Page 126 of Angels Are Falling

Finally.

Finally, I had broken the spell he had put on her. Hope hit my bloodstream hard—her stilled hands, the question building on her lips—and for two whole seconds I stood there and let myself believe that I could snap my wife out of this hold he had over her.

“Fuck. My head,” Kai murmured. He, who had never once in my presence produced a small sound, made his voice come out cracked and careful.

Amelie immediately abandoned her interest in pursuing the truth. “Kai. You might be concussed. Okay. Okay. Don’t move. Do you feel nauseous?”

“Only a little.”

“How’s your vision?”

“It’s really fucking bright.”

“I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

“No, Princess. Give me a minute. I’ll be fine.”

“Kai. This might be serious.”

“I’m okay, I promise. Just stay here with me.”

“Okay. Then follow my finger. Can you do that?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said, as if it was costing him monumental effort.

And over her bent head, Kai looked at me. The corner of his mouth moved just for a second. If I hadn’t spent my whole adult life behind a camera waiting for the truth to cross a face, I’d have missed it.

He was faking it. And I watched, helplessly, as Amelie bought his victim act. Everything I told her was already forgotten. I could have screamed the truth until my voice tore. Volume wasn’t the problem here. There was a time when she’d have believed me, and now, even with evidence, Amelie wouldn’t see reason.

A memory arrived, uninvited, from the kitchen of my old home. My mother was at the stove, my father doing the crossword. They had just informed me they’d be turning the guest bedroom into a room for Amelie. It was a dream for any seventeen-year-old to have their girlfriend sleep in the room across from them. But it didn’t stop my curiosity—why would they do such a thing?

My father hadn’t looked up from the paper. “Because no one in this world will ever love you the way that girl loves you.”

They knew Amelie was lonely in her big house, that her father was never there, and they gave her a room to make her happy. Because in their eyes, the girl who loved their son more than anything else in the world deserved to be happy.

Even then, my parents knew no one would love me as much as Amelie.

I was almost relieved that my parents weren’t alive to see what I had done with Amelie’s unconditional love. They’d be ashamed of the person I had become. Because no matter how prettily I had dressed it up, the truth was still irrefutable.

I sold Amelie and her unconditional love to live out my fantasy life.

All my adult life, people had told me that my wife loved me blindly. Friends had confirmed it, sometimes burning with jealousy.

Amelie is blind when in love. Lucky bastard.

Yet I convinced her to marry another man, and she did it because she loved me too much. Because she was blind when she was in love, and I had exploited it for my own selfish desires. And now…

Now, she was blindly in love with Kai.

Twenty feet away, my wife was cradling another man’s face like the world would crack if she let go. She was murmuring to him—too low for the words to reach me—but nevertheless, I recognized the weight behind it. As I was listening to my wife comfort him, I realized she was never going to hear me again at any volume because she was looking at Kai the way she’d once looked at me.

The man bleeding in the grass knew it, too.

“Amelie.” I tried once more, quieter. “He isn’t who you think he is. And he hit me too. Look at my face.”

“He was defending himself!” Furious tears spilled from her eyes, the scarf going red under her hand. She only got angrier at the sight of his blood. “I saw you. You attacked him! What was he supposed to do, stand there and let you?”

“He hit me, too⁠—”