Chapter 35
F ive minutes inside the apartment and already Neela had come to actively despise the color beige. It shouldn’t have been that surprising. If such a neutral snoozefest of a color had actually existed on any mortal color wheel, beige was about as opposite as one could get from the preferred neon green and hot pink of her favorite twinkle lights.
Which, she was disheartened to realize, she’d left in the angels’ den, because being the only female charmer didn’t magically gift her Amazonian height.
Yet another reason on her smorgasbord of arguments to leave.
Rhode had been the one to put the lights up in their—correction, his —living quarters, and since he’d actively avoided everything having to do with her and despite many precarious chair balancing acts on her part, she could never quite reach the damn things.
Sure, she could have bugged one of the other angels for help, but there was something about inviting another man into that space that felt like an even bigger betrayal than the one she’d already committed. It didn’t improve matters that the space had never been hers to begin with.
The apartment she stood in the middle of had a similar thing going for it. Though far larger than her suite of rooms in Cyro’s hideaway, this was also about to be paid for with money that was not her own. The idea left her about as comfortable as a boob in a mammogram machine, but it wasn’t like she had a lot of options, and dammit, Drea and the others knew it, too. So when she’d first floated the idea to everyone over breakfast that she might want to try living on her own for a while, Tung was at the ready with the cash hookup.
While taking the handout wasn’t exactly fun, it had been necessary. What hadn’t been necessary were the pitying glances and soft nods of support that were made oh-so-heavier by the uncertainty lingering around her.
In one desperate fell swoop, she’d simultaneously planted every questionable doubt into the only people who’d ever truly cared for her and also delivered the one thing that was a game changer in their quest to get home: the relic.
So, yeah, the appreciation was there, and she hadn’t survived that long without knowing she needed to ride that gratitude wave for however long the crest stayed above the surface, but the distrust was there as well. Of course it was. What else would have kept Rhode away from his family for so long? And did she blame him?
Neela set her bag, which contained the sum total of every piece of clothing she only sort of owned, down on the gray low-pile carpet, rooted around for the tape measure, and started outlining what her future would look like etched in graphite measurements and leveled markings. Soon, she’d gone through every inch of the place, sketching out the bones of what her new life would eventually fill in. The place wasn’t much. Two bedrooms, a living room connected to a simple dining area, and a standard galley kitchen were all that stood between her and her bedraggled mess of poor choices that refused to give her conscience any moment of peace.
Distractions were one thing, but efficiency, on the other hand, was something else entirely. If she could just mentally picture everything around her filled in, all her shelves, hanging plants, and gauzy curtains, and work at it like a fiend, it would almost— almost —take the sting out of the soul-deep throb that refused to go away when she thought of the space without him.
Rhode.
The one person she’d tried so hard to reach was also the one person who had mastered the art of always stepping out of that reach.
Until then, Neela’s focus had been doing the lion’s share of the lifting, holding her final intact mental fragments by the tits and forcing them into service to measure out the small bathroom’s window size. She was doing semi-okay until she walked by the mirror above the pedestal sink.
Instead of her reflection, all Neela could see was Rhode’s face. The memories of his squared-off jaw tensing as if he had just chewed on a nail. His deeply dark eyes flashing various shades of disapproval and disgust. Firm lips that had devoured her with passion she’d never thought possible slanted in an angry slash of hurt.
When her mind was in a reasoning mood, it would unhelpfully point out the number of times she’d tried to tell him about how she’d hoped to save him from his torment, from both of their torments . . . along with the number of times she’d shit the bed on that particular goal thanks to Cyro’s little public revelation.
The resulting picture was as ugly as the festering wound twisting her heart into some petrified mass that even the most astute mortal paleontologist would have a hard time identifying as belonging to a hominid.
Tearing her gaze away from the mental image of Rhode that always followed her around regardless of her will to leave it behind, she was equal parts annoyed and grateful when she realized she’d left the paint chips in the car.
Because, despite every cleanser she’d tried, she hadn’t managed to buff away the scent of Rhode from the leather.
“Well, that’s surely going to change very soon.” On heavy limbs, Neela walked out the front door of the garden apartment and almost had to pinwheel her arms to keep from eating pavement.
Rhode stood in the middle of the parking lot with his hands in the pockets of his slacks and his broad chest standing between her and her car. A look of stony resolve was carved into not only his expression but the set of his shoulders as well. He was enormous, his silk shirt immaculate, and wore a quiet rage she’d only ever seen on the mortal Vikings from her video games. The sight of him forced goose bumps to emerge in places she didn’t think possible and froze every muscle in her body, including the one at the center of her chest responsible for keeping air in her lungs and her body upright. If she’d had any ounce of decency or self-preservation, she’d have started spewing the apology she’d had saved on her lips from the very moment Cyro was blasted into the sky.
But all she could do was absorb the fierce beauty that she’d worried she’d never see again. Rich deep eyes, a wide brow, a chiseled chin that always had the perfect amount of rasp to it when he’d drag it across her delicate skin.
“What are you doing here?” she managed to say, though how she had trusted her voice to get the words out was beyond her.
“I think we need to have a conversation.”
Her heart sank down to her heels. And there it was. The reckoning he expected from her, which, going by his stern demeanor, was to be delivered with no small amount of flourish and groveling on her part.
She could grovel. If that was what she needed to do to get him to finally listen to her, then that was what she’d do.
“I don’t know where to begin, honestly.” Neela took a tentative step closer and wrung her hands beneath her chin. “For so damn long, I’ve had the words at the ready. But now that you’re here, I’m terrified that they won’t be enough, that they won’t satisfy you.” She took a deep bracing breath and closed her eyes, willing every ounce of remorse and compassion into the explanation she prayed he’d accept. “Rhode?—”
“The light suits you here.”
Her eyes flew open, but before she could inquire further, she was stopped by the seraph’s monotonous pacing across the pavement, which was only broken up by the occasional glance back toward where her apartment was.
“Eastwardly facing windows, attached garage, security cameras evenly spaced throughout the perimeter. The property management company is pretty good at selecting tenants as well, according to Chrome’s background check. No history of tenant evictions or small claims suits. It’s a small property, ten units. Easy to keep on top of. Employs regular lawn maintenance and snow removal contractors, all with equally clean records and up-to-date full insurance. Maintains an average tenancy of five years and has only ever raised rents to keep in line with municipal tax increases. They even get the building power washed and gutters cleaned on a regular cycle, which is practically unheard of in most mortal housing developments these days.”
Neela’s mind spun at the speed he paced in front of her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m saying your instincts about this place are spot-on. It’s perfect, and that doesn’t surprise me. Your instincts are always perfect.”
Whatever native magnetism Rhode had exuded earlier to freeze her in place had slowly begun to unstitch itself from her limbs. Her brows made quick work of their newfound freedom and immediately shot to her hairline while she searched for words beneath a veil of confusion. On impulse, phrases like let me explain and I’m sorry came to the forefront, but every time they were loaded into the rocket of her mouth, poised to fly, Rhode’s dark and twitchy frame passed across her nose like some courtroom prosecutor delivering closing remarks right before the jury was about to break for lunch.
“I remember you,” he said emphatically to the painted lines in the parking lot that resembled her not in the slightest. “Maybe not fully, not in the way I should have, but my soul remembered you.”
Neela shook her head. “You’re not making sense.”
“That’s exactly it,” he exclaimed, waving his hands in the air, trying to plead his case to a jury of pigeons who’d stopped to peck at a discarded muffin wrapper. “When Cyro had his knife to your throat, I didn’t see red. I saw flames. I saw the mass destruction of everything around us for miles. I saw who I needed to kill, what I needed to sacrifice, how much damage I could sustain and still fight to get you free. I saw body counts and centuries-old trees buried beneath the snow mounds. There was no logic to it, only training. And when you hissed at him and that blade pressed farther against the delicate column of your throat, I lost my fucking mind. All I could think about was how soon I could slice that bastard’s arms off and get you in mine. So when you started speaking, any semblance of my rational brain had been demoted to reserve status at best.”
Somewhere in the back of her mind, a warning went off. A caution against interrupting whatever outpouring Rhode was coming to terms with, despite the torrent of things she’d held inside for weeks on end.
Finally, his pacing ceased, and he grabbed up her hands in a desperate gesture of acceptance. “I should have trusted your instincts. I should have known that under no circumstances would you have done the things you had, said what you did, if there were any other options available. I didn’t believe you then, but my disbelief wasn’t born of mistrust and hatred of you but of Cyro and every sick fuck who delighted in the torture of others.”
All the taught muscles in her middle slowly untangled from her vital organs, allowing her to take the first full breath in weeks. And once the seal had been broken on that blockage, she’d finally been able to breathe him in. Really breathe him in, into her lungs, cells, and every aching part of her that had been starved for so long. But she stalled out that inhale in favor of gripping the sides of his face so she could immediately tell her truth. “You have to know that I never meant to hurt you. I never meant?—”
“I love you.”
Neela paused, needing all the time available for her brainwaves to fall over themselves untangling those three little words.
“You can’t love me. You don’t even like me that much.”
“I love you,” he repeated more insistently.
“No, you don’t. You can’t . You can hardly stand to be in the same room with me. I’ve had more breakfasts with members of your family without you present than with you there. I’ve had cooking lessons from Steel, gone on shopping trips with Molly and Drea where Brass accompanied us, and even been taught by Iron where best to stab a dagger into a man for maximum takedown with minimum thrust. Since I’ve been at the den, I’ve slept in your bed more times than you have, except for the few occasions when we’d both been so strung out and exhausted that we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”
“More than a few times,” he amended, and damn if her heart and other heated parts of her didn’t remember every single one of those times.
Neela closed her eyes and sought out the strength she needed to paint the true picture of what life had been like for her from the time he’d first found her in that mechanic’s parking lot to this one. But the energy just wasn’t there. How could it be? She’d spent so much time analyzing every misstep she’d made when it came to him, and now that he was here, touching her like he’d been in the wrong, she just had nothing left in the tank to fight with.
“I love you,” he said again, rubbing soothing circles into the fleshy pads between her thumbs and index fingers. “I was so eternally wrong about everything. I let preconceived notions of who you were get in the way of what, deep down, essential parts of me knew you to truly be. My soul has been crying out for you since we both shared the same air in that dank cell, and I had no idea who you were or whether the soothing presence I felt was even real. My entire being screamed for you across the whispered inches that separated us then, and it hasn’t shut up since.”
As if reclaiming some of those lost inches, he brought her gathered knuckles to his lips and gently pressed his insistence into them. “You gave me back my time, and now it’s my turn to give you back yours, because I can’t spend another fucking second walking around this mortal coil like a mindless zombie hoping I’ll find answers any place except where I’ve been afraid to look. You’re my answer, Neela. You’ve shown me how to bask in the sunlight when you’ve only known it through others’ experiences. You’ve cradled and nurtured lives that never had the capability of thanking you but are all the better for your undying care and love. And I want to return that love to you. It’s so far past time someone showed you any scrap of the care you deserve, and I can’t live another day knowing that you and I both have an entire lifecycle of a star’s worth of time ahead of us and that we might spend it apart because I couldn’t summon the stones to trust you.”
Neela sniffed away the sharp prickle that was always the precursor to far wetter and messier things, but then Rhode cradled her face and inched his thumbs higher beneath the creases of her eyes, as if anxiously waiting for the first opportunity to care for her, starting with tending to the tears he’d caused.
“Are you being serious? Or is this another whiplash moment that I’ll have to figure out how to endure on my own once you leave me again?”
“The only way I’m leaving is by following you wherever you intend to explore. I love you. I’ll say it as many times as I need to for you to believe me.”
Slowly, the rust caging her heart had begun to peel away, leaving that dead organ free to pump as much joy into her body as she could stomach. Which was, like, a lot. But then another sobering reality dampened the moment. “I can’t be with you in the den, Rhode. It’s too dark, too much like what I’ve known and dreaded. I want sunlight and stars and green grass. But I can’t take you away from your family. I won’t do that to you.”
“You’re not taking me away from anything. You’re giving me everything. I could live under a park bench and sleep like the dead knowing you sat above me hours earlier.”
Neela snorted. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Try me.”
And then she did. All of it. She tried on every single word for size and came away wrapped in the coziest embrace of comfort and adoration she’d ever experienced. It made her heart swell and her defenses soften.
“I love you, Rhode,” she said, treasuring how those words felt on her tongue. “I— Oh my God, I left him in the car!”
Neela dashed around Rhode, not even sparing a moment to enjoy how adorable he looked with his features twisted in confusion, and bolted to the back of her SUV. A click of the key fob later, the hatch was up, and a giant Anatolian Shepherd leaped out of the vehicle, planting three paws solidly on the ground. The whole sit-stay routine lasted for the span of a good full-body shake before the dog was angling for Rhode and jumping up, licking the face of the angel she adored more than she ever thought possible.
“What-what is this? How? Easy, Lucky, easy! Oh God, he licked my teeth.” Rolling laughs bellowed out of Rhode at such an abnormal pitch she wondered whether she’d get her first noise complaint before she’d even officially moved in.
“His name’s Cerberus now. Officially adopted this morning and my new permanent roommate. Though, to be honest, I was hoping he could be your permanent roommate as well. That’s what I had in mind, at least, when I adopted him, even if you and I didn’t?—”
Rhode swept her into his arms and seared his mouth to hers in a kiss so fraught with emotion that no words could ever have a chance of conveying the depths of his passion. Slowly, brick by brick, his lips punched out the dark windows of her past and let the light pour in with a high-beam’s worth of abundance. It was in every grip of her waist, every gentle tug of her hair. The man’s body spoke of promised eternities in the light and moved with a dance that they had their entire lifetimes to learn.
She’d finally found her sun-filled eternity and no amount of darkness could ever claim their souls again. Because darkness only lurked where one let it, and she was determined to allow as much light in as possible.
Rhode’s possessive grip around her waist tugged at her soul’s desire. “We’re a true family now, little demon, and I couldn’t be happier because you’ve always had my whole heart.”
A lick on one cheek and a kiss on the other sealed the deal.
She was finally home.