Angels Fall

breathless screams echoed in her bead.
    She wasn't flying through the air, she assured herself. She wasn't spinning toward certain death, just a dream, just a panic dream. Regulating her breathing, she lay very still and tried to reorient herself. A lamp was on beside the bed, and the light shone from the hallway. For a moment, she remembered none of it. When it flooded back, Reece wanted nothing more than to pull the blankets over her head and dive back to oblivion.
    Even the flying Ferris wheel would be easier to ride out.
    How could she face him? Face anyone? She wanted to find her keys, then slink out of town like a thief. 
    She propped herself up on an elbow, waited to see if her stomach would hold, then sat up. There was a silver insulated cup on the night-stand. Battled, she picked it up, slid back the tab and sniffed. Her tea. He'd made her tea, and left it so it would be close and warm when she woke. If he'd recited Keats while showering her with white roses, she couldn't have been more touched. She'd said horrible things to him, had behaved abominably. And he'd made her tea. She sipped it, let it slide down and soothe her abused stomach. Because she could hear his keyboard now, she squeezed her eyes shut to help gather courage. A little unsteady on her feet, she got up to face the music.
    He glanced up when she stepped into the doorway of his office, and only lifted that single eyebrow. Funny, she thought, how many expressions that one move could transmit. Interest, amusement, irritation. And just now? Absolute boredom.
    She'd have preferred a good, hard slap.
    "Thanks for the tea." He stayed silent, waiting, and she realized she didn't have quite enough courage yet to begin. "Is it all right if I take a bath?"
    "You know where the tub is."
    He started to type again, though the gibberish he put on the screen would need to be deleted. She looked like a dark-eyed ghost, sounded like a penitent child. He didn't like it. He sensed when she'd slipped away, waited until he heard the water begin to run into the tub. Then he deleted, shut down. And went down to make her soup.
    He wasn't taking care of her; he was still too pissed off to consider it. It was just what you did when someone was sick. Some soup, maybe some toast. Just bare minimum stuff. He wondered how much of whatever poisons she'd had bottled up inside her she'd managed to reject along with the wine.
    If she started spewing at him again, he was going to…
    Nothing, he thought. It wasn't just Reece he was pissed at, he real-ized. He was pissed at himself. He should've expected her to blow at some point. She'd been handling herself pretty well, rocking back from each separate sucker punch. But she'd been swallowing down the fear, the rage, the hurts. Sooner or later, they'd have to spill out.
    Today had been the day.
    The nasty psychological warfare someone was waging against her, being asked to look at pictures of a dead woman. He didn't know dick about fresh dill, but obviously that had been one of the last straws for her.
    Now she'd apologize, and he didn't want her damn apology. Now she'd very likely tell him she had to  go, had to find some other shelter from her personal storm, and he didn't want her to go. He didn't want to lose her.
    And that was lowering.
    When she came in, her hair was damp and she smelled of his soap. He could see she'd done her best to camouflage the fact she'd been cry-ing, and knowing she'd been up there, sitting in his tub weeping, was another punch to the heart.
    "Brody, I'm so—"
    "Got soup." he interrupted. "I'ts no pollo arrosto—whatever the hell that is—but you'll have to live with it."
    "You made soup.
    "My mother's recipe. Open a can, pour contents into bowl, zap in nuclear oven. It's world famous."
    "It sounds delicious. Brody. I'm sorry, I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed."
    "But are you hungry?"
    She pressed her fingers to her eyes while her lips trembled.
    "Don't." There was the barest trace of desperation under the hard edge of his tone. "I'm at my limit on that kind of thing. You want the soup or not?"
    "Yes." She dropped her hands. "Yes, I want the soup. Aren't you having any?"
    "I had a sandwich while you were lying upstairs in a drunken stupor." The sound she made was trapped between a laugh and a sob. "I didn't mean what I said to you."
    "Just shut up and eat."
    "Please, let me say this."
    With a shrug, he put the bowl of soup on the table, saw her blink in surprise when he put a plate of buttered