Crescendo (6 page)

How could he think this didn’t have anything to do with us? Marcie was the one person who took every opportunity to attack and belittle me. Over the past eleven years, she’d teased me, spread horrible rumors about me, and humiliated me publicly. How could he think this wasn’t personal? How could he think I’d just accept this, no questions asked? Above all, couldn’t he see I was terrified that Marcie would use him to hurt me? If she suspected he was even remotely interested, she’d do everything in her power to steal him for herself. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Patch, but it would kill me if I lost him to her.

Overwhelmed by that sudden fear, I said, “Don’t come back until you’re ready to tell me what you were doing at her place.”

Patch impatiently pushed his way inside and closed the door behind him. “I didn’t come here to argue. I wanted to let you know Marcie ran into some trouble this afternoon.”

Marcie again? Did he think he hadn’t dug a deep enough hole already? I tried to stay calm long enough to hear him out, but I wanted to yell across him. “Oh?” I said coolly.

“She was caught in the crossfire when a group of fallen angels tried to force a Nephil to swear fealty inside the men’s room at Bo’s Arcade. The Nephil wasn’t sixteen, so they couldn’t force him, but they had fun trying. They cut him up pretty bad, and broke a few ribs. Enter Marcie. She’d had too much to drink and walked into the wrong restroom. The fallen angel standing guard pulled a knife on her. She’s at the hospital, but they’ll release her soon. Flesh wound.”

My pulse jumped, and I knew I was upset that Marcie had been knifed, but that was the last thing I wanted to reveal to Patch. I crossed my arms stiffly. “Gee, is the Nephil okay?” I vaguely remembered Patch explaining, some time ago, that fallen angels can’t force Nephilim to swear fealty until they’re sixteen. Likewise, he couldn’t sacrifice me to get a human body of his own until I turned sixteen. Sixteen was a darkly magical, even crucial age in the world of angels and Nephilim.

Patch gave me a look that held the tiniest glare of disgust. “Marcie may have been drunk, but chances are she remembers what she saw. Obviously you know fallen angels and Nephilim try to stay under the radar, and someone like Marcie, with a big mouth, can threaten their secrecy. The last thing they want is for her to announce to the world what she saw. Our world operates a lot more smoothly when humans are ignorant of it. I know the fallen angels involved.” His jaw tensed. “They’ll do whatever it takes to keep Marcie quiet.”

I felt a shiver of fear for Marcie but flushed it away. Since when
did Patch care one way or the other what happened to Marcie? Since when was he more worried about her than me? “I’m trying to feel bad,” I said, “but it sounds like you’re concerned enough for the both of us.” I jerked on the doorknob and held the door wide. “Maybe you should go check on Marcie, see if her
flesh wound
is healing properly.”

Patch pried my hand loose and shut the door with his foot. “Bigger things than you, me, and Marcie are going on.” He hesitated, as if he had more to say, but closed his mouth at the last moment.

“You, me, and
Marcie
? Since when did you start putting the three of us in the same sentence? Since when does she mean anything to you?” I snapped.

He cupped a hand over the back of his neck, looking very much like he knew he should choose his words carefully before answering.

“Just tell me what you’re thinking!” I blurted. “Spit it out! It’s bad enough that I have no idea what you’re feeling, let alone what you’re thinking!”

Patch looked around, as if he was wondering whether I was talking to someone else. “Spit it out?” he said, his tone darkly incredulous. Maybe even annoyed. “What does it look like I’m trying to do? If you’d calm down, I could. Right now you’re going to turn hysterical, regardless of what I say.”

I felt my eyes narrow. “I have a right to be angry. You won’t tell me what you were doing at Marcie’s last night.”

Patch threw his hands up.
Here we go again
, the gesture said.

“Two months ago,” I began, trying to inject pride into my voice to hide the quaver in it, “Vee, my mom—
everyone
—warned me that you were the kind of guy who sees girls as conquests. They said I was just another notch on your belt, another stupid girl you’d seduce for your own satisfaction. They said the
moment
I fell in love with you was the moment you’d leave.” I swallowed hard. “I need to know they weren’t right.”

Even though I didn’t want to recall it, the memory of last night resurfaced with perfect clarity. I remembered the whole humiliating scene in vivid detail. I’d said I loved him, and he’d left me hanging. There were a hundred different ways to analyze his silence, none of them good.

Patch wagged his head in disbelief. “You want me to tell you they’re wrong? Because I get the feeling you aren’t going to believe me, no matter what I say.” He glared at me.

“Are you as committed to this relationship as I am?” I couldn’t
not
ask it. Not after watching everything come tumbling down since last night. I suddenly realized I had no idea how Patch really felt about me. I thought I meant everything to him, but what if I’d only seen what I wanted? What if I’d grossly exaggerated his feelings? I held his eyes, not about to make this easy on him, not about to give him a second chance to skirt the issue. I needed to know. “Do you love me?”

I can’t answer that
, he said, startling me by speaking to my
thoughts. It was a gift all angels possessed, but I didn’t understand why he was choosing now to use it. “I’ll stop by tomorrow. Sleep well,” he added curtly, heading for the door.

“When we kiss, are you faking it?”

He stopped short. Another disbelieving shake of his head. “
Faking
it?”

“When I touch you, do you feel anything? How far does your desire go? Do you feel anything close to what I feel for you?”

Patch watched me in silence. “Nora—,” he began.

“I want a straight answer.”

After a moment, he said, “Emotionally, yes.”

“But physically no, right? How am I supposed to be in a relationship, when I have no idea how much it even means to you? Am I experiencing things on a whole different level? Because that’s what it feels like. And I
hate
it,” I added. “I don’t want you to kiss me because you have to. I don’t want you to pretend it means something, when it’s really just an act.”

“Just an act? Are you listening to yourself?” He tipped his head back against the wall and gave another, darker laugh. He cut me a sideways glance. “Are you done with the accusations?”

“You think this is funny?” I said, hit by a fresh wave of anger.

“Just the opposite.” Before I could say more, he turned toward the door. “Call me when you’re ready to talk rationally.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re crazy. You’re impossible.”

“
I’m
crazy?”

He tipped my chin up and planted a quick, rough kiss on my mouth. “And I must be crazy for putting up with it.”

I pulled free and rubbed my chin resentfully. “You gave up becoming human for me, and this is what I get? A boyfriend who hangs out at Marcie’s, but won’t tell me why. A boyfriend who walks out at the first hint of a fight. Try this on for size: You’re a—jerk!”

Jerk?
he spoke to my thoughts, his voice cold and cutting.
I’m trying to follow the rules. I’m not supposed to fall in love with you. We both know this isn’t about Marcie. This is about how I feel about you. I have to hold back. I’m walking a dangerous line. Falling in love is what got me in trouble in the first place. I can’t be with you the way I want.

“Why did you give up becoming human for me if you knew you couldn’t be with me?” I asked, my voice wobbling slightly, sweat prickling the palms of my hands. “What did you even expect from a relationship with me? What’s the point of”—my voice caught and I swallowed without meaning to—“us?”

What had I expected from a relationship with Patch? At some point, I must have thought about where our relationship was headed, and what would happen. Of course I had. But I’d been so frightened by what I saw coming that I’d pretended the inevitable away. I’d pretended a relationship with Patch could work, because deep inside, any time with Patch had seemed better than nothing at all.

Angel.

I looked up when Patch spoke my name in my thoughts.

Being close to you on any level is better than nothing. I’m not going to lose you.
He paused, and for the first time since I’d know him, I saw a flicker of worry in his eyes.
But I already fell once. If I give the archangels cause to think I’m even remotely in love with you, they’ll send me to hell. Forever.

The news hit me like a blow to the stomach. “What?”

I’m a guardian angel, or at least so I’ve been told, but the archangels don’t trust me. I have no privileges, no privacy. Two of them cornered me last night for a talk, and I walked away with the feeling that they want me to slip up again. For whatever reason, they’re choosing now to crack down on me. They’re looking for any excuse to get rid of me. I’m on probation, and if I screw this up, my story doesn’t have a happy ending.

I stared at him, thinking he had to be exaggerating, thinking it couldn’t possibly be that bad, but one look at his face told me he’d never been more serious.

“What happens now?” I wondered out loud.

Instead of answering, Patch sighed with frustration. The truth of the matter was, this was going to end badly. No matter how much we backpedaled, stalled, or looked the other way, one day all too soon, our lives would be ripped apart. What would happen when I graduated and went off to college? What would happen when I followed my dream job to the other side of the country? What would happen when it came time for me to marry or have kids? I wasn’t doing anyone a favor by falling in love with Patch more every day.
Did I really want to stay on this road longer, knowing it was only going to end with devastation?

For one fleeting moment, I thought I had the answer—I’d give up my dreams. It was as simple as that. I shut my eyes and let go of my dreams like they were balloons on long, thin ribbons. I didn’t need those dreams. I couldn’t even be sure they’d come true. And even if they did, I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life alone and tortured by the knowledge that everything I’d done meant nothing without Patch.

And then it hit me in a terrible way that neither of us could give up everything. My life would continue marching into the future, and I didn’t have the power to stop it. Patch would stay an angel forever; he would continue the path he’d been on since he fell.

“Isn’t there anything we can do?” I asked.

“I’m working on it.”

In other words, he had nothing. We were trapped on both sides—the archangels applying pressure from one direction, and two futures headed in vastly different directions from the other.

“I want out,” I said quietly. I knew I wasn’t being fair—I was protecting myself. What other option did I have? I couldn’t give Patch a chance to talk me out of it. I had to do what was best for both of us. I couldn’t stand here, hanging on, when the very thing I held disappeared more with each passing day. I couldn’t show how much I cared when it was only going to make things impossibly hard in the end. Most of all, I didn’t want to be the reason Patch
lost everything he’d worked for. If the archangels were looking for an excuse to banish him forever, I was only making it easy.

Patch stared at me like he couldn’t tell if I was serious. “That’s it? You want out? You got your turn to explain yourself, which I don’t buy, by the way, but now that it’s my turn, I’m supposed to just swallow your decision and walk out?”

I hugged my elbows and turned away. “You can’t force me to stay in a relationship I don’t want.”

“Can we talk about this?”

“If you want to talk, tell me what you were doing at Marcie’s last night.” But Patch was right. This wasn’t about Marcie. This was because I was scared and upset with the deal that fate and circumstance had cut both of us.

I turned back to see Patch drag his hands down his face. He gave a short, unamused laugh.

“If I’d been at Rixon’s last night, you’d wonder what was going on!” I flung back.

“No,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “I trust you.”

Afraid I’d lose my resolve if I didn’t act immediately, I smacked the heels of my hands against his chest, knocking him back a step. “Go,” I said, tears making my voice rough. “I have other things I want to do with my life. Things that don’t involve you. I have college and future jobs. I’m not going to throw it all away on something that was never meant to be.”

Patch flinched. “Is this what you really want?”

“When I kiss my boyfriend, I want to know he feels it!”

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. I didn’t want to hurt him—I just wanted to get this moment over with as quickly as possible before I unraveled and broke down sobbing. But I’d gone too far. I saw him stiffen. We stood face-to-face, both of us breathing hard.

Then he strode out, yanking the door shut behind him.

Once the door was closed, I collapsed against it. Tears burned at the back of my eyes, but not a single drop fell. I had too much frustration and anger clashing around inside me to feel much of anything else, but I suspected in a way that caused a sob to catch in my throat, that five minutes from now, when everything else had dropped away and I realized the full impact of what I’d done, I’d feel my heart breaking.

I
LOWERED MYSELF ONTO THE CORNER OF MY
bed, staring into space. The anger was beginning to wear off, but I almost wished I could stay caught up in its fever forever. The emptiness it left behind ached more than the sharp, fiery pain I’d felt when Patch walked out. I tried to make sense of what had just happened, but my thoughts were a disjointed mess. Our shouted words rang in my ears, but they echoed helter-skelter, like I was recalling a bad dream rather than an actual conversation.