I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(26)

“Clare! Are you there? Please tell me you’re there.”

Zach, either drunk or crying or both.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

“Clare! Please! I don’t need to come in. Just come talk to me!”

Our next-door neighbor’s Irish setter, Galway, began barking; Hedwig, the corgi across the street, followed suit. I knew that soon the entire neighborhood would go off like a string of canine firecrackers.

“Coming!” I called and with dread creeping up my spine, I walked into the mudroom, switched on the outside light, and turned the knob. Zach stood on the second step, his elbow propping open the screen door. With his golf cap, T-shirt and shorts, tear-streaked face, anxious eyes, and shaky smile, he looked like a fourteen-year-old, here to confess that he’d broken my car window with his baseball.

“Oh, Zach,” I said, sighing.

“Will you come out and talk to me, just for a minute?” His words slid into one another, blurred at their edges.

“God, tell me you didn’t drive here.”

“No, no. I wouldn’t do that.” He jerked his head in the direction of the driveway. “Ian. He only agreed to it because I threatened to drive myself. He said, ‘All we need is for you to get a DUI and bring more shame and ignominy down upon the dignified heads of your family.’”

“He said that, did he?”

Zach waved his hand aimlessly around in the air. “Something like that. We spent last night at his fancy condo in Baltimore. The natives call it Bawlmore, which is pretty appropriate since I’ve been bawling more these past couple days than I ever have before.”

“Ian drove you all the way from Baltimore?”

“He did. You know, you should probably let me in or else you come out and shut the door. Wouldn’t want to let bugs into your family abode.”

Zach held the screen door open for me and edged away so that I could slip by him, then he let the door shut. We stood a few feet apart, just at the foot of the stairs. He took off his cap and ran his hand through his hair.

“I feel like I should get down on my knees,” he said, with a limp chuckle.

“Zach, why are you here?”

He smiled bleakly. “I just needed to check to see if you’d changed your mind yet.”

I started to speak, but he reached out and touched a shushing finger to my lips. Reflexively, I jerked my head back like I’d been stung and could have kicked myself afterward.

“And on the off chance that you hadn’t changed your mind yet,” he went on, “I wanted to ask you to please consider doing it soon because no one will ever, ever love you like I do.”

His voice broke at the word love, and he pressed his golf cap to his eyes, then took it away. My own eyes burned, and I wanted to hug him so badly that I clasped my hands behind my back to stop myself.

“How could I have caused you so much pain?” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“Hey, all you have to do to fix it is come back to me. On any terms you want. We can start all over. God, we can date, even. Remember when you took me hiking?”

I swallowed a sob. “A bee stung you. And it rained.”

“I loved it.”

Behind my back, my two hands gripped each other for dear life.

“Zach, I can’t come back to you.”

He reached out and rested his hands against my upper arms. I didn’t flinch. “You don’t have to decide now. I just wanted to check and see if maybe you had, but you don’t have to until you’re good and ready.”

“Please. I’ve decided already.”

He froze and I watched his soft expression clear away like a window defogging. For a split second his hands began to grip my arms, but then he yanked them off, spun around, and frisbeed his hat into the shadowy yard where it snagged on a rosebush.

“This is why,” he said, his voice rising. “This is fucking why!”

I stepped up onto the first step.

“Your perfect house! Perfect family! I hate my family because they suck, but I hate yours even more!”

I stepped onto the second step and silently slipped my hand through the screen door’s handle, my thumb on the button.

Zach whirled around, his teeth flashing in a bitter grin. “Your perfect parents! And Cornelia and Teo, whoever the hell they even are! Not even blood relatives. All those people. They’re why you think you don’t need me! Right? Am I right?”

I stood, fear thrumming through me, the yard looking watery and weird, the button under my thumb the only solid and true thing on the entire planet, and then, from deep inside the house next door, on the other side of the row of flame-shaped cypress bushes, Galway began to bark, to send clear, wild sounds flying into the night.

“Shut the hell up, dog!” spat Zach.

Drawing his leg back like a soccer player taking a penalty kick, Zach slammed his foot against the terra-cotta planter next to the back gate. He probably expected to send it flying, but the planter merely fell over and lay on its side, intact. In the yellow light, I could see a handful of potting soil splash out, but the fern inside didn’t budge. In the stillness that followed, Zach stared down at the planter, and I pulled open the door and slipped inside the house.

“The neighbors will be out here any minute,” I told him, quickly. “You need to leave.”