Page 387 of Romeo

“Smart man.”

I laughed softly and kept looking. There were more. Not hundreds, but enough to give me pieces of a woman I would never meet. Someone preserved inside the phone of a man who had loved her.

When I finally handed it back, my fingers brushed Angel’s. He went still. So did I. It was barely contact. Nothing.

Except apparently it wasn’t.

I pulled my hand back slowly, expecting Angel to move closer. When he stayed where he was, I asked, “Did you really look for me?”

His expression changed. Not dramatically. Angel didn’t seem built for dramatic expressions. But I saw it.

“Once I knew there was a you to find,” he said, “I didn’t stop.”

My throat tightened. He’d only known I existed for a few months, and somehow knowing he had spent those months looking for me made the answer harder to absorb. I had spent eighteen years without knowing there was anyone out there searching for Kaitlyn Grace Ward, while he had spent every day since learning about her trying to find where she had gone.

I nodded because speaking suddenly seemed harder than it should have been.

Angel looked toward the doorway. “I can go.”

My eyes snapped to his.

“I know you weren’t ready. None of this changes that.”

He meant it.

That somehow made it worse. Or better. I wasn’t sure.

He slipped his phone into his pocket. “King has my number. Romeo does too. You want something, you call. You don’t, I leave you alone.”

Then he turned.

Panic came out of nowhere. Not the kind Mac had caused. Something quieter. A door closing before I had decided whether I wanted it open.

“Angel?”

He stopped immediately.

I stared at his back for a second before he turned around. The words felt strange. Too big and too small at the same time.

“Could you stay for a little while?”

He didn’t smile. I was grateful for that. If he had looked too happy, I might have wanted to take it back just to escape the weight of giving him something.

Instead, he nodded. “Yeah.”

That was enough.

Jasper came back through the doorway a few minutes later, took one look at Angel still standing near me, and somehow managed not to ask a single question. He crossed directly to me, wrapped an arm around my waist, and kissed my temple.

“We can leave.”

I leaned into him. “Home?”

His mouth curved against my hair. “Home.”

I looked around the cabin that had hidden us for two weeks. The kitchen where Jasper had made terrible coffee. The couch where we had talked until sunrise. The bedroom where hiding had stopped feeling like hiding and started feeling like the beginning of something neither of us had planned.

There was blood on the floor where Mac’s body had been. The peace we found in the bayou was gone. I expected that to hurt more than it did. Maybe because Jasper’s arm was around me. Maybe because Angel was still standing across the room instead of disappearing. Maybe because for once leaving somewhere didn’t mean losing everything I had found there.