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It makes me breathless and shivery for some reason. A little sad for him, too.
“Why does it hurt?” I ask.
His arms wind around my waist and his legs go on either side of me, sort of cradling me into his body. My knees are digging into the grass and so are my elbows but that barely registers, seeing how I’m flung over him.
“Because you look at me like…”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t hate me anymore.”
My heart’s banging in my chest. He must feel it. He must feel my heart knocking on his chest through mine.
“I do,” I’m compelled to whisper.
And for some reason, I don’t want to even think about how I’m lying right now.
“Good.”
His raspy voice makes the butterflies take flight in my stomach. There are so many of them and they are so wild that if they want, they could fly me away with them.
“You’re going to die soon, you know,” I whisper lamely.
Slowly, amusement comes to line his features. “Am I?”
“Yes,” I explain. “Cross my heart and hope to die? You’re dying. Because you lied.”
“Lied about what?”
I don’t know why I’m going back to his comment but I am. Maybe because I need a reminder of how things have been between us, for years.
How I shouldn’t want this.
“I’m not an idiot. I know I’m heavy. I have a pretty good memory of all the things your minions called me back in school. All the times they made fun of my thighs and my waist and my chest. I remember all of that.”
“I remember that too.”
“Of course, you never said anything. You just watched. You let them say and do all those horrible things to me.”
“I never stopped them,” he whispers, his palms splaying open on the small of my back, that flash of an expression flickering through his features again. The one that I saw when he told me to not be like him.
His low words paired with that expression start up an ache in my belly. It’s not a gentle ache either. Nothing Zach causes in me, in my body, is ever gentle.
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t.”
But then, something occurs to me. Or more like, hits me in the chest, almost making me gasp.
“I wanted you to,” I say quickly. “I-I wanted you to stop them. That’s why I…”
It’s my turn to trail off because I don’t even know how to say it. How to say the words that I’m about to say.
“That’s why you what?”
“That’s why I’d always…” I pause to prepare myself. “I always looked at you. Whenever they said or did mean things to me, I’d always stare at you.”
Why would I look at him when I knew and when he proved over and over that he wouldn’t help me, that he wouldn’t stop them? Why would my eyes find him in my most miserable moments?
“It’s stupid, isn’t it? Me looking at you and expecting you to help me? When I knew you were behind all the pranks in the first place.”
That expression on his face flickers again and for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is.
“Stupid, yeah,” he says with a clenched jaw.
Weirdly, I want to touch that jaw and see how it feels.
“But that isn’t true now, is it? You, uh, defended me that night. You sent Ashley away,” I breathe out.
His features tighten. Those hands on the small of my back tighten too and I know – I just know – that he wouldn’t admit to it.
He wouldn’t admit to defending me or coming to my rescue.
“Did you find someone else?” I jump topics and ask.
He frowns. “Find someone else where?”
“In New York?” His frown deepens and I explain, “You shouldn’t have blurted out your secret to a room full of maids if you didn’t want it to travel everywhere. Besides, I already knew you weren’t at Oxford. Such a stupid lie. Like you’d ever go to Oxford. To study, no less.”
Something about that melts his body and makes him smile. His palms creep up my back. He pulls back my hood, freeing my hair, and his fingers curl around the strands, playing with them. The gesture is so cozy that something squeezes in my chest.
“So? Did you find someone else in New York?”
“To do what?”
I almost rip out the grass in embarrassment but somehow, it’s imperative for me to know this. “To mess with? Like you messed with me?”
Maybe it’s crazy but I have to know.
In reply, Zach’s hand spreads over the line of my neck. Gently. Only he knows how to be tender with fingers as rough as his.
“No,” he rasps as he sifts his other hand along the strands of my hair. “There’s only one shade of blue unlucky enough to catch my eye.”
I can’t even stop the sigh that escapes my lips and I grow heavy. So heavy that my chest lowers itself of its own volition. Up until now, our upper bodies were kind of floating within touching distance. But my sigh makes me go flush with him.
