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I fell to the stony ground, slippery with mud, tearing my jeans on a serrated edge. My head cracked against a rock, making me see stars.
The sudden pain was a welcome relief.
I lay there, the storm raging all around me until I was numb. Until I’d locked everything away. Every single feeling that had the power to break me.
Then I climbed to my feet, slipping in the mud, and wiped the rain away from my face. I was soaked through, frozen, bruised and bleeding, but I was still here.
I was alive.
To this day, I wasn’t sure what had stopped me from going over the cliff. Looking back, I knew now that some of the things I’d thought that night had been distorted by my own grief and pain. My dad did care about me in his own way. The Four were my closest friends, and I knew they’d be fucking horrified if they knew what I’d almost done, not least because Cade and West had lost their own mum to suicide.
But that’s the thing with the darkness in your mind. It’s like a suffocating, insidious fog, spreading into your blackest corners, whispering that everyone would be better off without you. Telling you that everything would stop hurting if you just gave in and let go.
“Fuck,” I whispered, sinking down onto a large flat rock and burying my face in my arms.
“Zayde?”
My whole body froze at the sound of the soft, tentative voice. Slowly, I raised my head.
“I need to explain. Please will you listen?”
The shake in Fallon’s voice did me in. There was no way I could ever refuse her anything. Ever. I’d give her the whole fucking world if I could.
Taking my silence as assent, she picked her way across the rocky ground to where I was sitting, her red Converse sending small clouds of dust into the air as she scuffed her feet over the dirt. When she reached me, she sank down onto one of the rocks next to me. Something crinkled in her hand, and it was only then that I realised she was carrying a copy of that fucking newspaper.
“How did you find me?”
She shook her head. “Luck. We went to your house first, but there was no one there, and then James drove this way. I saw your bike at the side of the road.”
I stiffened at the mention of Granville, but she was quick to speak up. “James isn’t here. I asked him to leave. This is a conversation that I need to have with you.”
“What do you want? Haven’t you done enough?”
She visibly recoiled at the venom in my voice, but she took several deep breaths, squaring her shoulders. “Do you really think I’d do something like that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know you anymore.”
Her lip trembled, and she bit down on it, the fingers of her free hand squeezing her thigh. “I didn’t do it. But I know who did.”
EIGHTEEN
Zayde listened in silence as I gave him a rundown of everything I’d said out loud at Tim’s grave, his face a blank, impassive mask. When I’d finished speaking, he let his face drop into his arms again, the same way I’d found him when I arrived at the castle ruins.
The sight of him made me ache. Even though he was hiding his true feelings behind his impenetrable walls of ice, I knew that the article would have hurt him deeply. But it wasn’t my place to comfort him, was it?
Except…after my conversation with Tim and then with James earlier, it was getting harder and harder to hang on to the hate. The day would soon come when I’d have to properly face what had happened that night, to examine it with fresh eyes, and to acknowledge that maybe I’d been blinded by my own agony.
Before I knew what I was doing, I was placing the newspaper on the ground, slipping off the rock, and closing the distance between us. “Zayde.” I tentatively placed a hand on his shoulder.
His head lifted, and his eyes met mine, almost colourless in this light. He swallowed hard, and I saw the exact moment when he let me in, just a little. Just enough to see the raw pain in his gaze, making the breath catch in my throat as my heart twisted for this man with a broken boy inside him that just needed someone to be in his corner. Someone who’d hold him tight so he knew he didn’t have to face the world alone.
“Oh,Zayde.” I gave in, sliding my hand into his soft hair and allowing him to wind his arms around my waist. I stroked my fingers across his scalp, my other hand going to his nape, cupping it and holding him gently in place.
It was a long time before he drew back from me. Keeping his gaze averted,he pulled his phone from his pocket and got to his feet. I could see him talking into it, but he’d walked away from me, so I couldn’t hear what he was saying. When he finished the call, he stayed where he was, running a hand through his hair, already mussed from the wind.
The wind rustled the discarded newspaper, and I had a sudden thought. It would only be symbolic, but maybe it would help. I scooped it up. “Zayde? Do you have a lighter?”
His gaze arrowed to mine and then to the paper. The corners of his lips curved up a little as he crossed back over to me. Kneeling down, I began balling up the pages as best as I could, throwing them into the ashy remains of what looked to be a firepit.
