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“Because I want to know. Because I care what it means.”
“It’s just a tree,” she said, sighing.
“It’s black and bare. Cold. Or dead. Which one?”
She sighed again, then finally opened her eyes to look up at him. The weary black of her gaze was almost as dark as the ink of her tattoo, but so much deeper. “I don’t know.”
“You must know.”
“I don’t. Maybe it’s dead. Maybe it’s bare for the winter, just waiting to wake up and live again. But…maybe not. Nothing much has changed in the five years since I got it.”
“It’s not right, then,” he said. “That’s not you. You’re not cold and dead.”
“You sound awfully sure for a man who hardly knows me.”
“I know you well enough to see your heat. You’re alive and fighting and strong.”
He watched her throat work as she swallowed several times, then her face tipped slowly away from him. She stared into the dimness of his room as if there were a movie playing on the other wall. Finally, she shook her head. “Anger isn’t strength. It isn’t even living.” She added a moment later, “It’s like stars.”
He slid his hand up, over her breast and her beating heart and her beautiful neck. He smoothed her hair back, but she didn’t look toward him again. “What do you mean? What about the stars?”
“People look at them and see something beautiful. Something alive and bright.” Her voice had gone so flat that he felt a momentary fear. “But it’s just old light. Old and dead. Some of those stars aren’t even there anymore, did you know that? You think they’re alive and shining, but they died a long time ago. There’s nothing there.”
“Jesus, Grace. That’s not you.”
“It might be. I’m not sure. But I have to find out. I thought I was tough when I ran away from home. I thought I’d seen it all and I could handle anything. But at sixteen, I was still too alive. I could still feel it all.”
Cole realized his heart was beating harder. “What are you saying? You could feel what?”
When she finally looked at him, it had gotten too dark in the room to see much, but he thought he caught a glimmer of tears in her eyes. Grace laughed. “Nothing. I think I’m drunk.”
“Grace. You could feel what? Were you hurt?”
She shook her head. When he tried to brush a hand over her cheek, she batted it away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters. You were just a girl. If you were hurt or raped or—”
“I was living on the streets. Of course bad things happened. To me and everyone else I knew. There were no doors to lock, and you can’t call the police when you’re a runaway. But at least when you’re drunk or high, it fades. It doesn’t matter. And eventually, you don’t feel it anymore. It’s the only way to keep going.”
“Grace, I…”
“At least I got out alive. Some of us didn’t. I try to feel grateful for that, but now…I don’t even know what I want to feel anymore, but something’s got to change.”
Turning her face away, she fell into silence. Cole’s chest ached, as if there was breath stuck and he couldn’t make his lungs work. But he was breathing just fine. He took a deep breath and another, trying to ease the tightness.
“I can’t keep going like this,” she whispered, “but what if I’m just old, dead light? What if it’s only anger in there, making me seem alive?”
“You’re alive, Grace.” He kissed her forehead, then her nose, her wet cheek. “You have a right to be angry, but that’s not all there is. Do you think anger makes me want to touch you this way?” He smoothed her hair back again, kissed her cheek, then her ear.
“That’s not the only way you touch me.”
“Oh,” he said as all the air left his lungs. “That’s not—”
“I know. And it’s good. It’s what I need. That’s my point.”
“I’m sorry. I’m not usually like that. If you don’t want me to—”
“I do want you to. You know that.”
