“As if you’d want to find me!” she tossed at him, incredulous. And something else beneath it, something she ignored. “Why don’t you find someone else?”
“I want you,” he said. Implacable. Sure. “I married you.”
“I can’t do this,” she said, tears mixing with the rain, and she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I can’t live like this. I never should have approached you—”
“But you did,” he said, some fierce note in his voice that she didn’t fully understand, though her body heard it and warmed. “And here we are.”
“It’s your fault!” she accused him. “It was just a crazy idea. I never would have gone through with it! But you were so…” She shook her head, wishing she could clear it, but nothing seemed to work. Not since the day she’d met him, if she was honest. “I never really meant for any of this to happen.”
“While I can’t regret a single moment of it,” he said. He shifted, this strong, powerful man, as if he was uncertain. As if she meant that much to him. But how could she believe that? He sighed, slightly. “I don’t want to be a ghost anymore.”
She turned toward him, searching his face, looking for something she wasn’t even sure she would recognize if she found it. That great red rage left her in a sudden rush, along with that driving, instinctive need to run, and she wasn’t at all certain what was left. But she couldn’t seem to look away from him as the rain came down in sheets all around them, over them.
“I have been alone all my life,” he said gruffly. “I lost my father too young. My mother and brother excelled at cruelty. They enjoyed it. The only friends I ever truly had were in the army, and they all died in that explosion.” His mouth tightened, and shadows twisted through his dark eyes. “I survived, but I was covered in scars. Suddenly my outsides matched what I’d always thought was already on the inside.” He looked away for a moment, as if he was battling something, and then met her gaze again, his own fiercely probing. Furious—but not, Angel understood, at her. Perhaps none of this had ever been aimed at her. “My mother only told me she loved me when she was playing one of her games,” he said softly. “She thought it was funny if she could get me to believe her, even for a moment.”
“Rafe…” she whispered, her throat tight, her heart seeming to somersault behind her ribs. Something in her shifted then. The fear fell away, the hurt seemed to subside, and all that was left was that same old feeling, that sharp urge to protect him, somehow, even from this, his own past.
Maybe she had loved him all along.
“You are the first person I’ve ever known who is more beautiful inside than out,” he said, his eyes so dark, so very dark, and Angel felt it inside of her. “I don’t know why you love me,” he continued in the same low voice, twisting in and around the rain that fell upon them, and her heart began to pound. “I don’t know if I’ve already ruined it. All I’ve ever seen in me are these scars, long before they showed on my face. Ugly, incapacitating scars, in and out, that make me wholly unfit for the company of others. I don’t know why you approached me, and I can’t think of a single reason why you would stay.”
She couldn’t speak. He raised his hand, cautiously, and when she didn’t flinch away, he slid it over her jaw to cup her cheek, leaning down close, as if the rain that fell on them was some kind of blessing. As if it held them there, in a kind of embrace, cocooning them. Washing away all the harsh words, all the pain. The past. Their families. All their shields and armor, masks and hiding places.
Clearing the way, somehow, for whatever came next. Making space for their strange marriage, their rocky start. Making it feel new. Right, somehow.
“What I know is that you are like sunlight to me,” he said, his voice ragged, but sure, and his eyes warming to quicksilver as he looked at her. “You make me want to come out of the dark, Angel. You make me want to believe that I can.”
She felt that dangerous spark of hope ignite within her, but this time, she let it glow. She felt it turn into a fire, then grow into a blaze. And then it began to spread. And spread.
And she let it.
“You can,” she whispered, almost overcome with the heat of all that hope.
She was lost again, but this time with him. In him. Where she belonged. Where she would stay. No masks. No scars. Just them. She smiled then, a real smile, and after a moment he returned it.