Price of Angels (51 page)

              “I…” All the breath rushed out of her lungs, her confession riding it. “I’m pregnant.”

              She stared at the faded lettering on his shirt a long moment, feeling the rapid rise and fall of his chest. The thunder of his heart. Finally, she lifted her eyes, prepared for any number of awful snarls, or dark frowns.

              Instead, his face was perfectly blank. Wide eyes and a relaxed jaw and smooth brow, he stared at her like he didn’t know who she was, or what she’d just said.

              “Michael–”

              “You are?”

              She nodded, and closed her eyes, and turned her face away from him, fighting the awful sting of tears.

              She heard him swallow, the audible gulp. His voice was wooden. “You were on all kinds of meds, after your surgery…”

              “Yeah.”

              “And so you…” He exhaled, breath rustling against her hair. “Okay,” he said. “Okay…yeah.”

              Holly looked at him, startled. “Okay?”

              “Well what am I supposed to say?”

              Her eyes tracked wildly over his face, searching for anger, panic, resentment. “You’re not upset?”

              “Are you?” he countered.

              She prided herself on reading him, but in this moment, she could glean nothing. “I…”

             
Upset
wasn’t the word for what she was.

              “It’s too much,” she whispered. She drew in a shuddering breath. “How could someone like me get so much? I’ve got you, and that’s more than I–” She sniffled, hating the tears that tried to fall. “There has to be a price, doesn’t there? Shouldn’t I have to pay some kind of price, because I got you?” Because he was her avenging angel. Her guardian. Her salvation. St. Michael. “A baby’s too much,” she repeated. “To much to hope for, or to have, or…”

              He took her by both shoulders. “Stop thinking like that,” he said firmly. “Stop it.”

              “But–”

              “Do you not get it, Hol?” Now she saw the anger, blazing in his face. “You live in this old-ass house, full of ugly-ass shag carpet, and you live in it with me.
Me
, Holly. Your car’s older than you are, you work in a truck rental office, and the highlight of your week is watching Stallone movies while I try to shove my hand down your pants. How in the hell is that ‘too much’?”

              She frowned up at him. “Are you trying to tell me my life’s lame?”

              “It is lame. You could have gone anywhere, had anyone, done anything, and you stayed here with me. You stayed here with me,” he repeated, and she saw the flashes of pain and gratitude and wonder deep in the centers of his eyes, and she understood. “You ought to have everything you want,” he said firmly. “There’s no such thing as too much.”

              “You aren’t mad about the baby,” she said, knowing it was true.

              He swallowed, his throat working, Adam’s apple punching. “I want you to be glad that you stayed. Honey, only one thing scares me, and it’s not babies.”

              Tears blurred her vision. She smoothed her hands across the soft cotton covering his chest. “I never thought…and I never expected…never felt like I had any right to want–”

              She threw her arms around his neck, squeezed him as tight as she could.

              His arms came around her and he stroked her hair, hands gentle against the back of her skull.

              She allowed herself to open up to it, let the idea of it all wash into her, warm and healing as saltwater waves. A child that was hers, and his, something new and untouched by darkness, something pure and whole born out of their own broken souls, forged in love and warmth.

              How did she deserve it? How did anyone?

              “I think,” he said quietly against the top of her head, “that there is a price. And I think we paid it already.”

              She sighed against his shoulder, where her face was tucked into the warmth and strength of his spare frame. “Angels are expensive,” she agreed, and she fitted her hands over the wings on his back, imagining she could feel the texture of feathers through his shirt. All those feathers, light, and soft, and hope-scented, lifting her to heaven.

THE END

~*~

The Lean Dogs –

And their old ladies!

- will return in Dartmoor Book III

The Skeleton King

Summer 2015

~*~

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Other Titles from Lauren Gilley

The Walkers

Keep You

Dream of You

Better Than You

Fix You

Rosewood

Whatever Remains

Shelter

The Russells

Made for Breaking

God Love Her

“Things That Go Bang In The Night”

Keeping Bad Company

Dartmoor

Fearless

Price of Angels

The Skeleton King
(Summer 2015)