Page 58 of Born for Starlight

Fuck that shit.

I’d build a way to do both.

Who in the hell could have called this? Three years of work, and it dovetails with my friend's baby sister. What were the fucking odds of that?

"Matthew?"

The tablet was dark before her second step. Old habit. An ugly one, tonight.

Angelica stood in the bedroom doorway in my t-shirt, hair tangled, eyes at half mast.

"Hey," I said. "Did I wake you?"

"The bed got cold." She crossed the marble on bare feet and folded herself into the couch beside me, knees up, toes tucked under my thigh like they were meant to be there. "What are you doing up?"

"Working the Aurora visit. Routes, timing, the staff list." I tipped my head at the dark tablet. "And I'm still waiting on information about Luzia."

It wasn't a lie. Not exactly. I was still waiting on information about Luzia. More information. But if Angelica ever learned the information I was holding back right now, she'd rip my lungs out through my throat, and I'd deserve it.

"I keep thinking about her." She pulled a throw pillow into her lap and wrapped her arms around it. "She's so little, Matthew. She's sick, she's in a hospital in a city where she doesn't have one single person who belongs to her."

"The sisters love her."

"The sisters love seventy kids at a time." She looked out the window at the waking city. "You know what I keep coming back to? I was her. Same country. Same kind of building. Same nobody. Then three brothers decided I was theirs, and I got a whole family out of it. Parents, brothers, a ridiculous small town that acts like I never left. I didn't earn any of it. I was two. I got lucky."

"Angelica."

"I know I was blessed. I've always known it." Her voice went quiet, which with her meant serious. "So, what did Luzia get? A camera pointed at her once. And me. A stranger, losing sleep, trying to track her down at a hospital. If I could give her what I got, Matthew. Safety like I had. Just one little girl, with people who belong to her."

She didn't finish.

She didn't have to. I heard the whole sentence she wasn't saying, and it had adoption papers written all over it.

I was already holding back things that would break her heart in half. Now she was falling for a little girl who might already be out of the country.

Double-fucked doesn't even begin to cover it.

"Tomorrow, I want to call the hospital myself," she said. "I mean it. If your contacts can't get through, I'll be a very famous nuisance until somebody puts a doctor on the phone."

"Give me twenty-four hours before you unleash yourself on a Brazilian switchboard."

"Twenty-four. Then I go full movie-star Angelica with stubborn Drakos added in."

"God help São Luís." I reached over and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "You know what I saw today? The biggest heart on display that I’ve ever seen. You had seventy kids, a press caravan, a giant novelty check, and you gave the kids so much of your time and care, when all the while, you were distraught over one little girl."

"Flattery." Her eyes narrowed, but her mouth curved. "You're deflecting."

"I'm multitasking." I cupped the back of her neck and kissed her, slow, until her breath changed and the pillow slid off her lap. "It's four o’clock in the morning, sweetheart. Come back to bed."

She laughed low in her throat and let me pull her up off the couch. I steered her toward the bedroom with my hands on her shoulders, and she leaned back into me the whole way.

Warm.

Trusting.

Mine.

The tablet stayed dark on the table behind us.