When Angels Cry by Maria Rachel Hooley Read Free Book Online

arrangements.
    “It’s about all this stuff, isn’t it?  You think I just snubbed you because we’re from different backgrounds, right?”  She slowly shook her head and blinked.  “What is it you see?”
    Kaylee ’s hair had slipped down her chest, leveling at her breasts.  “You think this is about money?   And what if I told you that one day you’d be so rich you wouldn’t know how to spend all your money ?   Even so, you’d still be unhappy.  What would you say to me, Bastian?”   She leaned against the front door , her fingers splayed against the wood, pressing it closed.  She could feel the cold through the door. 
    “Get out of the way,” he growled , his hands balled into fists.
    “Some people don’t give a damn about money.”   She glared at him, refusing to budge.
      “Yeah, right.”  Bastian laughed incredulously.  He raised his hand and swept it around the room.  “You have a friggin’ $5000.00 painting on that wall.  God only knows what these marble floors cost, and you don’t care about money ? ”
    “It’s just stuff, Bastian.  S tuff.”  Kaylee moved from the door to the corner where a fancy decorative vase stood.  As she took it in hand, Kaylee felt the weight of the glass chips inside.  “This vase cost $500.00 when I bought it a year ago.  I thought it would go well with these marbled floors —and the marbled floors went so well with the décor of the next room , and so on and so forth.  The whole house is set up to match, but you know what?  It’s never really been a home.”  Kaylee looked down at the black - and - white vase.  Tentatively, she trickled her fingers along the pattern.  “Five hundred bucks.  And this is what happens one day when someone isn’t careful or God isn’t paying attention.”  She loosened her fingers one by one until the vase slipped. 
    Bastian stooped and tried to catch it, but the vase crashe d to the floor and shattered, scattering the glass chips across the floor.
    “Geez, Kaylee —that was an expensive vase. ”  He looked up at her, his eyes narrowed in bewilderment.
    Kaylee shook her head as Bastian collected the fragments.  “It doesn’t matter, Bastian.  In the end, even expensive things break like cheap ones, and all that remains are pieces.  Still, I’d rather have the pieces than the money because maybe the things bought with the money, if they are the right things, mean something, and if you put the pieces back together,  just maybe you have that moment of perfection before everything comes apart again.”  She crossed her arms over her chest.  “I could give you all this, and you know what, Bastian?  It wouldn’t make you happy.  Maybe at first it would seem like it, but then, day after day, you’d realize all the things money isn’t, and all the things money can’t do.  And then, God help you, you’d realize just how empty you are because you don’t even have that illusion anymore.”
    Kaylee walked away, leaving Bastian to collect the fragments.  One small shard jabbed his finger and broke the skin.  A pinpoint of blood welled up on his forefinger. 
    “Damn .  I guess this is what I get for jumping in ,” Bastian mumbled .  He brushed the skin, feeling for more glass , but found none.  He stared at his finger as blood beaded upon it, growing from a fine pinprick to a circle the size of a pencil eraser.  Bastian shov ed his finger in his mouth.  Kneeling, he watched the doorway , but even as he expected her to come back, he knew better.   He took his finger out of his mouth and sized up the cut , which had finally stopped bleeding.  Once again he picked up the pieces, this time more carefully.
    “You’re an enigma, Kaylee.  You have all the money in the world  you seem not to want , and y ou must be a black belt the way you keep your door unlocked.  You even fraternize with somebody like me.”  He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes.  His eyebrows furrowed as a