by Holly Rayner
Sean nodded. “I know what you mean. The first time I really tasted wine was a few years after I really got up and running with Ranchos Caballos Blancos. I figured it was time to see what all the fuss was about. The only wine I’d ever tasted was some sweet stuff from a box at one of my foster parents’ houses, and I’d hated that.”
Delaney made a sour face. “Doesn’t sound too good,” she said.
He laughed at the memory. “It did the trick. Me and a couple of the guys drank the whole box, got tipsy off of it, and went knocking down mailboxes.”
Delaney set her glass down. She stared at the stem. Her manicured fingers brushed the base of the glass lightly, back and forth.
She’s tensing up, he realized. Was it something I said? Maybe it was talking about getting drunk as a teen. Or my foster parents. I shouldn’t talk about that stuff. Maybe it makes her uncomfortable.
She cleared her throat.
“Um… Sean?” she said. “I’ve actually been wanting to ask you a few things… about your past. Do you mind?” She looked up and met him with a direct stare. Her eyes looked clear.
He was surprised by her directness, but he admired it. The thought of steering clear of mentioning his past didn’t sit right with him, anyway. He was glad she wanted to know more.
“Fire away,” he said.
“Okay… well, I guess what I want to know is…” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “How much criminal activity did you do, really? Are we talking about mostly hitting mailboxes with baseball bats, or… worse?” A shadow crossed her face. “Have you hurt anyone?”
He felt his chest ache slightly as he realized that the question Delaney had just posed was the very thought that had been weighing on her all evening.
She wants to know if I’m violent, he realized. That’s why she’s been a little bit distant. That’s why she was searching my eyes.
He felt sorry to have put her through that worry.
“Delaney, no,” he said, his voice deep with sincerity.
He made sure to look right into her eyes as he said this, so she would know it was the truth.
“I’ve made plenty of mistakes,” he said, “And yes, the crimes I was involved in went beyond just trashing mailboxes and TP-ing houses. But I want you to know that I’d never inflict harm on another human. Or animal. Never.”
This seemed to ease her nerves a little bit, but she still appeared apprehensive.
She fidgeted with her wine glass as she said, “Then… what kind of stuff did you do?”
At that moment, the waiter approached with their appetizers: sautéed mussels in a basil pesto cream sauce, and steamed artichoke served with butter.
Sean waited as the waiter topped off their water glasses. Once they were alone again, Sean spoke.
“Let me start from the beginning,” he said.
He wanted Delaney to understand—to really understand—who he was and what he’d lived through. He wanted her to understand that the track he’d been on had practically been served to him on a platter, much like the appetizers before them. It had been served up as the only way forward. When he was able to finally choose to put it behind him, he’d felt like he was making a conscious decision for the first time in his life.
Before that, he’d been in a sort of trance—the hypnosis of his upbringing.
“My mom raised me,” Sean said. “Well, maybe ‘raised’ isn’t the right word. She lived with me, but I took care of her more than she took care of me. She had some major problems. Didn’t make it past the age of twenty-five, bless her soul. She had me when she was just sixteen.”
“Wow,” said Delaney. “That’s young. I’m so sorry.”
Sean nodded in acceptance of her condolences.
“Thanks,” he said. “She was sweet, but absent most of the time. Not with it. Addictions can be pretty ugly in that way.”
Delaney nodded and continued listening.
Sean went on. “Once she passed, I was put into foster care. Had some rough situations in that regard. People wanting the money that the state pays out, but not wanting to really put up with the kid that comes along with the paycheck.”
“I’ve heard that those situations can be pretty bad,” Delaney said empathetically.
“You’ve got that right,” Sean said.
He reached for a mussel but put it on the little white plate before him instead of tipping the shellfish into his mouth.
“I guess I reacted by acting out. That’s all I can figure, looking back on my behavior. I think I was pretty desperate for attention.”
“That makes sense,” Delaney said. She bit the tip off of a butter-dipped leaf of the artichoke.
Sean continued. “In high school, it was pretty small stuff. I stole from the local shops, pedaled cigarettes, swiped liquor from the houses I was staying in… that kind of thing.”
He paused, remembering how furious his foster parents used to get. He shook his head.
“That earned me some attention, sure enough,” he said. “But not the good kind. By the time I was eighteen, I wanted out of the foster care system so badly. I was old enough, so I got my own place. And I paid the rent doing the only thing I knew how to do—stealing.”
“What kind of stealing?” she asked. She appeared captivated by his story.
It felt good to Sean to be able to share it with her. He’d never talked about his past so openly, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever put it into words chronologically before. As he spoke, some aspects of his own history made sense to him—like puzzle pieces sliding into place.
“I got hooked up with a pretty high-level group of criminals, and we mostly ripped off places that wouldn’t suffer too much from the loss. You know—no mom-and-pop places. We stuck to big chains, banks, casinos… places like that.”
“I see,” she said. “And you made a living like that?”
He nodded. He wasn’t proud of it, but he wanted to be honest.
“I did. For seven years… eighteen to twenty-five—the same age my mom was when she died. Then I got out and never looked back.”
“What happened?” she asked quietly. “Why’d you get out of it?”
Her eyes roved over his face. He remembered mentioning the explosion that had changed his life so dramatically to her, on the night of the reunion. He took a deep breath. He wanted to give her some details—just enough so that she would understand—but talking about the explosion was difficult. It brought up a visceral response in him that wasn’t pleasant, to say the least.
She seemed to guess what he was going through.
“If it’s too much to talk about… you don’t have to. Please,” she shook her head. “Forget I asked.”
“No,” he said. “I want you to know. It was just a routine job—routine for me, back then. A large bank, millions on the line that I was going to get a cut of. I was pretty low on the totem pole, but I got payouts that made the risk worth the reward. I was in charge of blowing up the safe. I had a background with explosives…”
He recalled the small handmade explosive device, and the way it had felt cool and heavy in his hands as he’d attached it to the safe doors.
“Something went wrong. To this day, I don’t know what. I was always so careful with my wiring, checking it over so many times before ever using a device. I must have been distracted that night as I was preparing or something. The device went off five minutes too early, and in the wrong direction. I lost consciousness and when I woke up, alarms were going off and I could barely breathe. I just knew I had to get out of there. I managed, somehow.”
He closed his eyes briefly and had a flashback of how it had felt to wake up to so much chaos and fear. The memory still gave him terrors at night, sometimes. He’d wake to drenched sheets and a pounding heart. He opened his eyes to dispel the flashback.
“I escaped by crawling down the block and then lighting a parked car on fire,” he explained. “I pretended I was injured in a crash. Gave a fake name and all that—I didn’t want to be
handcuffed to a bed when I woke up from surgery.
“The hospital bought it. I was treated and then recovered in Mexico. Lucky for me, the job had been so close to the border that that ended up being the closest hospital. When I came back to the States, I had a brand-new identity. I wasn’t Derek Bradshaw anymore.”
“You were Sean Macintyre,” Delaney said softly.
Sean nodded. “It was my mom’s maiden name. Macintyre. Kind of my little ode to her. She would’ve done well with a second chance at life, I think, if someone had given it to her.”
“Is that what you have?” Delaney asked. “A second chance at life?”
Sean finally lifted the mussel off of his plate. He tipped the meaty shellfish into his mouth and enjoyed the flavors while he thought over her question.
He sipped his wine.
Then, he spoke. “The word ‘life’ kind of puzzles me if I think real hard about it,” he said. “In some ways, I feel like I was born on that day that my device exploded.
“I woke up to smoke and this blaring alarm. I was lying there, and for the first time, I had a real choice to make. And I knew it. That’s the important part. I knew it. Before, I was making decisions on autopilot. I was just doing what I thought I had to do to survive. So, in some ways, I feel like my life started that day. This is the first real identity I’ve ever had, because I chose it for myself.”
She processed that for a minute while eating a mussel. Then, she looked at him and offered a shy smile.
“Has it stuck with you? That feeling of being aware of your choices?”
“Very much so,” he said.
“And you’re choosing to be here, with me?” she asked.
“I am,” he said. “And there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be.”
“I feel the same,” she said.
A beat of silence passed between them, and Sean felt so connected to her. It was as though the space between them was buzzing with their shared energy.
All of the distance he’d sensed earlier was gone.
“Thanks…” she said after a moment. “Thanks for sharing all that with me. I know it wasn’t easy. I could see it in your expression.”
“You’re good at reading people,” Sean said.
She nodded. “People, and animals. They can’t say when they’re in pain, so I have to read their expressions and body language. I guess I’ve gotten sort of good at it over the years.”
“Maybe that’s why you’re such a successful vet,” he said.
“Maybe,” she said. “I think a lot of communication happens without words.”
He reached for an artichoke leaf and dipped it in the butter. He’d never thought about it before, but it struck him that she was right—and that was also something he liked about the woman across the table from him. Deep emotions didn’t scare her off. He felt he could truly be himself around her.
She spoke again, and her voice was gentle and sweet.
“I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit,” she said. “I think you were more aware, back in high school, than you remember. Memory can be funny like that, you know. It takes two sometimes to clear away the distortions. You remember being trapped in the trance of your upbringing, but I remember that you were more aware than any of the other kids at Pepper Ridge High. When I looked at you, I just had a feeling that you ran deeper than everyone else.”
“Really?” Sean said. Her memory astounded him.
She nodded. “Really,” she said. “You were special. There was something about you…”
He lifted one side of his mouth in a crooked grin. “Thanks. That means a lot to me.”
He exhaled and let some of the tension he’d been holding fall away. He felt so good about the way Delaney had reacted to his criminal past. It was a huge relief to know he could be honest with her, and she wouldn’t turn away and run for the hills.
“I guess I’ve been talking your ear off about me,” he said. “How about you? Tell me about that mamma of yours. She still live around here?”
Delaney’s features relaxed, too. She seemed happy to be on to a lighter topic.
“Oh my goodness gracious, these are good,” she said, as she polished off another mussel. And then, “No, she went off to sunnier pastures. Took my dad with her. Now, they spend their days poolside.”
“Sunnier than Texas?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “The sunniest. Arizona! I go visit them a few times a year, and in the summertime, I swear I almost get heatstroke, it’s so darn hot! Good thing they’ve got a big pool. I jump right on a float and don’t get off until it’s time to leave. My parents even eat in the pool. Mom has this little tray table…”
She chattered on about her parents’ setup in Arizona, and Sean felt light and happy as he listened. He laughed along with her as she described the retirement community that her parents lived in, complete with quirky nudist neighbors and an alpaca petting zoo.
As Delaney was describing the community’s welcome center, complete with a resident chihuahua that dressed in pink sunglasses, the waiter brought over two plates of choice lamb sirloin in a cabernet demi-glace, with little sides of herby mashed potatoes and a vegetable medley.
Sean ate slowly. The food was delicious, and he wanted to savor every bite. More than that, he wanted to savor Delaney’s presence.
He didn’t want the evening to ever end.
Chapter 10
Delaney
Delaney didn’t want her date with Sean to end.
She loved the way his arm felt, draped over her shoulders as they strolled along the River Walk. The espresso that she’d sipped to accompany the chocolate torte for dessert had made her feel wide awake. It felt so right to walk hip-to-hip with Sean, slowly strolling along the walkway along with other couples enjoying a Saturday evening together.
They paused to take in a particularly beautiful view of lights reflecting across the San Antonio River, and Delaney thought of the item in her purse.
Should she show it to Sean?
Was now the right moment?
She eyed him.
He was looking out at the water.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said. “I didn’t know anything could beat the sunsets out on my ranch, but I gotta say, this might be giving those sunsets a run for their money.”
Delaney murmured an agreement. She reached up and laced her fingers through Sean’s.
It had been so exciting when he’d looped his arm over her shoulders. Now, the secure weight of his arm felt so natural, as though they walked like this every evening. She stroked his fingers with a light touch, sensing the communication that seemed to flow so easily between them. He was happy. Content. Just like she was.
What more could I ever ask for, than to stand right here with this amazing man? she wondered.
His fingers were long, slightly rough from hard work. His palm felt warm to the touch. She liked the way he intertwined his fingers with hers.
With just the slightest movement, she turned her head to the side and up, so that it was tilted toward him. Thoughts stopped flitting through her mind. The only thing she was aware of was the heat of his body, the warmth of his hand against hers, and the way her heart beat in her chest, tapping out a rhythm of pure desire.
She felt him lean down. She closed her eyes.
As his lips touched hers, she felt more heat emanate from him as he held her closer. A feeling of closeness and warmth blossomed in her chest as they kissed. She turned her body a little more so that she was facing him.
When they parted, she was breathless. It took some time before thoughts returned to her.
“Delaney…” Sean said. His deep voice was slightly roughened around the edges with raw desire. “Good Lord, woman… What you do to me.”
She tried to contain her giggle. It felt so good to have such a strong effect on him. Some laughter bubbled out.
“I’m serious,” he said. “I can’t get over it—how fortunate I am that you showed up on
my ranch that day.”
“Maybe it was inevitable…” she said.
She thought again of the item in her purse; the crane that she’d refolded was tucked safely between two pages of her day planner.
It struck her as more than a coincidence that she’d saved that one little paper crane, all those years. Yes, it was delicate, and the paper was lovely. But she knew that the real reason she’d never been able to throw it away was because of the way she felt about the man who had given it to her.
Now, here she was, standing next to that very man.
His name was different. His appearance was different. But he was the same.
“Maybe…” he said. “I like thinking about that… that we were destined to meet, somehow.”
His eyes roved the little row of restaurants along the Riverwalk.
“I know it’s late, but do you want to get another drink?” he asked. “I hate the thought of going home. I like being with you, Delaney.”
She opened her bag and felt around for the crane. Her fingers brushed the very tip of a wing, protruding from her planner. She pulled at it and then held it up for Sean to see.
Sean looked confused at first. He didn’t seem to recognize the crane. The dim glow of the streetlight above was very weak. Then, realization dawned on his features.
“Is that…?” he said.
She nodded. “The origami crane you gave me,” she finished for him.
“You kept it?” he asked. He sounded truly bewildered.
“Mhmm,” she said. She handed it to him. “You gave it to me in art class, remember?”
He touched the thin paper with reverence. “I do,” he said.
“Open it up,” she suggested.
He started to unfold the pointed wings and then the body of the crane.
She hoped that he’d be able to read her writing, in the dim light of the streetlamp.
She waited as he read. Sean had asked her out to the prom, and finally, though it was fifteen years later, she was able to respond. She’d written “yes,” right below his words.
“Yes?” he said, looking up from the note.