our eyes connected, I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t get enough air into my lungs with the shallow breath I took. “You’re sad,” he said, his voice low. “It feels like...a heaviness in my chest. I can feel it, Trin.”
I closed my eyes, thinking I really needed to get better control of my emotions.
“Talk to me,” he whispered in the quiet.
“I was... I was thinking about Misha.” That was a lie, yet another I’d told today, and also not something I wanted to talk about, either. But it was better than the truth. “It was just a random memory. Not important.”
His hand touched my shoulder, surprising me. The weight was light, but I could feel the warmth of his hand through the material of my shirt, branding my skin. “But it is important.”
Exhaling roughly, I said nothing.
“I know you miss him.” His fingers curled around my shoulder. “Even with everything he did, you still miss him. I understand.”
Did he really? Things might have been tense between him and his father before his passing, but it wasn’t like his father had wanted him dead or had sought to betray him. Or orchestrated the death of his mother. Then again, his father had gone after Layla.
“I know I’ll never replace him. I’ll never be what he was to you.”
My eyes flew open as my hands curled into fists. “That’s a good thing. I wouldn’t want you to be anything like him. Everything about him was a lie, Zayne. I didn’t really know him.”
His lashes lowered, shielding those extraordinary eyes. “But there are good memories, Trin. What he became doesn’t change that, and they’re not going away because of what he ended up doing.”
“But they did.” I stepped away from his touch. I needed space before everything to do with Misha cracked wide open. “Because what if he’d always been like that, and it was all fake?”
“You don’t know that.”
“That doesn’t matter. He tainted those memories, Zayne. He made them not real.”
His hand fell to his side. “They’re real as long they belong to you.”
I sucked in a breath, his words hitting me hard in the chest. When I looked at him again, I found him watching me, his expression stark.
He took a step toward me, arms rising as if he was about to pull me into his embrace, but he stopped short of doing so. Relief and disappointment flooded me. His stance stiffened and then he turned toward the steel door. “Come on. Let’s head home.”
Home.
Sighing, I waited until he opened the door. The faint scent of exhaust wafted into the kitchen as Zayne turned on a light, revealing a large bay housing several vehicles. He smacked a button on the wall, and the garage door rattled open. A warm, sticky breeze blew into the space.
I closed the door behind me and heard the lock automatically click into place.
Zayne snatched a set of keys off the wall and skirted the grills of two SUVs as he walked toward something covered with a tarp. “You’re not afraid of motorcycles, are you?”
“Uh. I’ve never been on one, but I don’t think so? I mean, I shouldn’t be,” I reasoned as I watched him grab a fistful of the beige cloth and yank it aside, revealing a black motorcycle that looked like it went fast—really fast. “Is that yours?”
Zayne nodded as he reached for the handlebars. “Yeah, haven’t taken it out in a while.”
I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that Zayne owned a motorcycle and that I found that so...hot. It was just a method of transportation, no big deal, but I was feeling a little flushed.
“I keep meaning to ride it back whenever I’m over here,” he said, turning something on the center part of the bike as he lifted a foot and placed it on one of the shifters.
Nudging the kickstand up, he straightened the bar. The security floodlight kicked on, illuminating Zayne and the bike as he wheeled it into the driveway. “Can you grab two helmets? They’re on the shelf to your right. Sorry. No pink ones.”
“I was really hoping for a pink helmet with kitten ears.” I did as he said, grabbing two black full-face helmets. They were heavier than I expected, but I guessed that was a good thing when you wanted something between the pavement and your skull when going sixty miles an hour or faster.
The garage door closed behind me as I joined Zayne in the driveway. Stopping, I looked back at all the