CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
BLAIR
PRESENT DAY
“It wasn’t you, B. It was all fucking me.
” Zane’s voice breaks and all I can do is stare at him while my head plays catch-up with our conversation.
A tightness fills my chest, and I struggle to take in air.
After seven years, I finally admitted to the guilt I’m carrying, and now he’s spinning me a different story.
I shift uncomfortably, our conversation wreaking havoc on my heart, while at the same time, a weight has been lifted at finally getting my feelings off my chest.
But I’m so confused.
“Zane, I—”
“I wish I’d known how bad it was for you. Or how much you were carrying. Hell, I wish I’d taken a moment to pull my head out of my ass before walking away.”
“That’s hardly what happened, Zane. You were broken. We both were. You’d just lost your sister and—”
“I should have protected you!”
“From what?”
“Yourself. I know you. I used to think I knew you better than anyone else. I should have realized you were going to take this on. That you were going to carry some of the burden.”
“I should have taken it all. There’s no point in both of us carrying it around.”
“B.” Zane cocks his head, his expression pointed. “You know it’s not that easy.”
“Make it easy. It was an accident, but if I hadn’t begged you to come and get me…”
“Stop. Please. Nothing you can say will make me blame you. Ever.”
The intensity of his gaze makes me squirm as I fight back my tears. I’ve been holding my truth so close to my chest that it’s hard to let go of. But with Zane’s reassurance, I want to. He’s always had that effect on me. Always been able to make me see the best in myself.
Zane glances away, lost in thought, and when he looks back, his expression breaks me. “Fuuck.” He shakes his head, schooling his features. “It’s amazing how much I can remember of that night considering how drunk I was. I hate it.”
“Same.” I force a smile at the irony. “It’s like a movie got stuck on repeat in my mind. One I can’t forget.”
“I hate those movies; they’re always the bad ones.”
“The horrors.” I huff out a laugh though it’s anything but funny.
“Oh, it’s a horror all right. I’ve spent so much time thinking. Regretting. Wondering what I would change if I could. I’m sure you know the drill.”
“I do.” I tuck my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around myself. “What do you think about the most? Apart from, you know.” I wince. “The accident.”
Zane blows out a breath, his cheeks puffing as his eyes close. “I think about the days leading up to the night. The point where you told me you deserved the world. And I didn’t listen.”
“Ahh.” I giggle while my stomach clenches. “While I hate that part, I delivered a good blow.”
“You did.” He snorts. “And I wholeheartedly agreed with you. I was an ass. You were right to walk away. What do you think about most? Apart from, you know, the accident.”
Pain grips my chest and I can’t tell him the moment I think about the most because it would absolutely shatter him. But I can tell him one of my biggest regrets, where it all started falling apart. “I’m stuck on the moment I confronted you about the kiss.”
“Fuck.” Zane’s face contorts as though that memory physically tortures him. “I never let myself think about that. The guilt is too much.”
“Why? You never kissed her back. I overreacted.”
“No, you didn’t. None of that is on you. That’s all me. If you hadn’t seen that, maybe you wouldn’t have left the party.”
“So many maybes.”
“I know,” he rasps, looking away. “It’s the maybes that keep me up at night.” His voice lowers, and if I wasn’t paying full attention, I might have missed the way the fight leaves him. As though he’s resigned to the fact that he’ll never move on. Never get over the guilt.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, reaching out to grab his hand. He’s trying hard to hold his composure, and it’s breaking my heart. “I’m sorry you—”
Zane frowns. “Why are you sorry? I get why you left, and I still remember what you said. If people knew about us, she’d never have kissed me.
No matter how you look at it, I fucked up.
I’d been fucking up for a while. But if I was to rank my fuckups and pick the worst, it would be letting you leave that night.
I’m the one that should be sorry. You shouldn’t have been at Nathan’s, but you were, because of me—” His voice breaks this time and he doesn’t know the worst of it.
He stayed away because I asked him to, and he never even knew the full story.
He still doesn’t. But if I tell him—if I tell anyone—we’re all transported back to the night. No one will ever move on.
Lifting to my knees again, I pull him into me and cup his face, lightly brushing my thumb across his cheek, needing to change the energy in the room. “We can’t change the past, Zane. You’re here now. Even when I pushed you away, you wouldn’t stay gone.”
“Like I said, once I saw you again, there was no going back. You’ve always been it for me, B.”
My breath hitches, and in the silence of the night, it’s deafening to my ears.
“Does that really shock you?” Zane asks, a sad smile gracing his lips.
“It shouldn’t, but it does.”
After he left home, I told myself that he kept us a secret because he never wanted the commitment.
It was a coping mechanism, and after a while I started to believe it.
I knew he was faithful. I never once questioned that.
But since he always joked about not having time for multiple girls, it was easy to let myself believe that meant something more.
Maybe he didn’t have time for me either.
“God, I’m such an idiot.” Zane abruptly jumps up, running his hands down his face, pacing the room.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted, and yet…
I refused to tell your brother. I kissed someone else.
I let you walk away. I forced… my sister to drive me to find you.
And I…” he trails off, closing his eyes, and when he opens them again, my chest heaves as I fight back the tears.
I have never seen his expression so defeated.
The devastation in his gaze has me breathless.
“You didn’t—”
“We were fighting,” he cuts in, refusing to look at me. “S… She wasn’t going fast enough and I was yelling at her to move. She tried to pull over, telling me to get out of the truck. That she’d find you on her own. But I wouldn’t let her. I needed to see you. I needed to make things right.”
“Zane—”
“No, wait. Please. I need to get this out.” He takes a deep breath, his eyes lifting to mine, while his gaze see through me, his mind somewhere else.
Back in his truck, maybe. “I turned the steering wheel, B. I was so fucked up that I didn’t see someone coming in the opposite direction.
I just couldn’t let her stop. To make things worse, the police said there were no signs of the car slowing down or moving off the road.
She was never pulling over. She told me that to piss me off, to make me admit how much I loved you. Such a typical thing for her to do.”
I freeze, letting his words sink in, until my protectiveness takes over.
“Oh, God.” I jump up and pull him into my arms, my gaze lifting as the first tear slides down his cheek.
“Zane…” I trail off because nothing I say will ever ease that confession.
I can’t imagine how much that’s eaten away at him.
Pulling him closer, I silently comfort him until he shakes me off.
“You should hate me. You want to know why I let you push me away so easily? Why I left? It’s because I couldn’t look at you, I couldn’t look at anyone without the weight of the guilt crushing my soul.
But if you’d have called, if you’d ever reached out, I would have moved heaven and earth to be here.
In a heartbeat. No matter how broken I was. ”
Sorrow and regret crush me, but I fight to stay strong. For Zane. “I always knew that,” I whisper, trying hard not to let my voice crack. “And I never hated you. I couldn’t.”
“Yet you didn’t call.”
“I didn’t.” Shame creeps up my chest until I feel it on my cheeks. If I’d have known he blamed himself, I might have picked up the phone. But then again, maybe I wouldn’t have. “You’re here now,” I say with a smile, as though that erases the past.
“I am.” He finally smiles back at me, but there’s no joy in his expression, no warmth.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be whole, Blair, and I know I’ll never be worthy of you, but I’m not leaving you again.
Even if the best I’ll get is your friendship.
That accident has already taken too much from me.
My sister… my sanity. If I’d done just one thing differently, none of it would have happened. ”
“You can’t think like that. It’ll kill you.”
“I know. It’s come close. The only reason I survived was football. On the field I’m a different guy. I have a different life. But it was always missing something. Fuck, if I’d just told Cade about us…”
“No.” I shake my head. “I’m thankful you didn’t because when he found out, he reacted exactly how you thought he would.”
“What?” Zane raises a brow, his expression a mix of hurt and confusion.
“He flew off the handle. Starting yelling about me being too good for you and what a fool I had been. He told me you’d been sleeping around at college and that you’d never be a ‘one woman kind of man.’ Then he said he hoped you’d never come back.”
“Wow.” Zane huffs incredulously. “I knew he’d say I wasn’t good enough, but that—”
“I know.”
“He didn’t seem to hate me when I saw him at the hospital, though. Or in the foyer earlier tonight.”
I bite back my smirk, the memory of Cade coming back—tail between his legs—always bringing me joy. “That’s because he apologized. Told me he overreacted because he was jealous. He didn’t want to lose his best friend. To me. But it turns out, he lost you anyway.”
“Because I kept my word and never came back.”