A Matter of Time (The Angel Sight Series) (26 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Rayna

I ripped the lettuce into pieces with my hands, not bothering with the knife on the counter. It felt good to be using my hands again this way. Dirt gathered at the bottom of the sink from the carrots, radishes, and tomatoes left in the colander. My vegetables, from my garden.

Dad’s tablet, propped up against its stand, chimed out a ringtone. With a wet finger, I slid the bar at the bottom across to answer the video chat. “Finally,” I said as soon as the picture on the other end came into view. “You’re five minutes late.”

Lee’s face, complete with his new, frameless glasses and slicked aside hair, pixilated on the screen before it cleared. “Sorry, Ray, I was on diaper duty.”

“No way Auntie Rayna’s favorite niece could stir up that much trouble,” I said, dropping the head of lettuce back into the colander.

Gina plopped onto the bed beside Lee, causing the camera on their end to bounce. “Yeah right, why don’t you try babysitting one night? Then you’ll see how sweet and innocent Auntie Ray’s niece really is.”

I waved at Gina, wet fingers dripping onto the counter.

“Damn,
chica
,” she said leaning in closer to her screen. “I think you need to send some of that sun you’ve obviously been getting over our way.

“Yeah, San Francisco’s been so foggy since we moved back.” Lee agreed.

“I’ve been wondering, how is it there, with the city restructured and everything?”

“It’s great for us,” Lee said, using the adorable
us
to answer for him and Gina. “A lot of people are too scared to move back after all the
unpleasantness
here, so we’re renting a house for a killer deal.”

Gina nodded. “Plus it’s really close to our school.”

They were living with Lee’s mom and both attending San Francisco State University full-time. Between free childcare at school and Lee’s mom eager to help out with the baby, they were really making it work.

A sharp squeal pitched through the tablet’s speakers.

“Uh oh,” Gina said, leaving the bed for a second, then coming back with a different kind of angel. “Say
hi
to Auntie Ray, Phoebe.” The almost ten-month-old wore a pale pink dress with hot pink and leopard leggings underneath. Her round face was dark and her tightly curled hair sprang up everywhere, but her eyes and nose were all Luke’s. She was the beautiful product of both her parents.

“Hi, sweetheart!” I beamed, touching the screen and wishing I could hold her, just once.

Gina’s phone chimed. “Oh, sorry, Ray. Gotta go. That’s Luke. He’s on his way to pick up Phoebe for his weekend. We’ll talk later, k?”

“No problem. Bye, Gina. Bye, Phoebe!” I set my sights back on Lee. “You two seem to be handling everything really well. You guys are doing okay?”

Lee glanced over his shoulder before leaning in closer, tugging his screen over so he was centered in the picture. “We’re better than okay. We’re doing great. I mean, it’s hard. A lot of the time it’s hard, but it’s worth it.”

I cracked a smile. “Lee, I’m so happy for you. I’m glad everything worked out.”

His face fell a bit and he got quiet. I’d seen this side of him before, and there was nothing to do but wait him out. “Speaking of happy … any news on … ?”

I held up a hand toward the screen. “What is it about He Who Shall Not Be Named being brought into all of our conversations lately?”

Lee tipped his head a bit. “It’s been six months, Ray. I would have thought you’d have heard something by now. Not a phone call, postcard—”

“Contact is too dangerous. I guess.” Which wasn’t true, since Lee and I had been communicating via video chat since the week I’d arrived in the Caribbean.

“And how are you feeling about that?”

“Lee, please. If I wanted to have a conversation with a therapist, I’d go back to the SS Crazy. Okay? I don’t want to talk about that. At all.”

The door to Dad’s office, around the corner from the dining room, clicked and flew open. He grumbled about the door sticking. My reaction was always, “It’s summer. We live on an island. It’s humid. All the doors stick.” Still, every time he muttered at that particular door when he opened it.

He scratched his cheek and smiled at me. “Who you talking to, Ray?”

“Who else would I be talking to?” I chimed back.

Dad waved at the screen as he passed behind me. “Hey, Lee. Hope everything’s good!”

“Hey, Mr. Evans,” Lee waved back.

Dad poured himself a tall glass of orange juice, then left the kitchen with a parting, “Send your mom and that pretty little girl our love,” before he went around the corner to the den. I heard him start to complain about something to Laylah.

“By pretty little girl, does he me mean Gina or Phoebe?”

I rolled my eyes. “With Dad, who knows?”

“Oh fudge! Fidgety, fudge, fudge,” Gina shouted in the background.

“Do you need help with that, babe?” Lee called over his right shoulder.

“No, hon, it’s okay. You talk to Ray. I’ve got this.”

Phoebe wailed, her screams piercing through the speakers into our kitchen.

Lee scrambled off the bed and leaned into his laptop’s camera. “Hey, Ray, I’ll call you later when we get some quiet time. I want to hear the rest of the story about how everything went down with the angels. You keep putting it off.”

I’d been telling Lee (and sometimes Gina) little bits of the story of San Francisco and the angels—and the Fallen—but I didn’t know if it was a good idea to keep going. I’d spun a quick version of the story to Dad and Laylah, but neither of them seemed too enthusiastic about what I had to say. They knew I wasn’t crazy, that I worked with the angels, and that was as much as they needed. As for Lee, he’d heard more of the story than anyone else. I’d given him details I probably should have withheld. But what could I do? He was my best friend and he wanted to know.

Though, I still told him nothing about Hell—no one here knew a thing about my time in Hell. That wasn’t a story I’d ever share.

“Sure. Next time,” I hedged, trying my best to hide my disappointment. “Talk to you later.”

I pressed the end key on the chat, then finished prepping the salad. The timer dinged for the lasagna a few minutes later, calling Dad and Laylah into the dining room. I placed the salad on the table and watched Laylah carefully truck the hot lasagna over.

Nothing about my little sister screamed little anymore. Her blond hair, bleached lighter by the Caribbean sun, was almost to her waist now. Her face had thinned out a bit, revealing cheekbones even Mom would have been envious of. She was half an inch taller than me, with hints of curves even in the floral beach cover-ups she wore. The girl who I hadn’t seen since she was fourteen was mere months away from being sixteen. I’d also missed two birthdays of my own, one in Hell and one in the coma I’d been in after I’d disintegrated the Fallen. Laylah would start a new school in the fall, as a junior, and I would start online college—thanks to a falsified high school diploma courtesy of the angels. A parting gift for saving the world and ruining my life in the process.

I took my seat across from Laylah at the eight-seater table—much bigger than we would ever need, which was pretty much the motto of the entire house the angels had set us up in. Remembering the salad dressing, I jumped up, and was halfway to the fridge when a bell in the hallway chimed.

I looked around, confused.

“Would you mind getting the door, Ray?” Dad asked around a mouthful of steaming lasagna.

The door? In all the time we’d been here, we’d never had a visitor. That was the way it was supposed to be for a girl whose face had been plastered all over the news for weeks. I grabbed a knife from the counter and slid it behind my back before I pulled the door open.

A blond boy with pink cheeks stood on the porch, the low afternoon sun glowing in his hair.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Cam,” I breathed and dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor as I pulled him inside and hugged him. “I—what—how did you—?”

I couldn’t string a single question together before Dad called out, “You two are letting all the cold air out. Come on in, Cam.”

I narrowed my eyes down the hall toward the dining room. Dad knew. Nice of him to keep me in the loop. I had a hundred thousand questions for him, but they could wait until after dinner. Cam was human, after all; he needed to eat.

Just before I closed the door all the way, Cam turned back to me, standing very, very close. I had to angle my head back so I didn’t bump my forehead into his nose. “He’s waiting on the porch.”

My heart somersaulted. “Well, why didn’t you tell him to come in?” I asked with a smile, fingers still on the doorknob.

Cam stopped me from pulling the door open, stepping in front of me again, this time even closer. When he spoke his voice was soft enough to keep the conversation to ourselves. “There’s something you should know before you go out there.”

His words smacked into me like a motorcycle colliding with a brick wall. I jerked back. “What? What happened?”

Cam lowered his eyes. “He’s … being tested.”

“What? Tested by who?”

Cam parted his lips, but hesitated.

My grip tightened on the doorknob. Kade was one door away from me, and this conversation was keeping us apart. We’d already had enough of that. “Whatever is going on, just tell me. What do I absolutely need to know right this minute?”

His gaze drew up to meet mine. “He’s having issues … with his hunger. He tried to feed on me.”

“What?” My world pitched sideways. I stumbled into the door, clicking it closed.

Cam angled his face into my line of sight. “It was only once. He took nothing. It was a long journey and he was—” Cam shook his head. “No one saw. I’m sure he’ll be fine, but I wanted you to know before … ”

Before I let him into my house with my family.

My fingers brushed over my lips. I blinked once, then nodded to him. “Go sit, have some dinner. I’ll be in in a minute.”

I waited for him to turn and head down the hallway before I walked out into the tropical heat.

Kade leaned against the front porch’s railing dressed in the same pants he wore in San Francisco and a t-shirt.

“Hey,” I said, leaning against the side of the house across from him.

“Hey,” he said back, barely looking up from the blue painted floors of the wraparound porch.

Twelve slats of wood separated us. That and the fact that he almost sucked part of our newly human friend’s soul.

Six months was a long time. People have changed drastically in less than that. Had he?

“It’s good to see you.”

That got his attention. He brought the full force of those brown eyes up to me.

“We did it. The Fallen are all dead.”

“Good. That’s good.” I nodded to the floor, not able to hold his gaze. “Were you the one that … ?”

“No. God, Ray, no.” The surprise and hurt in his tone caught me off guard. “I messed up. I’m assuming Cam told you.”

I nodded, drawing my gaze up, needing to look into his eyes for this, to know if I could believe him. If I could trust him. The thought pressed tiny needles into my heart.

“I had a weak moment. Several weak moments. But I pulled it together and stopped myself. It doesn’t excuse what I did, and I don’t expect you to—”

“Kade, I know what you are. And I know
who
you are. You’re going to have to feed every once in a while. Just … not on our friends.”

“No, I don’t. I had a lot of time to think the last few months. I’ve done the math. If I conserve my energy, live within my means, I can survive maybe twenty years without feeding.”

A rock sank in my chest. “And what happens after twenty years?”

“That’s it.” He gauged my reaction. “Don’t do that. Twenty years is a long time. Longer than we ever thought we’d get together.”

“I don’t want to be a widow at thirty-eight. Or ever.”

His eyebrow perked up. “A widow? Aren’t we jumping a few hurdles here?”

My cheeks heated. “Whatever. We have all the time in the world.”

“If twenty years is all the time in the world.”

Stubborn ass. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” There. It was settled. Sort of. I’d have to make him feed which was going to be so weird, but after everything we’d been through, one mistake would never be the end of us.

So why wasn’t I jumping into his arms and kissing him senseless?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, hurt lacing his words.

“Tell you what?” A mangled paperback copy of my favorite book rested in his hands, the one I used to carry around with me everywhere when we lived together on Earth in his tiny apartment, back when we could barely stand each other.

“That the guy gets hit by a car and killed at the end on his way to see his girlfriend? And how the girl has to pull herself back together, remembering him for the rest of her life, returning to the same beach where they first met every summer until the day she died?”

I swallowed. “I only read that ending once, and I didn’t like it, so I always stopped reading just before that. When they make up.”

“You can’t always pick and choose what you want!” His fingers dug into the cover of the book, bending the pages back.

A lump the size of the island we currently resided on formed in my throat. It hit me then, what was really wrong. He was worried I had changed, too. Six months was a long time. “I know that, I do. Back then, before Hell but after the SS Crazy, I needed something safe, something secure to rely on when I couldn’t rely on myself. That’s not who I am anymore. I know myself.” I let the strength of my breath flit between us. “I figure there’s a time to take risks with your heart, and you can play it safe all you want, until the right ending comes along. Or the right person.” I finally found the courage to leave my side of the porch. “Falling in love with a wingless Fallen angel doesn’t happen every day.” I stood in front of him and touched his hand, still firmly gripping the book. “Once you’ve known that … all-encompassing love, there’s no way to know how everything will end up. You just have to hope they feel the same way about you.”