Chapter 3
ANGEL
It’d been two hours since Evangeline Bailey Rosedale jilted me.
Two hours after she went up onto her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth.
Two hours from the moment she whispered the words that crushed my heart.
Minutes bled into agonizing silence, my gaze glued to the waterside lawn where she was supposed to become my wife.
I wanted to race down those stairs and hunt her to the ends of the earth, to beg her to yield, to surrender to us.
Yet for some reason, my soul refused to comply.
My phone rang several times, but I muted every call that wasn’t from her, wanting to give her every chance to reach me; to tell me it was all a big mistake.
A loud knock rattled the oak door of my suite, shattering my churning thoughts.
The digital lock pinged, and the door swung open.
Jude’s timbre rang out.
‘Brother, it’s me, using your spare room card.’
I swiveled to see him and the rest of the Six Sinners saunter into the space, their eyes flicking around with curiosity and concern.
‘Dude, you’re not answering your phone,’ Bishop rasped.
Joining me outside on the terrace, they stopped and eyed me with incredulity, still in my shorts, vest, and barefoot.
‘Mate, it’s 2 p.m., and you’re the groom for a ceremony that starts in a few hours,’ Jude growled, his brow furrowing as he eyed my bare feet and disheveled appearance. ‘Why aren’t you dressed? Where’s your tux?’
I exhaled, unable to find words at first.
My brain spun, the contrast between their pre-wedding energy and the disaster in my heart turning my stomach.
I twisted away to keep my back to them as I stared out at the glistening lake.
‘It’s all off. It’s not happening.’
‘The hell you just said?’
I replied to Reign’s growl with one of my own.
‘There is NO wedding.’
Levi snorted, coming alongside me to stare at me with an arched brow.
‘No way! It’s your wedding day, man. Where’s Evangeline?’
‘She’s gone,’ I muttered in a ragged, ugly rasp. ‘She jilted me, brothers.’
The five men surrounding me fell dead quiet.
Their easy, loose stances shifted into braced postures.
‘What in the actual?’ Reign muttered.
Jude grabbed my shoulder and spun me around to face him, his jaw tight.
‘What do you mean, gone?’ he demanded in a rough register. ‘Explain.’
I lifted my burning eyes to lock gazes with them, my arms crossed over my chest.
‘She took off after telling me she couldn’t go through with it.’
I leaned a hip on the balustrade and tilted my head, letting out a hoarse, bitter chuckle.
‘She’s pulled a runaway-bride freakout?’ Bishop muttered under his breath, blinking at me in disbelief.
‘What kind of sick joke is this?’ Deacon muttered.
I shrugged. ‘Sick as it gets. She came in, told me sorry, and took off. I tried calling, and I even texted, but she’s kept my messages on read for the last two hours.’
My timbre cracked at the humiliation.
‘She’s gone.’
Jude focused on me, his face hard as he processed the betrayal, and he finally huffed. ‘She walked out on you on your wedding day? She must have lost her freakin’ mind.’
‘Where did she go?’ Reign growled, shaking his head, lost in shock.
I jerked my chin to the window. ‘No clue. Some loser picked her up in a red Mustang.’
My brothers stared at me in utter shock and disdain.
In the silence following my explanation, my chest burned.
‘Not surprised,’ Bishop muttered.
‘Brother,’ Jude warned him.
‘Just saying it like it is. I always got the feeling she was dragging you along, playing with your heart.’
‘Bishop,’ I growled, on edge and bristling. ‘Let it go or I’ll send you sailing over this balcony.’
He backed off with his hands raised in surrender.
I meant it too, and had the chops to go through with it, given my black belt in judo.
I lifted the phone in my hand and tried one more desperate time, my thumbs flying over the screen.
I dialed her number again, but the call went straight to voicemail.
I jolted at the sound of her voice.
‘I can’t speak right now; leave me a message after the tone.’
The electronic beep was a gunshot to my heart.
‘Evangeline, don’t do this to me,’ I rasped into the receiver, raw, hoarse, undone. ‘Don’t quit on us. What you’ve done is brutal, but if you come back, we can talk it through. Please. I love you.’
I was begging.
Hissing at the shame of it, I ended the call.
With a curse, I flung the device clear across the veranda, into the suite and onto the mattress.
It bounced, mocking me with its silence.
My brothers followed its trajectory, brows arching before their gazes swung back to me.
Jude shifted his massive frame by the door, his jaw set in a hard line.
‘You’re wasting your breath, brother. She made her choice.’
‘I know,’ I muttered, rubbing my shaking palms over my face. ‘God help me, I know.’
I prowled back inside and sank back into an armchair beside my bed in despondence.
My gaze flicked to my crew.
Jude, ripped, muscled, and handsome, had long hair falling to his shoulders, and loomed at 6’3.
My co-lead vocalist in our band, Six Sinners, was brooding and intense, wise, and had one of the most generous hearts ever.
His voice was legendary in the industry for its growl and cadence, and his musicality was off the charts.
His wife was the beautiful Sofia, a stunning Italian ex-actress who now worked at our charity, The Sanctuary.
Deacon was towering, dark, attractive, with a shock of striking, inky curls.
Of Mixed Kenyan and Australian heritage, he favored tees and jeans, and his saxophone playing almost always brought our grown male fans to tears.
He practiced martial arts whenever he could and was a black belt with multiple awards.
He was also a single dad to Raff, one of the most precocious and smartest nine-year-olds on the planet.
Deacon juggled parenting duties with his ex-wife, Ana De Stella, a stunning, beautiful former model now a world news photographer.
I never quite understood why the pair got separated, because they seemed made for each other, but Deacon had his reasons and stood firm by them.
Bishop was our wild child, always in flannel button-downs, most often open to mid-chest or lower.
He had an aversion to vests and, off stage, almost always wore only shorts and slides, even in the middle of winter.
His hair was a spill of dark tresses to his shoulders, and his ink and accessories were top-notch.
He played the bass guitar like a boss, too, baked like a dream, and was our secret resident nerd.
Levi was our violinist, our philosopher, and our spiritual guide.
A deep thinker, he was also an amazing lyricist, and many of our most beloved songs were because of him.
With locs and jewelry to die for, he was black British with Jamaican roots.
His parents settled in Sydney years ago when his mum came to work as a nurse down under.
He was the ‘dad’ of the band, always fussing over us, feeding us his mum’s jerk chicken and rice and peas whenever we were home.
Reign was our dirty blonde, shaggy-haired drummer who made you weep with his runs.
His solos were legendary, as was his love for motorcycles and fixing cars.
I respected these men because while we wrote and performed in unison, we also did life together; in the trenches for each other.
Now, they moved to flank me.
Bishop held out a glass of water.
I drank it.
Levi fixed me a mug of black coffee; I took it too, welcoming the heat as it punched into my icy gut.
Deacon and Reign paced the floor, asking me occasional questions that I answered in mumbled responses.
After a spell, I slumped into a catatonia, unable to speak.
After some time, they fell quiet and sat with me, letting me wallow, rocked and paralyzed by disbelief that Evangeline was my Delilah.
My betrayer and backstabber.
Damn, we’d been on such a good streak too.
Yes, she was flighty; she’d walked away from me a few times over the years; this wasn’t our first breakup rodeo.
During our separations, I’d attempted to move on; I even hooked up with other women, attempted to blitz her memory away, but I never succeeded.
Each time she left, however, she still came back; every bolt for freedom led her back to me.
Whenever she returned, I forgave her because I believed there was no one else for me.
The last time, she came back with a fierce, renewed enthusiasm, promising never to hurt me again.
When I proposed, she wept and accepted.
I indulged every chaotic detail of her wedding preparation excitement, playing right along because all that mattered was locking her down and claiming every inch of her, forever.
We structured our timeline around her influencer career, her fashion store, and my band tours.
With Six Sinners dominating the charts and her habits under control, our world finally felt secure.
However, last night, I spotted her hands trembling during the rehearsal dinner.
I told her to breathe, to get some rest, dismissing the warning signs as simple nerves.
Perhaps I was too consumed by the desire to make her my wife to ask more probing questions.
I ought to have, because now she was gone, bailing on us, our forever disintegrating into dust.
Outside on the stunning lakefront, the wedding prep continued to spin at a frantic pace.
Catering crews rolled metal carts across the manicured lawns, hoisting a massive five-tier cake into the luxury pavilion.
Evangeline had spent months customizing the tent, selecting the crystal chandeliers, the imported French linens, and the rows of gold-rimmed chairs that sat empty under the striped awning.
All for naught.