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Chapter Forty-Seven

Darien

‘D ar, I just, I can’t …’ Shantal tries, but she can’t finish the

thought. The burden of it all is so heavy that I feel it weigh on me.

‘I hear you.’ I do. I hear her almost too well. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.’

We stay as we are for a few long moments. My arms circle her as if shielding her from the invisible slings and arrows of stabbing memories. I know exactly what those kinds of wounds do to you, and I’d take them for her in a heartbeat.

‘I’m sorry. I woke you up,’ Shanni murmurs. ‘It’s going to be a race weekend, and you need to sleep …’

‘What do you mean?’ I lean back and brush a tear from the corner of Shanni’s left eye with total concentration. I’ve been awake for mere minutes, but I’m completely aware of every detail. ‘I don’t mind. I’m staying with you, mina . There’s no other place I want to be right now.’

I know there’s nothing I can say or do to fix this for Shantal. For a human being to carry around that kind of pain for so long is punishment greater than any broken bone or torn tendon.

So I just try to be there. I stand there with her at the balcony door. I’ll stand there as long as she needs to.

Her voice cracks as she tells me, ‘I just … I just don’t know what to do any more.’

I trace circles on Shantal’s arm with my thumb, worry creasing my brow. ‘How come?’

Shantal lifts her head so her eyes meet mine, a curl of her hair sticking to her cheek. ‘To a degree, I resent her for it, for keeping that from me. And then I feel terrible when I think that way. Because maybe … Sonia did what she did to satisfy everyone else. She never got a chance to love, and now … what if I don’t either?’

My heart pounds double time as her words sink in. Who expects that kind of sacrifice from a person? It twists my gut just to think about it.

‘Love …’ I swallow hard. The words are difficult, but I try my best to put them together. ‘Love isn’t a currency, Shanni … that’s what’s so great about it. You don’t owe anyone anything to be deserving of love. Loving someone doesn’t have to be any harder than we make it.’

Shantal doesn’t move her line of sight from me. Only her lower lip quivers slightly. ‘Meeting your family last night … it was beautiful, Dar. You all show your affection so easily. I wish it were that simple.’

‘I do, too.’ I don’t know, I just want to take away everything that’s hurting her and make it mine, so I don’t have to watch her fall apart like this. Except that I can’t. I’ve never felt more helpless than when all I can do is reach out and fix that piece of hair that won’t let go of her cheek. ‘But it’s always gonna be your right to love , as much as it is anyone else’s.’

‘And if it isn’t?’

Love hard, or not at all , M?e always told me. Same way she loved my father, even when people told her to get over it, that he wasn’t coming back. No matter how hard the world tried to take the right to love Nico Cardoso-Magalh?es from her, she never let it.

‘You love, anyway.’ I smile sadly. ‘Can’t live without it.’

She hugs me tight, her head finding that place under my chin again, pressed to my chest. Her embrace is fervent, desperate, as if she’s clinging to a life preserver, and in it, there’s a piece of … guilt. Of blame.

I don’t question the odd feeling, though. I give her the kind of affection that I was given by my family all my life, the only kind of affection I learned to give: the unconditional kind. I hug her back, and I don’t ask why she radiates the emotions she does. I accept them as they are.

That’s what you do when you love.