I drag a hand over my face but it doesn’t stop the tears that spill out, hot and relentless. I slide down the side of the car until I’m crouched on the ground, back against the bumper, staring at nothing.
“She said even if you weren’t there, part of you was,” he continues. “That’s why she named her Gabriella.”
The guilt is suffocating, I almost can’t take it. “I don’t deserve that,” I choke out.
“No,” he agrees bluntly. “But she didn’t name her that because you deserved it, Gabriel. She named her that because she loved you.”
“Did she…blame me?” I ask after a while.
Zale looks down at his hands. “She blamed herself,” he says. “Which was worse.”
I close my eyes, because of course she did. Zalea would carry the weight of the world before letting anyone else touch it.
“I was chasing medals,” I murmur. “While she was burying our daughter.”
“You were chasing something you thought mattered,” he says after a while. “You were wrong…but you were also young.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No,” he agrees. “It’s not.”
“I need to know everything about her, even if it kills me inside.”
Zale studies me for a long time before he slides off the trunk and lands on his feet in front of me.
“Then ask my sister, not me,” he says. “She deserves to decide what you get to know, and when.”
I nod slowly, because he’s right. This is a conversation I should have with Zalea, as Gabriella’s parents.
“For what it’s worth,” he says awkwardly, not meeting my eyes, “she seems happy with you.”
“You think so?” I ask, pushing myself up on unsteady legs and wiping my face one more time.
“I’m not saying I forgive you,” he adds quickly. “But if you hurt her again, I won’t let it slide this time.”
A ghost of a smile pulls at my mouth despite the wreckage I feel inside me.
“Got it.”
He jerks his head toward the driver’s seat. “Come on, Coach. Never keep my sister waiting.”
THIRTY-TWO
ZALEA | VARAZZE
Gabriel’srental car crawls into the hotel parking lot, and my stomach flips the way it always does when he’s near. Zale is the first one out of the car, stretching his arms over his head with a huge grin, while Gabriel steps out slower. One look at him and I can tell something changed between our phone call and the drive here.
I jog toward them, my hair whipping behind me. “You made it,” I say.
Zale points at Gabriel. “We probably could have got here sooner but he decided to drive like an old man today.”
“I had no choice. You screamed as soon as we merged lanes,” Gabriel counters smoothly.
“I did not scream.”
“My eardrums say otherwise.”
I laugh at their bickering, noticing it’s not as hostile as it was just this morning. We check Zale into his own room at the hotel, and after he tosses his bag inside, he and Gabriel change into their swim trunks, and we head back toward the beach.
