Page 117 of Angels Are Falling

I’d thrown the door wide open for a stranger and handed him my wife and family, and I had never done the one thing any sane man does first.

I hadn’t asked who he was.

I couldn’t sleep.

I told myself it was diligence. I told myself a lot of things. That any reasonable man would want to know. That I was doing it for my family. That it had nothing to do with the sick green thing that turned over in me every time I saw his hand at the small of her back and heard Caden’s flat voice saying years.

I found the man through someone I had met in Dubai, discreet, expensive, no questions, exactly the sort of private investigator I needed. I gave him Kai’s name and one instruction. Everything. The money, the history, the parents, the whole shape of the man, all the way back to wherever it started. Whatever was there. I needed to know who I’d let into my home because the man was notoriously private. There was almost nothing about him available through conventional means.

It took less than two days and an obscene amount of money. He’d used every arsenal at his disposal to get me the answers.

When the file arrived, it was thicker than I’d braced for, and I made myself wait until I was at work. Some instinct I didn’t examine told me not to open it under his roof. I shut my office door for absolute privacy and opened the document with trembling hands.

The file started where I’d told him to start. At the beginning. His parents.

I read the first page.

Then I read it again, slower, because the words hadn’t gone in the first time and left me staring at the paper like a man who’d forgotten how to read.

I set the file down on the table, carefully and gently, and I sat there. I did not move for a long, long time.

Everything I thought I knew about him was the top inch of something with no bottom.

And I’d already let him all the way in.

Chapter

Thirty-Five

AMELIE

The check was folded in my back pocket.

I’d written it that morning with Kai’s checkbook. It was my checkbook, too, I supposed, since he’d added my name to every account he owned and reminded me a dozen times to use them. I checked the number twice. It wasn’t a repayment. It was a thank-you, years overdue, for everything Rose had covered for me throughout college. A few months ago, I would’ve never dreamt of using Kai’s money to pay back my friend. But now, what was mine was his, and his was mine. We had truly become one, and it no longer felt odd to repay Rose with our funds.

Through the kitchen window, I watched our lively backyard. Smoke rose off the grill in thin gray ribbons. Caden stood over the coals, and Kai stood beside him, sleeves rolled. Two of the scariest men I had ever met, presiding over hamburgers. It was eerily domestic. The kids orbited them, Bella supervising the grilling efforts, and the twins locked in a silent custody battle over the tongs.

Stefan had made himself scarce since my birthday party, and I hadn’t followed up. I was still haunted by Kai’s face after he caught us in bed. That broken look made my heart shut down automatically where Stefan was around. Not that it mattered. Stefan had his friends, and it was all that seemed to matter to him. I didn’t know what that meant for our marriage or the future. All I knew was that I couldn’t bear to hurt Kai again, and that meant putting distance between Stefan and me.

I shoved the thoughts of my precarious future out of my mind. Today was about soaking up the remaining time I had left with my best friend, and I wanted to focus on that.

Rose and Caden stuck around after my birthday so we could catch up. In the last few days, I had performed the story for Rose as taught by Kai’s publicist and his lawyers. Stefan was my amicable ex-husband. We bought a house with adjoining wings for the children’s sake. Co-parenting. The word tasted like a press release every time I said it, mostly because it was one.

Rose hadn’t pushed me about the holes in my story. Who’d believe I was happily married to one man at the beginning of the year, only to be perfectly happy with an entirely different person by the end of it? She just loved me too much to grill me if I wasn’t ready to share my truth, and I was grateful for the grace.

“Okay, out with it.” Rose sat at the kitchen island with her oat milk latte. “You’ve been fidgeting since I sat down.”

Marriage had steadied her. The girl who used to rehearse ordering coffee and couldn’t speak in public unless intoxicated could now call out nonsense on the first offense.

“I wanted to give you something before you left.” I pulled the check out and slid it across the island, face down.

She looked at the check. “Why are you giving me this?”

“It’s for college,” I told her.

Her eyebrows climbed. “Amelie.”

“Don’t fight me on this. Just put it in your purse and deposit it when you are home.” My scholarship had covered the cost of my books, room and board, and tuition. Rose had covered everything else. Morning coffees. Dinners. Drinks. Even clothes at times. “This is everything you covered for years. Plus interest.”