Dark and Shallow Lies(82)

“I’ll be fine,” he reassures me. “And if you need me, I’ll be here.”

We lock eyes, and that feels like a promise “My daddy wasn’t a monster,” he says. “He didn’t kill those little girls.”

“I believe you,” I tell him.

“And your mama wasn’t a monster, either. People do terrible things when they’re hurtin’.” He lays a hand on my cheek. “Doesn’t make ’em all bad.”

I nod, and something inside me loosens up.

Seems like, every time I’m with Zale, I come away just a little bit healed.

I let him wrap me in his arms and pull me against him.

“And Elora and I weren’t in love,” he whispers. “Not like you mean. Not like that.”

We stand there for a few minutes, all tangled up in each other. And I start to feel that humming current again. It gets stronger and stronger until Zale’s white-hot energy is coursing through both of us.

Everywhere his body touches mine, I’m suddenly so alive.

Wide awake.

And when I look up toward his face, his eyes blaze down at me bright blue.

Evie’s wind chimes sing out like tinkling laughter. It’s a familiar sound. Magical.

I reach up on my tiptoes to pull Zale’s mouth toward mine. Not because I’m hurting and I need the pain to go away. But because he makes me happy. And I need that to last a little bit longer.

I am so unprepared for the sensation of kissing him, though. So completely unprepared.

When our lips meet, it’s the lighting of a fuse. Zale is soft and sweet, but thrumming with barely contained electricity. Little zaps to my front teeth. The roof of my mouth. Zip. Shock after shock after shock that makes it hard to keep breathing. My legs are shaking. And Zale’s hands are at my waist.

My wide-open heart skips and jumps. It stops hard. Then races.

And when I finally feel his tongue against mine, it’s the completing of a circuit. We hum and vibrate together like our bodies are tuned to the exact same frequency.

That buzz erases everything that hurts and all the things that scare me, at least for a few minutes. I pull him even closer. And I stop fighting the way he makes me feel.

Eventually, we have to stop so I can catch my breath. Zale bends low to whisper in my ear.

“There’s magic in you, Grey.”

And for the first time ever, I almost believe that.

The sky is turning light in the east. But off to the south, there’s a solid wall of black. It’s the light in the sky that scares me, though. Not the dark.

“You have to leave,” I tell him. “You need to get out of here.”

He smiles at me. “I’m not afraid of the hurricane. I was born into the storm. Remember?”

“I know,” I tell him. “But you need to be afraid of Hart. He’s got a gun, and he’s convinced you killed Elora.” Fear grips me all over again. “There’s a supply boat coming this morning. I’m gonna make him leave with me. But if he finds you, he’ll kill you.” My heart is being split right down the middle. “He’s messed up right now. Half out of his mind. But he’s not a bad guy, he just –” Thinking about Hart makes it all hurt again. “Elora was everything. To both of us.”

“I understand.” Zale reaches out to run his fingers through my hair, and I lean into the tenderness of his touch. “You have to love deep to grieve deep like dat.”

I nod and swallow hard. “That’s why Hart went back to Keller’s Island that night. When Elora disappeared. Even though he knew your father was dead. He needed to feel like he was doing something. You know? He needed to look absolutely everywhere. Even if it didn’t make any sense.”

Zale stares down at me, and something flickers through his eyes. “Grey, Hart never came back to Keller’s Island the night Elora disappeared.”

“He did,” I argue. “He said he came back here and got the four-wheeler. Then he drove out there. He told me he ended up covered in bug bites.”

Zale shakes his head. “I was there the whole night, Grey. I went back there right after I saw Elora on the dock. And Hart never came around. If he’d come poking around back there, I’d have known it.” The wind is ripping at the shingles on the roof, and the sound of them flapping is like a flock of birds coming home to roost. “Nobody came around looking for Elora that night. Nobody at all.”





When Zale leaves, I stagger back inside. My head is heavy. My stomach, too. Like they’re both full of mud.

Why would Hart lie to me?

I slump in a corner and pull my knees up to my chest. I miss Zale already. I need that energy of his. My whole body aches. I’m confused. And I’m so bone-tired. The kind of exhausted that comes from fighting and fighting and fighting.

And losing.

And losing.

And losing.

How long has it been since I slept? Really slept.

Days?

Weeks?

Months?

And that’s when that flash hits me. Elora yelling into the storm. I scratch and claw at it. I grab it and dig my fingernails in. Try to hang on long enough to see something useful.

But I can’t see her face.

And I can’t hear whose name she’s screaming. I only feel the sound tearing its way out of my throat.