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She looks down and notices the grass she’s flattened under her feet. “I’ll pace somewhere else,” she mumbles. “Donotfollow me.” She spins on her heel and strides away before I can respond.
“I’m just walking here,” I say as I do exactly what she just requested I not do. “I can’t help it if you chose the same route I did.”
She pauses on the spot and I nearly plow right into her. Gritting her teeth, turning those furious, burning green eyes on me, she snaps, “I can’t be around you right now, Ilarion.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Why not?”
“Because…just…just because.”
“Does it have something to do with why Celine is upstairs crying right now?”
Her face drops instantly. I can see the threat of tears in her eyes to go along with the anger. “Cee’s crying?”
“What happened?”
“What happened…” she repeats softly as though she’s talking to herself. “What happened is that I fucked up. I fucked up so badly that I don’t have any goddamn clue how to fix it.”
“Well, it’s about time you realized that.”
Her eyes dart to mine. They’re shining with unshed tears, but I can still see the ever-present fight behind them. It’s there in the set of her mouth, the square of her jaw. “Giving up” is not in this woman’s vocabulary. Which is great sometimes, and horrible in others.
“Did she evenwantto marry you?”
“At one point, she did, yes.”
“Really? Because from everything I’ve gathered so far, it feels like the marriage was about nothing but convenience.”
“You keep talking about marriage.”
“And you keep talking in riddles.”
“I don’t, Taylor. You just don’t pay attention.”
Her nostrils flare. I wonder if she knows that her father and sister have the exact same tells. Makes it so much harder to forget the fact that they’re all related.
“I’m missing some piece of the puzzle. Something went wrong between the two of you.”
“That implies that, at some point, anything was right between us.”
“Somethingwasright between the two of you,” she insists, as though saying it often enough will make it true.
“Were you always this slow? Or is this a consequence of moving back home?”
“This isn’t my home,” she snaps. “And all I want from you is a straight answer.”
“Fine.” I’m losing patience. “Ask me the question then.”
“Were you the reason she wanted to kill herself?”
I don’t blink.
I don’t hesitate.
I don’t pause for effect.
“Yes.”
That’s all I give her. A single word that packs the kind of punch that you feel in your gut long before and long after the fist ever makes contact.
