“Do you want to open it?” I ask, but I’m relieved when he shakes his head.
“You’re sure he’s really in there?” He raises his eyes to meet mine.
“Yeah,” I say. “I saw him myself.”
Zale takes his hands and lays them on top of the barrel alongside my own. I feel that faint tingle. Like the little mound of earth back at Keller’s Island.
The moment feels solemn. Almost like a eulogy.
“Did Elora know?” he asks me. “About what happened to my father?” I nod, and Zale looks hurt. I know he’s wondering why she kept it from him.
But I think about that little grave out at Keller’s Island, and I understand why. Because even when the secrets we hide in our pockets aren’t our own, the weight of them can still be enough to drown us.
Zale is studying my face. “Thank you for this, Grey.”
“I didn’t know,” I tell him. “You have to believe me.”
“Of course I believe you,” he says, like there could never be any doubt. Like he trusts me completely.
And I feel like shit again for letting Hart convince me that Zale could be a murderer. Or that Case could, either, for that matter. I should have known better. I did know better, deep down. But my whole life, Elora has been my candle. And Hart has been my North Star. I’ve always depended on their light to guide me. It never occurred to me I had the power to push back my own darkness.
“What are you going to do now?” I ask.
“Go get my boat. Take him home,” Zale tells me. “Lay him to rest. Next to Aeron.”
“Let me help you,” I offer. “I have to leave in a couple hours, but –”
He shakes his head. “This is something I need to do alone.”
And I understand that.
Zale takes my hand and walks me back across the boardwalk to the Mystic Rose. With the people all gone, it’s hard to ignore the peeling paint and the sagging boards. The weeds and thorny vines pushing up through the holes and all the little broken places.
He stops at the front steps, but I lead him around the house. To the kitchen door in the back. I need to put some distance between our goodbye and the bones of his father.
“Be careful,” I tell him. “The storm –”
“I’ll be fine,” he reassures me. “And if you need me, I’ll be here.”
We lock eyes, and that feels like a promise “My daddy wasn’t a monster,” he says. “He didn’t kill those little girls.”
“I believe you,” I tell him.
“And your mama wasn’t a monster, either. People do terrible things when they’re hurtin’。” He lays a hand on my cheek. “Doesn’t make ’em all bad.”
I nod, and something inside me loosens up.
Seems like, every time I’m with Zale, I come away just a little bit healed.
I let him wrap me in his arms and pull me against him.
“And Elora and I weren’t in love,” he whispers. “Not like you mean. Not like that.”
We stand there for a few minutes, all tangled up in each other. And I start to feel that humming current again. It gets stronger and stronger until Zale’s white-hot energy is coursing through both of us.
Everywhere his body touches mine, I’m suddenly so alive.
Wide awake.
And when I look up toward his face, his eyes blaze down at me bright blue.
Evie’s wind chimes sing out like tinkling laughter. It’s a familiar sound. Magical.
I reach up on my tiptoes to pull Zale’s mouth toward mine. Not because I’m hurting and I need the pain to go away. But because he makes me happy. And I need that to last a little bit longer.
I am so unprepared for the sensation of kissing him, though. So completely unprepared.
When our lips meet, it’s the lighting of a fuse. Zale is soft and sweet, but thrumming with barely contained electricity. Little zaps to my front teeth. The roof of my mouth. Zip. Shock after shock after shock that makes it hard to keep breathing. My legs are shaking. And Zale’s hands are at my waist.
My wide-open heart skips and jumps. It stops hard. Then races.
And when I finally feel his tongue against mine, it’s the completing of a circuit. We hum and vibrate together like our bodies are tuned to the exact same frequency.
That buzz erases everything that hurts and all the things that scare me, at least for a few minutes. I pull him even closer. And I stop fighting the way he makes me feel.
Eventually, we have to stop so I can catch my breath. Zale bends low to whisper in my ear.