Key Of Valor - Key Trilogy 3 Part 56

"Maybe she's got better taste this time around. You don't look to be too much of an a.s.shole."

"Thanks."

"You never tried to wiggle out of work," she said to Zoe with a hint of affection. "I'll give you that." On impulse, she reached out, touched Zoe's hair. "Good cut-got style. Anyway, you never were stupid, either. You got a chance for the high life here-'cause this one looks like the high life to me-you'd be a fool not to take it. A woman's got to take what she can get."

"Mama."

"I say what's on my mind, always have, always will." Crystal dropped the cigarette, crushed it under her shoe. "I gotta get back inside. Get a ring on your finger this time," she told Zoe, then tipped her chin at Bradley. "You could do worse."

She dragged the screen open, went back inside. And shut the door.

"It never comes out right. It just never does." Tears flooded Zoe's eyes and were ruthlessly blinked back. "We need to go."

She started toward the woods almost at a jog, kept her head down when Brad took her arm. "She doesn't understand you."

"That's not news to me."

"She doesn't understand the light inside you. Or that it's not about what you can get, it's about what you want to make. She doesn't understand you, so she doesn't know how to love you."

"I don't know what to do about it."

"You keep trying, and it's going to hurt you. You stop trying, and it's going to hurt you." He ran his hands up and down her arms for comfort. "I understand you, Zoe, so I know which choice you'll make."

She looked back toward the trailer. "I'll come back at Christmastime and maybe... just maybe." Because she thought they both needed it, she worked up a smile. "I told you she wouldn't like you."

"She did too like me. She's already caught in my web." He bent to kiss her lightly on the lips. "Just like her daughter."

"Me, I'm h.e.l.l on cobwebs." She took his hand again, and they walked into the woods.

"Why do they call them cobwebs? They're not made out of cob."

"There's a question for Dana. She'll look it up somewhere-I don't know where she finds half these things- and give you a whole lecture on it. I never knew anybody so smart with words. It was always numbers for me. Now I'm friends with Dana, who knows everything about books, and Malory, who knows everything about art. I've learned a lot from them in the last couple months. Sometimes it all seems like some kind of dream."

She paused, looking around as she spoke. "And I'll wake up one morning and it'll all be the way it was. I'll be working for that b.i.t.c.h Carly again and I won't even know Dana or Mal. I'll pick up the newspaper and read Flynn's column, but I won't know him. Or I'll see one of Jordan's books and wonder what he's like, because I won't know."

She looked up at Brad, touched her fingers to his cheek. "I won't know you. I'll go pick up something at HomeMakers, and I won't think of you because none of this happened."

"It's real." He curled his fingers firmly around her wrist so she could feel his grip, so he could feel her pulse. 'This is real."

"But if it wasn't, if I'm in bed having some long, complicated dream, I think I'd wake up heartbroken." She looked back in the direction of her mother's trailer. "Or worse. Whatever happens next, wherever all of this ends, I couldn't stand it if I'd missed knowing you. Kiss me." She leaned in, rose on her toes. "Will you?"

He drew her close, and laid his lips on hers gently. Letting the moment spin out. When she sighed, when she linked her arms around his neck, it was more lovely than any dream.

She felt something shift inside her with an ache so sweet it brought the tears rushing back. The air was cool, his mouth so warm. Love, beyond what she'd ever hoped for, was here.

She felt his hand stroke her hair, smooth it all the way down her back. His slim young body pressed to hers with his need quivering through it, and into hers.

She eased back, looked into bright blue eyes, and let a tear trickle down her cheek. "James." She said it softly, cupped his face in her hands.

"I love you, Zoe." James's voice-a little breathless, eager, fell on her ears. "We were meant to be together. You'll never feel this way about anyone but me."

"No, I won't." Swamped with the love that poured from a sixteen-year-old girl's heart, she pressed his hand to her lips, to her cheek, held it there. "Nothing will ever be the same, not for either of us."

"We'll run away together. We'll be together forever."

She smiled, very gently. "No, we won't." She kissed him again, with no regrets, then stepped back. "Good-bye, James."

Brad hauled her upright when her knees gave way and continued to shake her, to say her name, as he had since he'd felt her leave him.

Her eyes had blurred, her cheeks had paled.

She'd called him James.

"Look at me. Look at me, G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

"I am." Limply, her head rolled back, and though her vision grayed with the effort, she fought to focus. "I'm looking at you. Bradley."

"We're getting out of here." He started to scoop her up, but she pressed a hand to his chest.

"No. It's all right. I just need a second. Let me take that second sitting down."

She slid down, sat on the ground with her forehead pressed to her updrawn knees. "I'm a little dizzy. Just need to get my bearings."

He pulled the knife from the sheath under his jacket and took a long scan of the woods before crouching in front of her. "You clicked off, like someone had flicked a switch inside you. You called me James."

"I know."

"You slipped away. You weren't with me, you were with him. Looking at him." With love. "You said nothing would ever be the same."

"I know what I said. He took me back. Kane took me back, but I knew it." Steadier, she lifted her head. "I knew it, almost as soon as it started. I felt... I'm not ashamed of what I felt, and I'm not sorry for it. That would mean I'm ashamed and sorry about Simon. But I can be sorry Kane used you that way."

"You cried for him." Reaching out, Brad caught a tear on his fingertip.

"Yes, I cried for James. And for what might've been if he'd been stronger, maybe if we'd both been stronger. Then I said good-bye."

She laid her hand over Brad's, curled her fingers into his palm. "Kane wanted me to feel all those things I felt for James, and he wanted to use them to drive something between us. Has he?"

"It p.i.s.sed me off. It hurt." He looked down at their joined hands and, after a moment, turned his over so their fingers linked. "But no, he didn't drive anything between us."

"Bradley." She started to lean in, wanted to touch her lips to his. And saw the knife. Her eyes went huge. "Oh, G.o.d."

"He can be hurt," Bradley said simply. "If I get the chance, I'm going to hurt him." Standing, he sheathed the knife, then held a hand down to her.

She moistened her lips. "You better be careful with that thing."

"Yes, Mom."

"Still a little p.i.s.sed, aren't you? I know who you are, Bradley. I know who I am. He tried to make me forget that, but he couldn't. That has to mean something. I felt exactly like I did when I was sixteen and with James. My body, my heart, my head. He ran his hand down my hair. I wore it long then, and he used to do that. Run his hand all the way down my hair when he kissed me. That kind of thing's inside me, in those memory boxes. Kane can get into those."