Chapter 28
28
“ L et’s go to the maze,” I tell Devlin after dinner’s cleaned up.
I’ve been silent for the past hour, replaying the vision in my head. Devlin’s attention has been stolen by my dad, who wanted to talk about inventions and dragons. I don’t know how those two work together, but in my dad’s mind they must.
Outside, the air’s thick. It’s going to rain. When we arrived, the sun hadn’t fully set, but now the sky’s inky, and not a star nor the moon can be seen.
“Blair—” he murmurs.
“The maze,” I say. “I thought you wanted to go.”
“I do.” His eyes cut to my face, and he must see the hard set of my mouth because he says, “Okay. Let’s do it.”
The maze hedges are tall, at least nine feet, and they’re so thick that you wouldn’t want to try pushing your way through them to reach the other side.
The walkway’s glowing with footlights, and the inside is bright, yet it’s intimate, like even though my family’s only a few yards away, it feels like Devlin and I are in our own universe.
He exhales a slow breath as soon as we step on the pebbled path. “You know .”
I fold my arms. “Know what?”
He rolls his eyes. “ The vision. The one with you in it.”
“You mean the one where I get hit by the truck?”
He winces. “That’s the one.”
He’s not looking at me, and I want him to. I desperately need him to look at me. I want to be wrong on this more than I’ve ever wanted anything, but there’s no way that I am.
“When did you first see it?”
He’s staring straight ahead. “When do you think?”
“I wouldn’t know, Devlin. Just answer.”
“The day before you saw me with Basheen.”
I’m furious. I’m just so mad that I can’t even speak to him right now, so I keep walking. He keeps walking. We do this in silence until we’re well inside the maze.
“If we stay to the right, we’ll eventually get out,” he tells me.
He veers right and I follow, but if we leave too soon, we won’t have this conversation, and I need to have this conversation.
So I stop and he stops. He turns around.
“Is that why you did it? Why you kissed her?”
He looks away, giving me that beautiful profile. “Blair, I was going to tell you all of this earlier, before we got interrupted, but now you’re pissed off, and you’re not going to listen to me. Maybe we should talk about this in a couple of days after you’ve had time to cool off.”
How dare he assume how I’m feeling right now! Even if he is right about me being pissed off. “I don’t want to talk about this in a couple of days! I want to talk about it now. I want to know it now! Tell me everything. I deserve it. You don’t get to tell me that you’ve always cared me, and then not give me all of it, Devlin—all of you. That’s not fair.”
He bobs his head and slowly drags his gaze from the hedge back to me. “Okay. All of it?”
“All of it.”
Thunder rumbles overhead. It sounds far away. He looks up, studies the sky and says while he’s still staring up, “The vision came the day before you saw us together. I woke up and saw it, and it scared the shit out of me. It scared every molecule in my body. Shit, Blair. I didn’t know what to do. All I could think about was the vision that I lost my parents to, and how I could have stopped that from ever happening.”
“You were too young to know that,” I attempt to soothe him. No idea why, because I’m royally pissed right now.
“But I wasn’t a kid when I saw yours, and I wasn’t going to let anything like that happen to you. And you saw the vision, so you know that we’re together in it—really together. So I asked Basheen to meet me and paid her to make it look like we were kissing.”
My jaw drops. “You weren’t kissing her?”
“Gods, Blair.” He tips his head up and shakes it back and forth like he’s damning the gods above for handing him a horrible lot in life. “Do you think that you’re so easy to give up on? To forget about? You owned me. You still own me. I’ve just spent ten years trying to deny it.”
Fat raindrops splatter on my arm. A few at a time, then the sky opens like it’s been slogging through a repressed memory and it’s finally made the breakthrough in therapy that it’s been working toward.
I completely understand the feeling.
“Yes, I did think that I was so forgettable,” I tell him. “I believed it, because the next thing I knew, everyone was whispering how I’d influenced you into caring about me.”
His hair’s wet. His shirt’s soaked. He takes a step forward as water drips off him. “Do you think that I ever needed magic to fall in love with you?”
And right there, my heart cracks open. It feels like a rocket just blew it up. My lower lip trembles, and I have to choke down a sob. “Why? Why did you keep this from me? Not the part about the rumor. You’ve already explained that. But all the rest of it?”
Oh, I’m soaked now. My skin’s slick and it’s pouring. No longer are there just a few raindrops. We’re in the middle of a torrential downpour, which the South is known for. These sorts of storms are epic for causing flash flooding.
Rain splatters the grass. It pelts my skin. My feet are soaked in my shoes, and my hair’s plastered to my face and neck like leeches.
“I didn’t want you to be hurt,” he yells over the sound of the rain. Water falls from his hair like he’s in the shower. “The vision I had was clear—if we stay together, you die. End of story. I’d”—he looks away, chokes on his words, looks back and drops his voice—“I’d already lost two people that I loved. I refused to let another person die. I couldn’t go through it again. Not like that. My heart couldn’t take it.”
He looks at me, emotion swirling in his eyes. I feel the same way. My heart can’t take much more of this, either. For so long I’d wanted him—for ten years. So much time. Okay, yes, I’d hated him. But I’d only hated him because I wanted him so much. Because I cared for him so deeply.
“All my life,” I shout, and then choke on the words. The rain is seriously hammering us, but neither of us is moving. I’m sure the earthworms are trying not to drown, but not Devlin and me. We’re holding our ground in this standoff.
“All my life,” I begin again, “the way was decided for me. When Addison’s magic didn’t come in, I became the next in line to take over the bookshop. There’s was never a question about what I wanted. My life was planned out. And then this whole thing with the balls—it’s the same. Get married, Blair! It’s your turn! Maybe you’ll be lucky and Storm Grayson will want you. It’s not about what I want. It’s never about what I want. Even with you”—my words come out strangled in my throat as tears push against my eyes—“you made this decision without me. You decided what was best for me without asking, and that’s not fair. For once, I want a choice in what happens. I want to be the one deciding.”
He plows his fingers through his hair. “You don’t get to decide if you die. Not when I can save you!”
This man! Doesn’t he understand what I’m telling him? Furious, I march over, my feet splashing in pools of drowning pebblestones.
“No, you don’t get to decide for me, Devlin. You denied both of us happiness for the past ten years. You took that away from me. You took it away from us! What gives you the right?”
“Your life,” he roars. “That’s what gives me the right.”
I shake my head. “I’d rather have one day of happiness, one day of knowing that I’m loved and in love, than a lifetime without it.”
He blinks, raindrops dripping from his thick lashes, and looks away. “Blair…”
“No, Devlin. No.” I grab his face and turn it until he’s forced to look at me. “I understand why. I do. But ever since I lost you, my heart’s had a hole in it the size of Kansas, and I’ve never even been to that state.”
He laughs and then goes very still. His eyes search mine, and they fill with so much worry and regret that it makes my heart knock against my ribs.
“I never wanted to let you go,” he admits.
“Then don’t. Don’t let me go, Devlin. You did it once. Don’t do it again.”
I’m begging him. I really am. I’m pleading with every cell in my body. Every part of me wants him. I’ve always wanted him, and I’ve always been so jealous of every woman he dated after me.
His gaze drops to my mouth, and when his eyes flicker back up, there’s heat in them. I grab his soaked lapels and tug him forward, my mouth tipped toward his.
“Don’t let me go, Devlin. I can’t go through that again.”
He lifts his hands and cups my face; then he drops his mouth to mine and kisses me.