Page 37 of Angel's Smoke

Her own words, the ones that had carried through a pre-storm maze of cellular towers to a pseudo-stranger’s phone once upon a time, seemed like forever ago, and despite what had happened between her and Iron, she couldn’t help but think she was still stuck around waiting.

Anna tapped a pen on her notebook, making sure to keep it out of the camera’s view. “I think you’re supposed to usually blend the beans up with some water first, then add them to the brownie batter,” she responded as helpfully as she could. “Next time, when you have a sweet urge like that, it’s perfectly fine to portion out a regular brownie. Not everything needs to be about fiber and sugar. A treat is a treat, and we all need those in our lives. Problems arise when we rely too heavily on them in our diets or, conversely, neglect them to the point where they occupy the majority of our focus. It’s all about balance, and that’s the hardest lesson to learn.”

“Don’t I know it,” he said, patting the top half of a stomach that greedily took up more than its fair share of the camera frame.

From across the hall in her bedroom, her phone rang. Good thing that part of her virtual office policy mandated that she leave the thing in a different room. Fortunately, she had time to take the call, as she’d already gone fifteen minutes over with Marty and her next client wasn’t for another forty-five minutes.

“I think we’ll end there for today. A new scale sounds like it might be a good fit, if it’ll create habits that promote consistency. I know data accuracy is important to you, so try it out for a week and we’ll go from there.”

Anna said her goodbyes and, after hanging up her headset, went to grab her phone. Her stomach lurched.

Two missed calls. From Iron.

Just seeing his name on her screen was enough to send her into a tailspin. The hurt that clogged her throat was still there, pressing reminders into her trachea of how they’d ended their last conversation, with her defending not only her judgment and decisions but her desire to know more about a man who was clearly running scared. And people said some fucked-up shit when they were scared. She should know. But after three days of trying to process that which couldn’t be processed without more information, she was left with nothing to do except wait and hope he’d keep his word and call.

Now he was doing exactly that, apparently. Then why was she so uneasy about it?

The phone started chirping in her hand again, and she answered it.

He was in her ear before she even had a chance to dole out her greeting. “Anna.”

“Hi.”

She was wrong if she said his voice didn’t still affect her. Oh, it did, and she hadn’t realized how warm her small cabin felt when his baritone words were drifting around her, bouncing off the rafters with their soothing vibrations.

“You doing okay?”

Could there be a more loaded question?

Her mind drifted to the half-demolished box of Fruit Loops on her kitchen counter and the fruit bowl she’d left untouched since he’d last arranged it days ago.

“Yeah. Just fine.”If you count thinking less and less of yourself because you, once again, make questionable decisions when it comes to men. And even though you’re so good at it, you hate waiting. Like, a lot.

The phone fell silent for a beat, then Iron’s heavy exhale forced her to take a seat on the bed. “I’m sorry,” he said. The phrase was quick but not clipped. “I need to address a shitload of misunderstandings.”

“Well, it’s always best to start at the top.”

“The top.” He scoffed. “How about we start at the core? I left something unsaid, and I need to correct that.”

“Oh?”

“To me, you and your baby are a package deal, and yeah, at first, I didn’t know what to make of it.”

“You didn’t know what to make of a pregnant woman?”

“No! I didn’t know what to make of . . . Fuck, I didn’t know why the prime mages, if they even existed at all, put you and your baby in my path to care for. I couldn’t parse out that sort of responsibility or how to nurture what I desperately wanted to without putting you both at risk. And I realized recently that I can’t.”

Outside her window, there was no wind. No angry snarling weather. No torrential rain or drifting snow. There was nothing to portend the Doom 2.0 that was coming for her when Iron finally let the other shoe drop. Already, her nose began to twitch with the increased blood funneling to her cheeks and tear ducts.

“I realized,” he continued, “that I can’t be willing to play high stakes without high risk as well.”

Her eyes had just begun to mist over when her brain stalled out. “I’m sorry. What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, if you’re up for it, I’m willing to try. I’m happy to bring you and your baby into my world, meet my family, their mates, hear all the stupid theories that come out of Chrome’s mouth whenever he gets a few microbrews in him. All of it. I’m willing to hold your hand, guide you through the very messy and, to be clear, really fucking dangerous shit show that can be my life, if you’re willing to spend some more time with me. Time where we’re not waiting out a storm or battling over word scores.”

Anna sniffed. Shit! She didn’t mean to let him hear that.“It wasn’t really a battle, I don’t think. The game just ended early. I would have won eventually.”

He chuckled softly. “There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

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