Page 119 of Angels Are Falling

“Rose.” Caden’s keys were already in his hand, though I never saw him take them out. “We should get going.”

“But our flight’s not for another five hours.”

“We should get ahead of traffic.”

“But we were in the middle of⁠—”

“The traffic,” Caden said pleasantly, which from him was a filibuster.

Kai set the platter down with the exaggerated care of a man buying time. “Amelie.”

“The kids are still outside.” My voice came out level. Somewhere in my mind, I was screaming, but here in the kitchen, I sounded like a woman in control of her emotions. I didn’t want to lose control in front of Caden and Rose. “Can you please watch them while I walk Rose out?”

He searched my face. I watched him look for anger and not find it—because I had no idea what I felt right now—and I watched the it unsettle him more than shouting would have. He was fluent in my temper. He had no dictionary for my calm.

“Of course,” he said, finally.

Outside, Rose hugged me on the driveway, and I held on a beat too long.

“New York for New Year’s,” she said into my hair. “Both of you, no excuses. I already told Kai. Poppy’s doing her vow renewal, and she wants you there.”

Poppy was Rose’s cousin and a friend of mine by proxy. She couldn’t care less if I attended her vow renewal, but I still agreed. “New Year’s.”

We chatted for a few minutes, Rose blissfully unaware of the atomic bomb she had dropped. After she finally climbed into the car, Caden rounded the hood to the driver’s side. Just as I was lifting my hand to wave, he stopped, palm resting on the door.

“Go easy on him,” he told me.

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Whatever you’re about to do with what Rose told you.” There was no apology in it, and no request, either. “Just go easy on him.”

In all the time I had known Caden, he had never advocated for another man’s cause.

A laugh escaped me, short and disbelieving. “Go easy on him? No one in the history of the world has ever suggested that Kai Cavendish needs someone to go easy on him.”

His gaze went past me to the house, and his voice shifted so slightly I might have imagined it. “He was drowning before you. Because of you. He’s finally himself again after years of self-destructive behavior. So, go easy on him.”

The cold that went through me had nothing to do with the ocean breeze. Kai and self-destructive behavior didn’t go together. “Are we talking about the same Kai Cavendish? Tall, dark hair, insanely levelheaded.”

“There were a few years in the middle where he wasn’t so levelheaded. He lost himself.” He opened the car door. “He was nearly finished by the time you finally noticed him.”

Finally noticed him?

“You brought him back to life, and you’re the only person who can do that for him. Remember that.”

He slid behind the wheel before I could ask more questions. The engine turned over. Rose blew me a kiss through the glass, radiant and oblivious, and the car eased down the drive, and I stood there with my arm still half raised.

What the actual fuck just happened?

I stayed in the driveway long after the taillights turned out of sight, trying to lay the man Caden described over the man I knew, and the edges wouldn’t meet anywhere. Kai folded newspapers into perfect thirds. Kai was calm, a man who had never in my presence been late, loud, or careless.

Kai did not drown.

But Caden made Kai sound self-destructive, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I wrapped my arms around myself against the cold and found myself asking the question Caden hadn’t answered.

What happened to you?

Chapter