Page 64 of Angel I Am Not

Dante dragged a hand over his face. “I don’t have every answer.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “You’re telling me all of this and you don’t know how it works?”

“I know enough to know what happened to me.”

The words took a second to register. “What happened to you?”

He hesitated, and suddenly the café felt much quieter than it had a moment before. “I was an angel,” he said. “Then I fell. Opportunity opened a door she should not have been able to open, I took it, and somewhere between one side and the other, there was room in the balance for something that hadn’t existed before.” Dante held my gaze. “Chance.”

I shook my head once. “What?”

“That’s what I became.”

“No.” The answer came out before I could think about it. “No, you’re Dante.”

“I am Dante. I am also Chance.”

“You’re a fallen angel.”

“I was.”

“You’re the king of Hell.”

“That too.”

I shoved out of the booth so quickly I nearly clipped the table with my hip as I stood. “You cannot just add IDEA to the list like it’s another fucking title.”

“Raph—”

“An IDEA isn’t a designation. It isn’t a rank. You were an angel.” I started pacing the narrow space beside the table, ignoring the humans who were beginning to notice me. “You fell, but that doesn’t rewrite your essence. That isn’t how anything works.”

“I know. Fuck, Raph, I know. You really didn’t know any of this? I would have assumed it came up with Opportunity right next to you.”

I glared at him, my heart beating a little faster. “What are you talking about?”

“Port.” Dante said it like the answer should have been obvious. “She’s Opportunity.”

It made sense in the narrowest possible way. Port moved between the throne and the rest of Heaven, carrying messages, opening access, giving people the chance to speak to God when no one else could reach him directly.

But that didn’t mean—

Dante stood before I could make another pass, catching my wrist when I nearly walked straight into him. The contact stopped me more effectively than it should have. His grip wasn’t tight, just familiar, his thumb resting against the same place it had a thousand times before everything between us fell apart.

For another sweet moment I remembered what we had been. Late nights after council meetings. Arguments that ended with me tucked against his side while insisting I wasn’t upset. Dante listening to every complaint before finding some way to make me laugh despite myself. The way he used to touch me when my thoughts moved faster than I could sort through them.

Then I remembered how many years had passed since any of that belonged to us.

I pulled in a breath. “How?”

“I don’t know all of it.” His voice had softened again. “Opportunity didn’t create me. She created the opportunity. I took it. Something about that choice, the fall, whatever rule had already been broken around us—it made room for Chance.”

I dragged my free hand over my face. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

Dante’s grip loosened, though he didn’t immediately release me. “Raph, we haven’t talked in years. If you hadn’t been the one to bring Ari to me, I’m not sure when we would’ve sat face-to-face again.”

That hurt because it was true. I had spent years thinking of Dante as part of a life that no longer existed while apparently expecting him to have somehow kept me informed about everything that happened after I stopped being part of his.

He finally let go of my wrist, and we returned to the table with considerably less dignity than either of us had started with. I sat down and stared at my cold coffee, trying to fit Chance beside every other name I already associated with the man across from me.