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“You did?” I ask, glancing at him as he takes a slow sip of his coffee.
“Mmhmm.” He murmurs, keeping his eyes closed. “Thrilled to be of assistance.”
“Anything I can help with?” I ask, circling around the island to stand next to Tristan while he mans the left side of the stove.
He smiles down at me and hands me a spatula. “Will you keep an eye on these while I finish the scrambled eggs?”
I gave him a nod and smile to myself at the sheer normalcy of what we’re doing. I wish we could stay like this. Pretending like everything's back to normal. And avoiding the questions that I’m sure they still have.
Once I finish plating the last of the bacon, the guys all take their seats around the dining room table and wait for me to join them.
As I approach the table, I lock eyes with Ezra and for a second I think about falling back into our old habits. But sitting on his lap right now would send him the wrong message and if I’m honest, I’m not even sure what message I’m trying to send. I haven’t been here for 24 hours and I’m already confused. I can’t imagine what these next few days will do to me.
I can’t sit here and pretend that things between us are back to normal. But I also can’t go back to pretending like I don’t want them.
Waking up this morning really solidified things for me. Regardless of what’s happened, I feel safe with The Reapers and if I want any chance of moving forward; I have to leave the past in the past.
I take one of the open seats at the table and go to grab myself a plate.
“Already on it.” Cy says, loading my plate up with a heaping mound of scrambled eggs. I try to take it off his hands, but before I can, Tristan grabs it and is already tossing some bacon on it. I sit back in my seat and watch as my plate travels back and forth between all four of them, and by the time Cyrus places it back in front of me, my eyes are tearing up so much that I can barely see anything.
Ezra studies me. “Angel, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I say, swallowing and shaking my head as I try to pull back the emotion in my voice. “It’s just. Why are you guys being so nice to me?”
“Kitten, why wouldn’t we be?” Atlas asks as concern furrows his brow.
“Because I’m an asshole.” I sigh, looking at all of them as shame heats my face. “I hurt you. I blamed you. I fought with you. And I said some really awful things to you. I don’t deserve any of this.”
“Angel, we all made mistakes.” Ezra says, watching me from across the table. “But that doesn’t change how we feel about you.”
“You hate me.” I say, looking directly at him as I shake my head. “And I know that you three have moved on.” I say, shift my eyes between Atlas, Tristan, and Cyrus. “I crossed paths with that server as she was leaving your office and she told me what happened.”
“Princess, we haven’t moved on.” Cyrus says, wrinkling his nose.
“Far from it, actually.” Tristan adds.
“Each of us has been trying to deal with the loss of you in the best way we could.” Atlas says, “And I take full responsibility for what you saw in my office. But we didn’t touch her. Pulling her up there was about nothing more than keeping up appearances, but it was a mistake. I was torn the fuck apart when you left.”
“We all were.” Ezra adds, locking his eyes on mine.
It’s obvious there’s a lot more to all of this than I thought. Did they really miss me as much as I missed them?
“I don’t understand. If that’s the case, why didn’t you guys try to find me?”
“Honestly.” Atlas says, clenching his jaw. “We didn’t think you wanted us to.”
He’s right.When I first left them, all I wanted was to get as far away from them as I could. It’s easy to see why they thought I’d want that.
“If we had any idea where you really were, we would’ve gotten you the hell out of there.”
“Dimitri said that you would’ve known I was with Melanie before she died.”
“We did.” Tris offers. “Well, I did. B… but we knew nothing about the attack.”
“About that.” Atlas says, holding my gaze. “I was going to wait for the right time to tell you this, but now seems as good a time as any. This morning I made a call to one of Melanie’s older brothers, to offer my condolences and assure them we were going to whatever it took to track Dimitri down.”
“Well, what did he say?” I ask, trying to decipher his unreadable expression.
