“Yes!”

He stalked forward but stopped a few yards away from her. “What about the dress?”

Sarah stared at him wide eyed at an apparent loss. Angel was glad the storm was so loud or his booming voice might bring out the neighbors. He could see Sarah trying to make sense of what he was yelling about.

“That f**king dress, Sarah! You’ve never dressed like that for me, but you wore it for your brother? You expect me to believe-”

“It was for you.” She cried.

She was still lying. Incredible. Angel clenched his teeth but was unable to calm his voice. He was too riled up. “I wasn’t even gonna see you that night!”

“But you were!” Her eyes lit up. “Remember? You were supposed to pick me up but then Sydney showed up last minute. I didn’t want you to find out like that so I left with him and called you.”

Angel thought about it for a second, still breathing hard. It didn’t make sense. She never dressed that way.

Sarah dropped everything in her hands on the lawn hurried toward him. She stood right in front of him and Angel looked into her flooded eyes. “This is gonna sound so stupid. I was gonna to tell you that night about Sydney. I swear. I worried about it the whole day. Valerie came up with the idea that dressing that way would distract you. I don’t know, make things easier. I didn’t have time to change when he got there. But the dress, the hair, all of it was for you, Angel, not him.”

Feeling an enormous weight lift from his heart and being so close to her, he had to resist pulling her to him. But he did move the wet strands of hair away from her face. Her eyes searched his. For the first time since they’d broken up, he began to feel a glimmer of hope. If only he could get past her going back to live with Sydney. “So, when do you go back to Arizona?”

She sniffed, and bit her lip. “I may not.”

Angel’s heart had just started to calm and he felt it start up again. He lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“My mom may be getting out of jail sooner than we thought. Maybe a couple months. That’s why I’m still here. I went to see her and she asked me to hold on a little longer. But she also said it was up to me where we would live once she’s out.”

His eyes searched hers now. “So, what are you gonna do?”

“That depends.” She had that crinkle between her eyebrows.

Angel frowned. There was always something. “On what?”

“On you.” She seemed to hold her breath.

It took a second for it to sink in. But when it did he pulled her into his arms. She was startled but laughed. “Don’t play with me, Sarah. You’ll really stay?”

Her eyes welled up again. “You want me to?”

Angel smiled bringing his hands to her face and touched his forehead to hers. He stared in her beautiful eyes before kissing her tenderly. He’d missed her scent, her lips, her taste so much. He was never letting her go again.

Sarah pulled away and gazed in his eyes. “I love you, Angel.”

Hearing her say it for the first time choked him up. “Say it again,” he whispered.

Her eyes sparkled and she laughed. “I love you.”

“I love you too, baby.”

CHAPTER 30

Sarah laid there tracing the engraving on the chain around Angel’s neck with her fingers. She glanced at her wrist and smiled at the charm bracelet. She’d taken it off and refused to even look at it the entire time they were broken up, almost mailed it to him, when she’d lost all hope. Something in her heart wouldn’t let her and she was glad now she hadn’t.

After a week of being back together they still couldn’t get their fill of each other. Angel had made sure he closed the restaurant every night ever since and Sarah was right there with him each night. She wondered if his parents had any idea of the things they did in that back room.

Angel lifted himself up on his elbow and played with her hair. “How’d you get so close?” He stared in her eyes. “You and Syd?”

Ever since they’d been back together Sarah made it a point to keep any talk of Sydney to a minimum and up until now Angel really hadn’t asked too much. She knew once the dust settled it would be coming and now here it was. She had prepared herself, she wasn’t keeping anything from him again. No matter how uncomfortable.

“Well, I told you we moved a lot when I was little. So, I never had any friends. As soon as I made them I had to leave them. By the time we moved to Flagstaff, I’d given up making friends. Then Syd befriended me,” she smiled remembering. “He didn’t have any friends either, though he didn’t admit it at first. He was really chubby.”

“Sydney was fat?” Angel seemed amused by that.

Sarah smiled trying not to roll her eyes. “Yes, he got pretty big in middle school. I just never made much other friends ‘cause I wasn’t sure how long we were gonna be there. Then my mom told me her job was made permanent and we were staying put. By then me and Syd had already gotten pretty close. Since my mom was always gone, I spent a lot of time at his place. It became my home away from home and his family treated me like their own.”

Angel’s eyebrow lifted. “And he never made a move?”

Sarah shook her head. “Never. Like I said he was real heavy for a while there and very self conscious about it and I was self conscious about my teeth.”

“Your teeth? You have beautiful teeth.”

“Yeah, now, after three years of braces. They were a crooked mess before. So, me and Syd, were a couple of self conscious misfits who leaned on each other for years,” She smiled again thinking of the memories. Angel was staring at her so she went on. “Anyway, middle school is when I started nagging him about losing weight. That’s when I started running. It all began to get him to lose weight. We started to run every day, that’s when my love for running began. By high school he’d lost so much weight, then he stretched and that really helped. We joined the track team together and now you’d never even know he was so heavy.”