When Sparks Fly (25 page)

“You’re kidding? He lives in Florida now?” Avery asks, casting a look at Jeremy.

We’re huddled up on the couch in the living room watching episodes of Scandal on Netflix while eating pizza.

“What was that look?” I ask, hitting pause on the television, thinking she didn’t sound so surprised by that news.

“What look?” She bites her lip and grins.

I wave between her and Jeremy. “That one,” I say, when it happens again.

Jeremy laughs. “I’ll tell you what, Kane’s a sneaky bastard, almost as sneaky as Raven.”

Then it hits me. “Holy shit! Did y’all know he was here?” They look at one another. “Y’all did, didn’t you?”

Avery holds up her hands in defense. “I knew before you, but not by much. Jeremy on the other hand…” she flicks her eyes to him.

“You knew?” I ask, standing from the couch, placing my pizza back in the box.

He rolls his eyes. “Don’t get pissy, Raven. You kept a secret from me for over a year.”

“A year?” Avery asks with surprise. “You didn’t tell me you were Raven for over a year. That’s…that is…”

“Crazy, I know. I should have known that playing with fire was sure to burn. Damn… how it burns,” I say with a laugh.

“You’re insane,” Jeremy laughs.

“Love makes a person crazy, right?”

“I want to know about this burn you speak of,” Avery says with rapt attention.

I roll my eyes and plop back down on the couch with a scowl on my face. “I can’t believe y’all knew he was back home and didn’t tell me.”

“Don’t pout. You just got played in your own game,” Jeremy says. “Besides, you might have stalked him like that creepy Raven bitch. We might have heard about you on the news.”

I throw a pillow at him and apologize when it knocks the pizza out of his hand. “Funny asshole,” I say, but I can’t deny that I do have unhinged tendencies when it comes to Kane.

We drop the conversation, eat pizza and watch Olivia Pope live her own life of secrets with Fitz.

“I swear to God. He is the hottest president ever. I’d totally have an affair with him,” Avery says and when the laughter fills the room, it becomes my calm. This is our normal and the furious storm that raged inside of me has settled.

After we’ve retreated to bed, I log onto Raven’s Facebook page before shutting it down for good… just for shits and giggles. My mouth falls agape when I see that I have a message from K. West.

“Wanna role play, Raven?” he asked in his message.

I see he’s online so I decide to play along. “Funny. What do you have in mind, Kane?”

“Once upon a time an angel and a devil fell in love,” he replies.

“That is true. I heard it didn’t end well.”

“Perhaps. I heard it was sinfully good. The devil was once an angel, you know?”

“Yes. So, what happened between the angel and the devil?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. You’re the devil.”

“Wait! I thought I was the angel?”

“You are definitely not an angel, Raven Elise.” He adds a winking face emoji. “But I figure you and I can play in hell together. You wanna?” A devil horned emoji, heart and then an angel emoji are sent next. I laugh.

“Can we play forever?”

“Do you want to play forever?”

“Yes.”

“Then we will.”

“Do you want me to be your Angel again, Kane?”

He doesn’t reply, but my phone does ring and I smile when I see it’s him.

“Hello?”

“Hey.” His voice will be my lullaby tonight. “Why were you on Raven’s page?” he asks.

“Why were you?”

“I asked first.”

I sigh. “I guess out of curiosity, but I’m shutting it down. I don’t want to be Raven anymore.”

“Do you want to be my Angel again?” I imagine him in his bed, the bed where we made love. I smile at the fact that he’s in a condo here in Florida. That maybe we are finally on the same map.

“Is this your way of asking me to be your girl again, Kane?”

He laughs and I swear it’s the best sound in the entire world. “You were always my girl, Angel. Even when you weren’t, you were. I hope you know that.”

“I’ll be your angel
and
your devil if you want.”

“Hmmm… a little of both.”

We spend the night talking to one another. I ask him about the new book he’s writing and if I still get to be his beta bitch being as though Raven was this trusted one. He tells me with such excitement about the characters, so much so that I think I know them and then he makes my heart flutter when he says that he’d love to share with me. I love his enthusiasm, his passion and most of all I love that I am a part of it. Tomorrow I will have to share him with the readers at the Flirty Fourth, but tonight… he’s all mine.

‡
Chapter Eight

Kane

“What’s it like?” Angel asks.

She’s sitting on my sofa as I go over my checklist for the signing. I flick my eyes to her briefly. “What’s what like?”

Book. Check.

Banner. Check.

Swag. Check.

“Signings. Having fans drive into town just to see you?”

I pause my pacing and turn to her. “I don’t have fans. I have readers. But truthfully, it makes me feel anxious. Like I want to throw up.”

She laughs and my eyes narrow so she quickly stops. “Seriously. I get nervous, like stage fright or something. I don’t do people well and I find myself tongue-tied and nervous as fuck.”

Her head tilts sympathetically and I turn to the sliding glass door to look out over the beach. It’s a beautiful day. The beach directly ahead of me is secluded, but to the left in the distance, it’s full of life—families setting up picnics—preparing for a day on the beach. Tonight it will be alive with people watching the fireworks over the water.

Angel wraps her arms around my waist and hugs herself against my back. I thread my fingers through her hands at my stomach and smile at how natural, how comfortable this all feels.

“Were you like that in Hollywood, too? Being around the stars and the movie producers must have been something.” She places a kiss to my bareback and I turn around to face her, neither of us releasing this embrace. Her gaze falls to my chest and I smirk at how she’s attracted to me.

“It was something, but that was different…vastly different. My words were on paper, but then several people got their hands on it. The director. The producer. They decided what would see motion and what wouldn’t. Everyone wanted something from someone, but once my part was done, it wasn’t usually from me. It’s different with a novel. With a novel I have the control. I set the scene, the mood, and the characters’ emotions. I decide. With that responsibility comes culpability. Readers may love it or hate it. At signings, they want you to talk about it, explain the story and it’s like giving a pitch, which I should be used to or good at, but I’m not. Not really. I feel like sometimes a story can’t be explained with a few short words. It needs to be read, to be experienced and then it’s a breathing thing that I can talk about it.” I realize that I’ve been rambling and so I stop, but I look at her and she’s smiling. “What?”

Her smile grows wider. She rises on her tiptoes and kisses my forehead. “Nothing. I just really love what’s in here,” then she kisses my chest, “and here.”

I grab her cheeks and grin at her. “I love you, too.”

She walks to the couch and sits down. My eyes travel to her legs in the cut off jean shorts she’s in, smiling at the teal blue decorating her toenails.

“I can’t believe you actually live here, Kane. It’s so quiet and calm out here. What brought you back?”

“Besides, you. I needed a place to write, somewhere reticent.” I look around at the muted room. “California wasn’t home and I was ready to come home.”

“I’m glad you’re back,” she says. Something flashes in her eyes and I see her glance at the room with a slight frown, but when she meets my gaze it’s gone and back is the smile on her face.
What was that?
She grows quiet and it makes me uneasy.

“You’re chewing on your lip. Something on your mind, Angel?”

“Mmm?” she asks. I just stare and wait. “Kind of. How long did you suspect I was Raven?”

Okay, I wasn’t expecting that.
I’m kind of pissed that she keeps bringing her up. If anyone should be… it should be me, but I’m not.
So, why is she?

“It’s just… you came home, but you didn’t tell me you were here. I didn’t deserve to know, either. So, I’m not bitching about that. I’m just curious why you waited until I confessed that I was Raven to expose your own secret. Were you waiting because there was a possibility that I wasn’t her?”

Shit!

“What do you mean?” I ask, but I already know.

“I mean… you spent months, a year building a relationship with Raven. Messaging her daily, nightly. You opened up to her and she you. There were nights, Kane, that you messaged her first. You reached out to Raven and she was just there to listen, to reach back.”

My lips pull tight and my heart thumps loudly. “What are you asking me, Angel? I already know how this went.”

Her eyes narrow and she begins to fidget with the thread on her shorts. Nervous. “Before you knew it was me… she was just a girl named Raven. Someone that loved your books. That enjoyed having private conversations with her favorite author, exclusive access to your head. She wasn’t Angel. She wasn’t me, not to you. But you…” I look away from her eyes because I know what’s coming. “You enjoyed her, Kane. You provoked her just as much. What would have happened had I not been Raven?”

“But you are her,” I whisper without meeting her knowing stare.

Her soft hand reaches to my cheek and I touch her fingers beginning to breathe heavily as our eyes meet. “But what if I wasn’t? What then?” I shrug because I don’t know. I don’t know what my answer should be. “Did you have feelings for Raven?” she asks in a soft voice.

“Yes,” I admit. “Did you have feelings for K. West?” I ask.

“You are K. West.”

I shake my head. “No, I’m Kane. Sometimes I feel like two different people all together.”

She nods in understanding. “Yes, I had feelings for K. West, but I knew who I was and who you were. That’s not the case for you. You didn’t know that I was Raven. As far as you knew, she was a girl with similarities to me, interests in you. She wasn’t Angel Solis. She was Raven Elise. We were two different people.”

“True. So, you want to know who I like better? Is that it?”

She shrugs and looks away from me.

“I like Raven because she’s open. As her, you were vulnerable and you didn’t hide, which is laughable considering you were hiding the entire time. But Angel… I love
you
. Yes, I had feelings for a girl that never existed, but the truth is… I think it’s because on some deep level, there was a connection and that wasn’t because of her that was you. So, please don’t twist any of this around to make it even more fucked up than it already is. We both made mistakes and hid ourselves, but here we are.”

She blinks up at me, “Okay, I’m sorry.”

I pull her into my lap, inhaling her. “Will you be my PA today?” I place a kiss to the top of her head.

Her eyes sparkle when they meet mine. “Assists you in what?” she asks, biting that lip.

“Hmm… I see you’re wearing your horns today.” I smile at her and the dark cloud of the Raven conversation melts away. “Seriously! Would you like to come to the signing with me as my assistant?”

“Do you want that?” she asks.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t. I’d love nothing more than to share this with you. I should have all along.”

“Then, yes. I’ve never been to a book signing before. This will be my first.”

“Consider your cherry popped,” I say and laugh when she gives me an incredulous look.

“Now, who’s wearing horns? On second thought, you were wonderful the first time you popped my cherry. I’m sure the second time will be amazing.”

I smirk and she giggles, reaching up to place a chaste kiss on my lips. She hops off of me with a grin. “Oh, my God! Whatever will I wear, though?” My mouth hangs open when she removes the black t-shirt that she had been wearing leaving underneath a tight Team Micah shirt. Perfect. She’s perfect.

I smile wide and tug on the hem of her shirt to pull her towards me. “Team Micah, huh? I love it. And you,” I whisper against her lips and then I kiss her.