“It is.” He strode to Zoom’s tank, the need to be active suddenly a driving force. “Should be able to join the rest of the herd in a couple of days.” Grady felt her gaze right between his shoulder blades as he pushed the tank lid back a little. “Hey, Zoom,” he greeted. “Hungry, little guy? Of course you are.” He opened the container of turtle pellets. “You’re always hungry; you should be way too fat for your shell, buster.”

Grady tossed in the usual amount and watched as Zoom proceeded to snap them up.

“Are you still in love with her?”

The question dropped like a huge boulder into a still pond, and everything seemed to stop for a beat or two—all sound and thought and action—before a tsunami of ripples buffeted his body. Grady turned, his heart beating slowly and forcefully. “What?”

She looked surprised but stoic. Like she couldn’t quite believe she’d asked the question, but now that it was out, she wasn’t retracting. “Are you still in love with her?” she repeated.

“With Bethany?”

“Yes.” Suzanne rolled her eyes. “Bethany.”

God…where had that come from? “Because…of Zoom? I don’t understand… Turtles live for a long time. Should I have…given him away or something?”

“No, of course not. I just mean…” She faltered like she couldn’t really articulate what she meant now or where the question had come from. “According to Cora, there’s been nobody else since Bethany. In seventeen years. So…you must still be in love with her, right?”

“Yes.”

It was an automatic answer to a question he hadn’t been asked or thought to ask himself for a long time. Of course he still loved Bethany. She was his first crush. His first girlfriend. His first kiss, his first…everything. And she’d been sweet and lovely and smart and funny, and it had been so fucking unfair that she’d been taken from this world when she’d had so much to offer.

Of course he still loved Bethany.

But…that wasn’t the question Suzanne had asked. She’d asked if he was still in love with Bethany. And, Grady realized, as he stood in front of this woman who had driven him crazy for three weeks that he wasn’t. He wasn’t in love with Bethany anymore.

And that he hadn’t been for a very long time. That somewhere along the way in the intervening years, time had done what time usually did—it had healed. Bethany…his parents…it still ached to think of what he lost, but it wasn’t a big black-and-purple bruise anymore or even a yellowed, fading one. It was a scar. Like the one from the shrapnel. A reminder of the pain and injury but fully healed.

He just hadn’t realized.