Forever Mine

  Angel would make sure of it. They walked out of the station. He’d seen her send her calls to voicemail the whole time they’d been in there. Angel was sure it was Sydney. Just as they put their seatbelts on, Sarah’s phone went off again and she finally answered it.

  She greeted him and then her voice broke. “I know. I’m sorry I was at the police station…..no I’m okay. Yes, I’m with Angel. I’ll tell you about it later okay?” She lowered her voice but Angel heard it and wished to God he hadn’t. “I love you too.”

  The blatant jealousy scorched through him. He stepped on the gas. Just a few hours ago he was anxious to kill for her, and now he just wanted her out of his car, his life.

  He sped into her driveway. The rain was really coming down. He didn’t bother to turn the engine off or even attempt to soften his tone. “I hope you make sure that asshole goes to jail.”

  Sarah nodded and gathered her things and the plastic zip lock the police woman had stuck all her paperwork in to keep it dry from the rain. “Thank you, Angel. You really saved me today… I don’t know what else to say to you. I just wish…”

  She didn’t finish and opened the door in a hurry to get out.

  He was out of patience. “Wish what, Sarah?”

  “That I could understand how you got over me so fast,” She got out and closed the door.

  Angel let his head fall back on his seat. Unbelievable.

  He turned off the engine, opened the car door and jumped out. “You really think I’m over you?” He yelled over the hood of car.

  Sarah didn’t answer. She didn’t even turn around she was halfway up the walk.

  Angel charged around the car toward her. He called her name again and she stopped and turned around. Angel saw she was crying.

  “I can’t even imagine being over you and moving on, but you’re already with someone else.”

  “What?” He couldn’t believe she was doing this. “Don’t throw this shit back on me, Sarah. I’m not the one who-”

  “Angel, I know you ran back to Dana two days after we broke up.”

  Angel could see she was furious, and his mind raced to think about what she’d just said. “I went to talk to her, that’s all.”

  “Whatever, it doesn’t matter, I hope you two are happy,” She began to turn back toward the house.

  “No, no, wait,” Angel took a few steps forward. He wasn’t about to let her turn this on him. “Only reason I wanted to talk to her was because she had information on you.”

  Sarah spun around. “What the hell would she know about me?”

  “Someone saw you that night. The night you and Sydney were holding hands and hugging on the beach,” Just the image tossed his insides. “She called me that night to tell me and it made no sense to me. I ignored it. But after finding out the truth, I wanted to confirm exactly what it was she had seen.”

  Thinking about sitting there and getting the confirmation from Dana, made him relive the pain, and he started to walk away. He was so done with all of this.

  “I’m so sick of crying over you, Angel,” He heard Sarah sob. “You’ll never understand about me and Sydney and he’s always going to be a part of my life.”

  It killed him to hear her so upset. But she was right. He’d never accept it. He couldn’t. He turned around to face her. She looked as broken as he felt. But it only made him angrier, she’d done this damn it. Not him. “What do you want me to understand, Sarah? You really expect me to be okay with you moving in with this guy? This guy you’re in love with?”

  “I. Am. Not… in love with him!” she yelled. “I love him, it’s different.”

  They were both getting soaked but it didn’t matter. Angel had a feeling this would be the last time he’d ever talk to her and he wasn’t holding anything back. He laughed in disbelief. “Like a brother, Sarah?”

  “Yes!”

  He stalked forward but stopped a few yards away from her. “What about the dress?”

  Sarah stared at him wide eyed at an apparent loss. Angel was glad the storm was so loud or his booming voice might bring out the neighbors. He could see Sarah trying to make sense of what he was yelling about.

  “That fucking dress, Sarah! You’ve never dressed like that for me, but you wore it for your brother? You expect me to believe-”

  “It was for you.” She cried.

  She was still lying. Incredible. Angel clenched his teeth but was unable to calm his voice. He was too riled up. “I wasn’t even gonna see you that night!”

  “But you were!” Her eyes lit up. “Remember? You were supposed to pick me up but then Sydney showed up last minute. I didn’t want you to find out like that so I left with him and called you.”

  Angel thought about it for a second, still breathing hard. It didn’t make sense. She never dressed that way.

  Sarah dropped everything in her hands on the lawn hurried toward him. She stood right in front of him and Angel looked into her flooded eyes. “This is gonna sound so stupid. I was gonna to tell you that night about Sydney. I swear. I worried about it the whole day. Valerie came up with the idea that dressing that way would distract you. I don’t know, make things easier. I didn’t have time to change when he got there. But the dress, the hair, all of it was for you, Angel, not him.”

  Feeling an enormous weight lift from his heart and being so close to her, he had to resist pulling her to him. But he did move the wet strands of hair away from her face. Her eyes searched his. For the first time since they’d broken up, he began to feel a glimmer of hope. If only he could get past her going back to live with Sydney. “So, when do you go back to Arizona?”

  She sniffed, and bit her lip. “I may not.”

  Angel’s heart had just started to calm and he felt it start up again. He lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  “My mom may be getting out of jail sooner than we thought. Maybe a couple months. That’s why I’m still here. I went to see her and she asked me to hold on a little longer. But she also said it was up to me where we would live once she’s out.”

  His eyes searched hers now. “So, what are you gonna do?”

  “That depends.” She had that crinkle between her eyebrows.

  Angel frowned. There was always something. “On what?”

  “On you.” She seemed to hold her breath.

  It took a second for it to sink in. But when it did he pulled her into his arms. She was startled but laughed. “Don’t play with me, Sarah. You’ll really stay?”

  Her eyes welled up again. “You want me to?”

  Angel smiled bringing his hands to her face and touched his forehead to hers. He stared in her beautiful eyes before kissing her tenderly. He’d missed her scent, her lips, her taste so much. He was never letting her go again.

  Sarah pulled away and gazed in his eyes. “I love you, Angel.”

  Hearing her say it for the first time choked him up. “Say it again,” he whispered.

  Her eyes sparkled and she laughed. “I love you.”

  “I love you too, baby.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Sarah laid there tracing the engraving on the chain around Angel’s neck with her fingers. She glanced at her wrist and smiled at the charm bracelet. She’d taken it off and refused to even look at it the entire time they were broken up, almost mailed it to him, when she’d lost all hope. Something in her heart wouldn’t let her and she was glad now she hadn’t.

  After a week of being back together they still couldn’t get their fill of each other. Angel had made sure he closed the restaurant every night ever since and Sarah was right there with him each night. She wondered if his parents had any idea of the things they did in that back room.

  Angel lifted himself up on his elbow and played with her hair. “How’d you get so close?” He stared in her eyes. “You and Syd?”

  Ever since they’d been back together Sarah made it a point to keep any talk of Sydney to a minimum and up until now Angel really hadn’t asked too much. She knew once the dust settled
it would be coming and now here it was. She had prepared herself, she wasn’t keeping anything from him again. No matter how uncomfortable.

  “Well, I told you we moved a lot when I was little. So, I never had any friends. As soon as I made them I had to leave them. By the time we moved to Flagstaff, I’d given up making friends. Then Syd befriended me,” she smiled remembering. “He didn’t have any friends either, though he didn’t admit it at first. He was really chubby.”

  “Sydney was fat?” Angel seemed amused by that.

  Sarah smiled trying not to roll her eyes. “Yes, he got pretty big in middle school. I just never made much other friends ‘cause I wasn’t sure how long we were gonna be there. Then my mom told me her job was made permanent and we were staying put. By then me and Syd had already gotten pretty close. Since my mom was always gone, I spent a lot of time at his place. It became my home away from home and his family treated me like their own.”

  Angel’s eyebrow lifted. “And he never made a move?”

  Sarah shook her head. “Never. Like I said he was real heavy for a while there and very self conscious about it and I was self conscious about my teeth.”

  “Your teeth? You have beautiful teeth.”

  “Yeah, now, after three years of braces. They were a crooked mess before. So, me and Syd, were a couple of self conscious misfits who leaned on each other for years,” She smiled again thinking of the memories. Angel was staring at her so she went on. “Anyway, middle school is when I started nagging him about losing weight. That’s when I started running. It all began to get him to lose weight. We started to run every day, that’s when my love for running began. By high school he’d lost so much weight, then he stretched and that really helped. We joined the track team together and now you’d never even know he was so heavy.”

  Angel chuckled. “Yeah, I would’ve never guessed he was a fat ass.”

  Sarah frowned but was glad Angel wasn’t being uptight about it. Angel leaned over and kissed her sweetly. It amazed her how happy it made her just being with him.

  He kissed her some more and then it came, “Babe, I know he’s your friend. And I’m gonna try my damndest to be as understanding about this as I can, but I need to know everything. I can’t have you keeping things from me, again, especially when it comes to him. So, if he ever calls you, I don’t need to know everything you two talk about, I just don’t want you keeping it from me.”

  He must’ve seen something in her expression, or felt her tense up because he stopped then asked, “What?”

  “You want me to tell you every time he calls?”

  Angel’s eyes narrowed, “How often does he call, Sarah?”

  Just like that, the complete honesty thing went out the window. Sarah knew it was wrong but with that look in his eyes and the tone of his voice there was no way the truth was going fly here. Telling him their calls were daily was out of the question. “Well, he doesn’t do the calling every time, but we talk …a few times a week.”

  Sarah saw Angel trying to stay poised. He rolled his neck like he always did as if that would somehow release the tension. As far as she knew it never worked.

  “I’ll work on it,” she added quickly.

  “What does that mean? I’ll work on it? Is it really that big a sacrifice?”

  “No, but…you just don’t understand-”

  “I’m trying to,” he laid his head back, putting his hand behind his head.

  Sarah lifted herself onto her elbow. “Is once a week too much?”

  He stared at her but said nothing and now it was her turn to do the kissing. She leaned over and pecked his lips, then kissed the dimple that formed on his cheek with his furrowed expression.

  He put his free hand behind her neck. “Sarah, Babe, I don’t want you to think I’m being insensitive. I get he’s your long time friend and all. It’s just gonna take me some time to get used to this.”

  Sarah kissed him a little longer this time. “I know it is. We’ll make this work. We have to ‘cause I don’t want to be apart from you ever again.”

  Angel smiled, and pulled her to him with both arms now. “I love hearing you say stuff like that,” He kissed her long and deep then stopped to add. “And yeah, I wanna know every time you talk to him.”

  Sarah was just going to have to cut down on the talks with Sydney because lying to Angel was a thing of the past. She wouldn’t be making that mistake again. They made love again and then Angel took Sarah home without another word about Sydney.

  *

  Angel’s heart almost stopped when Sarah called him crying. He couldn’t make out a word she was saying. But then he heard her laugh in the midst of all the crying. “She’s getting out the day after tomorrow!”

  For weeks they’d been waiting on the date and finally Sarah’s mom was being released from jail. Angel couldn’t be happier. Sarah’s mom would be there for her during the coach’s trial.

  “I told you, baby, believe.” It was late in the evening and a school night but they still stayed up and talked. At first Sarah had the insane idea that she was going to Arizona alone to pick up her mom. Like she had when they were broken up. There was no way Angel was going to let that happen.

  Sarah’s aunt couldn’t take the day off on such short notice so Angel made arrangements and drove Sarah himself. Her mom wasn’t being released until late in the afternoon and Sarah suggested they stop at Sydney’s to visit for a little bit, said Sydney had invited them. Angel wasn’t exactly looking forward to it but for Sarah’s sake he pretended to be fine with it.

  When they reached Syd’s place Sarah turned to him, “You sure you’re okay with this?”

  Not really but he may as well get it over it. As far as he was concerned, Sarah was a part of his life for good now, so if Sydney was part of hers he had to get used to this. “Yep, I’m good.”

  She leaned over and kissed him before getting out of the car. Angel walked around and met her at the sidewalk. Sydney was already standing on his porch with a blonde girl.

  He met them at the bottom of the porch steps, greeted Angel first and introduced him to his girlfriend Carina. Then he turned and greeted Sarah.

  “I missed you, Lynni.”

  Sarah let go of Angel’s hand to hug him. “I missed you too.”

  Angel watched as Sydney embraced her long and hard. “God, you look good.”

  He focused on not grinding his teeth too hard and tried not to frown. Sydney looked up and met Angel’s eyes even as he still held Sarah. “I guess happiness’ll do that to you huh?”

  Sydney’s mom made them lunch and they ate in the backyard under the patio. Sarah and Sydney talked about the track team she’d left behind in Arizona and she filled him in on the details of her mother’s early release. Angel glanced at Carina who, like him, hadn’t said very much, and wondered if she was as unsettled about their relationship as he was.

  They didn’t stay too long, and Angel guessed it was because Sarah sensed his discomfort even though he did his best to try not to cringe every time Sydney called Sarah, Lynni.

  Sydney hugged her just as hard when he said goodbye. This time Angel turned away casually, not wanting to see the way Syd’s hands caressed her back. He was thankful neither professed their love for one another or he may have snapped.

  Sarah squeezed his hand as they drove away, “Thank you for that. I know that couldn’t have been easy.” She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it.

  “Why does he call you Lynni?” Angel didn’t want her to think he was angry but he couldn’t help asking.

  She shrugged. “From the moment I met him and I introduced myself as Sarah Lynn, his first remark was, you look more like a Lynn than a Sarah. After a while it turned into Lynni.” She kissed his hand again. “Does that bother you?”

  Angel decided to just be honest. “I hate it.”

  Sarah laughed. “Why?”