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“You miss him.”
My arms tighten around my wife. “I never had a dad growing up. But I always thought if I did, I’d want him to be like Luciano. Day after day, I’d watch him walk into that deli in his fancy suit. Now I know he was looking for Mom.”
“That’s where his hopes and wishes died,” she says, leaning back against me.
“All this time, she didn’t tell me.”
Angel turns and wraps her arms around my neck, trailing her nails lightly across my skin. “She knew what kind of life Luciano led. She wanted to keep you from following into it.”
Pulling her close, I hover my lips against hers, my hands seeking flesh that will forever belong to me. “Yet I still did.”
She smiles that secret smile again. “I told you. Fate always finds a way.”
The first time I kissed an angel, she died.
The second time, we both did.
As far as the world is concerned, that’s where Alexandra Romanov and Dominic McCallum’s story ends. Our tragic, bloody, heartbreaking story that will live in infamy as Hollywood folklore for generations to come.
But for Jade DeLuca and Brendan McCall, the story has just begun.
Not long after we said our vows, Angel told me that Alexandra had confessed a secret. She told her that the night I saved her, she made a promise to herself. She swore she’d find me again in another life. When she did, my pain would be hers. My heart would beat for her. She’d destroy me and set me free.
She was a woman of her word. Even if she now only exists somewhere in a quiet, serene corner of Angel’s mind.
We saved each other that Christmas Eve twenty years ago. And then we did it again fifteen years later.
The world demanded justice for a lost little girl until they got it. But when Alexandra Romanov’s justice turned out jagged and messy, public opinion took a sharp swing in the opposite direction. They idolized an icon, and when that shiny exterior tarnished, they crucified a human.
Maybe all of this could’ve been avoided if I’d never walked into the bar that day. Maybe Angel Smith would still be just another washed-up actress waiting tables in Chula Vista. Maybe Violet DeLuca and Brenda McCallum would still be alive.
But then again, maybe they wouldn’t.
Angel believes fate always finds a way. She holds firm that the universe revolves around balance and whether it takes a day or a decade, all wrongs are eventually righted.
So maybe it was fate that drew me into that bar.
Maybe fate knew Alexandra Romanov’s story wasn’t finished.
The first time I kissed Angel, I thought I chose her to make history. But maybe fate chose us to rewrite it, and then close the book for good.
A content smile settles on my face as I watch my wife chase our daughter into the surf, both of them laughing as she swings her into the air.
Once upon a time, a man taught me that wishes and hope were useless weapons. I believed him. I lived my whole life around that thought. But he was wrong. Because the man who stands with his heart open waiting for life to step up to the plate ends up with something unexpected.
Everything.
The End
