Chapter 30 #2
“Rafe, none of this is making sense.”
“Then let’s just go back to the beginning,” he says. “That day on the pier, didn’t you know, when you looked at me, there was something about me that was different from anyone you’d ever met?”
Slowly, she nods. She’s still glaring at him, but he’s looking at her like he needs her to hear this, like he needs her, period. Slowly, she sits back down.
“Tell me the truth,” she says.
“My given name is Malach Rafael. It means God heals.”
She shakes her head, tears burning her eyes again. “I don’t believe you,” she whispers.
“May I show you?”
Rafe puts out his hand. She looks at him. He nods. She understands to place her hand over the top of his. He threads his fingers through hers.
A strong and sudden current courses through her, forcing Dez to shut her eyes. It starts in her hand but moves throughout her body, her neck and her feet, her elbows and her eyes.
“Oh,” she says involuntarily. It’s something like warmth, but not precisely warmth.
Dez doesn’t have a name for what she feels, because it’s beyond anything she’s experienced before.
Tranquility floods her, pure and transcendent.
It reaches deep into her core, deeper than she even knew she went, pouring into all the broken, empty places inside.
She breathes, but it’s not like normal breathing.
Her chest feels open, light, her body receptive to a new sensation of wholeness that spreads all the way to her broken heart. It’s so beautiful.
So clearly divine.
She whips her hand away.
“What the fuck was that?” she gasps.
Rafe looks down at his empty hand. “Healing.”
“Don’t heal me. My brother is dead. I’m supposed to be cut open.” Her voice hitches. “Why couldn’t you heal him?”
“I did,” Rafe says quietly. “The night of the accident. Right after I left you on the road. I healed him as much as I was able to … as much as I was allowed, Dez. And so he made it to the hospital. Held on all this month. Long enough for you to be the one to make his film.”
She runs her eyes over Rafe’s gorgeous features, once so irritatingly perfect, now imbued with something richer, something previously unimaginable. She shakes her head and glares at him. “You really are an angel.”
A smile spreads across his face.
“So,” Dez whispers. “There’s a God? God is real.”
Dez had been raised, of course, to believe, but over the years there had been so many times when she doubted God that they started to stack overwhelmingly together.
Tonight, confronting her brother’s death, was the kind of moment she’d expect she might swear off God forever.
What God would let this happen, after all?
Except, here’s Rafe, inviting her to believe in the miraculous.
“I used to know angels who knew Them,” Rafe says.
“Them?” Dez whispers. A thrilling sense of truth, of rightness, flows through her.
Rafe nods. “In the heavenly realm, everything is paired. You’ll see.”
“What are They like?”
Rafe considers this. “It’s been a while since anyone has experienced Them. Some say They’ve gone back to the time before time.”
“What does that mean? Why would God leave?”
“I can answer a lot of your questions. But there are a few that are beyond even me.” He tips his head toward the Vault. “Can we go back inside? Moriah’s about to explain something I think you’re going to want to hear.”
Dez shakes her head. She can’t go back in there.
“If you don’t attend the gala until the end, you don’t pass the midterm, Dez. It’s one of Acheron’s ironclad rules.”
“I can’t.”
“We’ll hang in the shadows,” Rafe assures her. “No one needs to know we’re there.” He puts his hand out again.
“No more healing,” Dez warns.
“I’ll keep it to myself.”
She looks at his hand. Still doesn’t take it. She’s so exhausted, so tremendously sad that she wants something real to hold on to. But she knows this isn’t it.
“Why are you being kind tonight? Because my brother died?”
“I’m sorry your brother died.”
“I won’t get used to it,” she says. “Odds are you’ll be a dick again tomorrow.”
Rafe runs somber, penetrating eyes over her face. “Ask me why I haven’t been kind to you before tonight.”
She meets his eyes. “Why haven’t you been kind?”
“Because”—he draws a breath—“from the moment I met you, it was clear that you would change me. In ways I really want to be changed. But I could also see what lay ahead for you.” He gestures around them.
“I knew your brother would soon die, that you would make his film. I knew that this night would come when you would stand in the Vault and learn the truth. I knew that it would break your heart.” He reaches for her, strokes her hair.
“What I didn’t know was whether you’d stay once you found out.
And this part’s selfish and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t bear to get close to you if after tonight, you left.
You could have used a better friend these past few weeks.
I wanted to be it. But I’ve been scared I might lose you. ”
Dez can’t believe what she’s hearing. It makes her angry, and at the same time, it makes sense.
“You knew all this, yet you don’t know whether I’ll choose to stay?”
He shakes his head. “That’s a mystery. Because it’s up to you.”
Dez stares into his azure eyes, remembering the first night they met. “Well, I hope you got it all out,” she says.
“Got all what out?”
She pushes him lightly. “Being an asshole.”
“I think I did.”
She takes his hand. She takes an angel’s hand. Knowing what he is, feeling power coursing through him—one that’s always been there, one she finally has a word for.
Angel.
“Is this a truce?” she says. “You and me? Are we cool now?”
Rafe grins. “If you decide to stay here,” he says as they walk back to the Vault, “things are going to change. Tomorrow, we’ll be on the same side.”