I can hear him talking to me, but the words are not reaching me. Tears spring to my eyes, the painful lump in my throat turning to heaving sobs that wrack their way through my entire body. I feel as though I’m going to throw up, as though I’m going to pass out, as though I might lose my mind entirely.
I manage to force my head up once more, though my eyes are blurry with tears. I look around the room to all four of them, practically pleading for them to tell me this isn’t true. “It’s gone? Just like that? How bad can it be…?”
“The roof collapsed,” Callum tells me, as gently as he can given the circumstances. “And by the time the fire is out, the place will be practically underwater. It’s not going to be useable again, if there’s even much of the foundation standing at all?—”
“You can’t—you don’t—” I try to catch my breath, pressing my face into Joe’s shoulder and inhaling deeply. I just don’t want this to be happening. The very place that I’ve poured my life into for so long, the heart of this town, the place of safety and comfort and growth that has served so many in this place for so long…it’s gone, just like that. “This can’t be happening,” I gasp.
Joe smooths his hand down my back, clearly doing his best to comfort me. “You’re having a panic attack,” he tells me gently. “You don’t have to?—”
“No, I’m not!” I reply, pulling back from him, forcing myself upright again. I know it’s not fair to turn this anger on them, given that they’ve done everything in their power to keep the town safe, but right now, I need to do something with this emotion, and they’re the only ones here.
“That school—” I jab my finger back over my shoulder, as though I’m referring to it directly. “That place was where my children were supposed to be educated,” I tell them. “Where I was meant to work. Where I—whereallof us spent at least ten years of our lives. It’s not irrational for me to be angry or upset about this! It’s not just a panic attack, it’s?—”
“I’m not trying to say you’re being irrational,” Joe assures me, rising up, speaking slow, like he’s taming a wild beast. Right now, that’s what I feel like, eyes blurred with tears, body wracked with more tension than I know what to do with.
“That school was one of the only things I had in this town, one of the only things I had that was mine,” I continue, the words spilling out of me faster than I can get a handle on them. I know I’m being unfair, but I can’t stop it. I need them to hear this, and I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to tell them now that the fire is almost dealt with.
“Because when I came back to this town, when I was pregnant with the quads, I—I thought I would find you here,” I confess, looking around at them, their eyes all pinned to me as they listen in silence. Carlisle throws back a generous gulp of his drink, like he’s trying to shut out the truth of what I’m telling him, but I know it doesn’t work like that.
“But by the time I made it back here, you were all gone,” I continue. “And I had no idea where the hell you had gotten to. I thought—fuck, I don’t know what I thought. I thought that Iwould be able to find some stability here, that at least one of you would step up to help me with the children when they came along, but you…”
I clench my fists at my sides, trying to contain the tears that are threatening to fall. I can tell how unreasonable I’m being, but I can’t help it—I just can’t stop picturing the school in a pile of ash, the classroom that I’ve gone out of my way to make such a safe, welcoming space for the children of this town, knowing one day it would include my own. Everything I thought I would have has been torn away from me, just the same way I felt when I first discovered I was pregnant. The emotions collide faster than I can make sense of them, faster than I can take hold of them.
“You were all gone,” I whisper. “And now, you’re all going to leave again, and I don’t know where the fuck that leaves me, because one of you is the father of my children and none of you seem able to talk about it with me!” My words ring out in the quiet room, and I finally come to a halt, breathing hard, shoulders squeezed up to my ears.
Well, now I’ve said it. We have all been carefully avoiding the matter of my children up until this moment, ever since the conversation that Joe and I had on the topic when they first arrived, but with their reasons for staying here starting to fade, I need to get it all out in the open. Better that I say it now than be left with the questions in their absence, even if it does feel as though I’ve thrown a live grenade into the middle of the room.
Finally, Carlisle speaks, breaking the silence. “You think we would just leave? Like that? After everything that’s happened?”
I’m still breathing hard, my chest rising and falling quickly, as I turn to face him. “I don’t know what you would do,” I admit. “It’snot like this situation—it’s not like they give out a handbook for this kind of thing…”
“I would never have stayed away for as long as we did if I’d known about the babies, Angelie,” Callum murmurs, his words laced with an almost painful sincerity.
I can tell that he’s hurt that I would even think of him like that, but what choice do I have? It’s not as though I’ve been in touch with any of them long enough to know one way or another what they would have done if I’d given them the choice. Perhaps it was easier for me to turn all this in on myself rather than acknowledge the truth of what they might have done. The thought tangles in my mind, messy and discomforting.How much have I kept from them for my sake instead of theirs?
“None of us would,” Joe adds, as the silence fills the room again. “You know that, right? It wouldn’t have mattered which one of us it was—which one it is—we all would have been there for you.”
I glance between them, chewing my lip. These men, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all of them focusing their attention on me like this. It feels almost surreal, as though I’m standing in the middle of a fairy circle or something, the way they all look at me like they can hardly believe I’m there.
I feel the same embers flickering in me that I did the night we were together for the first time. That sensation of being wanted, desired, craved in a way that I hadn’t ever felt before. Even as I stand here now, accusing them, chewing them out, none of them make a move to leave or argue with me, as though they know I need to get this off my chest. All of them are listening to every word I say.
“I just…I just don’t know what happens now,” I whisper, the words catching at the back of my throat. “I don’t know if I can stand this town without you in it, not again…”
Dylan reaches for me, taking my hand and pulling me into his lap. “You don’t have to,” he murmurs, hand resting briefly on my cheek. “You don’t have to, Angelie.”
I gaze into his eyes, willing myself to believe him with every fiber of my being. His hand runs up the back of my shirt, resting on my bare skin, and the shock of his ash-stained hands on me suddenly pulls me back to the here and now. Maybe it doesn’t matter what comes after this. Or maybe I can believe that, just for the time being, just for long enough to grant my addled mind a break from the questions that have been tearing it apart for as long as they’ve been back in Devin Ridge.
As though I’ve drifted back in time to the night of the bonfire all over again, I lean in, wrap my arms around Dylan, and kiss him on the mouth.
16
ANGELIE
As soon asour lips find each other, I feel the mood in the room change. The anger and grief and guilt and hurt that was spinning out of control suddenly finds a way to express itself as I kiss Dylan once more, hands on the back of the chair, gripping tight as though it’s the only thing keeping me grounded right now.
As his tongue explores my mouth, I sense movement behind me, and I look back to see Joe positioning himself at the base of the chair, wrapping his arms around me as he plants kisses over the back of my neck.
“You really think we ever would have left if we knew?” he growls in my ear, and there’s a note of something close to anger in his voice, as though he struggles to believe that I would have trusted in that. I turn my head, breaking my kiss with Dylan, and Dylan takes the opportunity to pull off my shirt, tossing it to the ground before he grasps me once more. I’m on his lap, but Joe’s fingers run down my thighs, groping at me like he’s reminding himself of just how much he has missed me all this time.
