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“I’d like that.” I twirl a noodle around my fork and pop it into my mouth. “Mmmm. This is so good.”
He grins. “I’m glad you like it.”
The question of what’s happened in his past still lingers on my mind. If his mother killed herself over the grief of the loss of her daughter, why does Zach’s father blame him for their deaths? Suicide is a personal choice kind of thing. It isn’t like Zach made her do that. Something about the whole situation doesn’t add up and while he’s being so sharing I might as well try to figure out the mystery behind this man.
“Can I ask you something else?” I ask quietly.
Zach takes a drink of his water and says, “You can ask me anything you want and I’ll try to be as honest as I can with you.”
“It’s about your sister…” He freezes up again at the mention of bringing up his sister again. I’m starting to see the pattern with that every time I ask something about her. It’s almost as if he’s afraid to talk about her. “What happened to her?”
He sets his glass on the bar in front of us. “She died in a car crash.”
At first I think those kinds of tragic accidents happen every day. I still don’t see how Zach’s dad blames him for any of this.
Zach traces patterns in the condensation on the glass and I worry he’s shutting down again until he opens his mouth and continues. “There was a guy in my high school—a real know-it-all type jackass, and he kept taunting me with his flashy new Mustang. I always tried my best to ignore petty bullshit like that, but this guy was able to get under my skin like no other. He talked so much shit everyday about how his car would smoke my Camaro in a race, that one day it finally got to me.”
This is not the story I was expecting from him and I’m perplexed on where he’s going with this. “So what happened?”
He sighs. “I told him I’d race him after school to get him to shut the fuck up.”
I crunch my brow. “How did that involve Hailey?”
He stares down at the counter and takes a deep breath. “I was responsible for driving Hailey home from school. Instead of making her wait at a playground or something while I raced, I kept her in the car with me.” He frowns. “I thought she was safer with me than alone at a park. There’s so many weirdo creeps. I didn’t want one to come along and take my eight year old sister, you know.”
My heart leaps up into my throat as everything starts clicking. Hailey’s death. The fact Zach’s sterile. “There was a crash?”
He nods. “It was a two lane road. An oncoming car forced me off the road and I hit an embankment and the car flipped us about five times. I broke an arm and fractured my pelvis. Doctors said I was lucky to even be alive because I was so mangled. Most of the damage was on Hailey’s side, though. She was gone on impact and it was all my fault.” He sucks in a deep breath and he starts choking up. “I never meant to hurt her.”
I rub his back and place my chin on his shoulder as my heart aches to comfort him. “I’m sorry.”
Zach wipes away a fallen tear. “Thank you, but I don’t deserve sympathy. I should’ve died, too.”
“You were just a kid,” I say softly. “Kids make bad choices, doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to grieve.”
“But it’s my fault she’s dead. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for what I did. My parents never did. I killed their baby.” He sniffs.
“Don’t say that. It was an accident,” I try to ease his burden.
He shakes his head. “My own mother said that at my trial. She told the court to punish me to the fullest extent of the law for killing her baby.”
I gasp and clutch my chest. “You went to jail over this, too?”
“Juvenile prison and my license was suspended until I was twenty five, but I think they let me off light. I deserve to still be rotting in that jail cell.”
“It was an accident, Zach. You didn’t mean to hurt her. You have to learn to forgive yourself,” I say.
“I don’t think I ever will. The best I can hope for is little moments of forgetting, like my time with you.” He stares into my eyes. “When I’m with you, I don’t feel as shitty about my life. You give me hope that I can maybe one day be a better person.”
I place my hand on his arm. “You’re already a good person. You have a good heart. I know that. You need to know it, too.”
He sets his hand on mine that still rests on his forearm. “I’m trying, but deep down I think I know I don’t deserve anything good.”
I stand and wrap my arms around his neck. He squeezes me around the waist in a tight embrace and we hold each other, connecting without words.
This man is far more complex than I thought. I’m glad he trusts me enough to tell me his story, but I get the feeling that he hasn’t known real love in a long time, and that explains so much. It answers the question on why he’s never settled down even though he’s got a good heart.
I’m going to show him that he’s capable of giving and receiving love. He deserves to know he can.
Chapter 17
RIFF
I put away all the groceries I bought from the local shop. I’m excited. Before I leave in the next couple days, I’m going to teach Aubrey how to cook one of Mom’s specialties, chicken and noodles. Granted we aren’t making the noodles from scratch like Mom did, but these frozen ones will work out nicely.
