her, and what she’d accepted, hit him right in the heart.
Holy shit.
Tessa was his truemate.