Dusk (Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (17 page)

“Can I ask you something?” I locked my gaze with his. “Something unrelated to what we just did.”

“Of course. You can ask me anything.”

“What happens after?” He looked puzzled, so I clarified. “After your job here is done. What happens? Do you just go away? Are you allowed to stay here? Do you have choices about college and your career?”

“I’m not really sure what happens after,” he said, his fingers sliding along my jawline. “I’m sure the Boss isn’t going to want me to be a high school dropout or anything.”

He was being jovial. But I was seriously concerned. “I don’t want you to have to go.”

Adrian leaned closer, his hands finding my cheeks and cradling my face in his palms, causing my pulse to spike. He kept leaning until his our noses touched and his eyes seared into mine.

“He has a way of making sure things work out the way they’re supposed to,” he whispered, then closed the distance between us and melded his lips with mine.

I love you.

The words were right there, begging to burst free as we kissed in the shade of the trees. I wanted to say them. Badly. But a small part of me – the part that still wallowed in the misery I’d become accustomed to – screamed at me to stop.

Fear held me back. Fear of rejection? Fear of being unworthy? I wasn’t sure, but I hated it. Hated the fear in a way I’d never thought possible.

I shoved the fear away, forcing it back to wherever it came from. Wrapping my arms around Adrian, I basked in this moment with him. He’d given me so much and asked for nothing in return. He’d given me back my life. Shown me how to forgive. Given me the chance to love again. I would not let the dark thoughts cloud my time with him.

And those three words… I tucked them away and held them in my heart. The moment would come, soon, and then I would give them to him.

“I
want to talk about Dad.”

I could tell by the way Mom gripped the back of the kitchen chair that I’d surprised her.

Setting a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses on the table, I slid into my seat. We’d just returned home from church – a practice Mom had not let me get out of, despite my reckless summer – and were about to sit down for lunch.

“I’m glad,” she said, dropping into her own seat. “And surprised. I’d begun to think you never would.”

“It’s still not easy.” I poured my drink and stared at the yellow liquid, afraid if I looked at her I’d start crying before the conversation even got going. “I’ve dreamed about him lately.”

“Oh Zoe,” she whispered, reaching across the table to take my hand.

I kept going. “And I realize that I need to forgive him so that I can go on with life.”

“Yes.” Her voice cracked on the word.

“I’m still really angry. I feel betrayed. But I also feel so guilty for the way I treated him. The things I said. Things I can never take back or apologize for because he’s gone. And he wasn’t a bad person. I know that. He made a bad choice, but he was a good man. And I loved him.”

With that the tears ran down my cheeks and the lasagna on the table lost all appeal.

“I did too.” Mom’s grip on my hand grew tighter and in broken syllables she responded. “Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean you can’t apologize. He knew you didn’t mean those things, but if you need to say you’re sorry, I believe he’s listening and will hear you.”

I nodded, unable to say much else. My chest heaved with sobs that had waited too long to escape.

Mom rose from her place and came around to my side of the table. Sitting in the seat next to me, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into her embrace.

How could I have forgotten how this felt? How a mother’s arms could heal? How finding comfort with my Mom could ease the pain? And now that I’d finally let her share my grief, I couldn’t stop the well of emotion that bubbled over.

She held me that way for what seemed like hours, while I cried every tear I’d held back since April. When the sobs began to subside, her shirt was soaked and my throat was dry, but her arms were still tight around me.

“I felt all those things too, Zoe,” she said, her voice soft and warm. “I was so angry at him. Sometimes I still am. I was absolutely betrayed, and it felt horrible. And I’ve felt guilty. I said hurtful things to him, too. I said things out of anger that I didn’t mean. I know you never heard them, because we never wanted you to see the ugliest part of things. But you need to know that you aren’t the only one who said things and then regretted them.”

“Could you have forgiven him?” I asked, my voice hoarse and weak.

She stroked her hand through my hair, the way she’d done when I was little. “I already had.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I still loved him,” she whispered. “I didn’t trust him, and that would’ve taken a long time to rebuild, but I loved him. And I knew that as long as the love still existed that I could forgive. Maybe that would’ve meant that we worked things out eventually. I’d like to think so. But we’ll never know.”

“It’s hard not knowing.” I straightened, brushed my hair out of my face, and looked at her for the first time since the crying jag began.

“It is. Knowing he was willing to go the distance to try makes it a little easier. And I do believe that, Zoe. That he was sincere about doing whatever it took.”

“I believe that, too,” I whispered. “I believed it then. Before he died. I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“Your father made mistakes,” she said. “Big ones. He hurt us. But we don’t have to stay in that hurt forever. We can choose to live. We can choose to let life take us down new paths. We can choose joy.”

“I’m getting there.” I grabbed a napkin from the table and wiped the wetness from my cheeks.

“Does a certain handsome motorcycle rider have anything to do with that?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. No sense denying it, although telling her the extent of Adrian’s involvement in my return to the land of the living was probably not the best idea. “He makes me want to be better.”

“Well, since that’s the case, I can maybe get past the motorcycle.”

She grinned at me and I laughed. She laughed, too, and I realized we’d just had our first normal mother-daughter moment since our world crashed down around us.

It felt good.

And I felt more whole than I had in a long time.

K
nocking on Vivian’s front door wasn’t easy. I had so much to atone for. I’d mistreated my best friend for months, and just when things were getting back to normal, I screwed it all up again.

She might not be ready to forgive me, but I needed to apologize so that at least she’d know how truly sorry I was.

The smile on her mom’s face when she opened the door told me that Viv hadn’t talked to her family about our falling out. It was possible she’d confided in her older brother, Jack. They’d always been close. But since he was off at college, I probably wouldn’t run into him.

“Hi Mrs. Rogers,” I said, forcing a smile even though I felt meek as a mouse.

“Zoe,” she said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and ushering me into the entryway of the house. “I’m so glad to see you. It’s been too long.”

I nodded. “I agree. Much too long.”

“I hope you and your Mom are doing all right. I know these have been very difficult months.”

“We’re doing better,” I answered. I felt a deep happiness at the honesty of those words.

“Vivian is upstairs in her room. Go on up.”

With a smile and a whispered
thanks
I headed up the staircase. My hand grasped the polished wood of the banister, and with each step I forced myself to breathe normally.

Vivian’s door was open, and as I approached her room I heard music and the clicking of computer keys. She was probably working on homework. I figured she wouldn’t welcome my interruption, but I wouldn’t take long. I’d say what I came to say and then leave.

Her desk faced the window, so as I stood in the doorway her back was to me. For a moment, I considered turning around and forgetting about everything, but I owed her more than that.

“Viv.” I knocked softly before I lost my nerve.

She turned and said nothing. Just stared.

Well, I’d known it wouldn’t be easy.

Stepping into the room, I shut the door behind me because no way did I want her mom overhearing.

“I won’t stay long. I just came to apologize. For everything.”

“Okay.” She sounded skeptical.

“I know you probably won’t believe me, but I wanted to talk to you. You were the only one I wanted to talk to about everything.”

“Then why didn’t you?” she asked, getting up from her seat at the computer desk to sit beside me on the bed.

“I’m not sure,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and staring at the floor. “When Dad first came clean with Mom and they told me they were separating for a while, my first instinct was to pick up the phone and call you. Then I started thinking about saying it all out loud, and…” I stopped before I choked on the words, and took a deep breath. “I was just so ashamed. So embarrassed. And I knew you wouldn’t look down on me or anything like that, but I guess I thought if I just didn’t talk about it, it would be like it wasn’t real.”

“I can understand that,” Viv whispered. “I guess I can’t really understand how you felt, but I can see why you didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Several times I almost told you, but I never had the guts.”

“It’s not really about guts,” she said. “It’s about your heart. It was broken. And I get that. I really do.”

“Then, just when I thought maybe I could talk to you about everything, Dad died, and… I don’t really know exactly how to put it… I just kind of fell down inside myself and tried to forget.”

“And that’s where Courtney and Nikki came in, right?”

I looked up at her then. I wanted her to see the truth in my eyes. “It was never about choosing them over you.
Never
. I wanted to forget, even if it was just for a little while. And I thought it was working. I thought the drinking and being reckless was helping. But it wasn’t. In the end it just made things worse. I was ashamed of myself, because I knew the way I was acting was wrong. I avoided some of the guilty feelings by avoiding you. And I’m so so sorry that I ever thought avoiding you was a good idea.”

“I wasn’t jealous of the two of them, you know?” A sad smile spread across her face. “As if I’d ever want to be anything like them. I knew what you were doing, and even though it hurt, I wasn’t mad. I just hated the thoughts of you with those two.”

“I never intended to tell Adrian the truth about my parents before you. It all just sort of happened by accident, before I even knew him very well. He found me out by the horse farm one night after I’d barely avoided a fight with Mom. Everything was just right at the surface. All the raw emotions. And I just blurted it out that Dad had an affair. Then once it was out there, I couldn’t stop all the rest of it from coming out.”

“And here’s where I need to apologize to you,” Viv said, shocking me.

“Why would you need to apologize to me?”

“For the way I acted at school the other day, after that scene with Courtney. I had no right to expect that you’d tell me all the details at all, much less before anyone else. This wasn’t some piece of gossip. It was your life. Your family.”

“I should’ve told you.”

“In your own time,” Viv replied. “My reaction was more about still being hurt about your summer with Nikki and Courtney than it was about you not telling me about your parents. For that, I’m sorry.”

“So can we forgive each other?” I asked, a wave of hope bouncing around in my heart. “And maybe go back to rebuilding our friendship?”

Viv nodded. “Senior year. Let’s move on and enjoy it.”

We sealed it with a hug, and I hoped with all my heart that moving on from my own guilt and misery would be as easy as it was to move on in my friendship with Vivian.

“Brett asked me to go to the homecoming dance with him next month,” she said. “And he held my hand in the parking lot yesterday.”

“No way!” I hugged her again. “Tell me
everything
!”