My heart was beating wildly. Walk away? Stop playing by the rules? “What are you talking about?”
I’d live on the move, constantly hiding, hoping the archangels don’t find me.
“If they did?”
I’d go to trial. I’d be found guilty, but it would give us a few weeks alone, while they deliberated.
I could feel the stricken look on my face. “And then?” They’d send me to hell. He paused, then added with quiet conviction, I’m not afraid of hell. I deserve what’s coming. I’ve lied, cheated, deceived. I’ve hurt innocent people. I’ve made more mistakes than I can remember. One way or another, I’ve been paying for them most of my existence. Hell won’t be any different. His mouth quirked into a brief, wry smile. But I’m sure the archangels have a few cards up their sleeves. His smile faded, and he looked at me with stripped honesty. Being with you never felt wrong. It’s the one thing I did right. You’re the one thing I did right. I don’t care about the archangels. Tell me what you want me to do. Say the word. I’ll do whatever you want. We can leave right now.
It took a moment for his words to settle in. I looked to the Jeep. The wall of ice between us fell away. The wall was only there because of the archangels. Without them, everything Patch and I had been fighting over meant nothing. They were the problem. I wanted to leave them, and everything else, behind and race off with Patch. I wanted to be reckless; thinking only of right here, right now. We could make each other forget about consequences. We’d laugh at rules, boundaries, and most of all, tomorrow. There would only be me and Patch, and nothing else would matter.
Nothing but the promise of what would happen when those weeks drew to a close.
I had two choices, but the answer was clear. The only way I could keep Patch was by letting him go. By having nothing to do with him.
I didn’t realize I was crying until Patch ran his thumbs under my eyes. “Shh,” he murmured. “It’s going to be okay. I want you. I can’t keep doing what I’m doing now, living halfway.”
“But they’ll send you to hell,” I stammered, unable to control the quiver in my lower lip.
“I’ve had a long time to come to terms with it.” I was determined not to show Patch how hard this was for me, but I choked on the tears running down my throat. My eyes were damp and swol en, and my chest ached. This was all my fault. If it weren’t for me, he wouldn’t be a guardian angel. If it weren’t for me, the archangels wouldn’t be bent on destroying him. I was responsible for driving him to this point.
“I need one favor,” I finally said in a small voice that sounded more like a stranger’s than my own. “Tell Vee I walked home. I need to be alone.”
“Angel?” Patch reached for my hand, but I pulled free. I felt my feet walking away, one step in front of the other. Farther and farther from Patch they took me, as if my mind had gone numb and turned all action over to my body.
CHAPTER 13
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON VEE DROPPED ME OFF near the front door to Enzo’s. I was dressed in a yellow printed sundress that walked the line between flirty and professional and was far more optimistic than anything I felt on the inside. I stopped in front of the windows to shake out my hair, which had relaxed into waves after being slept on all night, but the gesture felt wooden. I forced a smile. It was the one I’d been practicing all morning. It felt tight at the edges and brittle everywhere in between. In the window, it looked false and hollow. But for a morning following a night spent crying, it was the best I could manage.
After walking home from Marcie’s last night, I’d curled into bed, but I hadn’t slept. I’d spent the night tormented by self-destructive thoughts. The longer I stayed awake, the more my thoughts took a dizzying departure from reality. I wanted to make a statement, and I was hurting enough not to care how drastic it was. A thought came to me, the kind of thought I never would have entertained in my life before. If I ended my life, the archangels would see it. I wanted them to feel remorse. I wanted them to doubt their archaic laws. I wanted them to be held accountable for ripping my life apart, then ripping it away completely.
My mind swirled and tottered with these kinds of thoughts all night. My emotions shifted through heartbreaking loss, denial, anger. At one point, I regretted not running away with Patch. Any happiness, no matter how brief, seemed better than the long, simmering torture of waking up day after day, knowing I could never have him.
But as the sun began to crack across the sky this morning, I came to a decision. I had to move on. It was either that, or slip into a frozen depression. I forced myself through the motions of showering and dressing, and went to school with fixed determination that no one would see below skin-deep. A pins-and-needles sensation enveloped my body, but I refused to display a single outward sign of self-pity. I wasn’t going to let the archangels win. I was going to pull myself back on my feet, get a job, pay off my speeding ticket, finish summer school with the top grade, and keep myself so occupied that only at night, when I was alone with my thoughts and it couldn’t be helped, would I think of Patch.
Inside Enzo’s, two semicircular balconies spread out to my left and right, with a set of wide stairs leading down into the main eating area and front counter. The balconies reminded me of curved catwalks overlooking a pit. The tables on the balcony were filled, but only a few stragglers drinking coffee and reading the morning paper remained in the pit.
With the help of a deep breath, I took the stairs down and approached the front counter.
“Excuse me, I heard you’re hiring baristas,” I told the woman at the register. My voice sounded flat in my ears, but I didn’t have the energy to try to correct it. The woman, a middle-aged redhead with a name tag that read ROBERTA, looked up. “I’d like to fill out an application.” I managed a half smile, but somehow, I feared it wasn’t anywhere close to believable.