I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(53)

“Genes,” he said. And then his accuracy-loving self couldn’t resist adding, “Not exclusively, obviously.”

The fact that he didn’t throw in a few details about epigenetics or the effect of environment on phenotype or whatever worried me almost as much as his wan cheeks.

“Seriously,” I said.

“How do I look?”

“Hunched. Mushroom-colored. With blue circles under your eyes.”

He smiled a tired smile.

“Extremely handsome, in other words.” He rolled his shoulders a few times, wincingly. “I had this brainstorm at 4:00 a.m. and just sort of jumped in the car. I guess I’m a little tired.”

“Hold on,” I said. “You drove here? From Charlottesville? Today? Isn’t that like a nine-, ten-hour trip? And what are you doing having brainstorms at four in the morning anyway?”

“It was a brainstorm, Clare. You don’t plan brainstorms. They just hit and you just get caught in them. Hence the word storm.” He gave a wry shrug. “Although this front had been moving in for a while; I just tried to ignore it.”

“Could you stop being metaphorical already and tell me what’s going on?”

“Okay, but can I maybe sit down first?”

“Oh, Dev, I’m sorry. You must be about to fall over. Come in and sit.” I pushed him in the direction of a chair and tugged his jacket off from behind as he walked away. “Do you want anything? Water? Coffee? Toast?”

“No thanks. I should probably just start talking.”

Then, Dev sat down in my dark blue velvet armchair, aimed his gray-blue eyes at me like two pretty headlights, and started to talk.

“So I had this brainstorm, and I figured I’d better just get in the car and start driving before I lost my nerve, but I only had to drive about ten miles before I realized that I’d never lose my nerve because if I’ve ever been sure of anything in my life, I’m sure of what I’m about to say to you.”

“And you’ve been sure of a lot things,” I said. “You’re an un-wishy-washy person by nature.”

“So you understand how sure I am about this.”

He did sound sure, but for a second, he looked downward, his lashes casting tiny twin shadows on his cheeks, and I recognized that this was the moment: the pivot point between the way things had been and the way things would be. And in that still, time-stopped moment, I knew what he was going to say to me.

When he looked up again, he was the usual Dev, flushed and vivid, and he smiled his sudden, direct, radiant, untired smile at me and said, “I love you and you love me, and out of all the things I know, what I know the most is that we should be together.”

For a full three seconds after he said it, I knew it, too, with all my heart.

“Oh, Dev,” I said.

“And trust me, I get exactly how big a jerk this makes me, since you’re with Zach now, but not saying it would be worse. I swear I’d be doing all this even if he were here.”

“I believe you.”

“Not to downplay my jerk status, but you don’t belong to Zach. You belong to yourself. I definitely didn’t come here thinking, ‘I’ll steal her away.’” He spoke those last four words as if they were something bitter he needed to spit out.

“Then what were you thinking?”

“I was thinking, ‘I’ll ask her to do this with me.’”

“Do what?”

Dev got up out of the chair and sat down next to me, not touching me, but so close that I could see the scar in his eyebrow and the thin tributary of vein running down the right side of his forehead, close enough that I could take in, all at once, the entire familiar terrain of his face.

“All of it,” he said. “Everything. Or separate things sometimes but together, next to each other, in the same place.”

“You want to live with me? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, yeah, for starters. Live and everything else. Live, et cetera.”

Dev made et cetera sound like the best adventure ever. How easy it would have been to reach out and grab his hand and set off on it with him. But I hesitated. I hesitated and he saw me do it and at least half the glow went right out of his face.

“Before you answer,” he said, quickly, “please understand that you’re not trapped. I would never corner you. If you say no, you won’t lose me. That’s not a thing that could happen. If you say no, I promise I’ll never bring it up again. I’ll stay your friend.”

He slid his hand under my hair and rested it against the side of my neck.

“I’d miss touching you, though,” he said. “I’ve pretty much lived in a constant state of missing touching you for the past four years. Please don’t say no. Let’s be together for the rest of our lives. Don’t you want to? It would be so fun. Let’s just do it, Clare.”

That was my Dev, eyes all lit up, talking about a lifetime commitment like a ten-year-old talks about climbing a tree or starting a secret club. Of course, I loved him. I had loved him since I was thirteen. But oh God, Zach. Zach with his head down, talking about his father in that broken voice, asking me to help him. The men in his family never asked for help, but Zach had asked me. “I can’t do this without you,” he’d said.