Page 2 of Pretend Wife
I pulled off the highway and onto the sharp curve of the exit ramp. I knew I’d misjudged the second I turned the wheel. The roads were wet, and I hadn’t slowed down quite enough to make this curve. For a second I was spinning, and then it all stopped with the sound of crunching metal.
Blinding pain ripped through my side, and then there was nothing but darkness for a few blissful moments.
I don’t know if it was seconds or hours that I was floating in a sea of unconsciousness.
All I knew was that the pain came back, tearing through me like fire, consuming my skin and boiling my blood.
Maybe I was still in some kind of dream, because I could have sworn someone was pushing my car away from a tree. There was a ripping sound, and then a figure stood over me, a silhouette framed by the lightning that flashed behind him.
“Fuck,” a man muttered. “Don’t you dare die on me, kid.”
Strong hands pulled me from the car. At least I thought that’s what they were doing. Everything was fuzzy, and the darkness was closing in around me again.
I welcomed it and the lack of pain it promised.
“No,” the man snapped harshly. “Don’t shut your eyes. Look at me, Hayden.”
The sound of my name falling from the stranger’s lips was enough of a shock to make me obey.
He looked young, maybe college age, and he was absolutely drenched, but he didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the rain. All his attention was on me as he lifted me into his arms like I weighed nothing.
Dark shapes extended from his back, like black shadows against the already-dark night. “I’ve got you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I just need you to stay with me a little longer.”
There was a rush of wind, and it felt like I was flying through the air. There was no light at the end of a tunnelor floating on clouds, nothing gentle about the way water lashed against my skin and air whipped around me.
I’d thought dying was supposed to be peaceful, but I guess the stories were wrong. Dying was nothing but harsh and unforgiving.
TWO
Danielle
They saylife is made up of moments. Sometimes you know a moment is important, but most of the time you have no idea how it will change your life. The moment I met Nate and Sierra was like that. I had no clue when I first laid eyes on them that my whole life was going to head in a different direction.
Two and a half years ago, they came to Heaven after a fight with a duke of Hell. Nate had lost his wings in that fight, and Sierra had gotten pretty beat up too. I’d been asked to heal her and I did, but afterward the urge to heal didn’t fade like it normally would. My fingers still tingled in a way that usually only happened when I saw humans who were hurt. But Sierra claimed she felt perfect. I realized the feeling must have been a response to Nate’s injuries, but that shouldn’t have been possible. Angels of the seventh order could only heal humans.
The whole experience freaked me out, but I learnedthat I was special. Or a freak depending on who you ask, I guess. And within a couple of days, I’d been moved to the secret order—a group of angels that didn’t quite fit in any of the other orders.
The first job I’d been given was to help Nate’s wings grow back. There was no way to instantly fix them, but with my help, he was completely healed within two months.
That’s when it became real to me.
I didn’t belong anywhere really, but the secret order had become my family. Micah, Nate, Sam, and Joriel were my brothers. Their wives were my best friends, and their daughters called me their aunt.
It only took a moment to alter the course of my life. And I never saw it coming.
Just like I had no idea when a young man burst through the doors of the hospital I’d been working at for the past few years that he was going to change everything.
He didn’t look much more than twenty. Rainwater plastered his dark brown hair to his forehead and ran down his bare shoulders and inked chest in rivulets to where he was carrying another man in his arms… a man who was a bit older and a lot more familiar.
I’d only seen him a handful of times in the year and a half that Sierra had been working for him, but I’d recognize Hayden Blake anywhere. Heir to Blake Hotels and the richest bachelor in Boston, his picture appeared in the news quite a bit.
Black curls fell over his forehead, and his trim beard added to his rakish appearance. He’d always looked likewicked desires wrapped up in a suit. And right now that suit was stained with blood and soaking wet, making the white dress shirt cling to his muscled arms and torso.
My fingers twitched at my sides, the urge to heal making them tingle. I was a healer through and through. Every instinct screamed at me to lay my hands on this man, to feel his skin knit back together under my touch.
“Danielle,” the young man snapped, his brilliant blue eyes locking on mine. They looked ancient, in stark contrast to his otherwise youthful appearance. The grief and wisdom in them implied he’d lived a thousand lives and none of them had been easy.
“How do you know my name?” I’d been caught up in the pain of the bleeding human in his arms, and it was only now that I realized there was no aura of colorful emotions around the man who carried him. He wasn’t human—didn’t have so much as a drop of human blood in him. “Who are you?”
