Page 118 of Angels Are Falling

“You don’t owe me interest. You also don’t owe me anything⁠—”

“Yes, I do. You did so much for me. Please just let me pay you back.”

Rose slid the check back across the marble with one finger, gentle and unbudging. “Am. You don’t owe me anything because Kai already paid us.”

“What?”

“He deposited money into Caden’s account.” She said it lightly. “For all the college stuff. He even returned the money Caden had sent you and Stefan for your wedding.”

The wedding gift from Caden. The check that had covered Stefan’s parents’ funeral when we couldn’t. Kai had reached years into my past and quietly erased all my debt.

I frowned. “How did he even know that I owed you money?” For a horrible moment, I wondered if Rose had been resentful all this time and mentioned it to Kai. Did she feel used? That humiliating phone call with Caden and Rose, when I’d called to ask for money, still kept me up at night. I’d never wanted money to become an issue between us.

Rose clocked my mortified expression and held up her palms. “I didn’t say anything to Kai, I swear. He just knew about it and sent us the money.”

“Why would Kai repay the stuff from college when I never even said anything about it?”

She shrugged, unbothered. “Probably the same reason he sponsored the scholarship. He’s always loved you. You know that.”

The refrigerator hummed. Outside, Bella shrieked at something.

“What scholarship?”

“Your college scholarship, silly.”

When I didn’t move, Rose set down her mug.

“When Caden told me that Kai built an entire scholarship foundation just for you… my God, I’ve never heard of anything more romantic.” She smiled at the memory, as if this were a story we told together at parties.

She thought this was information I already knew, not something I was hearing for the first time.

“I can’t believe he has been in love with you since you were in college. Caden was sure it would never amount to much. He didn’t think you and Stefan would ever split up.”

She kept talking. I stopped being able to hear her.

A dinner assembled itself in my mind from months ago. Candlelight. Champagne. Kai telling the story of a girl he’d loved for years.

There’s something to the power of observation. Soon, I knew her like the back of my hand.

She got married.

She isn’t that kind of woman, and I wouldn’t have loved her if she were.

I had been jealous of that girl. And for the last several weeks, I had hated her a little, too. The one that got away. I’d measured myself against her in mirrors. I’d lain awake next to Kai, wondering what she had that I didn’t, whether he would trade if given the chance.

The one that got away had never gotten away at all. She’d been standing in his kitchen this whole time, holding a checkbook with his name on it. Wearing his ring. Hating herself by accident.

It was me. It had always been me.

And beneath that realization was another thought: if he had been the one behind my scholarship, years before I ever learned his name, then how long, exactly, had he been watching me?

“I’m sorry about your divorce, but I’m glad you and Stefan are on good terms,” Rose was saying. “And I’m really happy that things worked out with Kai. Watching the two of you these past few days has been straight out of a movie.” She pressed a hand flat to her chest. “By the way, when did he tell you that he was the one who sponsored your scholarship? I’m dying to know the whole story.”

Because Rose had been enamored by my love story, and because I was in disbelief, it didn’t dawn on either of us that the patio door had been open for some time and that two people had overheard what Rose had accidentally revealed.

Kai was carrying a platter, Caden behind him with the long grilling fork. Kai looked at me the way he always did, first, before anything else in the room, and whatever was on my face told him that I’d figured it all out.

Caden realized it, too. He never told his wife the extent of my knowledge about Kai. He looked at me for a second. Then at Kai. And finally at his wife.