Austin’s eyes grew wide and I saw fear consuming him from the inside out. He didn’t seem to be able to say or do anything. I knew how I must look when I was angry. It would probably be the most terrifying thing a human would see in their life.
I counted to five and let out a slow breath as I released the boy that was trying to be so tough and heroic for a woman who wasn’t his.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered faintly as I stepped away, resuming my stance against the table. “But you really shouldn’t say things like that to me. Or to Jessica. It might be bad for your health. You shouldn’t put your nose where it doesn’t belong.”
Eyes still wide, he just nodded his head and walked toward the back of the bookstore and tried to look busy. Less than thirty seconds later, Jessica came walking out of the office with Rita.
“You ready?” she said with a smile that was half forced.
“Yeah, let’s go,” I said as she grabbed my hand. I glanced back at Austin who quickly looked away. I was starting to get a little tired of all the guys who looked at Jessica like she was a piece of meat.
X
The next day Jessica was pulled into work when another girl had called in ill. She hadn’t even said good-bye when she left. I felt sick. Our ice cream trip had ended up in a huge fight. She had actually slammed her bedroom door in my face. She tried telling me she didn’t care what happened, that she just wanted to be with me and I tried to tell her that we couldn’t have that anymore.
But in that moment I hated myself, everything I had become. I hated the angels who had tried to take her, I hated Cole for what he had done, I hated the entire afterlife. I wanted to fix this. But how could I do something so selfish?
The gravel crunched as I parked the truck in the tiny lot. I wasn’t sure why I was here or what I expected to get out of this. I wanted some answers, for someone to tell me what was right and what was wrong. It seemed a church should be the place to find someone who could answer that for me.
The chapel was empty when I entered, as I should have assumed it would be on a Friday afternoon. I looked around, making sure no one would be watching from the shadows but my senses told me there was no one around.
I worried I might burst into flames as I knelt at the altar. I wasn’t supposed to be here. Angels weren’t supposed to walk the land of the living. I wasn’t alive. But here I was, searching for answers as any mortal man might in the house of the Lord.
“If you’re out there,” I said quietly with my eyes squeezed shut. “Help me know what the right thing to do is.”
I sat and waited. What was I supposed to be doing? Listening for words to be spoken to me? A feeling from within? I wasn’t sure.
Nothing came for a good three minutes.
The sensation started in my fingertips and crawled up my arms to my chest. The air that flowed through the building suddenly sounded hollow and far away. My vision faded in and out and I struggled to make my eyes focus on the marble floor at my knees.
A chorus of low chuckles resonated from the darkness. I heard them whispering my name, calling me to join them, to go back to where I now belonged.
I gasped for air.
“Are you alright, sir?”
The call of the dead dropped away instantly as a voice from behind me rocked me back to my senses. I realized then that I had dropped to all fours and was shaking violently. An itching like I couldn’t describe ran under the skin of my back as I struggled to fight back what I was.
The priest who stood in the aisle behind me looked concerned and took a hesitant step toward me.
“I’m fine,” I said as I shook my head and climbed to my feet. It took every ounce of concentration I had to keep my wings from erupting. That would make for a difficult conversation. Actually, it might kind of make this priest’s life, seeing a real angel. It would also probably greatly increase the size of his congregation. “Sorry, I just got kind of dizzy.”
“Why don’t you have a seat?” the middle-aged man said as he indicated the front row pew.
I wanted to slip out and avoid this entire situation I had stupidly put myself into but couldn’t do it without offending the man who was trying to be nice. “Thanks,” I said uneasily and sat beside him.
Neither of us said anything as we sat side by side and looked at the stained glass window featuring a baby Jesus.
“Do you believe in redemption, Father?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Ah crap. I really didn’t need to get into a discussion with a man of God in my current… condition, about redemption.
“Of course,” he said with a slight smile as he looked at me. He had the same expression as most did when they looked at me up close. The look that something was wrong with me but they couldn’t figure out what. “Our Lord and Savior died so that we might be redeemed.”
“Even if someone does something so selfish it could destroy someone else for the rest of their life? Even if someone does something to make themselves happier than they could imagine? Even if it’s only for possibly a few days?”
“We all make poor decisions. Hopefully we think long and hard about them before we do something we will regret.”
I nodded as I stared at the ground at my feet. My hand slipped into my pocket and found the small box there. My fingers rubbed it as they did a dozen times a day.
“But there is always forgiveness when we fall,” the priest said in a steady voice.
I wished he hadn’t said that last part. I still didn’t have the answers I was seeking. Try to make the right choice but there is always forgiveness. I wanted someone to tell me exactly what the right choice was here. I doubted you were still entitled to forgiveness after you died. “Thank you, Father,” I said as I stood and walked out the door.
The water lapped at the rocks below us, the slight breeze bringing the salty scent up to where we sat on the rocky ledge. I picked a rock up and threw it out into the water.
Jessica sat next to me, reclined, propping herself up on her elbows. She stared out over the water but I could tell she wasn’t really seeing anything. She’d said less than ten words since we’d left the house and walked over the hill to the ocean.
“Are we ever going to be able to move past this?” I said as I my eyes fixed on the bracelet I had given her at Valentines. The tiny white gold leaves reflected the bright sun.
Her eyes dropped to the ground too but she didn’t respond for a while. “I hope so,” she said softly.
“I don’t want things to be this way,” I whispered. She still didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know how to fix this, Jessica,” I said. I could feel the desperation inside me start to boil up. “Things are so spun out of control I don’t know what to do. I hardly know what is right and what is wrong anymore here. I never had a hard time seeing the line before in my life, but now I’m not sure where it begins and ends.” I took a deep breath and glanced up into her face for a moment before my eyes fell back to the ground.
“I wish things could be different. I wish there was a different way we could have fixed this whole thing. But this is the way things worked out. It’s not perfect but it’s what we have. As long as you’re involved that’s perfect enough for me.”
Jessica took several shallow breaths, her eyes finally drifting from the ocean to my face. “I just don’t understand why we can’t just move on with our lives together,” she finally spoke. “So what if things are a little screwed up. Believe me, I can deal with a screwed up life. I’ve done it my whole life.”
“You don’t understand,” I said in despair as I pressed my hands into my face and dragged them down over my eyes.
“What don’t I understand, Alex?” she said, her voice cracking. “What is it that I’m missing here? I love you, I’m pretty sure you still love me. I don’t want to spend my life with anyone else. What more do we need?”
“Of course I love you, Jessica! But I can’t control what is going to happen to me!” I shouted louder than I had meant to. I’d been telling he
r the same thing over and over.
“I don’t care!” she shouted back as she got to her knees and came closer to me. She took my hand in hers and looked at me with pleading eyes. I could only keep my eyes fixed on the water below me. “Marry me, Alex. Marry me.”
I knew I couldn’t look her in the eye or my already wavering willpower would crumble. I wanted to cry, to fall apart, anything. I felt like every crucial piece of me was shattering inside. I thought it was going to kill me when I shook my head. “I can’t.”
Tears started sliding down Jessica’s face as she closed her eyes for a moment. She dropped my hand and in a movement that was too fast, was gone into the woods behind me.
CHAPTER FIVE
JESSICA
I was hollow after we left California. I moved around in a numb state, my actions automatic and mindless. My emotions were numb after Alex said the things he did, after he killed my hopes of someday calling him my fiancé. People don’t come back from the dead, he would be staying an angel. While Alex was still an angel, he would never completely be mine.
I tried to find hope in this situation, to see a way around this but you can’t overcome death.
I felt myself pulling away from everyone, not that there were too many people to distance myself from. Emily got sick of my non-responsiveness fairly quick. She’d tried to get into an argument with me several times, tried to talk some life back into me but there was little point when I didn’t even respond. Rita was worried about me but as long as I performed my duties at work there was little she could do. Austin backed off, for that I guess I could be grateful. Sal thankfully remained clueless. She didn’t need anything else upsetting her life, she’d dealt with enough already.
Alex knew exactly what was wrong with me. He knew why I was so sullen and where my mind had gone to. He could change it all with four little words but he was never going to.
I felt crushed. After dealing with the insanity that had been my life for so long, I had resigned myself to an existence of unhappiness and solitude. I was never going to have those things in life that other girls had. And then things changed. Alex had been able to accept the things that were happening. More than that, he had saved me from it.
Here was my once chance at a normal life. As normal as it could be, being in a relationship with someone who was dead. And now it was being cut off. Never allowed to continue to grow.
This would be my only chance at this. No one else would ever understand me the way Alex did. No one would ever accept me as I was and with all the impossible things my life involved.
And most importantly, I would never love another man like I did Alex. A love like that didn’t come around more than once a lifetime.
But we were never going to move beyond this point. We were as far as we were going to go.
In a way Jason had been right. As long as angels were a part of my life, I was going to be alone.
X
“Come on, that has got to make you feel a little better,” Emily said as she smiled and waved at the guys across the club. They waved and smiled back. Even though I was trying not to look at them in return, I could tell it was me their all too probing eyes were turned upon. I didn’t understand why, not with Emily standing beside me looking like a Greek goddess.
“How is this supposed to make me feel better?” I said as I pulled her toward a more secluded part of the club. “I just feel like a piece of meat.”
“Well if you don’t want it, I wish I was getting a little more of that attention,” she said as she tried not to let her drink spill. Despite Emily’s claim to be a terrible drunk she had downed a few drinks already. Apparently I was going to be driving her home. “I don’t think they can help it though, just look at you. I don’t have that angelic advantage.”
I shushed her and looked around to make sure no one had heard her. It was unneeded though; the music was pounding so loudly you couldn’t hear anything unless you were right next to the person. The noise was hurting my head. I was a little worried my ear drums might burst.
Emily was right though. With the strobe lights flashing, there was something a little, well… weird with the way it danced on my skin. It seemed just a little too luminescent. It creeped me out a little.
I had come home from work earlier that day to find Emily waiting for me.
“I can’t take this mopey, empty thing you’ve become anymore,” she said as she hauled me into my bathroom. “We’re going out. One way or another you’ll be coming back a little less miserable.”
Just under an hour later she had me buffed, shined, and makeupped to perfection and here we were.
We found an empty table and I tried my best not to touch its sticky surface as we sat down.
“So what’s the deal with you lately?” Emily said bluntly as she turned her eyes on me. “Why have you been so… gone?”
“I haven’t been gone,” I said defensively, noticing another guy leering at me. Why did Emily think this would cheer me up?
“Ugh, don’t even try to pull that crap on me,” she said as she rolled her eyes. “I can hardly even stand to be around you recently. You can barely even look at Alex. And seriously, it’s Alex! What’s up?”
I kept Emily’s stare for a long minute, debating with myself on whether to finally tell someone what was devouring me from the inside out. It would probably feel good to just get it out. “On the night that Cole took me, he told me Alex was going to ask me certain question that night.”
Emily seemed confused for a minute. I had little doubt her slow wit was connected to the drink in her hand.
“Alex was going to ask me to marry him that night,” I spelled it out for her.
“Oh my gosh! Are you serious?” Emily gaped.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “And then Cole came and screwed everything up.”
“Well, why hasn’t he proposed then? I mean, you guys are practically married already!”
I gave a sigh, not really wanting to think about it now. I should have just left things alone. “I don’t really know. He just says that he’s too unsure of everything now that he’s changed.”
“That’s lame,” she said as she took another swig and wiped a stray drip from her chin.
“That’s basically what I said.”
Emily downed the rest of her drink in one swallow. “Well, I don’t see what it really matters. Like I said, you guys are basically married already. What difference is it going to make?”
I didn’t answer Emily. I didn’t want to tell her how to me it would make all the difference. I didn’t tell her how badly I wanted to be Jessica Wright, how badly I wanted to call Alex my husband, or even just fiancé. I didn’t tell her how badly I wanted to be with Alex, all of Alex. And I couldn’t do any of those things until Alex asked me that life changing question. What I had with Alex was more than I could ever have hoped for in a million lifetimes but now that I knew what else was supposed to happen, it didn’t seem enough. We just didn’t seem… finished.
“I think you should get over this. You’ve already got the most amazing guy that has ever existed. What more could you want? Just enjoy what you’ve got.” Her voice dropped just slightly as she added “At least you have someone.”
Her last sentence caught me off guard. Guilt suddenly washed over me. “I’m sorry, Emily. This must sound really immature and selfish.”
She just brushed it off, rolling her eyes at me. “Whatever. I can understand I guess. Every girl dreams of their fantasy guy and their dream wedding dress and whatnot.”
I gave her a half smile. Emily really was a good friend. Even though it wasn’t really working, I appreciated her trying to cheer me up.
“Moping time is over,” she said as she sprang to her feet and pulled me up with her. “Let’s dance!”
I tried to relax and just enjoy myself. I didn’t dance often; actually, I couldn’t remember the last time I had danced. Several guys came and went, mostly dancing with Emily because she didn’t clam up and shy away. Even
if Emily thought it was just dancing, it didn’t feel right to be doing it with another guy.
A pair of black eyes watching me from across the club caught my attention and my head whipped around to get a better look. The man turned and started walking away, his dark hair covering his face. I whipped around again as Emily danced around me.
“Are you okay?” she shouted at me.
I took two steps toward the guy when he suddenly turned toward me. Relief and embarrassment washed over me. I was getting paranoid. Of course it wasn’t Cole.
“Do you want to go home?” Emily asked as I turned back to her, her face showing concern.
I gave a little half smile. “Only if you don’t mind.”
“Come on,” she said as she looped her arm through mine. She dug into her handbag and handed me the keys to her car. “You’re going to have to drive though.”
X
“I have to go to work now,” I said, frustration obvious in my voice. Not looking at Alex, I grabbed my purse off the table and walked out without looking back or saying good-bye.
I slammed the door to my car as I got in and hurled my purse in the passenger seat. Throwing the car into reverse, I backed out of the driveway too quickly, nearly hitting another car in the process. I got a nasty scowl from the man but I didn’t care enough to feel bad for nearly hitting him.
Two cars honked at me as I drove to the bookstore, evidence that I probably should not have been driving. One minute I was driving way too slow, the next I was speeding and swerving in and out of lanes.