Lucian Divine(44)

Thinking that I was causing Evey pain stung me deeply. “If this is all my fault, then why are you concerned?”

She took a long breath. “Because I’ve seen you with her. You are different, or she is different. You should have found a way to control it, but you didn’t. I don’t know if you were capable of staying away from her in that way, and that’s why I pity you now.”

“I wasn’t capable of staying away from her, I promise you that. But I’m still feeling lost, and I probably always will. I only feel normal when I’m with her. I just have to have faith that she’ll be okay.”

Mona smiled peculiarly at me. “That’s right—faith. But if she’s not okay? Will you curse God because of it, Lucian?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

She laughed through her nose. “You never learn.”

I checked my phone and noticed magic hour was almost over. “I gotta go.”

I took off into the fog, and boom! I was suddenly spinning out of control. I’d had a collision. A moment later, I hit the ground hard.

“Oh fuck, my back!”

An angel hovered over me. A big male. “Watch where you’re going, dumbass!” He spit on me before taking off.

“Oww,” I moaned. My wings, jaw, and elbow were bleeding. “Oh fuck.” I got up and stumbled home because I couldn’t get off the ground.

When I came into the apartment, Evey was awake. Magic hour had been over for some time. She gasped. “My God, Lucian, what happened? Were you drinking?”

“Geez, you really don’t trust me. It was foggy; I ran into some massive linebacker angel.”

“Come into the bathroom. Let me clean you up.” She wiped the blood from my wings and elbow and kissed the blood from my mouth. It was the kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.

“You’re an angel,” I told her, but she just shook her head. “What time is your appointment?”

She looked at the clock. “In three hours.”

“Can we rest?”

She nodded. “Lucian, your wings don’t look good.”

“They’ll heal. I just need to rest.”

She woke me two hours later, and I was surprised to see that my elbow and jaw still had visible lacerations. Maybe healing would take more than rest. Evey put Neosporin on my jaw. I tried to tickle her while she was doing it. “What are you doing?” she said.

“It’s been too long since you’ve smiled. It hurts me when you frown.”

“Really, does it physically hurt, Lucian, because I’m very literal?” She was copying what I had said to her the first night we met.

“I can’t believe you remember that.”

“I remember everything,” she said.

I had zapped Evey like any other soul I’d watched over in the past, but everything had stayed with her, or it had all come back. Why? Maybe after I was gone, she would remember me and be tormented. Or maybe I’d have to watch her die, and I’d be tormented. And then I realized, that is love. That is life. Brutal and beautiful all in the same.

My body ached as I drove her to the doctor’s office. Once inside, they swept her away to another room to do a mammogram, ultrasound, a biopsy and blood tests, then they told us to come back in two days. The doctor confirmed that there was definitely swollen tissue in Evey’s breast. I was sure something was terribly wrong and that it was my doing. I thought maybe it was the beginning of our time in hell, and that I was responsible.

We went home and slept. We were supposed to be on our honeymoon, but it didn’t feel much like a honeymoon at all.

Surprisingly, the next day, the doctor called us in. She was an older woman, experienced, which should have given us some peace, but she wasn’t warm. Evey and I needed warm. Dr. Smythe was the kind of doctor that didn’t feel the need to smile at everyone all the time. She wore a gray, coifed bun and a pair of bifocals on a chain around her neck. No stethoscope.

She gave us a tight smile when she entered the exam room, and nonchalantly she said, “So you two were just married?”

“Yes, three days ago,” Evey said.

“Do you want kids?” Dr. Smythe asked.

I had known this would happen. Evey had cancer, and the doctor was going to ask about freezing eggs and talk about chemo and send us to an oncologist. This was the end. This was going to be Evey’s life because of me.

“Oh God,” I said.

The doctor looked at Evey and jutted a thumb in my direction. “What’s his deal?”

“He’s nervous,” Evey replied. “I am too. Can you just tell us what’s going on?”

“Well, you don’t have cancer, but you are pregnant. Good all around, I hope. Congratulations.” She beamed, and then the room went black.

I passed out. I just passed out right there on the exam room floor. When the nurse waved smelling salts in my face, my eyes shot open.

Evey was staring down at me from the exam bed, looking worried. “Lucian, what happened?”

“First-time dads sometimes have this reaction,” the nurse answered her.

I stood on shaky legs. “Can you give my wife and me a moment?” I thought it was the first time I had referred to her as my wife to another person. I felt a sense of pride and smiled, even though I still felt like I was going to fall over.