Page 20 of A Royally Fake French Menage (Rippton U Creatives #3)

HELIA

“ C an you see him? Anything that looks like him?” Angelica’s voice spoke in my ear like some kind of undercover operative in a spy movie.

But we weren’t playing spies and heroes tonight. Nope, it was Tuesday night. Death Date Night, or Death to Dating Night. Cheap night at plenty of bars, pizzerias, and diners.

Also it was Taco Tuesday, and I was missing out.

The night I tried to become Tinderella for the tenth consecutive week in a row.

And my tenth epic fail, also consecutive.

“That’s it. I’m done.” I shrugged, downed my water in a tumbler to make it look like vodka because I didn’t want to be sad and alone, despite how I felt.

“Stay another five minutes,” Angelica urged. “You know I live vicariously through you. Give me that.”

“Uh huh. And how is that facade of life going for you right now?” I snorted into my glass, talking to myself.

I mean, how sad could I possibly look? My strike rate so far wasn’t particularly hot, sizzling, or even flopping.

Six stand ups, and four half shows of the ‘ my mother is dying and I have to leave’ hurrying off variety.

It was like no man on Rippton U’s wealthy offspring inhabited campus would come within sneezing distance of me. I might as well have a sign that proclaimed ‘anathema’ stamped to the top of my head for all and sundry to see.

Angelica rattled on, impervious to my moods, as always. “I get to pretend to leave my apartment, sit in a cafe, and sip water, all whilst not infecting the local area with my hyperactivity, or my crippling anxiety. You know, whichever lands first.”

“I think you get the better part of this deal,” I said dryly. “Alright. His time is up. It’s been forty minutes. Enough is enough.”

“Oh, girl. Go flirt with the bartender.”

“It’s a girl.”

“So? Go get laid. A change of pace never hurt.”

Yeah, but there is no pace, and no one is getting laid.

“You mean the diner server?” I eyed said waitress who winked at me, letting a quick fantasy play out in my head. A moment later my glass wasn’t the only damp thing about the table.

The little diner just outside campus limits was still a favorite haunt for locals and students alike. A presence that all the wealth in the kingdom wasn’t indeed theirs, and that they could live a normal life, offspring of billionaires all of them.

*cough* us *cough*

More fakeness and bullshit.

I bought into it just like everyone else.

“Um, yeah,” Angelica replied sheepishly.

“Girl in the chair, thank you for spending another amazing Tuesday Not Date Night with yours truly.”

“Talk to you next week, sister,” Angelica sent air kisses and signed off.

I pulled the earpiece out, turned it over and dropped the tiny miracle of technology into my black glitter purse, the item totally out of place in the white and red splashed retro themed milkshake bar-cum-diner that served alcohol after ten P.M.

The bell over the door tinkled. I craned my neck to watch who came in, praying it wasn’t my late date now that I’d made my choice to go the hell home.

Two tired cops on their local beat, each grumpier looking than the last, entered the diner, marring the colorful facade with their gritty noir darkness which made it my cue to really leave.

Date Night is done for another week .

“Fuck me, my life is sad,” I muttered, finishing my water.

“You want a coffee to go, sweetie?” The waitress appeared at my table on cue.

“Thanks, Misha. Appreciate you.” I made a heart with my hands and she ruffled my hair.

“I won’t be a minute, date girl.”

She didn’t lie; in less than sixty seconds I clutched a tall, black, burned coffee that singed my insides and clung to them like so much ash as I made the diner door tinkle on my way out, waving to my regular waitress.

“Sooo sad,” I sang to the night air, scaring a sleeping quail that hightailed it along the dimly lit path I took, darting side to side in a flurry like a suicide chicken as it assumed I chose to chase it.

Run, run, birdie.

I giggled at the tiny creature’s antics as it veered off the path and disappeared beneath a bush. A pair of luminous, disembodied eyes peered back at me.

“Night night, cutie.”

I blew the quivering quail a kiss, and turned off at the next fork away from campus and the lecture halls at the exclusive, rich kid and legacy alumni admissions only college.

Rippton wasn't a place where I thought I'd spend my newly found freedom, but my parents paid the tithes to be rid of the only child they never seemed to want, seeing as I didn’t fit into their perfect progeny mould while I inherited a boatload of abandonment issues and an apartment of my choice on the edge of town.

Sororities and parties never did it for me. Perching on my window seat, a glass of red wine dangling from my hand as I watched the college town grow silent each night, leaving me with the taste of dew on the icy night air, though? That did.

The same air that drifted through the arched floor to ceiling window I left open every night that was big enough for an adult to easily step through if they were willing to risk their existence over a sheer, four-story drop to the filthy streetscape below.

The nights I left my window open were the nights I slept best, as though the soft murmur of the sleepy town’s night time comings and goings filtered through to me in my dream state like a conversation I could listen to but didn’t have to engage in.

Hell, I'd even woken once from a dream to find a glowy, white angel standing at the end of my bed.

Lost in a dream? Maybe. Cliche, but true.

It took a few blinks for him to disappear, but my comfort level rose, and I clung to that pretence that all was right in the world, and that good girls went to heaven.

Not that I’d ever been the epitome of one of those, but I could pretend on that basis too.

Anyone else might freak out, but my weird happy zone appeared to be the reverse of everyone else’s.

Everyone, except maybe Angelica.

The blonde anxiety bomb of a hermit rarely ventured from her apartment.

Everything was ordered in, including her online classes.

Thanks to her family’s—wealthy—intervention, she got to study as she liked, providing she kept her marks up.

Angelica was no party girl risk, and her grades never fell below a high distinction level, leaving her exactly where she wanted to be—alone.

I sipped my scalding, ashy coffee, twisted my way through the streets, and took as many different options as possible.

Angelica, your paranoia is infectious.

Just as her laughter and cheeky sense of humor that no one ever saw was contagious.

It was sad, really. She was such a beautiful person, and kept it all to herself.

But, preferences, and I was glad I had one commiserator in this weird little existence until I was freed from both Rippton and my family’s ever-present expectations.

I laughed to myself, snuggling the warmth of my tall take away cup to my chest. The streets behind the rows of shops were silent, save for the light drizzle of rain that stopped and started on a whim.

Townhouses and narrow residential alleyways turned into gritty lanes filled with rubbish of mechanics shops and commercial properties.

Somewhere behind me, tin banged on tin, the sound reverberating along the narrow light industrial street.

I quickened my steps, pushing my pace ever faster until I came to a corner, and picked the path back to suburbia. Which would have been a solid strategy on any other night, barring not-date-night, anti-Taco Tuesday.

Tonight, my choices led me straight into the arms of devils.

I barreled around the next corner, head down, hell bent on getting home to my apartment out of the rain, sending Angelica a message stating how she’d skewed my sense of everything when I slammed head first into a solid something that unfortunately for both of us wore my burnt coffee.

“Damn, I was enjoying that.” I looked up, my apology on my lips. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t–”

I kept looking up. And up, and up.

Right into the face of an angel.

If angels were monstrous creatures born of pale skin, white hair so fine the moonlight left traces of celestial dust on each strand, and palest blue eyes highlighted with a sliver of demonic red.

This one stood at least six and a half feet tall, with broad shoulders, and felt like steel to run face first into.

He also wore my coffee.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, reaching out to—pat him dry, try to wipe the mess away—but his expression stopped me.

Disgust.

“Oh. Um, I hope that comes out. I’ll just be?—”

A second angel appeared slightly behind the first, as close to identical as my artist’s eye could tell in the dark night, despite the starlight tracing their sharp features made for demons and put in the wrong body.

I twisted back, knowing my instinct served me wrong, only inciting the predators lurking within those beautiful bodies, and stopped, already face to nipple height with the next.

The first turned on his heel in a delicate as fuck pivot better suited to a dance floor than an alley I should never have set foot in, sandwiching me between their bodies, effectively blocking my path.

I bit my lip, edging sideways. They came too, reducing my exit options to exactly zilch.

The second angel raised his hand, stroking a slicked finger across my cheek. “She’s so much prettier when she’s awake. I thought it was the other way around.”

“Much prettier,” the first agreed. “Especially with the addition of blood.” A cool hand caught my chin, tilting my head back from behind me so the angel-demon there could stare into my upside down eyes.

I blinked, recognizing the features I tried so hard to wash away with my wakefulness as the truth I tried so hard to ignore and deny in my waking hours slammed into me.

“I painted you. My angel,” I blurted. “My seraph.” That last came out on a whisper. A breath.

A confession.

READ ANGEL SHOT