by Fall, Carly
“Yes. Like I told you before, I’m a bad match for the Angel of Affection stuff, but I could immediately see the attraction between you and Adela. Evangeline told me it was to be. I just needed to figure out how to make you see that you loved her.”
Liam stared back at the dancing flames. “That’s all great, Gunnar, but Adela made it pretty clear that I’m not welcome in her life. When she found out that she was going to be human again, she cried, told me twice that she hated me, and never wanted to see me again.”
“Did you tell her your feelings?” Liam startled as Evangeline came into the room, her wings folding at her back.
“Well, hello to you as well,” Liam replied. “Please come in.”
Evangeline stood in front of the fireplace and ignored his sarcasm. “Answer the question, Liam.”
He shook his head.
“Well, didn’t you bother to think that if you were going to tell her she was to be human again, that she would want to know that she would be with you?”
Liam stared at the angel. As far as Adela knew, he thought their amazing night together was a mistake. He’d never told her otherwise and he felt like an even bigger ass. “I never got the chance.”
“Perhaps you should go back to the hospital and rectify things,” Evangeline said.
Liam stood up and glanced at the clock. It was past 10 pm now and visiting hours would certainly be over. He didn’t want to piss off Lucy or any other nurse by barging in and causing another fight with Adela. No matter how badly he wanted to see her and have the chance to explain things, it would have to wait. “I’ll go first thing in the morning.”
Chapter 40
Adela stared at the blank television as she lay in the hospital bed, her reflection gazing back at her. She didn’t know what time it was, but the nurse, Lucy, had left hours ago, and the much less-friendly, nurse, Tricia, had taken her place.
What had Liam done? And more importantly, why had he done it?
She remembered the talk they had while sitting on the couch and she’d been pretty clear that she didn’t belong in this era. Why had he chosen for her to stay, especially when she had the chance to spend eternity in the Inner Circle of Heaven?
It just didn’t make any sense. Now that she had calmed down, she was trying to think rationally, not emotionally. She didn’t understand what Liam’s reasoning was, but she would find out. And if need be, she would beg to be taken back as an angel. Whether that was an Angel of Death or an Angel of Affection, it didn’t matter. At least when she was an angel, she could hold on to the fact that she still belonged in Heaven and not on this Earth. Being human afforded her none of that security.
There was a shimmer in front of her and she narrowed her eyes to focus as Evangeline appeared. The angel smiled at her, so Adela decided there was no time like the present to start begging.
“How are you feeling?” Evangeline asked as she sat down on the bed.
Adela had been so overcome with stress and worry about being human, she hadn’t paid her injuries much attention. “I’m okay. Do you know what has happened?”
Evangeline nodded.
“I can’t be human, Evangeline,” Adela pleaded, hearing the desperation in her voice. “I don’t belong in this century. I can’t survive on my own.”
Evangeline smiled. “And what is the alternative you are looking for?”
“I want to be a member of Heaven again. If that means an angel, then fine. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
“I can’t do that,” Evangeline replied. “Liam made the choice.”
“And what about what I want?” Adela questioned, sitting up. “He had no right to decide for me!”
Evangeline ignored her. “I’m not supposed to do this, but let me help with that headache.”
The angel placed her hand on the back of Adela’s head. Taking a deep breath and shutting her eyes, Adela tried to calm down. She wanted to scream and yell to make sure that Evangeline heard what she was saying loud and clear, but as the pain subsided, her panic diminished a bit. Despite the pain medication, she hadn’t realized just how bad her head was throbbing and she relaxed into Evangeline’s hand.
“Tomorrow, Liam will come and see you,” Evangeline murmured. “Please hear him out.”
Adela opened her eyes as the pain faded. She had nothing to say to Liam, and she told this to Evangeline.
The angel stood up, and Adela looked up at her as she rearranged herself on the pillows.
“But he has things he wants to say to you.”
“I don’t care what he has to say, Evangeline. Please, talk to Michael and have him take me back,” Adela pleaded.
“I can’t do that, Adela. Your destiny has been set.”
Evangeline disappeared the same way she had come—nothing but a shimmer in the atmosphere, and Adela was more determined than ever to find a way to get back into Heaven.
Chapter 41
Liam waited at the nurse’s station to be checked in. Lucy eyed him warily. Upon his arrival, she had told him that he was not allowed to see Adela. He had begged, pleaded, and then gotten angry. Now they were at a standoff.
“You upset her yesterday and I don’t like my patients upset,” Lucy snapped.
“But it’s really important I speak to her,” Liam begged, wishing he had his angel abilities. If he did, he would have walked right past Lucy and she would have been none the wiser. He could already be in there talking to Adela, not arguing with the overprotective nurse.
Lucy sighed, finally giving way. “Let me go ask her if she wants to see you, okay?”
Liam nodded, and waited while Lucy went down the hallway to speak to Adela.
A few minutes later, she poked her head out from the door and motioned him to the room.
Taking a deep breath, Liam fought the urge to run. He needed to tell Adela why he had been such a selfish prick, and hope that his assessment of her feelings for him had been correct.
Putting one foot in front of the other, he tried to arrange his thoughts into a coherent sequence, but it was useless. By the time he reached Adela’s room, he still didn’t know what he was going to say or how he was going to say it.
Lucy met him at the door. “If you upset her,” she whispered, “I will kick you out of this hospital myself. Do you understand?”
Liam nodded and Lucy moved aside, clearing the way for him. Liam took another deep breath and stepped inside the room.
Adela was sitting up in bed, looking at him expectantly. Her hair hung to the sides of her tired face. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all, and he wanted to pick her up, take her out of there and protect and care for her.
“Hi,” he said, standing in the doorway.
“Hi, Liam.”
He looked over at the chair next to the bed and willed his feet to carry him over there. They didn’t cooperate. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
Adela shrugged. “They said I can go home today, although I’m not certain where that is.”
He didn’t either.
“Lucy said that it was very important that you speak to me.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
There was a beat of silence. “You can come in, Liam. I’m not going to bite you or anything. Although if I had the strength, I’d love to hit you in the face.”
Liam smiled, thinking how he could definitely do without a fist in his puss, but he wouldn’t mind Adela’s pretty little mouth nibbling on him.
That thought got his feet moving and he closed the door, then walked over to the chair. He put his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face, then looked at Adela. Yeah, he could definitely stare into those eyes for the rest of his life.
“What I did was completely unfair to you,” he murmured. He didn’t think about what he wanted to say, he just let the words flow. “I was a selfish ass.”
Adela nodded. “Yes, you were. Just because you weren’t asked to spend the rest of eternity in the Inner Circle doesn’t mean that you had the right to deny it fo
r me.”
“You’re right.”
“So why did you do it? Did it make you so angry that I was being asked into the Inner Circle, and you just couldn’t have it? I’ve been an Angel of Death for three hundred years, Liam. You’ve been serving for five years. Who do you think is more worthy? Don’t I deserve an eternity of peace and happiness?”
It wouldn’t matter if he served as an Angel of Death for three thousand years, Adela would still be more deserving. “There is no doubt, Adela, you are. But you’re wrong about my motivations. It wasn’t one of those things that if I couldn’t go, neither could you.”
“Then what is it, Liam?” Adela asked, obviously irritated. “Because I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to survive in this world!”
“With me,” he immediately answered.
Adela stared at him, obviously shocked at his words. “What, exactly, does that mean?”
“It means I want you to be with me. I want us to be together. As humans. Together.”
A slow blush crept up Adela’s neck and colored her cheeks. “I still don’t understand what that means, Liam. You’ve made it pretty clear to me how you feel about us being together. In fact, I believe the word you used to describe it was ‘mistake’.”
“I know. I was an ass.”
“It seems to me that is a very normal mode of behavior for you.”
Liam chuckled, but Adela didn’t even crack a smile. He cleared his throat. “You’re right. I’ve been pretty awful lately.”
Adela stared at him and crossed her arms over her chest.
“And I’m sorry,” he added.
She continued to stare at him.
This wasn’t going the way he wanted. He didn’t expect her to throw herself at him and declare her love, but he did think she would cut him a little slack.
He ran his hand through his hair. “Look, Adela, I’ve been a jerk, but please, just listen to what I have to say. Reserve your judgment and anger until then. Okay? Please?”
“Fine, Liam. Start talking.”
Chapter 42
Adela stared at Liam, feeling as though she was hearing and seeing him for the first time. Although he looked the same, his demeanor was different. It was as if all the layers of Liam had been pulled back, and before her was the core of him that was rarely seen.
“Two years before I died, I was involved in an accident that killed my girlfriend,” he said, staring at the floor. “Her name was Annie.”
She listened as he described the accident and what had been going through his mind beforehand. “She was making me crazy that night, Adela,” he said, rubbing his face. “She was drunk and obnoxious and I was so tired because I’d just worked a busy twenty-four hour shift. Honestly, I just wanted to get home so I could get away from her. The . . . guilt I felt after she died ate at me. Anger and guilt at both her and myself just ate right through me.”
The guilt and anger took him over, driving him to a lifestyle that didn’t surprise her as she had witnessed it on their assignment in Arizona when he’d slept with that woman named Grace.
“It never ended with me,” Liam said. “It was constant: booze, women, and more of both all the time. As long as I didn’t have to think too much about my life, I was happy. Well, I thought I was, anyway. I wasn’t miserable. I didn’t feel the guilt over Annie’s death. Looking back, even my job became a way of escaping. While I was with Annie, I would never have volunteered to fight the fire that killed me.”
Relief settled in Adela’s soul. Finally, she was given the opportunity to understand Liam, as his story was something that he’d never volunteered before. She remembered how many times he’d brushed her off when she asked about his life. It seemed as though Liam wasn’t very pleased with what his life had become in the last year that he lived and breathed.
After telling her about the accident, he looked up her, his face pleading. She didn’t understand what all this confession had to do with her, but she did feel a twinge of jealousy at the relationship Annie experienced with Liam, whether he was an ass or not.
“Then she came and visited me in Eternity,” Liam said.
Adela inhaled sharply. “You were able to see her? To communicate with her? I thought we weren’t allowed to see our past loved ones!”
“That’s what I thought,” Liam agreed. “But there she was. She wasn’t very talkative, but she told me that she forgave me.”
“And?”
“And . . . and it brought a little peace to my soul,” Liam said, staring at the floor again. “It was like I was this dog tied to this stake for so long, and finally my owner came and cut the cord. I wanted to wallow in my guilt, but at the same time I wanted to run far away from it.”
“What did you decide to do, Liam?”
There was a long stretch of silence, and then he said, “I decided that I would remember it, but it was also time for me to move on.”
Adela met his gaze. She had an idea of where this was going, but she needed to hear it from his lips. She didn’t want to assume anything—she wanted it laid out in black and white, where she understood every detail, every nuance. Liam saying that he wanted to be with her as a human could mean many things. Roommates? Lovers? Husband and wife? She wanted the exact layout of what he had in mind. “Liam, please forgive me, but I still don’t understand what this has to do with me. I mean, I’m happy for you that you…resolved your issue, but I’m still at a loss on how this affects your decision to keep me here on Earth and deny me my place in the Inner Circle of Heaven. You say you did it so that you can be with me. What exactly does that mean?”
“I’m getting to that.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “Okay. Please continue.”
Liam sat back in his chair, meeting her gaze and looking determined to say what he wanted to say.
“Then Michael pulled me out of Eternity and told me you were hurt. I was scared, Adela. Terrified. I rushed to your side as fast as my wings could carry me. When I saw you had slipped and Gunnar hadn’t shoveled the damn deck . . . I wanted to kill him.
“Evangeline appeared as I held your head in my lap and told me that she had said for me to shovel the deck, but I didn’t. I felt guilty, as I knew if I hadn’t been so stubborn, angry and jealous because of Gunnar, I would have shoveled the deck. I let those negative emotions take over and rule me, and you got hurt because of them.”
Adela shook her head. “No one caused it, Liam. Sometimes things are just what they are: an accident. It may not always be a nice outcome, but it wasn’t like you shot me or intentionally ran me over with a car. I slipped down the stairs!”
“That’s not what Evangeline implied.”
Adela smiled. “I say this with the great respect I have for her, but Evangeline is wrong.”
Liam studied her face, and after a moment, nodded. He leaned forward and took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. “While I held you, the Angel of Innocence was there, ready to take you. At first I said yes, Adela. I swear to you I did. But as I looked at you, I knew that I needed you here, with me. I wanted to be with you. What we have . . . or had . . . isn’t a mistake, and it never was.”
“What does this mean, Liam?” she whispered.
“There’s more,” Liam murmured, tightening his grip on her hand.
“What?”
“Who do you think our assignment was, Adela?”
She stared at their intertwined hands as she thought for a while about all the characters involved, and she was surprised at her final conclusion. It obviously wasn’t Jonathan and Jackie, and Gunnar falling in love with someone was ridiculous as he was an Angel of Affection. However, she knew her feelings for Liam. She was in love. Was it possible that they were the ones who were supposed to be in love? Were they supposed to live as humans together, even though they too were Angels of Affection?
“Who?” she whispered, still unsure she was reading the situation correctly.
Liam took a deep breath. “Adela, it was you and I. We were our own
assignment. We were the ones who were supposed to fall in love.”
Tears stung her eyes as she looked into his earnest green gaze. She had never seen him look so raw or so honest in the time she’d known him.
“I love you,” he whispered. “And I’m so sorry, Adela. Our night together wasn’t a mistake. It was the most beautiful experience I’ve ever had. Period.”
Chapter 43
Liam felt cleansed from the inside out as he spilled his secrets to Adela. It was as if someone had taken a washcloth and gently rubbed his soul as he spoke, washing away the dirt and grime that regret, guilt, and self-hatred could leave behind in their trail of destruction. There were so many times as he talked that he wanted to run, but he held on to the memory of that one tear he saw in Adela’s eye when he told her their time together had been a mistake. As much as he hated the fact that his words had put it there, he grasped at its meaning that, yes, she did have feelings for him as well.
When he told Adela he loved her, it was like a shiny new sealant had been put on his soul. Yes, the scars were still there, but the new paint job hid them well.
He knew they didn’t have any chance of cracking open again. They were closed, their contents no longer available for viewing. He was ready to move on with Adela, if she said yes. Unfortunately, that was the wildcard in all this confession and soul bearing shit.
“Liam, I just want to make sure that I understand this right.”
“Of course. Go on. I’m not the best with words.”
Adela nodded, and he hoped he had conveyed everything correctly, that she understood what he meant.
“So you want us—you and me—to live together as humans? You’re saying that you love me in that way?”
Liam nodded. “I do, Adela.”
Tears brimmed over her thick lashes and he moved to the bed. She brushed her face with her hand and scooted over as he muscled his way in. He kissed her eyelids, hoping the tears would stop.