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“You don’t need to be sorry about that.” She paused, then added, “I can tell you what happened, if you want. I’ve already told the story about a dozen times. I’ve got it polished by now.”
Zaxx wanted to know. He needed to know. He had to check back into reality and understand what was coming next. There was no law but the Horde in Signal Bend, so there was no danger of any uniforms showing up here, but somewhere around were two dead Springfield cops, and that had to be a major problem, a significant threat.
Right now, though, he thought he’d lose the last thread of his tether if he had to make his brain think about any of that.
What he needed was comfort.
He felt Gia’s hand in his, warm and soft, full of supple, capable strength. She had saved his sister from further horror. She’d exacted the revenge he’d failed to find. Despite the way he’d ghosted her at the beginning of the summer, she’d stayed with him last night when he’d asked, and she’d stayed for Zelda when he could not.
And Zaxx felt better, stronger, saner, every time she touched him.
Grab the good you can, Lilli had told him, the opposite of what she’d said in May.
Everything left is lost was the shared motto of the Lunden women.
The right thing, the honorable thing, would be to keep his distance. It could not be more clear that he was bad news and would do nothing but hold her back—or worse, get her hurt. Yet, he didn’t want it to be true. He needed something good. One good thing.
Maybe ... maybe it would be enough to have her as a friend? He couldn’t hold her back if they were friends. Maybe that would be enough.
He turned and faced her again. “I want to hear, but not yet. I’m not ready for that yet. I want to say something else now.”
“Okay.”
“I’m sorry I ghosted.” When she blinked, surprised, he pushed on quickly, before she could load the kind of challenge she’d fired at him last night. “I’m an asshole, but it wasn’t about you. I meant everything I said that night. But—” Making the choice in a flash, he decided not to bring her mother into it. “—in the light of the day, once I was on my own, I felt ... not enough. Not for you. I didn’t want to hold you back from anything. I don’t want that. I was afraid I’d make your life worse.” Every word of that was true; he didn’t need to tell Gia her mother had stopped him to tell him the same thing. “I’m still afraid of that,” he continued, “and today proves it’s true, but right now ... I just want you to know I didn’t lie, I wasn’t playing a game with you, and I want ...” He stopped, unsure if he should finish the sentence, or how he should. You was the word he needed to add, but it was more risk than he could bear.
Maybe friendship was enough. “Maybe you could not hate me anymore.”
Again she was quiet, and Zaxx had time to think she meant not to answer, meant to simply let his confession or whatever it was die on its vine. He looked away, focusing between his boots. There was blood on the floor here, too.
“I’ve never hated you, Zaxx,” Gia finally said. “I’ve been angry, and I wanted to hate you, but I don’t. But the whole ‘you’re too good for me’ thing is really lame—lamer than ghosting me. Don’t you think I should get to decide who’s good enough for me? And don’t you think a conversation is better than ghosting for getting your point across?”
“I’m an asshole,” was the only response he had.
“You can be, yes. But if all you want is me not to hate you, you’ve got it. Is that all you want?”
He lifted his eyes to hers. “What?”
“Is me not hating you all you want?”
“I ... what do you want?”
She dropped her head and looked up through narrowed eyes; the expression shouted Really? so loudly Zaxx felt a twitch of something like amusement.
“Right.” He cleared his throat. He could—should—say he wanted friendship. That would be the right thing to do, right? Lame or not, she was too good for him, so friendship should be the thing he said he wanted.
But he didn’t want friendship. It was not enough.
Too physically exhausted and psychically fried to fight himself any longer, he said, “No. You not hating me is not all I want. I want what I thought we’d start back in May.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it? Why?”
Gia’s answer didn’t come in words. Instead, she tipped over to lean on him and rest her head on his shoulder. Her fingers folded around his and squeezed, and she wound her other arm around his like a hug.
A thread of calm unspooled in his blood. The sprung springs in his head and chest began to sort and settle back where they belonged. Zaxx breathed out a twelve-hour breath and set his head on hers.
Chapter Twenty
