There was a brilliant white, momentarily blinding light before I felt arms around me. My fall halted. I held onto the solid form that held me. I closed my eyes unable to take in what was happening. Slowly, I was lowered to stand on the floor. The arms around me loosened and that’s when I reopened my eyes and found myself staring into Damien’s fiery ones where we stood in the middle of my bedroom. But this time they weren’t filled with hatred, this time there was another emotion. I swallowed, my heart was racing, my adrenaline was off the charts.

“You…” I was at a loss. It was what I had suspected but still couldn’t quite believe I had been right. Although I had been prepared to go to dangerous lengths to prove it. I had threatened to jump off the roof, and I know I was set on going through with it to push him to reveal the truth. The truth that had been within my grasp.

He let go of me suddenly and I felt myself sway. The sudden drop and my emotions made it impossible for me not to feel like my whole world had been shaken. And to be saved by the person who hated me the most was impossible to comprehend or explain.

Now that his actions had confirmed what I had suspected, it was time to find out the reason he would done something so out of character. He was a demon, who was supposed to take my soul back to hell. Why would he feel compelled to save me? It didn’t make any sense, and all I could do was hope he would be able to explain it to me.

The familiar hatred returned in his eyes and whatever I had just experienced and seen felt like it had been a part of my imagination.

I moved to sit down on my bed while I stared at Damien, who was looking at me like he wanted to wipe my existence from the face of the earth. None of it made sense. Why would someone who hated me so much save me, multiple times?

He had saved me when I had crashed the car over the bridge and he had saved me when I stepped into the path of the car. And he had saved me from falling from the roof.

The question, was why?

“I don’t understand,” I mumbled. My mind was still scrambled with thoughts I wouldn’t correlate into an answer. Nothing I knew to this point could explain any of it.

His hands fisted and I watched him as he seemed to struggle with what he believed and what he had just done.

“I don’t owe you an explanation,” he tersely told me. “I don’t have to explain anything.”

His jaw line tensed, like he was holding onto the anger to hide whatever had compelled him to save me.

“I want answers Damien, I need to know why you keep saving me. Why would you do that when you hate me so much?” I searched his features. “I would have thought you would have watched me die with some satisfaction.” I studied him closely.

His mouth tightened as he held my gaze with an intensity that made me stop breathing I was so entranced but somehow I managed to break it.

I stood up and approached him slowly. “Why Damien?”

The need for answers pushed me forward, through the fear of what I would discover and how it could possibility change everything I thought I knew.

The closer I go to him, I noticed how his features eased slightly. I reached out to touch him, my fingers moved to rest against his chest but they went right through him. This was not what I expected after what he had just done.

Now I was more confused than ever before. “How could you save me?” I didn’t know whether the question was directed him or myself.

Nothing I knew explained what had happened and I felt like I had more questions than answers.

“I don’t know.” His words were soft spoken, without his usual playful or angry tone. I was seeing a side to him I rarely experienced.

I lifted my eyes to meet his. The hatred was gone. I swallowed. To be so close to him made it more difficult to think straight. I was more aware of him and his presence than anything else. Even my need to figure out the truth.

“The white light?” I murmured, asking the first thing that came to mind.

In all three times he had saved me, there had been a blind white light.

“I don’t know.”

Maybe that’s why he couldn’t give me answers, because he didn’t have them. This wasn’t what I expected. I had believed he would be able to tell me everything but that didn’t seem to be the case. How was I supposed to get to the truth if he couldn’t help me.

I had expected him to know the answers and that fact he didn’t made me feel disheartened.

I began to pace as I took in everything that happened and what I could remember. Then I stopped to swing my gaze back to him.

“You’ve saved me every time my life hung in the balance. Could you be the reason I survived the accident with my family?” To me it was the only plausible answer, even if I couldn’t make any logical sense of it.

There was no logical sense when it came to the face I was asking a demon answers in my bedroom, only moments after he had saved me from falling off the roof.

“You saved me.” I moved to stand in front of him. “In the accident where my family…” I couldn’t say the rest.

He nodded slowly.

It felt like everything I knew I was discovering wasn’t what I had believed. I sank back down on my bed. What I had believed to be bad, wasn’t in fact bad. The boy who had haunted me, had also saved my life multiple times.

I didn’t know how that made me feel. There was safety in hating him. Without that hard emotion I was afraid of what I would feel for him. It was his actions and the dislike I had for him that had kept any attraction for him at bay but now. I was looking at him entirely differently. Seeing him as a boy and not just as a demon who was there to make my life miserable. This time I was seeing him as the boy who had saved my life, more than once.

“I don’t understand. How? You only came back with me when I died, how could you have been there before I died?” I frowned. It felt like everything I thought I knew about him was wrong with this new theory.

“How could you be there right when it happened?” I asked the question aloud but I didn’t expect him to answer. The question was more for myself.

“You came back with me because I wasn’t supposed to survive.” I was voicing my thoughts out loud. “Before the accident I couldn’t see ghosts or you. But you would have had to be with me before the accident to be there to save me, right?”

He nodded slowly.

I had the craziest thought. “Turn around.”

He frowned.

“Just do it Damien.”

Slowly he turned around.

“Lift your shirt.”

“What do you think you know Tessa?” he asked but I ignored his question.

“Just lift your shirt. Please.” I was fixated on the only answer that could explain why he had been there before and had been able to save me when the rest of my family had died.

He lifted his shirt.

Two deep scars marred his flawless skin, they were enough to confirm what I had suspected.

Damien looked over his shoulder as I moved to trace the line of the scars with my fingers. I couldn’t exactly touch him but I needed a moment to take in what I was seeing. I released a deep emotional breath.

“You weren’t always a demon Damien.”

He dropped his shirt and turned to face me. “What do you mean?”

“You had wings.”

It was unbelievable but made the most sense. And the proof were the scars on his back. He had been an angel.

“I think you were my angel Damien. My guardian angel.”