27. Angel
TWENTY-SEVEN
ANGEL
"It’s too cold to go out on the roof tonight, Harperrrr." I knew I was being a petulant brat, but I couldn’t help myself. Of all the nights for her to demand one of our stargazing sessions, it just had to be on the coldest fucking night of the summer. The rain earlier left the roof all wet and slick, and the air had a chill to it that cut straight through your clothes and dug into your bones.
I did not want to crawl out there and end up sick.
Harper put on that damn bratty stare and stuck out her bottom lip as she shoved her nose in the air. "Angel. You promised me you’d never say no." Her hands found her hips, and I rolled my eyes at how much she reminded me of her mother, but with more sass. Miss Daniels wasn’t to be trifled with, but she had a soft side for us kids. As far as a step-parent went, we couldn’t have asked for better.
As for her daughter, though . . .
"Harper, you’ll get sick ? —"
"Will not!" Her tongue peeked out from between her lips, and I swore it was like she was fucking twelve again, staring at me like I was a freak when my voice changed in puberty. "Aaaaaaangeeelllllllllll ? —"
"Okay, fine! Fine! We’ll go out and get sick, shit." I threw my hands in the air and stomped from my bed all the way to my closet. Clear in the back, hanging behind an entire wardrobe of winter clothes, was my fur-lined trenchcoat. I threw it around me and eyed her slim frame with skepticism. "You planning on going out there dressed like that? It’s cold."
"I’m fine," she whispered, wincing as something hit the wall downstairs, shattering on impact. "Hurry up."
By the time we scrambled out the window, several more plates and glasses had hit the wall, and Father was yelling about trust and respect and all the same talking points he always dragged out when he was drunk.
I shut the window behind us, cutting off the sound with a sigh. "There. Go on and get comfortable. Let’s see what we can find in the sky tonight."
I wasn’t big on stars. Or, I never had been before. But all it took was one night on the roof with Harper, and suddenly I was checking out astrology books from the library and enrolling in pre-college astronomy class for kicks.
Harper had starfished on the roof tiles, her hands behind her head, a smirk on her face that just as good as said ‘I win.’ But even the satisfied smirk couldn’t hide the way she shivered as a cold chill ran down her spine.
I gave it five minutes, and she’d be begging to go back inside.
Two hours later, I could still hear the faint echoes of the argument carrying on in the central part of the house. This place was so big that it’d be nearly impossible to hear them if they didn’t also like to leave the first-floor windows open so the neighbors could hear.
Not that we had any, but still.
I was mirroring Harper’s pose now, the two of us as side by side as our elbows would allow, just a foot or two apart, staring up at the sky as we pointed out constellations we recognized.
Her arm shot out, and she grinned wildly as her whole upper body followed it into a sitting position. "Oh wow! I know that one! It’s uhhhh, it’s uhhhh . . . shit."
I held a straight face for all of two seconds before a burst of laughter erupted from me. "Bahahahahahaha. Is it shit? Is that the name, Harper?" I wiped a stray tear from the corner of my eye, smiling at her even as I made her the butt of the joke.
She was less than amused. "Ha ha ha, very funny, Angel." She stared up and crossed her arms again, pouting like she’d been told she could never wear her favorite color again. "I do know it, dammit. I just forgot the name when I went to tell you."
My eyes found the constellation in question, and sure enough, I knew for a fact she knew what this one was. It was my favorite, and she’d introduced me to it last year, when we had our first roof session.
"That’s Saggitarius."
"That’s what it’s called!" She was practically bouncing in excitement now, and as she rose to her knees, a bad feeling washed through me.
I reached out to stop her, but it was too late. "Harper, watch out!"
As she came down again, her knee slipped, and she went down on her side and began to slide toward the edge.
She reached for me with panic-stricken eyes. "Angel, help ? —"
My hand locked around her wrist, and my whole arm nearly ripped out of the socket as I struggled to hold us both on the fucking roof. I had the foresight to wrap an arm around the lip of the exhaust vent, and now I was being pulled in both directions.
Painfully.
"Fuck, Harper, you’re heavy. I can’t pull you up—you’ll have to climb."
I hadn’t meant to use me as a rope, but that’s precisely what she did—and when she got purchase on the semi-flat portion of the roof, she laid on her stomach and offered me a hand up.
I climbed up and landed on my back, gasping for air like a fish on the docks.
"That was scary," she muttered, arms wrapped around her knees, full-body shivers rattling her perfect teeth. "I thought I was gonna die."
"I told you it was slick." My breath whooshed in and out, and after a minute, I was able to sit back up again. "I never wanna do that again. I feel like my arms are dislocated."
As I spoke, I slipped out of my coat, pleased the fur was still dry. Dry cleaning was a bitch, and Father would probably beat me over needing a fur coat cleaned in the summertime. The beating I could deal with. But seeing her cold, shivering, and wet, I couldn’t.
And I knew she wouldn’t go in until she was ready .
"You okay?"
She didn’t answer; she just stared off into the distance, here but . . . not.
When she registered the weight of my coat on her shoulders, though, she snapped out of it and turned to me with a blush. "Angel, I can’t take this. You’ll get cold!"
"I’m fine. Worked up a sweat saving your life." I had, but the adrenaline drop had left me with a heavy dose of the chills. I wasn’t about to tell her that, though. I’d tough through it.
If she got sick on my watch, I’d never forgive myself.
We sat on that roof for another three hours until the house was silent again. And when she went to stand on that slick roof, I instinctively grabbed her hand and pulled her toward me ? —
—right into my fucking lap.
Neither of us moved, breathed, even blinked. It was the closest I’d been to a girl— to her —in my life. And the way she looked up at me, that faint blush creeping slowly up her pale cheeks ? —
"Be careful, Harper," I chided, throwing a fake smile on my lips for her benefit, playing that whole universe-pivoting moment. "Only one life-saving rescue per person per day."
"Right," she muttered, her eyes plastered to her feet. "Sorry."
I had to fight the urge to watch her ass as she slipped back through the window.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I woke in a cold sweat, the last moments of the memory playing behind my eyes as I struggled to separate dream from reality, past from present. I saw it all vividly, the look in her eyes when she thought she was about to fall off that roof. When our gazes locked and I grabbed her at the last minute.
It was all so real, so vivid, for all that it was over ten years ago that it’d happened.
Wiping the sweat from my brow with the sleeve of my pajamas, I gave up on sleep for now and found myself in the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge for a cold bottle of artisan water to slake the dryness of my throat. It was like I had plastered a carpet to my tongue.
Ew.
"Where did that asshole hide my bottled water, dammit?—"
A door behind me slammed shut, and I jumped so fast I forgot I still had my head in the fridge. Headbutting those glass shelves really hurt like a bitch when you weren’t expecting it.
Especially when you weren’t expecting it.
"Fuck," I swore, shutting the fridge to start in on whoever was slamming fucking doors at whatever ungodly hour of the night it was?—
Standing there in front of Nash’s door, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes burning a hole into the fucking thing, was none other than Harper.
A very irate Harper, from the look of it.
And then I watched her swipe a hand across her face, drying tears. The part of me that lingered in the past, in the dream world, broke free and rose to the surface as I wordlessly crossed the room and wrapped my arms around her from behind, silently leading her to the couch.
Her gaze was watery, but as she turned to me, it was like a flashback. I’d seen that look on her face before. Only then, it hadn’t been one of my brothers who’d put it there.
"Are you okay?" I asked, already preparing for the worst. "Did he hurt you? Force you to do something against your will?" My eyes shifted to his door as the sounds of Nash stumbling around his room, banging into things, reached my ears. "Harper, did he hurt you?"
Her whole sad countenance shifted in a heartbeat to disgust. I could feel her recoil, emotionally as well as physically, and regretted my word choice instantly.
"No," she whispered, wincing as something hit the wall behind that door. "He didn’t hurt me." She stared at her arms, stretched out in front of her, turning them over to show me that there were no visible marks. "Not on the outside, at least."
I didn’t want to care about her feelings. I didn’t want this pit of agony in my stomach that swirled as I thought about all the things he could have said or done to cut her this deep without using his knife, each one worse than the last.
It was like an out-of-body experience, like watching a stranger, as my mouth opened, and I heard myself speak. "What did he do?"
Her hair brushed against my cheek as I held her, both of us sitting sideways on the couch, both staring at his door like we expected him to burst from it at any moment, screaming and swinging that knife of his around, making drunken threats.
"It’s not important, Angel," she muttered, her arms moving to wrap around her like she had done in my dream, in the memory. "I’m just temporary here. I shouldn’t worry about his stupid fucking problems with himself. When the hit on me expires, I’ll be gone, and then Nash won’t have to look at me again."
Silent tears fell from her eyes, and a dilemma rose in my heart.
I could talk to her. Explain Nash a bit, push her in the right direction.
Or I could forget about it and let her go to the office and lie down, pretending this never happened. Hell, she’d probably crawl into Rowan’s bed and seek comfort from that fuckwad.
The part of me I denied, the part that wanted so badly to be the old Angel, prodded at the back of my head like an annoying fly until I finally gave in and sighed. "Here. What do you like to eat? Let’s raid the kitchen for a snack, and you can tell me about what happened."
"I don’t wanna talk about it," she insisted, but when I rose from the couch and reached for her hand, she let me drag her along into the kitchen and leaned against the counter as I opened cabinet after cabinet looking for snack food.
Nash had a collection of it, but I could never figure out where the fucker hid it.
"Damn Nash, where did he put the junk food?"
Harper chuckled. "Last cabinet on the left, bottom shelf, inside the oversized soup pot."
I’ll be damned. "How did you know that?"
Her grin was contagious as I emerged with a bag of cookies, a single bag of microwave popcorn, and a bar of chocolate. "I saw him hiding them yesterday when he thought I wasn’t looking."
"Smart girl." I deposited the snacks on the counter and returned to the fridge, pleased when this time I was able to find a big bottle of the damn water I knew I’d bought more of. "I wonder who’s been drinking my water. I know I grabbed more than this one bottle."
"Ah, sorry, that fancy shit was yours?"
I should have known. "Don’t worry about it. We can share this bottle tonight."
Back on the couch, the silence and the awkwardness were back in full swing. Clearly, she wasn’t in the mood to tell me about what had happened between her and Nash, and I knew I shouldn’t want to know. I shouldn’t get involved.
But I had to do something.
So I turned on the TV, found the stupidest chick flick I could, and settled the bowl of popcorn on the cushion between us. The water wedged nicely into the crack of the couch, and I snapped the chocolate bar in half and handed her a piece, then settled in to wait.
For what, I wasn’t sure.
I didn’t need someone else’s problems. I had my own, dammit. And she would be gone in a flash, a blink of an eye, and then things would return to normal.
But a part of me wanted to make sure she didn’t get the wrong idea about Nash. As much as I argued and fought with the fucker, I knew how hard his life had been, especially after the scars. He didn’t deserve to hurt the rest of his life, and if this was the moment in my life I could help him, the deepest part of me, the part that couldn’t stand to see another person hurting, the part I buried and killed over and over as I murdered people, had to do something.
"Whatever he said to you, I’m sure he didn’t mean it."
Her scoff of disbelief almost hurt me, it was laced with so much pain. "Oh, I’m sure he did. And I don’t wanna talk about it."
"Okay," I said, settling back in as I turned the volume up a notch. "Man, this chocolate is great. I’m gonna have to replace the damn bar before he notices."
"Fuck Nash’s chocolate stash. I’ll eat the whole fucking thing. Serves him right."
My brow rose, but I didn’t look away from the screen as I popped another kernel of popcorn in my mouth. "Thought you didn’t wanna talk about it."
"I don’t."
"Good."
"Great."
I sighed. "Harper."
"The—I—no."
The second brow climbed to join my first. "That was an interesting string of English."
"Do you want it in your native language?" She turned to me, her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Or shoved up your ass?"
"You don’t speak Japanese, Harper," I pointed out with a smirk. "And you’d have a hell of a fight putting anything in my ass."
"That’s a matter of opinion, I think," she muttered. Turning back to the screen with another sigh. "Okay. Fine, you win, asshole." Her hand buried itself in the popcorn and came up loaded with the buttery stuff. "He told me he wanted to hurt me. And apparently, I’m fucked up for telling him I didn’t care." She huffed, on the edge of another sob, and I had to fight the instinct to reach for her. "But the sight of me makes him sick now, because he had to go and vomit after I told him, so . . ."
Oh, no.
"Nash has a problem with how he views himself now. He’s been . . . well, he isn’t the same Nash, not after she fucked him up like that."
Harper’s whole demeanor changed, like a bloodhound on the scent trail. "She?"
Great. Me and my big fucking mouth. Nash was going to kick my ass, but someone had to shove him out of his own fucking way. "His ex. She was a little fucked up, and uh, well, she’s the reason he’s got those scars on his face."
"What was her name?"
I shook my head. There were some things I could be forgiven for. Other things weren’t mine to reveal.
"That’s a question for Nash. It’s not my place to tell his stories. But just know, it’s not you that disgusts him. It’s himself, and the fucked up parts of him that he hates."
Her eyes softened, and she looked back at the screen, unshed tears for my brother lingering on her lashes.
"He just shoves those emotions outward so he can keep people from getting too close."
Her tears finally fell, though I pretended I didn’t notice, eyes still on the movie. "I know what that feels like."
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but now, I was driven and afraid to find out.