Dream Wedding(40)

She closed her eyes against the memories, but that didn’t help. Her throat tightened. “I know he didn’t die when my parents did. If he had, he and I wouldn’t have met. But that’s how I remember it. My parents dying, then Billy. All the time he was suffering and slipping away all I wanted was my family. My parents. If they couldn’t be there, I needed my sister with me.”

She felt the tears on her cheeks. How long had it been since she’d cried over Billy? “I used to pray every night that he would get better, that the lawyer would find Aunt Charity so Cassie and I could be together again. It didn’t help. Billy passed away in October of my senior year of high school. He was all of nineteen. I was seventeen. Aunt Charity showed up four months later. Four months too late in my mind.”

Maybe it was the tears in her eyes, because she hadn’t seen Arizona move, but suddenly he was crouched next to her and pulling her close. She went into his arms. She needed his strength and warmth to chase away the coldness of the past.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t usually get like this.”

“We all have our demons.”

“I don’t believe in that.”

“I’m talking about emotional demons, Chloe. The kind that live inside. We all have them, whether we want them or not.”

His arms wrapped around her as he pulled her next to him. She rested her head on his shoulder.

“Do you still love him?” he asked.

“No.” Her voice was muffled against his neck. “I did for a while, but we were so young. I don’t know that the relationship would have lasted as long as it did if he hadn’t been sick. That added a level of intensity that fueled whatever we were feeling. But he was a good person. I admired him, his courage, his determination. I just wish I hadn’t believed him when he told me he wouldn’t leave me.”

“The people who are supposed to love us the best always end up hurting us.”

She closed her eyes and focused on being next to him. He smelled of wood smoke and the unique fragrance that was his own. “That sounds like the voice of experience talking.”

“It is. When we first met, you asked about my parents. You assumed, because I was raised by my grandfather, that they were both dead.”

“You said your father was still alive.”

“He is. The reason my grandfather took me is that my father abandoned me to nannies. He blamed me for my mother’s death. Apparently the labor was hard and long, and she wasn’t very strong. He couldn’t bear to be around me.” He took a deep breath. “Emotionally and physically, he turned his back on me. I’m lucky. My grandfather was there to pick up the slack. But I spent the first fifteen years of my life trying to figure out why my father hated me. My grandfather finally took pity on me and explained it.”

The ache inside of her deepened. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need for that. I’ve put it behind me and moved on. But it might make it more clear as to why I’m not a huge believer in love. Even when it comes to parents loving their children. I’ve seen a lot of neglect in my life, and I’ve experienced it firsthand.”

She raised her head and looked at him. “We are quite a pair, aren’t we?”

“It’s not so bad.”

He shifted until he was reclining on the sleeping bag, then pulled her down next to him. She settled into his arms, her head on his shoulder, her hand resting on his chest. She should have been self-conscious in such an intimate position, but it felt right. Perhaps it was the privacy of being alone together in the middle of nowhere; perhaps it was because they’d both just bared their souls. She didn’t care which. At this moment in time, there was nowhere in the world she would rather be than here, with him.

A thought occurred to her. She raised her head and looked at him. “You know everything we’ve talked about tonight is private. I won’t be using it in my article.”

He touched the tip of her nose with his index finger. “Yes, I knew that. I trust you, Chloe.”

“I’m glad.” She settled down again. “So what was it like growing up with your grandfather? Were you close?”

“We were as I got older. When I was a kid I think he thought of me more like a puppy than a person. I know he cared, but he wasn’t the most responsible parent. I wanted to be able to depend on him and I couldn’t. He would pay attention to me for a while, then ignore me for weeks at a time. At least the staff always took care of me.”

“I can’t even imagine what that was like. At least Cassie and I had our parents for the first fourteen years of our lives, and we had each other.” She pressed her lips together. No doubt all the fans on the Internet and everywhere else thought the same thing she had—that Arizona’s life had been like a movie. All good times and laughter, played out in exotic locations. But the truth was different.