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This isn’t safe.
Iknowit isn’t safe.
But I lean into it anyway.
Mateo comes out to join us on the porch, guitar in hand, and he and Charlotte start playing a waltz together. The two instruments bounce off of each other, sultry notes floating on the dense, humid air all around us. I stare up at the sunset, and watch as the sun slowly sinks, the celestial curtain so,sofar away.
“I forgot what the sky looked like,” I say suddenly, not looking at Reyes.
He shifts beside me—not closer, but somehow more intimate…more open. “There’s something divine about it, isn’t there?” he murmurs. “Like a direct window to God.”
“For years, I’ve been in a red haze, and here…” I trail off, thinking about how I was drawn in this direction even before I had this stupid plan. How I sought out the unfiltered sunlight, the blue skies of my youth.
Did I know Reyes was something special to me this whole time? Did I come looking for him because I could sense that we were meant for more?
Am I just thinking this because of the fucking booze…?
“How do you reconcile it all?” I muse. I still can’t look at him. I don’t know if it’s possible to look at him without throwing myself into his arms.
“What?” he asks.
“The Angels,” I say. “The Heavenly Host. The Rapture, heaven and hell going to war on Earth…how do you reconcile your lack of belief in all this with your belief in the big man in the sky?”
He shifts again. Opens the mason jar of moonshine. Takes abigswig. “I have to believe this was all part of God’s plan,” he says. “And there’s…a little piece of God in what we’ve become, to me. That He would show us exactly who we were meant to be with, rather than force us to wander the earth not knowing…? It’s beautiful.”
I want to ask, again, if there’s a Mrs. Garza out there somewhere. If there ever was.
But I don’t.
Instead, I say, “I didn’t take you for a romantic.”
“Must be something in the air,” he says, gesturing over at where Charlotte is playing the violin.
I follow his gaze to see her staring down at the man I’ve come to recognize as her mate: a rangy blond named Elijah. He’s sitting on the stairs, leaning against the post of the porch with a glass of water in his hand, staring at her like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.
And when I look back at Reyes, I almost think I see the same expression on his face as he stares at me.
“He proposed to her last week,” Reyes says quietly. “It’ll be the first actual wedding I’ve performed since the convergence. And my brother won’t be there to walk her down the aisle.”
Now that I’ve looked at him, I can’t take my eyes off him. He chews on his lip, releasing it with a pop, then leans back against the step. I take him in slowly—his hulking shoulders, the way he holds himself like a predator even when he’s at rest.
I wonder if that’s always what it’s like for him…to be tense and on alert, no matter the circumstances.
I know what that’s like. It’s who I’ve been in Homestead for the past five years.
“What happened to him?” I ask.
“Charlotte’s dad?” Reyes breathes in deeply, his eyes sliding shut. This is obviously painful for him. “It was a long time ago.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No—that’s fine.” He opens his eyes and stares out at the sky, and at the waning moon just appearing on the deep blue horizon. “Manuel, Mateo, and I were part of the resistance early on, when the Angels first invaded Earth,” he explains. “We were all blessed as a punishment for standing against them, and Manuel was executed during a protest in San Antonio, along with his wife.”
I inhale sharply. I remember those protests—somany of them.
I knew the executioners. Some of them still live in Homestead.
“Jesus,” I mutter. “I’m…I’m so sorry.”
