Yeah… Maybe I should have warned him about my family, but I honestly had no idea so many members would be here.
I walk back to him and take his hand. “Everybody, this is Zane. Zane, this is my crazy family.”
“Who you calling crazy?” my cousin Dalton crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue. “Don’t listen to her, Z. She’s nuts.”
“Nuts. He said nuts!” Aunt Virginia giggles.
“Oh Lordy,” Aunt Alaska mutters and rolls her eyes.
Okay, so I have a lot of aunts living in the area. And judging from Zane’s still slack jaw, they are quite a sight.
Or maybe it’s my cousins he’s gaping at? Well, they’re a sight, too. All of them have their hair dyed in crazy colors, some going for the full rainbow spectrum.
Then I look up at his hair, tamer than ever before, but still a bright blue in the center, and smile. He’ll fit right in.
“Come in, Zane,” my seven-year-old cousin Cora says and links her arm with Zane’s, dragging us both into the room. “Time to meet the famous Aunt Carolina.”
“Famous?” Zane asks.
“She traveled to China and Japan and to Africa!” Cora proclaims. “She stayed with the Masari!”
“The Masai,” I correct absently as we approach the bed.
I swallow past a knot in my throat when Aunt Carolina opens her arms. I let go of Zane and hug her gently.
“Sweet girl,” she says and holds me for a long minute. “Missed you.”
“Missed you, too,” I whisper. “Sorry I couldn’t come earlier.”
“Ah.” She pats my back and lets me go. “I would have waited.”
My eyes fill with tears, and I struggle not to let them fall. Zane takes my hand and then, as if realizing my struggle, pulls me flush against him and puts an arm around me.
“Ah, Zane.” Aunt Carolina grins toothily, and her small eyes crinkle with pleasure. “I’ve heard about you.”
“You have?” Zane looks horrified, and it makes me laugh.
“No, I’m lying through my teeth. But now you can tell me all about yourself. Come here, let me look at you.” She beckons at him regally. “He sure is good-looking, Koty, my girl. Not enough color on him, though. Get him to dye his hair something more striking, will you? Pink, maybe?”
Zane sputters, and I double over with laughter.
“Come sit here, boy.” Aunt Carolina pats the bed by her side. “My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”
Zane sits down cautiously and flinches only slightly when my aunt grabs his hand and squeezes it.
“Strong man. I like that. Nice ink, too. Love the piercings.”
Zane just blinks. I guess he must be in shock.
My parents choose that moment to arrive, and I’m distracted from the Aunt Carolina/Zane show to greet them and be pulled into hugs.
When I next glance toward the bed, I find Zane laughing. I stare at him, trying to determine if he’s hysterical or just amused.
Amused, I decide when he bends down to whisper something in my aunt’s ear, and they cackle together like demented teenagers. I’m dying to know what he’s telling her. Dying to pull him out of here, so I can have him to myself again.
Crap, I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way before.
Until now.
“So…” Zane unlocks the door and pulls me into the apartment, then slips his arms around me and walks me backward toward the sofa.
“So…?” I’m a bit nervous, wondering what he thought of my family. He seemed to get along fine with my mad relatives, but who knows what’s going on inside his head?
“So, what’s the deal with the water?”
I blink, at a loss. “Water?”
“And falling.” He marches me backward until the back of my legs hits the sofa, and then he’s lowering me on it, bending over me. His arms tighten around me, so that I’m suspended for a moment over the cushions, before he gently settles me on top.
“I…” He’s propped with one arm on the backrest, the other next to my head, gazing down at me. His eyes are soft with curiosity, velvet black. In the late afternoon light seeping through the window, the strong line of his jaw and his dark brows are deep shadows, his mouth a tempting curve.
“See, I’ve met your family, and they’re fucking crazy. Good people. They didn’t mistreat you. You’re not sick and dying. Apart from the small surgical scars on your back and right arm, I don’t see any evidence of violence. So I’m missing something.” He lowers his face until his lips brush my cheek. “Why the hell did you want a dragon tattoo? I’d say you were just teasing me, but there’s more, isn’t there?”
I nod, unable to speak.
“You don’t scare easily. In fact, you’re fearless.” He gazes at me solemnly, not asking. Stating a fact. I like his conviction, even though it’s not true. “You have to be, to be with me.”
“I’m not fearless.”
“You’re afraid of falling…and of water.” He’s still gazing at me, and it’s like a warm caress. “You said someone pushed you. An ex-boyfriend.”
“Collin. My ex-boyfriend.”
His eyes narrow, and his mouth flattens. “But it doesn’t explain why you’re so scared of the water. Something happened to you, babe. What was it?”
Babe. I smile. I’m not fond of pet names, but it sounds so good, coming from him. It grounds me, reminds me it’s time I told him everything. Not just because I owe him for opening up to me as he did, but because I want him to know all about me.
Besides… We’re now marked by one experience in common. We’ve both survived it and are here now, together.
Zane lowers himself by my side, an elbow planted on the sofa, the other coming to rest over my stomach. “You okay?”
“You want to know why I stay away from the lake when we go to the park and from the pools at pool parties,” I whisper. “Why I freaked out when I was almost dropped into the pool. Why I’m so scared if nobody tried to drown me when I was a child.”
Like they did to you.
He winces and buries his face in my neck. “Yeah. I want to know, even if you think it’s stupid and unimportant. It’s important to me.”
My throat closes at his admission. I reach up and stroke the side of his head. He’s shaved it again, and there’s a small white scar there I never noticed before. So much I want to ask him. I want to know everything about him.
“Collin and I dated for a year. He played in a punk rock band, and I auditioned. That’s how we met. I was fourteen. He was seventeen. I loved his tattoos.”
“Mine are better,” Zane says, muffled in my neck.
I laugh. “Yeah, they are.”
I feel him smile on my skin. “Go on.”
“It was a weird relationship. I wasn’t picked for the band, but we still mostly met during their rehearsals, concerts and parties. He never kissed me. We…” I stare up at the ceiling. “We had sex a couple of times. In the bars where they played, in the bathrooms. He had me stand and took me from behind.”