Chapter Nineteen

Zoe

E ach footprint feels like a step further into an illusion.

The cobblestone under our feet winds into a clearing where a branch of the Charles river greets us in ripples, wide enough to stretch and swim but too narrow for boats to sail.

Tall trees twist in a canopy of leaves that dance with the whisperings of the wind and the dappled sunlight. Under them sit wooden benches, worn by time and the seasons.

Wildflowers bloom here and there, coloring the grounds with splashes of color and the air with a sweet scent.

The river speaks in murmurs, soft sloshes against the riverbank, small stones and sand.

A quiet escape from the hustle and bustle of the vultures and their scrutinizing lenses.

Our own little world. Just ours. In a different universe, where the city is a distant memory, while within the reach of a stretched hand.

"I know we probably should make these appearances somewhere more public… "

For a nanosecond, I pause, involuntarily searching Miles's features. He keeps his gaze down, gauging our steps on the uneven grounds. When I trip on a tree root, distracted by him, his hand shoots around my waist to steady me.

I straighten, pinning my gaze on the city horizon, but Miles keeps his muscled warmth around me. Even on a hot summer day, my body welcomes it.

"But we're moving in together next week, so I think our credit score is high enough." I laugh.

It's a nervous one, too high and a little shrieky, but I'm nervous too.

I wasn't. Not until I realized this is different from the countless hours we've spent together. It was supposed to be a thank you and an apology, yet it feels unnervingly like a date—a real date, candles and romance—which didn't make me nervous at all. Then I realized maybe I should be nervous. Or maybe I'm simply reading too much into it.

"The time we spend together is not a means to an end, Zoe. I like being with you."

The little bugs in my stomach metamorphose into butterflies that take flight straight to my fluttering heart.

I crane my neck up to his face, and he tilts his down to read my lips. "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah." He hums low in his throat, unfaltering in his gaze and his hold. "I suppose we could find something to eat."

"We could."

Picnic blankets are spread with an array of healthy foods: fresh fruits, Greek yogurt, protein pancakes and waffles… all strictly conforming to his dietary regime. And the inevitable candy bar. All my treats. Because it was my suggestion.

A day off. No pretenses, no pressures, no third parties. Just a boy and a girl and a picnic basket.

Under the weeping willow, the grass is cool and welcoming, courtesy of the shade. We pull our current books and we snack as we vanish into someone else's stories.

"You're staring," Miles says without moving his eyes from his page.

I can't keep the grin off my face, unashamed at getting caught. "You're blushing."

"Am I?" He lays the book over his bare chest, pinning his full attention on me. "I suppose a beautiful girl watching you is bound to have that effect."

"A beautiful girl," I parrot sillily before I can process how loud my voice is.

He hums as he reconsiders his own statement, determining it insufficient. "Not just any girl." He shifts, supporting his weight on one forearm. "And not just beautiful."

Here we are, in the heart of nature, in the lungs of the city—and there isn't enough oxygen in the air.

"Looks like we have another thing in common." Miles watches his knuckle brush across my cheek, the heat that spreads in there. "You're blushing, too."

"I do not blush," I deny in a breathless puff.

"You blush. So prettily, too." He takes his hand back, flexing it one, two times before he lies down and goes back to his fairy tale.

I snap my mystery book closed and push myself to my knees. "Do not. It just so happens we're overdue for a dip."

The scrunch of his face tells me he isn't excited with my idea. "You want to take a dip in that dirty water?"

"I'm hearing only excuses."

I start towards the river, unpeeling the strapless crop top that clings with a light sheen of sweat, then my shorts. I've foregone a bra, one of the perks of a small chest, so I'm all bare skin and a pair of silky black panties.

Uncommonly bold, I dip my toes in the chilly Charles and throw a quick look over my shoulder. "You coming, or what?"

Miles remains in place, but the book is thrown somewhere beside him, his gaze on my tattoo now as he mutters something under his breath. My panties are damp before water laps at them.

The chill bite on my feet triggers goosebumps all over my body, but I don't hide myself. Instead, I trudge further into unknown waters until it laps at my collarbone.

Miles follows.

"I didn't know you had a tattoo on your leg," he rasps, sending ripples in the river that make my nipples pebble painfully harder.

My eyes drop to the art on his chest, half hiding under the water, half bathing in sunlight: an ornate hourglass, cradled by vines that weaves and wraps around the two glass bulbs, mirrors of each other. Innumerable grains of sands succumb to gravity's hand, suffocating the narrow neck. One of them has penetrated, forever suspended in the air in a fall that'll never end.

Below, there's the bloom of a bug into an intricate butterfly with velvety wings, phase after phase illustrated with careful detail and utter realism. The word metamorphosis vertically completes it in straight capital letters.

"An unprecedented impulse." That's the best depiction of the barbed wire, a permanent garter on my left leg. I've yet to settle on whether I regret it. Right now, I don't. "What about yours? "

"A reminder." He crawls closer, the ripples of the river hitting just under my collarbones. "That the only constant in life is change. It's scary, but freeing too." He delivers the words softly, a secret meant to stay between us. "It reminds me that bad things won't last forever. Good things don't, either, so it reminds me to slow down and enjoy life, too."

Droplets of water return to the river in soft patters as my arm stretches for him, to trace his skin with a new layer of invisible ink.

I've always feared change. Perhaps because the first big shift of my life resulted in a little girl grieving the loss of the people she loved.

Then, change arrived in the form of Miles Blackstein.

He's shown me change can be for the better, too. He came in and tilted my entire existence out of its millimetrically designed orbit. He opened my eyes to all the changes I've been too blind to see, hidden below the opaque veil of my fears.

Change isn't inherently loss, and control doesn't mean contentment.

"And it reminds me that it may take some time, but I will get everything I want. However long it takes." Then he adds, not as an afterthought, but as the final conclusion, "Maybe I already have it." My nails puncture skin and sketch little half-moons that look perfectly at home beside his ink.

"Your eyes are… exquisite," he whispers.

They look up, lock onto his. Gray like steel bars of a jail cell and prison walls, exceptionally designed to lock me inside forever.

"They're blue," is all I manage, my belly quivering violently.

He's appalled. "They're not blue. "

Miles finally reaches for me, shoving his fingers inside my ponytail. With a rough tug, my head tilts to an angle that stretches my neck so that he can bore into the eyes he describes.

"They're so many things. Right now, you're right—they are blue. They're blue like the sky that mirrors in this water. But in a minute, when we get out, and the sun bends lower in the horizon, there'll be green in there, too. It'll grow until they blend, blue and green, and become something else. Something yours . And on rainy days, there's a tiny specter of gray in the mix."

There's reverence in the way he spews poetry about my blue irises. I'd tell him exactly how cheesy it is, but something else brews in me. The realization we're blinded to ourselves in a way others aren't. When we look in the mirror, we see little nothings in the same place others find little reasons to love us, to adore us, to admire us.

A shiver wracks my whole body, sharp goosebumps coating me inside and out.

"Let's get out of this infested pond. You're getting cold."

Without hesitation, he leads us to the riverbank, only letting go of my hand when he's sure my feet are steady on firm land. He offers me privacy, walking away towards our blankets—leaving behind his t-shirt for me. I gladly wear it an inch or two below my barbed-wire garter.

The sun has lowered as he predicted, the shade no longer under the tree. A corded forearm drapes across his face as a shield he wields against the beams, wet boxer briefs little more than a second skin under the sun.

"So, this is where you disappear to every time you come back with a wild mane of hair and bright red cheeks? he asks .

I drop next to him like a melted pool of a woman under the sight, under the sun, grateful for the distraction of his question.

"I'm not the biggest fan of exercise. Gyms bore me to death and definitely make me feel like death the day after, too. I come here when I want to do some exercise. I run along the river. Well, it's more of a quick walk, but whatever." I wrinkle my nose, embarrassed at the admission of my lack of athletic skills to a professional athlete. "Why? Did you think I had a secret portal to hell to collude with the devil against you?"

A smirk pulls at his lips. "The possibility you might be living a double life as Satan's right hand has crossed my mind, I won't lie."

"Imbecile." I smack his bare torso. Miles grins like the word is an endearment, not an insult. "It's not a double life if a girl can multitask."

"Zoe?" He removes the arm from his face, folding his hands in his lap. "I love that you have this piece of heaven for you, but please don't come here on your own."

I hear the words he doesn't say.

Not until Gun girl is caught. Not until you're safe.

"If you're inviting yourself, with proper incentive, I might consider sharing."

I wait for the joke I know won't come. Since the incident, he's put distance between us for reasons I can't fathom—and despise. Because I miss the things I once hated—his eyes that scorched me, his words that boiled my blood and made me burn.

As expected, he redirects instead. "How did you find this place?"

"Looks straight out of one of your fairy tales, right?" I tease him about his reading preferences. He likes fantasy, and I like to see him blush.

For a long moment, Miles watches me silently, but he doesn't press further. The last thing I want to speak about is my father and the long lost times when he was a dad.

So, I ask about his, instead. "You never speak about your father." For all the times he's gushed about his mother, he hasn't once mentioned his dad.

He regards me again—not that he ever stopped—as weeping leaves rustle above us until he settles on a response.

"My father is a football coach—American football." My eyebrows approach my hairline. "I know—ironic. But I always liked the round ball better, I guess. No matter how many times he tried to steer me in his direction."

Fully recovered from the shock, I nod effusively. "That's probably a good thing. Look at you." I wave in the direction of his body, lingering longer than I meant on the coarse trail of dark hair that fades beneath his boxers. "You'd be demolished on the field. Like, literally crushed. Steamrolled. Obliterated."

An unpracticed scowl steals his smile, and I stifle a laugh.

"It's just an observation, love. You don't have the brawl in you to end a football game with all your appendages intact." I ogle his chest in a very deliberate way, almost unable to conceal all the things I shouldn't be thinking. "Or the shoulders."

He blinks, a slow smirk stretching his lips. "You know you don't have to use this conversation as an excuse to check me out. Feel free to ogle me all you want, at any time and for no particular reason other than you want to. Because you like what you see. "

I force the full weight of my blank stare on him, waiting until he squirms a little. Only then do I recover our previous topic.

"So… you're not like your father i—"

I've never been interrupted quicker. "No. I would never leave my wife and my kid."

My heart twists in my chest, choking the breath out of my lungs. Words are long gone, evaporated with the air.

All this time, Miles has been carrying this hurt without complaint. What else is he hiding behind those dimples?

So many things I want to ask… I don't know where to start. I think I hear a sigh, or maybe I see it exit his parted lips, but all my focus is on digesting this vital piece of information from a man I'd been so mightily self-assured I knew everything about.

The heaviness inside me weighs me down. Without thought, I plop down. This time my head rests on his lap.

The pad of his forefinger traces my tattoo with a soft question. "Can I ask about your little heart?"

The change of subject is deafening, but I decide to reciprocate the courtesy of not pressing for answers he isn't ready to volunteer.

"Someone once told me I wore my heart on my sleeve, that I should keep it concealed."

Another piece of me I'd never shared before.

How many times did I hear those scolding words as a little girl?

Discipline your expression, Zoe. You wear your feelings on your face. That won't do you any favors. The sooner you understand, the better.

I had thought, naively, that the harsh tone had been only for my own good. With age came awareness. When my dreams didn't match his expectations, the hardest realization was that it hadn't been for my benefit.

"So I decided to wear it somewhere else, somewhere everyone could see it."

My final act of rebellion, the metaphorical cutting of the cord with Grandfather Hopkins.

Or so I convinced myself.

Because the cord remained intact. It still traps me, and it's strangulating.

He's still inside my head, except it's my voice I hear. My voice which he had thoroughly shaped with each reprimand, each praise, each instruction. It's my voice telling myself I'm not good enough—I must try harder to be something else, something better . It's my voice telling me to remain unflappable, impenetrable, in utter fucking control. But the words are his .

I've been living according to his gospel. It comes in handy, after all. It keeps people at a distance, away where they can't see through the thin layer of polished ice and recognize what lies beyond: all my insufficiencies, all the ways I fall short.

But hasn't Miles seen all that? And he's still here, looking at me like… I don't know how, but I like the way he looks at me.

Maybe it's time to truly break free. Maybe breaking free doesn't mean I must bare myself to the whole world. Maybe it's only my own world that deserves my vulnerability.

Vulnerability isn't only courage. It's trust in its bravest shape.

I trust him. I want to be brave, no matter how much it scares me .

"Thank you." My voice is a barely audible rasp. I clear my throat, try again. "For taking care of me. And for being my friend."

He doesn't realize the lengths of my gratitude, but one day, I hope I can tell him all the things I'm thankful for.

"Is that who I am, Zoe?" The brush of his finger becomes firmer, a press against the ink of my delicate heart. "Your friend ?"

Something thumps in my chest, like Miles can set the rhythm with his bare hands.

At a loss for better words, I rasp, "Yeah."

"Yeah?" He mimics me in term and tone, still memorizing the heart on my skin and musing. "I don't think I ever wanted to be your friend."

My heart races inside my chest. It always does when he's near. Running from something. Running for something. Equal parts afraid and excited.

I pretend I don't feel it. He pretends he doesn't hear it under his fingertip.

We're good at that—pretending. Pretending these little moments never happened. Pretending they're just pretense.

Although… Perhaps it's all me.

I pretend, Miles lets me.

I fear and await the day he no longer will.