I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(19)

“Was it his urgency that persuaded you? Urgency can do that.”

“Not only, although I’m sure that was part of it. But also he said I was his bright light, his life raft, his one hope of not being sucked back into the darkness of his family. He swore he could not, under any circumstances, be happy without me, and, as hyperbolic as that sounds, I knew he meant it.”

“You’re his blue sky. When everything else is darkness.”

I started. “Yes! Exactly.”

“But is he yours?”

“No one, not one person, has ever needed me like he does.” Even I could see how I’d swerved around her question, but in all the weeks leading up to this day, this had been my go-to answer to any question about Zach. Multipurpose, flexible, enough.

“Some may love you just as much. Although love’s not really the point.”

I blinked. “It’s not?”

“Usually, love is the point, almost always, but not this time.”

“So what is?”

She leaned toward me and took my two hands in hers, her coffee-colored eyes shining and deeply serious.

“No one should live with someone who scares her.”

I stopped breathing. And I know Edith’s statement might not have burst forth out of nowhere and streamed like a sizzling comet across everyone’s psyches. Some people might even have regarded it as too simple and obvious to matter. But it mattered to me. To me, this sentence was a revelation. Because the truth is that long before Zach burned holes in me with his glare and his words and hurled my suitcase against the wall, he had scared me. The anger that would seep like battery acid or flare like a gasoline fire at professors or other drivers or people on the news or (and especially) his father and his brother, Ian—part of me stayed wide awake always, keeping watch for it. Despite his general kindness—a kindness I knew he’d worked hard to achieve—Zach had scared me all along.

“You know what scares me more than his anger, though?” I said, slowly, looking at my lap. “How close he wants to be to me, all the time, every second. I realize closeness sounds like a good thing, but it’s like I can’t turn around or smile at something or read something or have an experience without his popping up, asking questions, relating. And I’m not even that private a person. I mean, here I am pouring out my secrets to someone I just met. But I miss keeping to myself what few things I actually ever kept to myself, without feeling like a traitor. I miss solitude, even though before this, I might have said I didn’t especially like being alone. I really miss having light and space around me. What scares me most is the thought that I never will again.”

“Oh, dear girl,” said Edith, softly.

Suddenly, a tremble went through the hedge to my left, and there stood Dev, in a dove-gray linen shirt so nicely cut and perfectly suited to him that I wondered if a girlfriend had chosen it. He’d been at the brunch, but I’d been so flustered, I hadn’t noticed the shirt before now. In one hand, Dev carried a white bowl.

“Stealing china from the hotel, I see,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, flushing a bit at the sight of Edith. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“I’m Edith.” She swiped her hand through the air in a windshield wiper wave.

“I’m Dev,” said Dev, swiping back and smiling. Then, he turned to me. “A few minutes ago, they put out these tiny cinnamon rolls, and I know how you have a thing for undersized food.”

He handed me the bowl, inside of which were nestled four cinnamon rolls the size of half-dollars.

“I figured I should steal you some because they were going like—” He paused, waiting for me to finish the simile.

“Undersized hotcakes?”

“Yup.”

“Well, thanks,” I said. “They’re adorable, like four curled-up baby hedgehogs.”

“Exactly what I thought.” Dev shook his head. “Weirdo.”

“You know, you could’ve just saved them for when I got back. You didn’t have to traipse all the way out here.”

“Okay, (a) I did not traipse. Like, at all. And (b)”—he shrugged, sheepishly—“I may have been sent on a mission to check on you.”

“My mother?”

“And Cornelia. I told them you were fine, that you’d probably abducted some nice person and dragged her into a hedge to talk her ears off, but they made me come anyway.”

I sighed. “I don’t know if fine is exactly the word I’d pick.”

Dev knitted his brows. “You need anything? Besides tiny pastries, I mean?”

I lifted my chin. “Nah. I’m okay. Go back and tell them I’m just getting some air and I’ll be back in a flash.”

Dev gave a thumbs-up. “Nice to meet you, Edith. Make her share.” He pointed to the bowl.

“If I have to wrestle her to the ground,” said Edith.

A snow-white burst of smile, a rustle of hedge, and Edith and I were alone again.

“Zach needs you,” she said. “What do you need?”

I squeaked out a laugh. “You don’t mess around, do you?”

Edith smiled. “All right, try this instead. You mentioned wanting light and space. It made me think of a room, an actual, physical place that is all yours. Do you have one?”