“All those times you and Leo chatted late into the night what, exactly, were you two chatting about?”

“First of all,” she said, looking him firmly in the eyes. “It wasn’t a lot of times. It was a couple, and we didn’t talk into the night. He happened to call late, so I chatted with him for a little, late at night. It was only that very first chat we had that we spoke for so long.” Her lips pulled to the side in a small frown as she ran her hand through his hair. “I know this whole thing’s been unsettling for you, but you’re getting it all twisted, babe. I promise you, you have nothing to be worried about.”

Angel closed his eyes, concentrating on the magical touch of her fingers against his scalp. She was massaging softly in that way she knew calmed him, so he took a deep breath but didn’t open his eyes. “What do you two talk about?”

“Just things in general,” she said in a voice so calming it made Angel open his eyes. He stared into her beautiful eyes, glad she’d taken this route in response to his questioning and not the exasperated one he was afraid she might. “He usually tells me about what he did that day. I tell him what I did. My school work. His odd jobs. That sort of stuff.”

“Just one thing,” he said cautiously. “And I promise I’ll drop this, okay?” She nodded with a smile, so he kissed her, grateful that she was being so patient with his paranoid ass. “Aside from the names he calls you, has he ever said anything else you thought was weird or made you uncomfortable? Anything else you kept from me because you didn’t want to upset me?”

The smile disappeared, and she broke the eye contact, looking away for just a moment, but then her eyes were back on his. “Angel, he says a lot of things I think are odd, not just about me about everything. He’s just different.”

“Like what?” Angel pressed.

“Like how he refers to all his close friends as his brothers and how much he loves them even though they’re not blood brothers. He calls his mom his queen and just the way he words things in general.”

“That’s not what I mean, Sarah.” Angel lifted a brow. “What else has he said to you?”

She broke eye contact again, and her sudden discomfort was palpable. This time she didn’t look at him when she began to speak. “He’s got this way of expressing himself, deeper than most people.” She looked up at him now. “I think what makes it seem so odd or weird is his tough exterior. I mean let’s just be honest, Angel. It’s not like his confessing to having been in a gang and done jail time came as a real surprise, right? It’s what you’d expect from a guy who looks like he does, a guy with the word fiera tattooed on his body. What you don’t expect is to hear him say the things he says in the way he says them.”

Angel continued to stare at her without saying a word, bracing himself for what she might say next because that’s what it felt like she was doing—preparing him.

“He says he feels like he has this connection with me, one he’s never felt with anyone else.” Sarah’s eyes seemed to search Angel’s for a reaction as she continued to speak. “He says he can’t explain it, but he felt it before we ever exchanged an email, just from the photos and videos he watched of me online. It’s why he was so anxious to meet me.”

“And, again, you kept all this from me because—”

“No!” she said, and finally the exasperation was beginning to seep through the otherwise calm demeanor she’d managed to keep up until then. “I wasn’t keeping anything from you. You can’t expect me to remember everything he says to me and then pass it on to you verbatim. And he didn’t say it all this at once. I’m trying to think of all the things he’s said over the past few months I know you’d find odd, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I thought they were. Maybe it’s because I’m getting used to his unusually frank way of saying things.” She shrugged. “He’s a deep thinker, and he doesn’t keep what he’s feeling or thinking to himself.” Her fingers caressed his scalp again, tilting her head with a sweet smile. “Maybe if you’d hear the way he talks about everyone else in life—how he calls the older lady who’s lived in the back house behind his mom’s since before he was born, grandma because that’s how connected he feels to her—maybe then the things he says to me wouldn’t seem so alarmingly weird to you.”

Angel didn’t know how she did it, but somehow she always said the perfect thing at the very moment he needed to hear it. Just when his inner ref was blowing whistles like a crazy man and throwing penalty flags in every f**king direction, because hearing that this dude was feeling a connection with Sarah had done it, she goes and adds that last part.

Pulling her to him and holding her tightly, he kept his promise of letting it go after that last question. Truth was it was pointless to argue with Sarah about this, and he didn’t want to anymore. He knew damn well that, aside from being concerned about her spending time with someone so unpredictable and possibly dangerous who they still didn’t know enough about, Sal was right. He had nothing else to be worried about. Even if the guy ever dared cross the line, he trusted Sarah would set boundaries.

The main reason he’d asked Sarah to tell him about anything else this guy might’ve said to her that was weird was to assure himself he wasn’t crazy. For as much as she assured him the guy was just different but that she was still aware there might be more to him, Angel’s gut feeling knew there was more.