Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Elena nodded because she couldn’t bear to hurt this woman who’d done nothing but fall in love with a man whose heart had been given to another a long time ago, then smashed into so many pieces that what he had to offer Gwendolyn was a cobbled-together imitation of the real thing.
The worst of it was that Gwendolyn knew. She was too smart not to know. But love, Elena understood, wasn’t always sensible. She, after all, had fallen in love with an archangel who’d made her close her own hand over the blade of a knife, her blood a scarlet warning.
“Is someone at home?” she asked Gwendolyn. “You won’t be alone?”
“All the girls,” Gwendolyn reassured her. “Harrison and Maynard are looking after the kids and the Guild’s given Eve compassionate leave.”
Harrison was Beth’s husband, Maynard Amy’s. “Good.”
“You won’t leave him?” Gwendolyn twisted toward the ICU room, the shadows under her eyes purplish bruises.
“I promise.”
After finally convincing the other woman to return home and get some sleep, Elena took a deep breath. It didn’t calm her. If anything, the medicinal air, sharp and acrid, just made things worse, tightening the knots in her gut until they threatened to strangle her.
“Ellie?” A hesitant question.
Careful to keep her wings flush to her back, Elena turned to find herself facing a small woman with skin of pale brown and eyes of tawny hazel in a rounded face, her curly black hair cut in a neat bob that she’d pinned to the sides. She wore dark blue scrubs, had a stethoscope around her neck.
Elena frowned. “I’m sorry,” she said, her brain stuttering on the knowledge that she knew this young doctor but coming up blank on the name. “I feel like I should recognize you, but—”
“Oh, don’t worry.” The woman waved a hand, her nervous expression easing into one so warm that it lit up the bleak chill that was the ICU. “The last time you saw me, I was maybe fifteen, had the worst case of acne, and was padded all over with what Mom called my cuddle layer. Med school took care of that—I barely have time to sleep, much less eat.”
A neuron fired. “Lola?” Elena’s mouth fell open. “You’re a doctor now?” Last she remembered, her friend Hector Santiago’s daughter had been a shy schoolgirl who barely said a word.
A dimpled smile. “Resident anyway.”
“How’s your father?” Elena asked. “I haven’t spoken to him much since he and your mom moved away.” The truth was that while Santiago had tried, their relationship had never quite been the same once Elena became entangled with immortals. Neither one of them at fault, their lives just occupying different spaces.
“He’s great. He’s the chief in a tiny seaside town in Virginia now—I was worried he’d get bored, but he’s pretty much a local these days. Has fishing buddies and knows everyone. Says it makes it easier to keep the miscreants in line.”
“I’m glad,” Elena said, even as her heart thudded and her mouth dried up. Because she couldn’t keep delaying.
“I just . . .” Lola Santiago glanced at the door to Jeffrey’s room. “I saw the name on the chart and I thought it might be your dad.”
“Is there anything you can tell me about his condition?”
“Major myocardial infarction—a big heart attack, in other words. Complication in surgery, but they got him back quickly. Right now, he’s unconscious and that’s not out of the ordinary, but we’ll start to worry if he doesn’t come out of it by morning.”
“I’ll buzz the staff as soon as he wakes.” Elena’s hands threatened to sweat, her pulse in her throat. “Tell your dad I said hi and that he still owes me ten bucks on our bet over the feather. He’ll know what I mean.”
“I will. He talks about you all the time, tells us stories of the cases you worked on together. Keeps saying he should invite you fishing, share a beer with you over old times.”
Elena wanted to smile, couldn’t quite manage it. “A woman with wings fishing. Now that’ll be something to see,” she got out before her throat closed completely.
Lola’s smile was understanding. “I’m around at night all the time, so if you need anything . . .”
Elena nodded, then forced herself to start walking to her father’s room. As the door loomed ever larger in her vision, she thought about Detective Hector Santiago and about how they’d worked together what felt like a lifetime ago. Death wasn’t the only way to lose people; sometimes, they simply drifted away. But unlike with death, there remained a chance to reach out, come together again.
What’s broken between us can’t be fixed.
Words she’d spoken herself to her best friend, about her relationship with her father. Now she hoped she’d been wrong, that the last words she and Jeffrey ever said to each other wouldn’t be ones scored by the vicious wounds of the past.