When Sparks Fly (27 page)

Angel

Full circle doesn’t feel so good. He’s breathing heavy and his eyes are full of turmoil, anguish and hurt. Hurt I caused.

I hurt him that night the same way he hurt me the day he left me in New York, when he chose a path that didn’t include being with me anymore. I realize that maybe that is what I wanted when I broke his heart—for him to feel just a fraction of the pain he caused me, but it feels like shit right now. I see it on his face and I know if that was my unconscious goal then I succeeded. I hurt him just as he did me. I hate it.

“I don’t want to be in here anymore,” he says with his voice cracking.

I tug him by the hand and walk to the wall where I kissed him. I touch the wall with my palm. “Right here, Kane. It was right here that I knew in my heart, I was meant to be with you,” then I pull him into the living room and stop in the very spot where reality slammed into me.

“Right here is where I lied to you and to him. I lied to myself. I asked you to leave and told you what we did was a mistake. I begged him to forgive me when what I really wanted was to follow you. In the end, I lost you both and I lost myself, Kane. I wish I could take it all back, probably the same way you wish you could take back the years we were apart, right?” I give him a pointed stare. He nods.

“I think you left me in New York because you were afraid I wouldn’t understand you. I know I asked you to leave because I was afraid I wouldn’t be enough. I think somewhere deep down I wanted you to feel that same hurt and I see now that it worked. I don’t like it. We were both wrong, Kane. We never even tried to co-exist once we grew up. We just made assumptions and mistakes and ended up with a lot of regret. We’re not twenty-one anymore. It might not be easy for us, but we have each other and to me, that’s all that matters now.”

He just stares at me, his chest rising and falling. “I hate that we did that to one another. I hate this house,” he says.

I look around at Ezra’s pictures with Tenley that replaced the ones he had with me. I glance at her décor, her feminine touch in his home, now their home together. “I do, too, but not for the reason you think.” He looks down at me. “I hate this home because right here in this spot I broke your heart and when I sent you out the door you never even knew that you took mine with you.”

His eyes narrow into determination and he reaches for my hand. “You know what I hate? I hate that you ever lived here in the first place. That he was ever even in the picture. The thoughts of him sharing a bed with you, a home with you… Fuck!” He growls up at the ceiling. “I just fucking hate it. It makes me crazy on the inside.” He looks away from me and around the house.

“Did you know that when your mom died and you moved in with us, I was a little irritated with that?” I shake my head. “I was. Thinking I’d have a moody girl floating around my space was aggravating, but I quickly realized that I enjoyed you in my space.” He smiles dreamily and I find myself holding my breath while the butterflies spring to life, fluttering in my belly with excitement.

“I knew rather quickly that something was different about you. You weren’t like other girls. I liked everything there was to like about you, Angel. You belong in
my
space, only ever my space, and I hate that you ever shared that with anyone other than me. It makes me disappointed in myself.”

I touch his cheek and trace his lips and then place my palm flat on his chest, lifting his hand to mine—to our heartbeats. “I hate that we were apart too, Kane. I hate it just as much. This though… this beating that we feel, I kept you right here… in my heart. I might have shared space with Ezra, but he never took your place here. I know you’ve been with other women that aren’t me. I saw it for myself, and I wanted to strangle her with her own hair extensions so I get it.”

“I think I would have enjoyed watching that,” he admits. Kane’s laughter makes me roll my eyes.

“You’re an ass.”

“An ass you love, though. Right?”

“Absolutely. The point is… we screwed up in college. We broke up and we went our separate ways, but we found one another again. It’s up to us now to do what’s right. Make it work or don’t? I personally want to make it work. I don’t want us to live in the shadows of things like this house, that night or any other night for that matter. It makes me sick to my stomach to picture how you spent your nights when we were apart.”

Kane’s smirks and it kind of pisses me off. “Do you want to know?”

“Know what?”

“How I spent my nights?”

I glare at him. “No, I don’t,” I look away and he guides my face back to him.

“I wasn’t partying it up in Hollywood, Angel. I didn’t have groupies and models in my bed. I met people, dated here and there and yes, I blew off steam, but my nights were not spent tangled in sheets with a slew of women. I spent most of my nights secluded to my computer… writing. Dreaming up new stories and new pitches. That was my exciting life.”

I stare into the sea of his baby blues, drowning and getting lost. “Let’s get out of here,” I tell him and he nods.

I go let Bear in and lock him in the kennel, making sure it’s secure and we won’t have a repeat of this. I take my key off of my key ring and place it on the entrance table making sure Kane sees me do it.

His eyes lift in question and so I explain. “We’re locking up this house by flipping that lock, Kane, then we’re walking out that door and moving on from our past. Today is a new day and we have forever to make memories that will fill the gaps of the time we lost. Okay?”

He looks down at me with adoration, smiling in that way that steals my breath. “I love you, Angel,” he whispers leaning into my lips.

I press a gentle kiss to his lips and smile. “I love you, too.”

When we shut the door to the house and step into the front yard, I gasp when we see the fireworks in the distance. Red, white and blue… all colors of the rainbow ignite the sky into an array of glitter. We stand there in the yard. Kane’s arms are around me as we watch in awe.

I’ve always loved the fireworks and tonight is no different, except that it is completely different. Because tonight it is a new chapter in the story of Kane and Angel—Our story—about two people who fell in love when they were in high school, got a little lost in college, but find their way back to one another in their adult life. The beginning, the middle and I know now… that he and I will never have an ending. After all an amazing author by the name of K. West once told me…
True love stories never have endings!

Kane and I, we are true love. I know the chapters we write in our life will be done together. Turning the page has never felt more freeing in all of my life.

‡
Epilogue

Dirty Thirty with my Angel

Angel was born August 7, 1985. I was born September 7, 1985. We are exactly, to the date, one month apart, and she’s the oldest, something that she reminds of when I want to dominate a situation and be the boss. She’s oldest and she’s a girl so by default… she wins. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I let her win because a happy wife equals a happy guy. My momma taught me that one.

We’ve been married for five years now and it’s been absolutely amazing. I proposed to her at one of my movie premiers. She had no clue what was going to happen when we sat in the front row. Myself, the producer and the director were interviewed beforehand and they were going to play it before the movie began. I knew that and had an idea. Nothing I could truly take credit for because I think I’d seen it on YouTube done before, but it didn’t matter because it would be a surprise for her, and I went with it. Unique or not, that was my proposal.

Everyone was in on it, everyone but her. I even flew down Jeremy and Avery, but she didn’t know they were there at that time. I sat beside her excited as hell and nervous as fuck with each ticking second. The movie was titled The Chosen and it was my first success in urban fantasy. I was anxious to say the least about the movie, but not nearly as anxious as I was for what was in store before the movie.

There I was with my right hand holding Angel’s and the box with the ring burning a hole in the pocket on my left side. She was rambling on and on about how excited she was for this movie and how much she loved California and was so thankful that I brought her with me. I barely heard her over my heartbeat that was thrumming so loudly with nerves shooting through my veins, and not the make me sick kind of nerves, but the excited fluttering ones. Eyes were on me because people knew what was about to happen and I just smiled, a true genuine happy smile. That was love and that was how it was meant to be—Angel and I sharing our life together, no matter where it took us. We could stay in Florida, move to California. Hell, we could live in Tim Buck Two and I’d still be the luckiest man alive because I had my best friend, my soul mate by my side. I had Angel.

Angel who at that time fell silent, watching the interview of how I wrote the story of The Chosen, which was somewhat her idea one night when we were drinking and I even said so, giving her credit where it’s due.

I looked away from the screen and stared at her face alight in pure pride for me. She was proud of me, proud of my accomplishments in this industry, both as an author and as a screenwriter. Proud of me as a person and who I became with her. That look on her face, that feeling swirling inside of me seeing it will be forever one of the most memorable moments of my life.

Second that memory to the one of me turning to the camera and telling the audience that, I, Kane West owe everything I have to a girl named Angel. A girl who came into my life when we were barely friends and her world was falling apart, only to flip my own world upside down after I fell hard for her. A girl who let me be myself even when that self was a selfish asshole. A girl who loved me endlessly, through good times, through heartbreak, through secrets on Facebook with a girl named Raven. I laughed at the inside joke that we now had about her and her stupid idea to cyber stalk me as another chick.

Then I got real serious. I was staring at Angel the entire time I was talking on that screen, rambling words of adoration and love, causing girls in the audience to swoon and sniffles being heard in the back, whom I assumed was Avery and my mother. Angel had tears flowing down her cheeks and her hand on her heart. She was sitting forward and staring at me on that screen as though the real me wasn’t even sitting next to her.

I told the camera, “Angel Nicole Solis, I fell in love with you when I was seventeen years old and I had no idea what love was. I fell in love with your mouth when we moved to New York and I watched you dig into a cheese pizza like you’d never had one before. The words that leave your lips and the smile that graces it steals my breath. I fell in love with that, that breathless feeling that you give me. I fell in love with your passion as you fell in love with the noisiest fucking city I’ve ever lived in,” I laugh. “How you loved it there, experiencing new things. You loved the noise. You loved the art. You loved to dance in a place dancers can only dream of dancing. I fell in love with your body when I watched you dance and I could say more about what I love about your body, but that’s between you and I,” I wink.