Page 101 of Baking and Angels

“Two weeks,” she said softly.

He flinched hard. “I’ve been here for two weeks?”

“Sleeping on my couch, yes,” Honey said. “You haven’t moved at all. Though that’s not the worst I’ve ever had to deal with. Éliott stayed there a whole month once.”

Rafferty furrowed his brows. He didn’t understand. In his mind’s eyes, he saw her again. Or perceived her? “Saw” was too small a word, but she had been brilliant and golden. It was an image that was hard to relate to the woman who squatted beside him now.

He shook his head, closinghis eyes.

“It wasn’t a dream,” he breathed, needing to hear those words. He knew what he saw, what he felt, what had happened. It had to be real. “It has to be.”

Another understanding bubbled to the surface.

No interfering.

It wasn’t a voice that said it, simply… a knowing. A rule, not given like an edict, but understood like fire burns or rain falls. Hard to define unless experienced.

“Even talking about it is interfering,” Raffertymurmured.

Honey nodded sagely. A vague gesture. She could just be saying that she heard him instead of that she agreed.

“Interferingis what demons do,” Rafferty murmured. “It’s why we tell everyone about us, why everyone believes we exist, butangels…”

But angels…

“But angelsdon’texist,” Honey said, her smile shifting a little, becoming more a knowing smirk, in the right light. “Do we?”

Rafferty laid a hand over his racing heart, pounding as the epiphany unfolded in his mind, dark and sacred as midnight rose. “Why did you do this for me?”

“I just like to help, and you looked like you needed some help. Thank you for letting me,”she said.

He licked his lips. “So what happens now?”

Standing up, she gestured for his coat, hanging over a nearby armchair’s back. “That’s up to you. But youcouldcheck your phone.” Then she left again, going back into the kitchen.

Any further deep introspection was interrupted by the sound of his mobile phone chirping. He found it in his indicated coat pocket. He also noted that he had no memory of taking it off.

“What in the…” he exclaimed as he activated the screen to see the countless messages covering it and continuing down as hescrolled.

The majority of them were from Helena.

He also noted that the dates and times kept goingbackward.

They went backtwo weeks.

Before he could open the first one, another fresher one popped up, marked from Helena.

[Rafferty please. Just answer me. If this was just about you and me, I would leave it alone, but if this doesn’t happen for Scarlet, I couldn’t live with myself. Please, the competition is in a few hours. Just let me know if you’re coming or not. Please.]

He ran a hand through his hair as he scrolled through the other messages. “Oh, Helena,” he whispered, reading her struggle and desperation to reach him. Her embarrassment and apologies. For every one he read, there were three more that had been deleted.

“Are you going to go?” Honey asked, reappearing with a paper bag inone hand.

He looked from her to the bag and back tothe phone.

“Of course, I’m going to go,” he said with more certainty than he had ever felt in his wholeexistence.

“Good,” Honey said, and she thrust the bag out to him.

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