Page 43 of Zachary

I fold my arms to hide the way my hands are shaking. How is this happening? “I’m not talking about this.”

Ronan shrugs. “That’s fine. But unless you have another reason for shelving the project, we plan to take this whole thing to the village council.” He sets his jaw. “Your grandmother won’t say no to me.”

The room is so quiet, I hear Zoe’s clothes rustle as she leans over to whisper to Cam, “Is this turning you on too?”

“Kind of,” he whispers back, staring at Ronan. “We should have befriended him sooner.”

“I can hear you,” Ronan says, but his eyes are locked with mine. “It’s your call, Zac. You come with us and claim ownership of this like you deserve, or we do it anyway. Either way, I’m not letting a good man get kicked for no reason. Not ever again.” The bitter vehemence in his voice cuts through my shock and anger.

“To be clear, you lied to me and made me worry about you, then you violated my privacy and robbed me,” I summarize, “and now you want me to believe it was for my own good?” I take a step closer to him. “Are you sure this isn’t just revenge? I was an ass to you, and now you want to humiliate me too?”

He looks like I’ve struck him, and I hate myself for saying those words. Whatever fragile beginnings of friendship might have been between us couldn’t have survived them.

To my surprise, he lifts his chin. “When I met you, you smiled and introduced yourself and were happy. Everyone here says you’re a nice person. A happy person. A fun person. I’ve rarely seen that side of you. Partly that’s my fault, but not all of it. And if we’re right, someone else did that to you. Made you a person who isn’t happy. Made you a different person than who you really are. Nobody should be allowed to do that.”

I can’t breathe. There’s something going on here, more than just me being unhappy about my ski resort. “Why do you care?” It’s barely a whisper.

He looks away. The ticking of the clock in the living room seems to echo through the whole house.

Ronan closes the distance between us, grabs my shoulders, and plants a kiss on my mouth. It’s awkward. My lip smashes against a tooth. It’s over in a heartbeat. But the electricity that sparked between us…

I swallow dryly as he steps back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I don’t… I guess I probably won’t see you again afterthis, and I just wanted…” He shakes his head. “The longer you’re someone different, the harder it is to get back to who you really are, Zac. I don’t know why you let your grandmother bully you. Any of you.” His glance takes in Asher and Micah, and I hear an indrawn breath but can’t look away from Ronan. “The thing is, people who love you should love you even when you tell them no. If they don’t, they never loved you at all. You shouldn’t have to always please them.”

He turns around and faces Garrett, Cam, and Zoe, who are still and pale. “I’m sorry. I ruined it. The resort’s a good idea, and it’s what the village needs. I can make sure Damaris doesn’t cause trouble. But I think maybe it’s better if that’s the only part I play. And… and I’ll call Brandt and have him find an elf at the DEA who can portal me to the cave every day. Nobody needs to be uncomfortable because of me.”

He’s halfway to the door before my wits come back.

“Wait.” My voice is hoarse, and I cough. “Ronan, wait.”

He stops and turns around, but now I don’t know what to say. It’s pretty obvious that someone hurt him, someone he thought he could trust. I need to step carefully around that, but right now I feel raw. In such a short time, with so little personal contact with any of us, he’s somehow seen through us all. He was right about everything he said.

Everything.

His lower lip trembles, just the tiniest bit, and I shove aside my insecurities. He put himself out there for me—how can I not do the same?

Just like he did, I close the distance between us. I don’t put my hands on him, though, just lean in and kiss him gently. “We can talk about this later,” I whisper. “But nobody here is uncomfortable because of you. And if they are, they’re the ones who can leave.”

He’s shaking, and when he raises his eyes to look at me, they’re glossy with tears. His throat works, but he only nods.

“Okay.” I turn to face my cousins. “Ask me about the ski resort.”

Asher’s face is stone; Micah’s is thunder. But when he speaks, his voice is ice. “Why did you shelve the project?”

“The day after I talked to you about it, the day after Ronan arrived, I took the plans to Grandmother for her opinion. I knew that if she championed it, the council would approve it without question. I also thought it would be a good investment for our family.” I pause. The memory of her words still cuts me; saying them aloud won’t be easy. “She didn’t even listen. I said I had an idea for a ski resort, and she told me to stop wasting time on dreams, because the village needed me to do my duty. So I shelved the project.”

Asher snarls. “You’ve always done your duty. We all have. Our whole lives are built around our duties to this village.”

“Asher,” Garrett murmurs, going to him, but Asher shakes his head.

“No. We say it’s fine because she let us all come and go for our studies and travel and choose the careers we wanted, and we all get to work in fields we love, but it’snotfine that Micah is expected to shuffle his own clients to fit in work for the village—unpaid. And it’snotfine that in any other town in the world, the work Zac does would require a team of people, and yet here he’s not even an official employee of the village. If he didn’t have family money to support himself with—that I’m required to manage—he’d be fucked. Yet even with all that, she waves the word ‘duty’ around and announces that we’ll help out with all these extra projects. I’m done. I’m done with her thinking she owns us. Maybe I could put up with the rest of it and the matchmaking, because I convinced myself she had goodintentions, but to not even listen to Zac, her grandson? Not even listen? No. I’m done.” He hauls his phone out of his pocket.

“Who are you calling?” Garrett asks in alarm.

“Gideon.” His thumb slides up the screen, scrolling.

“Why?”

Asher looks up. “Why? I’m telling a representative of CSG exactly what Grandmother did in the cave. I’m telling him everything else too. We cover for her, and she thinks she can get away with it, so she does it again. She’s been doing it for centuries, and people let it slide every time. Not anymore.”

---