“Nope.”
He looked amused, but relieved. He kinda stumbled toward me, and I realized he was going in for a drunken hug.
I stepped back and he stopped. He studied my lips, the only part of me he could really see well. He swiped a hand through his hair, his eyes looking bleary. I felt bad for him, and I hated it.
“What’s wrong?” he said dryly, his eyes drifting over the helmet, then meeting mine through the eyeholes again. “Did the scar grow back?”
I bristled. And I squirmed under the heat of his gaze; it spread through my body, feeling way too good.
Being this close to him, after being apart… it dredged up so many memories.
Our weird, brief marriage.
And that long, aching year in school.
That terrible wound on my face. That flaw that was so public, so obvious… I wore it to school like armor. I didn’t even cover it with bandages, to my mother’s absolute horror.
I didn’t hide it then. Not like I hid what was left of it now.
That year was a brutally awkward time in my life, but I decided it would’ve been worse to try to hide it and have people gossiping about me. Guessing what was wrong with me.
I let them all just see what was wrong with me.
And people like the one standing in front of me right now? Most of them looked down on me because of it. I’d learned to layer myself in heavy armor, mentally, just to get through the day.
I judged before I could be rejected. I hated before I could get hurt.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore.
I took the damn helmet off. “There.”
Dane stared at me as I tussled my sweaty helmet hair. He leaned in again, though maybe he was just unsteady on his feet. I stood my ground. His face was maybe a foot from mine. I could smell his cologne, alcohol, and that heady smell of him that I loved so much.
His eyes softened. “Devi… I…”
I crossed my arms, waiting.
His gaze trailed over my face, like he wanted to say something. But he didn’t say anything else. He looked so drunk, like he couldn’t even find the right words.
Maybe there weren’t any right words.
I knew what was left of my scar was covered with heavy makeup. He probably didn’t even know there was anything left of it. In the brief time we’d lived together, he’d never seen me without makeup. I’d never taken off that mask.
He just stared at me.
He still had the ridiculous wings on, kinda crooked, and the coat dangling from his hand. And he wasn’t saying anything, like,I shouldn’t have left youorI love you, or removing himself from my path.
So I started digging my coat check ticket out of the teeny, tiny pocket in my badass leather leggings—as he watched my cleavage jiggle in my leather breastplate thing—then turned on my heel and started looking for my coat.
“Devi.”
Great. The drunk angel was following me.
I examined my ticket, trying to match up the numbers, find the row of hangers that would lead me to my coat. Hard to do when he was looming over me.
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, you said that in your stupid email before you told me you were leaving and gave me no say in it.”
