I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(82)

Zach shrugged. “Since then I’ve been waiting for the right time. And this morning, I said to myself today’s the day.”

I felt relieved that the guy hadn’t tracked us to Canada, but then I turned and saw Zach’s car parked on the street.

“You drove here? In this state? You know you could’ve killed someone, right?”

Zach, who never so much as tailgated, who drove sixty miles per hour on the highway.

“That would’ve been on your head, Clare. Like everything else.”

“You have to stop this craziness, Zach. Having me followed? Driving drunk? Hacking my Facebook page? This isn’t you.”

“You left me. Like my mother. Like Ro. Women aren’t supposed to leave!” he shouted.

I had never had anyone look at me with such pure, black meanness in his eyes. I backed toward the car and groped for the door handle, but my fingers couldn’t find it.

“Do you know what Ian told me about Ro this morning?” said Zach. “He helped her run away.”

“What do you mean?”

“He helped her get away from my dad. Set up her escape to California, sent her money, helped cover her tracks. She swore to him she’d keep in touch and that she’d figure out a way for us all to be together again.”

“Oh, my God,” I said, realizing what he was saying. “Ian knew where she was all these years, and he let everyone believe she was dead?”

Zach shook his head. “For the first year, Ro kept her promise. She stayed in touch with Ian, but then, she wrote to say she’d found someone who would help her leave the country. Duped some man into it, probably. She said she needed to cut herself off from her old life, all of it.” He pounded his fist on his chest. “Her old life. She meant me! And Ian. We fucking loved her!”

“I’m sorry, Zach,” I said.

“You’re not sorry! You did the exact same thing.” He stabbed his finger in my direction. “How do you think I will stand it? Knowing your life is going on away from me? Imagining you with other people when you were supposed to be with me?”

“Zach, please stop yelling at me. You’re scaring me.”

“Good!”

He didn’t mean it. He was drunk, mad, hurt, and possibly mentally ill, but I knew the Zach who wanted to be good, who tried so hard, was still in there.

“Listen to me,” I said. “This isn’t you. Ian is the one who’s full of hate and anger, and he wants you to be, too. That’s why he told you this now, to feed your anger. Don’t let him do that.”

“Ian went all those years knowing that lying bitch was out there somewhere, living her life, being happy. She had no right to be happy. It killed Ian, ate him up.” Zach ran his hand down his face. When he spoke again, his voice was quieter but scarier, flat and strange. “But you know what? Maybe she isn’t. Maybe she isn’t out there living like we never even existed. Maybe she’s dead.”

Zach took an unsteady step toward me, looming large, and I pressed back against the car, trapped. “God, I hope she’s dead. If she died, that would balance things out. It would make things fair, don’t you think?”

Suddenly, Dev was there, standing behind Zach, looking surprised, his hair still wet from the shower.

“I don’t know what’s happening here,” he said in a low voice. “But it needs to end.”

Zach whirled around so fast he almost fell. “You! Shut the hell up!” he shouted.

He turned back to me and took me roughly by the shoulders. “Him. Jesus Christ, it’s always been him. You left me because of him.”

“Let her go,” said Dev.

“No,” I said to Zach, and then, without planning to say it, I said, “and also yes.”

Zach twitched backward, as if I’d struck him, snatching his hands off my shoulders. “What?”

I pulled myself up straighter. I would tell the truth. No more lies about Dev to myself or to anyone else. “It has always been him. But I didn’t realize it; I didn’t really, really know it, until today.”

Zach pressed his hands to the sides of his head and said, “How can you say this to me?”

“I owe it to you not to lie to you. I need you to understand, once and for all. Dev isn’t the reason I broke off our engagement. I didn’t choose him over you. We’re the reason I ended it. We don’t belong together. I could never live my life with you. It would be wrong.”

Zach stood, his head hanging down, and then, suddenly, with a guttural, animal snarl, he spun and charged Dev, knocked into him, his shoulder ramming Dev’s chest, and Dev fell backward onto the grass. I thought he would leap on Dev then, and I got ready to pounce, to jump in and help, but then Zach was coming at me instead, wild-eyed, arms flailing, and I balled my fists, ready to hit him, energy surging through me, even though I had never hit anyone in my life. But he was reeling, off balance, and Dev was up and on him, grabbing him around the chest, holding him back, Zach twisting and turning, trying to free himself.

“You don’t want to do this,” said Dev, panting out the words.

“The hell I don’t,” sputtered Zach.

“You don’t want to hurt Clare.”

As if Dev’s words were a bucket of cold water thrown over his head, Zach stopped struggling. He shook himself and stared at me, stunned, breathing hard. “Hurt Clare? I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I would never hurt her.”