CHAPTER 61
He’d said he was sorry, and now he could be excited over everything he’d seen and done. It amazed Darius that he could so easily forget how lost he’d been, how frightened.
It was what Darius would always love about him—his boundless enthusiasm, and the way he never
held onto anger or sadness. But just because he loved him, didn’t mean he was any better for Zion
than he was for Nathalie.
When they arrived at her house, Nathalie let herself out of the car. Reaching into her purse, she
handed her keys to Zion. “Why don’t you run and unlock the door for us?”
“Sure, Nathalie.”
Ben retrieved her case from the trunk and pulled up the roller handle for her, before getting back
into the car to give them privacy.
“Thanks, Ben.” She took it with a slight smile that died when she turned to Darius. “I think Zion
should stay home from work for a few days while I reevaluate the situation.”
He felt the nails of his coffin driving into him, even though he’d already known that he had to let
her go. Let them both go. But Nathalie was doing it for him. Because they both knew what the
result of her reevaluation would be.
“Right, I understand,” he said, even though he didn’t understand a damn thing—especially not how
he could have lost something so precious. So amazing.
Zion waved at him from the front door. “’Bye, Darius. ’Bye, Ben.”
As Nathalie rolled her case away, Darius climbed into the car and watched her through the window,
her back straight, head high.
“Where to, sir?” Ben turned the mirror slightly to look at him.
But there was nowhere to go. Because everything Darius had ever truly wanted, he’d just had to
leave behind.
“We have to talk, Zion.”
Nathalie sat him down in the living room almost as soon as Darius left them.
Left them.
She closed her eyes for one brief second, the impact of it hitting her as though her heart were being
crushed inside her chest. There’d been something so final in their parting.
But she couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about Darius, couldn’t want him, couldn’t
need him anymore. She had to think about Zion. He was her number one priority.
“You’re going to yell now, aren’t you?” Her brother slumped down into the sofa they hardly ever
sat on in a room they rarely used.
It seemed like a metaphor for all the parts of her life she’d closed off when her parents died. And,
like a metaphor, it was also the room Darius had carried her to that morning he’d surprised her with
a sexy visit. God, she really needed to stop thinking about him. Especially now that he was
gone...and it felt like her heart had broken into a million, billion little pieces.
Turning back to Zion, she said, “Is that how you see me? Always yelling?”
“No.” His brow knitted as he thought. “You don’t yell.” Then he shrugged. “You just tell me what
to do all the time.”
She did. She took him to school, to work, nudged him to do his homework, to clean his room, to go
to bed because it was late and he’d be tired in the morning. But when he was with Darius, they’d
had fun. They’d raced around Baler Seca a few days ago and ridden the Giant Dipper at the Santa
Cruz Beach Boardwalk a couple of weeks ago on one of Darius fun Sunday excursions after the
Saturday work on the car. Whereas she’d never even taken Zion to the Exploratorium.
She could suddenly see that Zion had been starving for some fun. Nathalie wondered how much
more guilt—and how much more sorrow—she could handle before her heart collapsed beneath the
weight of it.
“I’m not going to yell at you today, but we have to talk about your phone.”
“I know. I was just so excited. And Rick—he works in the supply room—drew me a map of how to
get there. And it was so cool and there was so much stuff to do that I forgot the time. Until they
were closing, and they said I had to leave.” He had done all that himself—found the museum, paid
to get in, wandered the exhibits.
“I’m glad you had fun,” she said, and she truly was. Still, she needed him to know how serious the
situation had been. “Your phone is your lifeline. You could have called Darius, and he would have
told Ben where you were.”
“I’ll take it next time. I promise.” He nodded expansively.
Next time? “You can’t go wandering off by yourself like that. You got lost. You need to wait for me
to come with you on your next adventure.”
He frowned. “I should have had Rick draw me a map of how to get back, too.” Then he brightened.
“I showed Ben the map, and he said I would have been fine if I’d just turned right instead of left
when I came out of the museum. That’s what I did wrong. I can do it, Nathalie. Next time, I won’t
turn left.”
He’d followed the original map. Zion had figured out the streets and he’d walked there. He’d made
only one small mistake that had thrown him off. A simple mistake that plenty of people could have
made in a part of the city that was new to them.
It was astonishing...and also horrible to realize that she, the sister who loved him and would do
anything for him, was the one who didn’t think him capable.
Darius did. Rick did. Ben did. She was the only one who doubted him.
More tears welled up and spilled over before she had a chance to stop them.
“I’m sorry, Nathalie Please don’t cry.” Zion’s eyes grew wet, too, in empathy. That was the kind of
boy he was. No, he was a young man, not a boy. But she’d never treated him that way.
Nathalie swiped at her tears. “I’m just glad you’re home and you’re okay. But we need to go over a
couple of rules. What’s the first rule?”
When she stopped crying, he did, too. “I have to take my phone everywhere.” His voice echoed in
the nearly empty living room.
They would have to start hanging out in this room again. Her mom would want that.
“And the second rule,” Nathalie enumerated, “is that you don’t leave work or school unless you talk
to me first.”
He was practically bouncing on the sofa. That was her brother, overexcited, racing toward the next
fun and interesting activity, forgetting the fright as if it had never happened. “Or Darius? Can I call
Darius?”
Darius. She’d told him she needed to reevaluate whether Zion should work for him. Until this
moment, she’d been positive she’d never let her brother go back there. Now, she wasn’t sure what
to tell Zion.
“For right now, let’s just keep it that you call me, okay?”
“Okay, but Darius always tries to help me. Always wants me to learn stuff. Always wants me to
have fun.”
She swore her heart swelled a thousand times bigger as she looked at him a long moment—really
looked. Her brother had the exuberance of a child, but the look of a young man. He smiled wide, he
loved big. He could forget the bad and move on to the good. She was supposedly his teacher, the
person he learned from. But she’d never stopped to think that Zion had things to teach her, too.
Like how to stop living in the past. How to trust. And, most important, how to love without holding
anything back out of fear.
“Were you scared last night?” She’d never even thought to ask. She’d just assumed. Because she’d
been terrified, and because Zion didn’t like the dark sometimes.
“I was scared.” He nodded hard. “But then I found a cop. And he was really nice.”
He’d been scared. But she didn’t think he’d been terrified. He’d gotten through just fine. Yes, things
could have gone horribly wrong. He could have met bad people. But he’d actually done quite well.
Darius had always believed that Zion could do more than anyone expected. He’d never seen Zion as
handicapped. Until that moment in his London flat, Darius had never used the word disabled. And
she’d seen then how it hurt him to say it.
Whereas she’d constantly set limitations, never let Jeremy expand, never made him test his
capabilities. She’d confined her brother. And she hadn’t trusted him to learn from both his mistakes
and his triumphs. She’d been afraid that Zion wouldn’t need her one day. So she’d forced him to
need her.
It was Darius faith in Zion’s abilities that had made him stronger.
And Darius love.
Darius had showered her with that love, too. Every time she’d doubted his promises, he’d made
them anyway. He kept on believing in her. He’d bared his soul to her, revealed all his dark secrets,
trusted her to keep them and accept him. And when she’d shut him down from the moment Ben
called to say Zion was missing, he’d still taken care of her. Taken care of it all.
Everything was suddenly so clear. Clearer than it had ever been before.
She’d been wrong, and she needed to make some changes.
Starting now.
She put her hand over Zion’s. “Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going out to breakfast.
Waffles—what do you think?”
“Yay, waffles.” Zion punched the air. “Can I have whipped cream and stuff?”
“All the stuff you want.” She smiled at him, feeling her heart fill. “And after that, I have an errand
to run. It might take a few hours. Can you stay home and hold down the fort?”
His eyes went wide with wonder, a look he’d probably displayed with every new and exciting
exhibit he found in the Exploratorium. “All by myself?”
“All by yourself.”
She had to start trusting Zion.
She had to stop being afraid.
And she had to tell Darius everything that was in her heart.
Completely hollowed out inside, Darius stared at the frame in his barn. After nearly three thousand
rivets, it was starting to resemble a car rather than a birdcage. Over the past weeks, they’d worked
on Saturdays and saved Sundays for fun.
And his nights had been entirely Nathalie’s.
But he didn’t have the heart to finish the car without them. Not when it had lost its meaning.
Not when everything had lost its meaning.
Everywhere he looked, in everything he touched, he saw Nathalie and Zion. He couldn’t be here
without wanting Harper. Without loving both of them.
“Mrs. Oswald said you were working up here.”
Jesus...even Nathalie’s voice seemed trapped in the barn, sweet, seductive, taunting him. He
dropped his head into his hands.
“Darius.”
Wait.
Wait.
That voice—the beautifully husky voice he knew would always haunt his dreams, especially the
way she’d said I love you to him just one perfect time—wasn’t in his head. Was it?
He lowered his hands and turned, half afraid he’d gone round the bend.
But she was there—thank God—backlit by sunlight. The sun shone through the fine fabric of her
dress. He recognized it as the outfit she’d worn the first night he’d seduced her. Or she’d seduced
him. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
Only that he’d never stop loving her.
His heart was an unsteady thump in his chest. “How’s Zion?”
“He’s fine.”
“You took him to school?”
She shook her head, moving closer, narrowing the distance between them so that he could clearly
see her beautiful face, her blue eyes, her red lips.
“He’s at home.” There was a softness to her tone, laced with meaning.
“By himself?” She must be a figment of his imagination. He couldn’t imagine Nathalie daring to
leave her brother home alone after what had happened.
She shocked him again by nodding. “All by himself.”
Her lips turned up a little bit at the corners as she said it, but it wasn’t a full smile. So he didn’t dare
hope, didn’t dare reach out for her.
But another step brought her closer still, until she had to tilt up her face to look into his eyes. “I
have a story to tell you, one I’ve told you parts of. But I need to tell you everything this time.”
The need to touch her was an ache inside him, but he’d never forget the way she’d recoiled from his
touch on the plane. He tried to ease the desperate ache by digging his fingers into his palms.
“Okay.”
“I was seventeen when Zion was hit by the car. I was old enough to understand exactly who hit him,
old enough to understand about the bills and why my parents accepted the money. I was also old
enough to understand that I needed to help take care of my brother. And when my parents died
when I was twenty-two, I wasn’t just helping anymore. I was in charge.”
His gut roiled for that seventeen-year-old girl who’d had to grow up the instant some joy-riding
punk lost control of his car, and then for the twenty-two-year-old who’d been all alone, with no one
to help.
“I watched out for him. I made sure no one hurt him. I told myself that if I didn’t let anyone get too
close, they couldn’t hurt him. But the truth is that my brother is happy and loving and resilient.”
Emotion brimmed in her eyes. “The real reason I didn’t want to let anyone close was to make sure
no one got close enough to hurt me.”
He moved then, three steps, close enough to touch, to hold. And it was the greatest moment of his
life when she didn’t shrink from his touch, didn’t push his hands away as he gently cupped her
shoulders.
But she didn’t let him interrupt. “You were the first person, the only person, to show me that I was
holding him back. And when he started to fly free, I was so scared that he might not always need
me. Because then what was I supposed to do with my own life?”
“Nathalie, I never meant to make you doubt yourself. You’ve only ever been good to him.”
She shook her head. “I have been good to him, but I’ve messed up, too. I know it’s not going to be
easy to start letting him go, but he’s not a little boy anymore. And I want to show him that I trust
him.” She inhaled a shaky breath as her eyes held his. “And I want to show you that I trust you, too.
Because I do, Darius. I swear I do. He’s blossomed in these last couple of months with you. Your
love has made him stronger. So much stronger.”
He wanted so badly to take everything she was giving him, to believe that it was real. Just as much
as he’d wanted to believe it when she’d whispered I love you to him in the dark. But he couldn’t
deny the truth of who he was.
“I screwed up so badly. I should have known I would. I should never have gotten in your way,
should never have forced myself into your life, and into Zion’s.”
“Listen to me.” She held his face in her hands. “My brother has learned how to do more for himself
in the last few weeks than in the six years since my parents died. I did the best I could, but Zion
needed you to see him as limitless. He got all the way to the museum on his own by following a
handwritten map. And he had a great time. He never could have done that without you. Without
everything you taught him.”
“Nathalie, it was all you. I was the one who didn’t prepare my employees properly. And he got
lost.”
“Yes, he got lost. And I’m not going to lie and pretend I wasn’t terrified when we both know I was.
But that’s also because I didn’t have faith that he’d know what to do.
