Page 95 of Truly Madly Magically

One strong family line, stretching backward and forward forever, ornery and us to the end.

Elizabeth smiles at me, her ghostly eyes overbright with the same tears I don’t shed.

“And thank you,” she whispers. She doesn’t elaborate, but I don’t need her to. I’m not worried any longer that other people might see—or not see—things in me I don’t.

She pulls her hand away. Then she smiles at Zachariah and gestures toward the door. He smiles back, and they leave together in what looks like a comfortable, companionable silence.

I think—I know: this is what forgiveness looks like.

I glance over at Zander, still facing the dark over at the window. If I push aside all the insecurities that ruled me for so long, I understand that what’s going on inside of him right now might be about what happened to me tonight, but it’s not about me. It’s about the whole mess of a year, and that long, slow loss of his mother, and no doubt a great many other things.

Some things are the kind of darkness we keep to ourselves, not because we’re hiding or hoarding it, but because it’s only looking at those dark spaces that teaches us how to walk instead in the light.

Tonight I don’t want to laugh this away, avoid it, or run. Tonight I have no fights to pick. I don’t want to do any of the things I usually do, and not only when it comes to Zander.

I want to be the kind of person who comforts other people instead of bludgeoning them with my own awkwardness and insecurity. I want that in a sweeping, general sense that feels more like coming of age than that terrible Litha ceremony ten years ago ever did.

Tonight I want the simplicity of being exactly who I am. What I am. I want to lean in, with joy and optimism, to what I could be. If I start like this. If I start right now.

I get up out of bed and silently move over to Zander. I wrap my arms around him and press my cheek to his stiff back. That’s all. It’s such a strange, beautiful, new sensation. To initiate comfort like this. To let my heart open wide without running away.

“Tell me what’s eating you up,” I whisper.

I’ve never been any good at this, but I have friends who are. A family who is. Maybe not always in the same ways, but with the same goal. To take care of each other.

The way they’ve always taken care of me.

Because they have, I know what to say.

“You’re supposed to rest,” he says gruffly, but some of the tension I can feel in his body eases. From me not launching into a new fight the way I usually do. From me holding on and not letting go.

“Then come to bed.”

He grunts. “Hardly restful, El.”

“It wasn’t a sexual proposition,” I say. Then smile, my mouth against his back. “Yet.” I manage to get the tiniest laugh out of him, but then it turns into a whole-body sigh. “Come on, baby. Let’s sleep.”

He turns around, keeping me in his arms, and pulls me with him as he heads for the bed.

A million versions of an old me exist—the one who would let him, the one who would pick a fight instead, the one who would needle answers out of him.

But now there are also a million versions of different future mes that stretch out before me.

Lessons, if I’m willing to take them.

I am. I hold on to his other hand to stop his forward movement toward the bed. “Talk to me, Zander.”

He looks at me then. His mouth curves. I think he’s trying to smile, but it doesn’t quite get there. “You can’t understand, and that’s okay. I don’t need you to. Let’s just go to bed.”

I don’t let go. I don’t move. “Explain it to me.”

He sighs like he’s frustrated, and that sound usually infuriates me. It usually spikes me straight into something boiling hot, shouting or sex, whatever works.

It’s not that I don’t feel the urge to swan dive straight into the familiar. I do.

That’s why it matters that I don’t let go of his hands. That I don’t give up.

He must sense this in some way because his shoulders slump. “I’m a Guardian,” he says gruffly.

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