All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,63
had watched the children and heard their mother, and he was reassured.
Ruth had been alone—and that had been unfortunate. Angel would bear responsibility for that. And regret. But Ruth had been happy alone, in the end.
Angel was starting to see that Tucker had been alone most of his life, and it was killing him now. Every memory of his past pulled something tight and irrevocable around his heart, making it harder for Angel to feel good about leaving him in Daisy Place with just his memories.
Angel even wanted him to take this break.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t painful being left behind.
“What do you suppose he’s doing, Squishbeans?”
The kitten purred and dug her claws into Angel’s side, kneading. The first time she’d done this, he’d been surprised and hurt. Tucker had been sleeping, so inert his breathing had been suspect, and suddenly Angel was being punctured with tiny needles.
But he hadn’t wanted to wake Tucker, and so he’d counted to ten, breathing like humans did, and realized the pain was not nearly equal to the comfort of having the kitten purr and make tiny kitten biscuits against his suddenly corporeal skin.
He’d pulled up his shirt after Squishbeans had toddled off to do the same thing in Tucker’s hair.
His skin had been perfectly smooth, not even a spot of broken skin or a tiny bit of blood to tell him he’d been hurt.
Unlike Tucker.
Angel sat at the window box overlooking the garden. The ghosts were out there—they were always out there when the sun hit the lawn—but he did not see them.
Instead he saw Tucker, that first day, lying in bed looking sleepy and relaxed, the pale skin of his upper arms almost blue in contrast with the tan of his forearms. There were small freckles, the occasional mole, sparse dark hair under his arms and across his chest—but it was the body of a man who had not endured too much physical pain in his life.
One day, one hunch to investigate a place Angel should have investigated years ago, and his body had been changed irrevocably.
Maybe it matches his heart now.
It wasn’t the first time Angel had thought that either.
Vulnerable.
Tucker Henderson, for all his swagger, for all his stubborn insistence he was making the best of the situation, had been hurt on a fundamental level.
Angel closed his eyes against the ghosts on the lawn and remembered that moment, that heady, terrible moment when Tucker’s blood, after he’d nicked himself shaving, had made Angel real.
You shouldn’t bleed for me, Tucker.
But he wasn’t sure Tucker could stop.
Angel opened his eyes and regarded the kitten soberly. “I would like for him not to get hurt again. Not so soon.” Ruth had endured some rough things, but not with the pain and frequency Tucker had. No wonder she’d wanted to keep her nephew away from Daisy Place.
The kitten meowed and played with Angel’s fingers, pulling one in to lick it.
“There’s no salt there, kitty,” Angel told her sadly. “You need to wait until Tucker gets back.” But Squishbeans kept at it, and Angel wondered what was waiting for him in the Chrysanthemum Room when he returned.
“Should we go see?” he asked.
Squishbeans did that sudden startlement thing that cats did, hissing and spitting and wiggling out of Angel’s lap and running away.
Not encouraging.
Angel disappeared, then materialized in the Chrysanthemum Room and looked around. The desk had been pushed to one end, loaded with the objects Tucker was reluctant to touch. That nice Greenaway father had been in here the day before and left a battery-run humidifier running all day. The once-vibrant wallpaper hung in curls down the walls from the ten-foot ceiling, and Angel thought that the least he could do would be to feel along the walls and check for traps.
Heaven help them both if someone had engaged in intercourse while pressed up against the wall.
Angel started to the right of the door, holding his hands in front of him as he ghosted his body around. He was so busy checking for spiritual energy that he almost missed the very real anomaly peeking out from behind where the strips of wallpaper met in the corner of the room. Previously the bedframe had obscured them, but now, loosened by the humidity, Angel could see the yellowed pages of what looked to be a letter wedged in between the layers.
Angel passed immaterial fingers through ragged parchment several times, cursing his limitations, before he remembered that Squishbeans was more than a cat.