Love doesn’t ask questions. And love doesn’t lie.
“No,” he says, pulling back.
Um… “What?”
“You don’t love me,” he says flatly. “You don’t even know me.”
* * *
Night has fallen by the time I venture outside the house. I had to wait until Clara went to sleep. Otherwise she’d worry.
It feels right to find him in the dark, where we walked holding hands, where we lay on the roof. The moon conspires with us, giving just enough light to see the lines of each other’s bodies, but not enough to see all the scars.
Kip sits on the porch railing, looking at the yard with its dark morning glory blooms. He doesn’t turn as I come out. He doesn’t move when I walk closer. But he knows it’s me. “I suppose it would be useless to order you back to bed,” he says without heat.
“You could try.”
He slants me a look. “Why do I get the feeling you’d enjoy that?”
“Because you know me.” I lower my voice, pretending to be serious. “You know everything about me.”
“Think this is a joke?”
“I’m not laughing. I’m just… You can’t make these vague proclamations and expect me to just accept it. If you didn’t love me—” I have to swallow past the lump in my throat. “I’d understand that. But you do love me, and it feels like a miracle. I can’t just pretend you didn’t say that to me. Unless…unless you didn’t mean it.”
He raises my chin with his knuckles, so I have to meet his eyes. “I meant it. Don’t ever doubt that you’re loved. Don’t doubt I’d do anything for you.”
“Then be with me,” I whisper. Both in body and spirit. He’s shutting me out like this, and he knows it. It hurts. It hurts more than the lashes of Byron’s belt.
He swings his legs back over the balcony so he’s facing me. A hand runs down my arm. “You really should be in bed. Not my bed either. You should be far away from me.”
“You keep warning me away. But I know the kind of man you are. The man who wanted to help me when no one else did. The man who saved my life. And you gave up the bounty to do it—”
“Fuck the bounty,” he says, harsh and loud. The word bounty echoes off the brick and wood of the porch. There’s a lake beyond the metal fence. I see it peeking f
rom between the trees, winking in the moonlight, beckoning. I feel suddenly tired, as if the only rest can be found underwater. I remember the poem, about the key being underground. I understand it more now, better than I could have before, how someone can want death. Not in a desperate scrabble, not violent or quick—just a slow drift to the bottom of a pond.
I look at this man in front of me, so intense, so angry. At himself?
And my sister inside, relentlessly cheerful after having lost her entire life. The father she knew. And the one who abandoned her before birth. She’s lost everything.
I’ve failed them both, Kip and Clara. I’ve failed myself. I thought I was looking into the barrel of a gun before. I counted each breath as I took Clara and ran, knowing any one of them might be my last. I faced down a lunatic and got shot in the process. But none of it hurt as badly as this desolate peace.
Kip’s eyes search mine, dark and knowing. “You deserve better,” he murmurs.
My voice is raw when I answer. “You’re all I want.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, I see his determination, the new openness. There are no brambles, no thorns. There is only a wide expanse, an endless earth.
“You were there,” I say softly. “How?”
“I told you my father worked security for yours. I was just a kid, roaming the grounds when I wasn’t allowed to. I saw you playing. You looked lonely. You looked beautiful. Even then, I think I loved you.”
“When did you realize it was me?” I ask. It hurts a little that he didn’t tell me. We both look different now, older, but at some point he clearly realized.
“I always knew,” he says. “That’s what I meant up in the room. I always knew it was you. That first night when I saw you onstage and in the private booth, I knew exactly who you were.”
My stomach turns over. Maybe it shouldn’t matter that he knew who I was. He could pull my hair and make me fuck his boot if I were a stranger. That would have been easier than this. Knowing what I was to him—almost family—and letting me debase myself in front of him.