Chapter One Hundred Thirteen

Angel wasn’t pregnant. She’d known that since the week after Colton was shot. It was stupid, but it had taken until yesterday morning for it to finally catch up with her. She’d curled into a ball in the spare room at Dane’s apartment, and cried until he came in and threatened to call the entire team to come help.

She didn’t know what had caused her emotional overload. A baby would only have complicated things.

Or maybe it would have simplified everything.

Without her permission, a vision came of her and Colton walking at a park with a baby strapped in one of those ridiculous carriers on his back, Pudge loping along, chasing after a toddler.

Her chest seized as if it was a picture of something she’d lost, rather than something she’d never had. And never would have.

She didn’t tell Dane why she was crying. And eventually, she got herself together enough to pack her things and say goodbye.

She should have been relieved that her strong sense of duty to Thorne was gone. She’d finally realized he was right. She was holding onto her job out of obligation, as well as the sense of family.

But as much as she loved the team, they weren’t her real family.

She stepped up to the gravestones bearing her parents’ names for the first time since they’d been placed there. Her brother’s marker was a few feet from theirs. Thorne had helped her make that decision. Anger had made her want him buried on another planet, as far from them as possible, in an unmarked grave. But Thorne had convinced her to put Nicholas there with them because they’d loved him.

She’d given in because she’d been too overwhelmed to argue, but now she realized he was right about that, as well. And if they still loved Nicholas after what he’d done to them, she knew they still loved her, too, even though she hadn’t been able to save them.

Instead of pouring out a stream of apologies to her parents as she’d planned, she sat down in the grass and spent the next two hours telling them about her life. She was surprised by how much of it included her feelings for Colton.

She found herself feeling the same way she’d felt a year ago.

Wondering what it might have been like if she hadn’t left him.

If she hadn’t been afraid to try a real relationship.