When Sparks Fly (23 page)

“Your scars remind you where you’ve been, but they don’t have to determine where you’re going. Only you can do that. Where do you want to go, Angel?” he asked.

I remember thinking that I wanted to go to Kane, but my head told me that Ezra was safe and I wanted to stay there with him. I asked him to make me forget and he did. We made love that night and his touch was gentle, sweet and slow torture. He saw my darkness and became my light. He fixed my broken heart, the heart that was still half beating in tempo with Kane’s, no matter how much I tried to pretend it wasn’t. I somehow fell in love with Ezra while still being in love with Kane.

I knew it meant trouble the second Kane came home to take care of his dad who had become sick. I think Ezra knew too because he asked me so, but I denied having feelings for Kane. I told him that was the past and he was my future. That he had absolutely nothing to worry about. All lies. For a year, I had wrapped myself up in the lie that my heart could love two people and never have a consequence.

I knew it would crumble around me eventually because the more I had watched Kane with his father, the deeper I fell for him again, remembering how he was there for me when I’d lost my mother. He was so caring, so loving, and he dropped everything to be by his parent’s side, being the anchor that kept his mother from drowning in pain. My heart broke for him and for Avery and me because his family was like our own. His mom kept us together.

I was there for her, too. She was like my own mother and she was losing her husband. So, one evening, Avery and I made them dinner, not knowing what to do to help, but knowing we needed to do something. His mom told me right there in the kitchen, in front of Avery and Kane, that she was happy for me. Happy that I found love again with Ezra, but in her heart, she always wished I had become her true daughter by marrying her son. I remember looking into Kane’s eyes when she said that, and I saw the same wish in them, but he was too late, though he didn’t know that at the time. Besides, I wasn’t what he wanted anymore, not really. Ezra had already proposed by then and I said yes, and Kane was on a new adventure in the writing world as a novelist.

Everything seemed fine for a while, his dad had beaten the cancer for six months or so we thought. I spent a lot of time with his mom and in that time I think she made me remember why I loved Kane. I felt immense guilt for having such feelings when Ezra was being so supportive and so understanding of our friendship and my relationship with his mom. Understanding to a fault really. He knew Kane and I spoke daily. Though, not in a romantic way, it was probably not the most innocent of ideas on my part. Emails here, text there and even a few stolen moments on the phone with a friend.

Then his dad relapsed and it all happened so fast. He died, his mom was without the love of her life and Kane was so alone and so sad and I loved him. I knew that pain all too well, having lost my own mother before. I watched him break and I broke right along with him. Ezra tried to be there for me, but I didn’t want his comfort. I wanted to put Kane back together the way Ezra had me, the way Kane had before him, and I knew it was wrong and unfair.

I fought harder than I ever had in my life and when Kane left for California again, I thought it was done. I’d get over the feelings that had resurfaced from a tragedy. He was gone again, back into his world of words and motion, and I could find my happily ever after with Ezra.

But then I read Kane’s first novel, and his latest adventure in writing was speaking to me. He wrote a beautiful, painful romance. It wasn’t a story of us; even still he was speaking to me through his words, much like a lyricist would through his music. His words broke me into tiny slivers—parts in the past and parts in the present. I’d touched the signed paperback that K. West had sent me and his quote in the beginning of the novel tore my heart wide open and made me question everything.

The most painful goodbyes are the ones that are never said and never explained or so I thought. A goodbye that is said when a goodbye is the last thing you really want is far more painful than words. Some goodbyes slay your heart regardless of how they are heard or not heard because those goodbyes mean slicing your soul in half—half with you and half with her, never whole. The heart will only be whole when a hello is heard and the goodbye no longer exists and she’s back in my arms again.

~ K. West

I didn’t know the depth of his quote until I read the story and that was the beginning of my downfall. I had already moved in with Ezra by then, but the tug of war in my chest was very real. A confession and an admission would change everything.

“Ezra asked me to marry him,” I told Kane on the phone in one of those stolen moments.

“What did you say?” he asked.

“I said, yes.” I told him with very little excitement in my voice.

“Oh!” Kane’s voice was nothing more than a breath.

“He loves me.”

“And you love him,” he said with defeat. It confused me that he sounded sad.

“Yes, but I’m confused.”

“Why?”

“Because I miss you.”

“I miss you, too.” His admission in those four words sliced me in half just like he said in his quote.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted.

“Does he know you’re talking to me?”

“No,” I confessed.

“I see. So, why are you?”

“Why am I what?”

“Talking to me.” His voice was driving me crazy.

“Because I like hearing your voice.”

“What are you doing, Angel?” he asked.

I sighed and my breath became pants. “I don’t know,” I said breathlessly. “It’s just that I know that I love Ezra and he’s good to me, but I…I…” I love you, too is what I wanted to say.

“You what?” His voice dropped to a sexy timber and I felt it, the ache again.

“I think about you,” I breathed and when he didn’t reply, I asked, “Do you think about me?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “What do you want, Angel?” he asked.

“To be happy.”

“Does he make you happy?”

“Yes, but so did you.”

“I also hurt you,” his voice cracked and the tears began to sting my eyes.

“Deeply.”

“I’m sorry,” he breathed.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“No, it’s not.”

We sat on the phone with one another, just breathing.

“I need to go,” I told him when I knew the tears were coming. I didn’t want him to hear me crying. I didn’t want him to know how sad I was, that he had such power over me. Besides, Ezra was going to be home soon and I needed to get myself together.

A double-edged sword fucked me the week following that conversation with Kane when he came into town for Ezra’s bachelor party. It was by coincidence that my bachelorette party ended at the same bar Ezra and his group of friends were at. Ezra stayed in the pool area of the bar and as always I was on the dance floor. Avery and I were in our own world, but she eventually left my world to dance with a guy near us, leaving me alone in my own hypnotic dance.

Secrets by Tiësto, was playing. The lights were flashing and the fog was surrounding me. I was in an electric heaven, my body damp with sweat. I looked over at the bar and that is when my eyes locked onto blue ones. Kane was leaning against the bar with a beer almost to his lips…watching me. His eyes drank me in, hungry and hooded. Something snapped in me because I missed seeing him look at me like that. I averted my gaze to seek out Ezra. He was shooting pool and oblivious to this moment without words being exchanged between Kane and me.

I was just drunk enough and just crazy enough to look back at Kane and smile. Beautiful (It Hurts) by Project46 began to play and it was like the mood was set for what I wanted to say. I danced for Kane. I let my body speak what my mouth couldn’t say. I watched him struggle not to come to me. I delighted in it because he felt what I did. All that time how I wanted him and he was untouchable, now the shoe was on his foot and he was the one aching. I was so lost in the music, in Kane’s eyes that I never even noticed Ezra’s approach from behind me.

His hand was around my stomach and his mouth was right at my ear, hot and breathy as he moved my hair out of his way. “Your eyes are telling me a lot of things, Angel.”

I lifted my gaze and found Kane staring right at us, narrowed and nervous.

“I’m going to ask you again and I expect that the vodka in you will make you honest,” he said and his tongue licked a spot on my neck. I saw Kane look away and I shut my eyes, leaning my back into Ezra. He groaned and turned me to face him, “Do you still have feelings for Kane?” he asked. I gasped. “Because he’s staring at you like he wants to devour you and you’re dancing like you’re thinking of letting him.”

I shook my head to rid the images he just placed in my mind. “I was just dancing, Ezra.”

“And he was just watching?”

I shrugged. “I guess. I can’t control where his eyes go.”

Ezra stepped back and looked at me, his eyes traveling the length of my body in skinny jeans, a black top that fell off my shoulder and my bright red fuck me heels. “I guess you can’t,” he smirked. “But that’s not an answer, Angel. Are you having second thoughts about us because now is the time to say so? If you have feelings for Kane you need to be honest with me. I’ll understand. You have history.”

I looked over my shoulder at Kane talking to a woman with a short skirt and beautiful, auburn hair. My stomach twisted when he gave me a side-glance with an unreadable expression masking his face. Fury was traveling my veins. I looked back at Ezra and lied straight through my teeth.

The next night Kane stopped by the house when Ezra was gone, saying crazy shit. Apologizing for leaving me, begging me not to marry Ezra. His words were leaving me exposed, my heart bare and naked and I… I missed him and I wanted him and his words to never stop existing so I kissed him. I kissed him with all the hunger I had felt for all those years, it all melted away as I melted into him. He swallowed up my whimpers and moans with his groans and apologies. Regret was swirling around us in a cloud of lust, of lost love, until the door opened and reality slammed into us with a force that would break three hearts.

‡
Chapter Six

Kane

It’s been a month since Angel confessed to being Raven. A month of us talking every night on the phone, not just messages and I’ve got to say it’s fucking amazing to hear her voice again. It’s like a drug that keeps me high. We’re not moving slow or fast. We’re just finding a rhythm that feels… comfortable, becoming friends again while longing for more.

She still thinks I’m in California. It’s been torture not telling her the truth and staying away when that’s the last thing I want to do. The truth that I’ve been watching her for a while now, that I came home to isolate myself from a world that had gotten too busy and just too much, that I came home because she’s the reason I breathe and I was a fool to think otherwise.

Stories can be created from anywhere and I should have realized that. I should have known that my own story was the most important one and that she’s the heroine in mine. I left our story as a cliffhanger back in New York, but I don’t want that for us anymore. I want her.

“Are you nervous?” I ask Ezra as he fixes his tie for the thousandth time.

Today is his wedding day and even if he’s not nervous, I know I am because according to Jeremy, she’ll be here.

“No, not in the least. I just can’t figure out what to do with my hands. I hate that I couldn’t see her this morning,” he admits.

I laugh, “Well, it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” I explain.

Jeremy snorts. “I’m sure they threw traditions out the door last night.”

“What happened last night?” I ask.

Ezra grins and Jeremy chuckles. I bounce my eyes between them with impatience. “So?”

“Tenley missed me and she snuck into my room last night. So, I gave her what she missed,” he says.

I laugh. We’re staying at a plantation where the wedding is being held. “Is that why I saw her tiptoeing with a goofy grin on her face this morning?”

“Hey, we didn’t look at one another this morning, so no rules were broken,” Ezra says with a smirk.