The Love Story (The Things We Can't Change Book 4) (28 page)

“Look,” he says, the formal tone gone and his more familiar, archly cocky—even if it’s forced—voice back. “What I’ve got to say is kind of hard enough to get out already, so if you could just stay quiet until I’ve said my piece so I can get it all out. And just… if Clarissa comes down here, let’s pretend we can’t see her, okay? I really don’t want her messing up my game.”

I laugh despite myself, despite the anxiety and nerves bouncing around inside of my stomach and getting stuck in my throat. I nod because I can’t speak, and for once, it’s Zeke taking a deep breath for courage.

“I first noticed you in the seventh grade. As in, I noticed you enough to think about you after I went home. That was the year you let your hair start growing out and when we came back from Christmas break, I noticed you. You sat in front of me in four classes—they were math, English, science, and World Civ, by the way—and you used to do this thing with your hair, I don’t even know what it was. It was like you didn’t like how long it was getting or it was heavy or something. You would kind of sigh or mutter something and just fling it back out of your way.”

He gives a quiet laugh at the memory. “It would fall on my desk and I would push it off with my pencil because I was afraid to touch it. We had three classes together in eighth grade—French, math, and European history—and you were getting used to your hair, I think. That’s when you started curling it or something. I don’t know, it looked different all the time and the highlight of my day was seeing how Evie Parker had done her hair.”

I want to speak, to tell him I don’t even remember those classes. I don’t remember him sitting behind me all that time, but I stay silent. Partly because he asked me to and partly because I’m a little ashamed I don’t remember him very much from those years.

“Koby sat in front of me in math and I remember being pissed because he was between you and me,” Zeke continues. “But I got over it. I wanted to ask you to the eighth grade formal but I’d never talked to you before, even though we’d sat next to each other forever. So I didn’t. I decided that next year, in high school, things would change. Then my mom left and I turned angry and you started going out with Tony and you kind of fell off of that particular radar. We only had a class together here and there. Then anatomy came junior year and you were in front of me again.”

He looks down at the floor, gives another self-depreciating laugh and continues. “In anatomy, you sat in front of me and I used to smell your hair. Like through the whole period. One time it fell all over my desk again, just like in seventh grade and this time I actually touched it. Because I’m a creep, I know. Sorry. Your hair used to be the biggest attraction to me. But now…”

He reaches up and touches my hair, feather-light fingers touching my bangs, rearranging a curl at the back and then tucking part of it behind my ear. I shiver at his touch, fire raging inside of me. It’s hard to hold myself back, but I want—need—to hear everything that he has to say.

“Now it’s gone and crazily enough, you’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on in my entire life. Before you were cute, beautiful. Now, you’re sexy as hell. I never would have thought I’d like it. But I do. And you have every right to do as you want with your hair. With… everything.”

“Thank you for that,” I whisper quietly. It’s all I can get out because I’m practically trembling. I want him to just spit it out, to say it. To hear if he’s even capable of saying it. I want it so badly. I wish I could say more to encourage him but I’m blank and empty of words. Besides. This is something that he has to beat on his own.

“Evie.” Zeke sighs, and I can easily read the fear and nerves in his eyes as he looks at me. “After our first date, you said something really… amazing. You said that everyone who looked at us only saw the differences. And I think I got carried away in that too. I don’t really have any excuses. My dad said some stuff that messed with my head and made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for you and then I was just… trapped inside my own head, in a vicious circle. I don’t have any justification for it. But I know you understand what I mean so I’ll stop trying to make excuses.”

I nod slowly, because of course if there’s anything I understand, it’s being unable to escape insanity inside your own mind.

“But what really got to me was the losing you thing.”

My eyes jerk up to him, surprised. “The losing me thing?” I echo. “You were the one that wanted to go on a-”

Zeke holds up a hand. “Not losing you like breaking up. Like I told you that night on the porch when we talked about Cindy. Everyone you care about leaves eventually. Or gets taken away. Nothing good ever lasts.”

“Zeke.” My heart hurts as I think about all the things he was struggling with. I should have tried harder, pushed him more, but no. Some things have to be worked out alone. Zeke and I had helped each other heal as best we could, but then it had been time to step back and see what we were made of on our own. “You know I would never leave you. Not entirely. Never by choice.”

“Of course I know that.” He scowls and I know it’s because I’m interrupting when he asked me not to, not because he’s really irritated with me. “But convincing myself of it is a totally different story. But then my dad and I… talked. And I kind of realized something. Even if I only got you for a short time, for whatever reason, I’d rather have that time with you than none at all. I’d rather have you impact my life and be able to take part of you with me always, even if someday, I don’t always have the real, whole thing.”

I stare at him, knowing this was all important to him, knowing he had to get it out but not sure if he had more to say. Or if he was finally ready to say
it
.

“So, I asked you to come here because I wanted to show you something,” Zeke says, breaking the silence at last.

He steps away from me and over to the wall, toward the canvas that I forgot even existed until tonight. Zeke takes hold of the sheet and pulls it slowly and carefully away from the canvas. Then he steps to the side, out of the way so I can see it clearly. I can’t hold back a small intake of breath when I finally realize what it is.

Me.

Zeke painted me. He painted me, only it’s a different me than I see in the mirror every day. I take a step closer to this stranger, which is almost life size since the canvas is so big. In it, I’m kneeling on the ground, arms planted firmly in the dirt with a tray of sprouts at my left hand. The gazebo, the older version of it, rickety and without its fresh coat of paint, is in the background but it’s hazy. Everything behind me is slow and dreamlike, so I am the only clear thing in the picture, the focal point.

I’m looking up, straight at the observer. My hair is in a braid, hanging over my right shoulder. I’m not even wearing makeup, just the shorts and tank top uniform I lived in for that time of the summer while working with Zeke.

He captured everything, every minute detail. The slight freckles on my nose, the way my hair always escaped my braid on the right side, shorter there because of my bangs. He captured the bandage over my forearm and the two cuts it didn’t hide. He even shaded in the shadow of cleavage my scooped tank top revealed in my kneeled-over position and the dirt smears on my hands and legs.

But more than anything, I was taken by the expression on my face. No makeup, but I looked… I couldn’t decide on the right word. I could see for myself that I was pretty; I’d never doubted that. But once, I had reflected that Zeke’s true talent with art was being able to capture the emotion of a moment, somehow preserve exactly how a person felt in a single moment only pencils and paper, or in this case, paint and canvas.

And what he had captured here wasn’t the fear that had held me prisoner all summer. Not the grief, the anxiety, not the clutches of Tony that I feared I would never escape. The insanity into which I’d sunk.

No. What Zeke seemed to have captured in this picture were only the feelings I had for him. Something radiated out from the sparkle in my eyes, was tucked into the corners of my small smile. Something filled every line of my body. It squeezed my heart, because if there was a way to portray being in love, Zeke had just achieved it. It was raw, it was beautiful, and it made tears rise quickly in the corners of my eyes.

“This is how you look to me,” Zeke says softly. He reaches out and touches my cheek in the picture and I ache for him to do it to the real me. “This is how you’ll always look to me, bald or old or wrinkled or tattooed up and riding a Harley.”

I can’t help but sputter out a laugh at that comment. “I’ll
never
do that to you,” I promise, and then realize I’ve already accepted him back with those words.

I know he’s noticed my slip up, but in typical Zeke way, he doesn’t point it out or say anything. He only turns and looks me squarely in the eyes. “I painted this a long time ago, before our date, before school started, before Florida. But I think I already knew, back then, that this is how we would end up. Eventually. Whether it was in six more months or six more years. I think we’ve always been inevitable. But I think that’s also why I fought it—fought you—so hard for so long. Fought being attached to you. Because I knew you would make me feel. Make me feel everything again and I was terrified of that. But the thing is… now that we’re here… I’m not really scared.”

He closes the distance between us and takes one of my hands again, looking down at me. His green eyes are brighter and more intense than I’ve ever seen before, burning with a fire I don’t recognize.

“I love you, Evie.”

It’s a whisper, but it doesn’t matter. He says it. He says it and his voice doesn’t tremble or crack.

I can’t stand to be so far from him any longer. A foot between us seems like a criminal distance. I lift his hand to my shoulder and then slide my own around his waist, aligning my body with his. He’s warm and solid against me and I take just a moment to listen to his heartbeat—his heart, something Zeke once admitted to me that he wished he could just rip out so he didn’t have to feel.

I want to reassure him, to tell him that if he still wants it out, that if it’s all too much, I can hold onto it for him. I’m strong enough to keep it safe for both of us now. Except maybe both of us are stronger now. Me for rising above my emotions, and Zeke for finally sinking into them.

I look up at him, trying to blink away tears because it’s stupid to be crying and I know it always makes Zeke uncomfortable. Still, I can feel my smile wobble a little because my lip is trembling.

“I love you too,” I whisper. The moment is far too intimate for loud words. “I think we both just needed to realize what love meant. To us. We’re not like normal people; why should we love like them either?”

Zeke gives a small chuckle, but it’s quickly ended when his lips finally meet mine once more. Zeke kisses me and everything that has been wrong in my world for so many weeks finally rights itself.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

That voice.

A chill goes down my spine. My skin turns to ice. My fingers claw into Zeke’s shirt and skin, even as I tell myself it’s impossible. This is all a bad, bad dream.

Only I don’t want the moment between Zeke and me to be a dream.

Better than the alternative!
my inner self rails at me, even as every hair on my body jumps to attention, ready and waiting for an order to follow or be punished.

Slowly, I lower from my tip toes and turn around. Zeke’s rigid stance has already told me what I’ll see, that I am right, but I have to see for myself.

Tony is standing in the doorway.