“I didn’t mean to scare you, Grey.”
It’s an old joke between us now. He knows I’m not afraid of him.
“I have to leave tomorrow,” I say as he crawls up to sit beside me. “I’m going back to Arkansas. It’s over.” I choke on the words. “I’ll never know what happened to Elora.”
I failed her. My twin flame.
Zale reaches for my hands, and I feel that tingle. My sorrow starts to evaporate, and that strange calm comes over me. It’s like slipping into a hot bath at the end of a long day. I let him wrap his arms around me and pull me against his chest. That zing makes me shiver. He’s warm and alive and beautiful. I breathe him in. Sunshine and cypress.
And it feels so good. He feels so good. I feel so good when I’m with him.
I can still feel the hurt of Elora. Not even Zale can make that go away. But his gentle touch makes it bearable somehow.
I think about Hart. How I love him with everything I have. How I always will.
Whatever that means.
But Hart is like the outgoing tide. If I hang on to him, he’ll pull me farther and farther out to sea, until we finally drown together.
When I sit with Zale, though, even during the storm, I can see lights on shore.
“I’m sorry, Grey,” he soothes. “I know how much you loved her. And I know how hard it is not knowing. Believe me.”
I pull away from him a little, so I can see his face.
“There’s something else I have to tell you. Something about your brother.”
I see the fire of curiosity in Zale’s eyes, and I feel it in his skin. Sharp enough to sting. But not hot enough to burn.
“You know where he is,” he says, and I nod.
Zale’s energy surges again to mingle with mine. Suddenly I’m breathless.
“There’s an old cypress tree, back at Keller’s Island. At the edge of the clearing. It has two trunks. You know the one I mean?”
“That’s where I found the little hummingbird, Grey. Off in the dirt there.”
“That’s where my mother put Aeron. At the base of that tree.”
Zale exhales into the night. The sound of bayou wind through tall grass. Then he pulls me tight against him again.
“Thank you, Grey,” he whispers. And when he presses his lips to the top of my head, I let myself breathe out, too.
Finally.
My first real exhale since Elora went missing.
Because at least someone is found.
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you find your father,” I tell him.
If only we had a little more time.
I can almost feel the answers hanging in the thick night air.
I look up so I can see Zale’s eyes. The intense blue of them. I reach out and run my fingers through his blond hair, then I lay my palm against the side of his face, and I can feel the dampness of his tears.
He’s crying.
I run my thumb over the ridge of his cheekbone, and I’m rewarded with a series of little sizzling jolts. It makes me laugh in surprise. I can’t help it.
Zale grins and holds me even closer.
The last night of a strange summer cut short by a churning monster.
Some secrets revealed. But others still buried deep.
“There’s still so much I don’t understand,” I tell him. “About what happened to Elora.”
And about what happened here thirteen summers ago.
“I feel like the real story is all tangled up with the lies,” I say. “And I can’t tell what’s true any more.”
“It’s all true, I think. And none of it’s true.” Zale is tracing slow circles on my palm with one finger, and the little zips and zaps have me mesmerized. “So it becomes a kind of poem.”
“Are you leaving tomorrow?” I ask him. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder where he’d go. What he’d do when Elizabeth comes roaring into the bayou like a runaway freight train.
Zale shakes his head. “I still need to find out what happened to my father. And I need to know how dis all started. I need to know who put Ember and Orli in the pond behind our cabin.”
I stare at him. There’s a massive hurricane heading our way. This whole place will be flooded out. Storm surge halfway up the tallest trees. Twenty, maybe thirty feet. Or more.
“Can you –”
He gives me a little smile, and those ice-fire eyes light me up with their shine.
“I can’t stop the storm comin’。 But I’ll be okay. I promise.”
He’s a hurricane baby, I tell myself. A boy born with all the power of the sea and the sky. And I know it’s not my choice to make. But I’m scared for him.