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She might be, Bliss thought at the time, but her mom didn’t have to know everything about everyone. Sometimes people liked to keep their secrets.
Bliss was silent as she ate a slice of the pizza and sipped at the iced tea Angel had brought.
“Angel, you should talk to Dad and get hired on with the police,” Erin stated as they finished their pizza. “I heard Sam Bryce telling Dad he should ask you about it.”
Bliss saw Angel’s surprise before she gave a roll of her eyes.
“Sam probably just wants to flirt with her.” Annie giggled. “She told Aunt Zoey that Angel was hot.”
“Good God,” Angel muttered, frowning a little as she brushed back the front of her hair in the same way Bliss often saw her mom do when she was really nervous. “That woman scares even me.”
Bliss laughed at the comment. Sam was really attractive, and Bliss had overheard several of Aunt Zoey’s friends talking about how “tempting” she could be.
Bliss had overheard another conversation, too. One where her mom had told Erin’s dad, the chief of police, that someone needed to find out what Angel was hiding.
There was no way Uncle Alex would hire Angel, even if she wanted to work there.
“I’d get arrested if I tried to work with Sam Bryce,” Angel assured them all. “I’d end up shooting her just because she can be so irritating.”
It was a friendly threat, but one that assured Bliss that Angel had no intentions of working on the police force.
“Sam’s fun,” Laken assured her. “She told Dad to suck her dick the other day and made him blush all the way to the roots of his hair. Mom was laughing so hard I thought she was going to bust a gut or something.”
They were all laughing then. They had all heard the comment, watched Uncle Dawg rub at the back of his neck, mutter something about damned smart-assed women, then stalk away. Even Bliss’s mom and dad had laughed at it.
The conversation flowed around the table until several girls from school drew her cousins’ attention and they excused themselves to go talk to them. Bliss stayed, staring down at the pizza she hadn’t finished and wishing it didn’t hurt so bad to tell Angel good-bye.
“Everything okay, Bliss?” Angel asked her, her voice softer and echoing with something Bliss just didn’t understand.
“You’re going to go fight again,” Bliss muttered, shooting Angel an accusing look. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You get paid to fight other people’s wars.”
Angel looked confused, hurt. “I didn’t lie to you, Bliss. I get paid to rescue people. Sometimes those people are caught in other people’s wars, but it’s not the war I’m fighting.”
Bliss clenched her teeth for a moment, feeling angry, sad, and fed up with how angry her mother always stayed with Angel.
“Why don’t you just tell my mom whatever it is she wants to know so she’ll stop being so worried about us being friends?” she demanded. “I don’t make friends easy, Angel. I don’t want to lose one.”
That was her fear. That one day, Angel just wouldn’t come back because Bliss’s mom would forbid it.
Surprise flashed in Angel’s eyes, the blue contacts she wore giving her gaze an oddly shattered appearance. Her mom was right; Angel hid too much of herself and who she was, even for Bliss’s comfort.
“Telling your momma my secrets wouldn’t do anything to help the situation, Bliss.” Angel looked away and brushed back the front of her hair again, even though it hadn’t yet fallen around her eyes.
Breathing out hard Angel drew the knife from the sheath at her belt and began cutting up the empty pizza box so it would fit easily in the mouth of the trash can.
It was the knife that silenced Bliss’s protests.
All she could do was stare at it, her entire world centering on that knife. The bone handle, weathered with age and the many hands it had passed through. Silver capped the bone, untarnished and gleaming from the constant handling and careful polishing. It was the blade that had her heart racing in her chest, had her wanting to scream, to deny, to demand explanations.
Because as Angel paused, holding the knife against the cardboard, the inscription on the blade jumped out and seared her brain:
Godspeed
It was right there, a little darker in the grooves, easy to read, impossible to deny.
“My momma told me once that sometimes it was her job to worry and my job to let her do it.” The words beat Bliss’s brain when Angel uttered them.
“Sometimes, it’s just my job to worry, Bliss, and your job to let me do it.” Her mother’s lips curved with a hint of sadness. “And every day I just pray that if I worry enough, I won’t lose you, like I lost Beth. . . .”
