by Tara Leigh
Delaney was the cloud.
Caleb’s death had nearly killed me. But Delaney gone…that would ruin me.
How could she do this? How had I gotten so wrapped around her damned finger that the thought of being without her set my soul on fire?
I’d let my guard down. I’d trusted Delaney with every piece of me, even the ones I despised. And she’d lied to me in return.
All I wanted to do was move past what I’d done, and now I would be reminded of it every time I looked into Delaney’s eyes. Because she’d done the same thing.
She killed. She ran. She lied.
Delaney shouldered crushing guilt and self-hatred every goddamn day. Just like I did.
The girl I’d put on a pedestal didn’t belong on one. She should have been standing with me toe-to-toe. Trusting me with her deepest secrets, as I’d trusted her with mine.
After all this time looking up at her, could I look down? Could I get past Delaney’s flaws? Could I reconcile who I thought she was—who I fell for—with this new reality?
Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
Even though my love for Delaney Fraser flowed through my veins with every caged beat of my heart, it was chased with the bone-deep knowledge that I didn’t know her at all.
We were on a goddamn merry-go-round of secrets and lies. Bliss and betrayal. Fuck-ups and forgiveness.
Delaney had forgiven me my sins without question. But I was drowning in hers. Maybe that made me a selfish bastard.
But I wanted off.
Trudging down the hall, I felt like a thousand-pound bag of dog shit on a hot summer day. Dirty. So fucking dirty.
Disappointment and disgust brewed in my gut, polluting my lungs, hurting my chest. I should have known. Should have known from the first moment at Travis’s house when Delaney looked at me.
Delaney knew me. And I’d let her in. Told her everything. And she didn’t run away. She had stayed.
I’d been so fucking stupid.
Yeah, Delaney knew me all right. Because she was me.
But I didn’t know her at all.
She was living in a web of lies. Lies she was still spinning. How could I be with someone who mirrored the worst choice I’d ever made?
“Two wrongs don’t make a right” was one of my mother’s favorite sayings.
In the elevator, I scoffed. Then why the fuck had the past few months with Delaney felt so right?
She had made me feel again. Crave the future I saw in those gorgeous whorls of blue and green, her eyes shining like a beacon within that angelic face.
I pulled up short just as I set foot outside, and it wasn’t because of the flash of a dozen cell phone cameras documenting my departure.
I fucking loved her. I loved Delaney Fraser.
And she loved me.
Fuck.
Dizziness assaulted my mind, the feeling that Delaney was just another penalty for what I’d done swirling right along with it. I pressed a hand to my stomach, feeling gutted.
Slipping back into the car parked just a few feet away from the hotel’s entrance, I swiped a hand over my mouth as if I could erase the bitterness filling it. Piper was still in the backseat, thumbs and eyes glued to her iPhone.
I dropped into the cool leather seat, feeling shredded by Delaney’s betrayal. Piper glanced up, a sleek eyebrow arching as she set her phone aside. “I take it congratulations aren’t in order?”
A sour laugh gurgled from my throat, and I glanced out of the window, my eyes immediately going to the highest story. Even now, all I wanted to do was go back to Delaney, take her in my arms and devour her until I’d forgotten everything she’d just said. She had told me to live in my truth, to face everything and everyone I’d once run from. What a crock of shit.
Now I was running from her.
I turned away from the window, glaring at Piper. “There any whiskey in this car?”
Delaney
I didn’t leave the room. I couldn’t. Instead, I spent the rest of the night with my face burrowed beneath covers that still smelled of Shane. Taking deep, longing breaths. Desperately hoping he would come back. Knowing he wouldn’t.
It wasn’t until the sun began to creep above the horizon, turning the hulking silhouettes of the buildings surrounding the hotel into oversized, pockmarked gray tombstones, that sleep finally came. I fell into its embrace, grateful for a respite from the pain splitting me in two. But even then, I couldn’t quite escape. It throbbed in the emptiness of my lungs, and I kept sputtering awake, trying to catch a breath.
As I lay there panting, scared to go back to sleep, scared to fully wake up, I heard a noise that sounded like the click of a key-card reader. I bolted upright. “Shane,” I called out, my tone blatantly hopeful.
Only silence answered back.
Leaving the empty bed to investigate, I saw an innocuous envelope pushing crookedly beneath the door. My full name was clearly printed across the middle, the return address still obscured. I peered through the keyhole in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the delivery person, but I saw no one. Whoever had pushed it beneath the door was gone.
Dread unspooling in my stomach, I tugged at its edge, the words in the upper-left corner sliding into view. TRAVIS TAGGERT & ASSOCIATES.
A soft whimper escaped my lips as I extracted the crisply folded stationery through the unsealed back flap. As I unfolded the letter, pulse racing, blood buzzing in my ears, a cashier’s check fell out, fluttering slowly to the carpet before landing, faceup, at my bare feet. Containing more zeroes than I’d ever imagined on a check with my name on it.
I remained standing, still and quiet, as I read the short paragraph.
The enclosed check contains all monies owed to Delaney Fraser, including a performance bonus. The nondisclosure agreement remains in effect. No further contact with the Client is necessary. Thank you for your service.
It was unsigned.
Pain assaulted my senses, the attacking shards so razor-sharp I looked down, expecting my skin to be in ribbons. Performance bonus? Thank you for your service?
I shuddered, staring at the words on the crisp linen page until they blurred, then crushing the paper into a ball and throwing it across the room. It should have made a sound as loud as a meteor hitting the earth. It should have exploded like a grenade, shattering the windows and turning the suite into a fiery, gaping hole.
It did neither of those things.
The wrinkled parchment ball didn’t travel very far, and it landed softly. Harmlessly. With absolutely no correlation to the damage it had done to my heart.
Tears came, and they were not nearly as quiet. Racking sobs burst from my spasming rib cage, scraping my throat and shattering the silence. I pulled my knees into my chest, rocking back and forth as hot tears streaked down my face. They tasted bitter rather than salty, and I rubbed at them with a sleeve of my terry-cloth robe.
In an angry haze, I fought an urge to tear up the check. The words in the accompanying note might have been venomous, but I’d sure as hell earned the obscene amount staring at me. Not on my back, but with my heart.
Surely Shane had taken the vital organ with him. I felt so empty, completely hollow. And yet I was still breathing, still crying.
Whoever said “the truth shall set you free” had never been dumped by the love of their life because of it.
I thought I would feel better after being honest with Shane, even if he decided to walk away. Especially since a part of me had wanted him to walk away, wanted to keep him out of my contamination zone.
But I’d thought wrong. Big-time.
Shane’s absence had left a black hole in the space my heart had been, and I was being pulled into the void.
Foolishly, I’d hoped that he could have looked past that awful link between us. That he could forgive me. But I should have known better.
My eyes were red and puffy as I stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I couldn’t stay here anymore. Not with the smell of Shane still clinging to the pillows. Maid s
ervice couldn’t remove the knowledge that Shane and I had once lain together on that bed, finding rapture in each other’s arms.
I’d wiped it all away with a few words. Words that had been clogging my throat for three years. A truth that had pushed between us like an electrified fence, miles of barbed wire heaped on top.
In a frenzy, I emptied tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner into my hair and lathered my body with the contents of another bottle. The scents clashed with each other, the combination jarring. Lemon and jasmine and vanilla. I nearly gagged.
Without a stylist, or hair and makeup people fussing over me, I stumbled out of the hotel in still-damp hair, wearing my oldest, most ragged pair of jeans and a stained T-shirt that I’d meant to throw out ages ago. I didn’t have many clothes from my old life, and I couldn’t stomach wearing something Shane had paid for. Ridiculous, I knew, since the check in my purse basically proved that he’d paid for me.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Delaney
An Uber took me to a cemetery in my hometown, just an hour away. Since my mother’s death, there had been a constant ache within my chest, a heaviness that wouldn’t allow my lungs to expand fully. I had been slowly suffocating, weighed down by a truth I couldn’t speak.
And then I’d met Shane. Suddenly I could breathe again. I could feel again. I could cry again.
But today was different. I wasn’t crying just because of Shane. My tears were for everything I’d kept bottled up for so long.
My mother’s death.
My father’s insistence on taking the blame.
The lives that had been shattered because, for a split second, my phone was more important than the world beyond my windshield.
I cried for the college coed who’d foolishly thought she had her future all mapped out.
I cried for Shane. For the little boy he once was, and the man he’d become.
I cried for the connection we shared. The couple we’d been for just a little while. Two people with one heart, who had found themselves in each other. Or so I’d thought. And I cried for myself. Because my heart, whatever part of it remained, didn’t feel like it would ever be whole again.
I fisted my hands at my sides, nails leaving half-moon imprints in my palms. No. No—I wouldn’t do that again. I was done letting someone else dictate what I would say. Where I should go. What I should think. How I should feel.
Who I would love.
One day my heart would be whole again. One day I would love again.
Someone who loved me back just as fiercely. Someone who would fight for me, who would fight alongside me.
The sun broke through a narrow gap in the clouds, slanting across my face, drying my tears. The headstone at my back warmed, the heat spreading along my skin, radiating through my chest. I pulled away, facing the stone, which was now reflecting the sunshine, glowing almost white. I looked around, expecting the neighboring markers to look the same. But no, I was surrounded by a sea of gray. I swallowed, tracing my mother’s name with my fingertips. Feeling her presence.
The sun slipped back behind the clouds, the headstone fading back into gray. But for just a moment, the inscription brightened, one last pulse of warmth lighting up the epitaph I’d been too devastated to notice.
LOVE HAS NO ENDING.
I pressed my palms against the slab, felt the warmth draining from it even as I was filled with certainly that mother was still be there for me, no matter what. I spread out on the soft green grass, watching the clouds floating by. “Thanks, Mom,” I said softly.
The first moment I realized I loved Shane, a part of me had relaxed, loosening with relief. I had thought I’d crossed some kind of invisible finish line.
But what I hadn’t known then, not even a clue, was that I’d only been standing on the starting block. The real race, my race, was just beginning.
I’m not sure how much time passed. Ten minutes. An hour. Two. It didn’t matter. I knew what I needed to do. I’d known it for a while now. I was tired of lying. Tired of hiding. Tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t.
Three years ago, I did a bad thing. A very bad thing. And I was still stuck in that moment. Caught. I’d never be able to move forward until I faced it squarely. Admitted it, not just to Shane, but to those who had been too eager to accept my father’s explanation. After a few drinks, he’d gotten behind the wheel with his wife and daughter in the car. One lived, the other didn’t. And he was serving a fifteen-year sentence for the choice he made.
Except that he hadn’t been behind the wheel.
I was at fault, not him.
Whether Shane was by my side or not, I had to make things right.
Shane
Reluctantly, I opened one very bloodshot eye. Regretted it immediately.
My cell was ringing, loudly enough it was obviously nearby, but all I could see was the empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s lying on its side. Empty.
Daylight streamed into the room, no doubt because I’d forgotten to close the shades last night. The past days were a blur. What city was I in? I couldn’t remember. Reaching out for a pillow to cover my throbbing head, my fingers touched something hard.
The damned phone.
Against my better judgment—Who was I kidding? I’d thrown out anything resembling good judgment the second I’d walked away from Delaney—I answered it.
“Colin Fraser is being released tomorrow.” Gavin’s delivery was matter-of-fact.
“Great,” I croaked, trying to inject a note of enthusiasm into my hoarse voice. Had I been smoking, too? What other vices had I indulged in? I glanced down at my pants. Still on, zipper up. It was a relief. I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in kissing anyone other than Delaney, touching anyone but her. Although after a bottle of grain alcohol, what I did or thought was anyone’s guess.
“Did you hear me? I said Colin Fraser is being released. Tomorrow.”
Through a thick fog, the meaning behind his words finally made it through to my brain. “What? How the hell did that happen?”
“If you had taken my calls at any point during the past day, I would have told you that Delaney came to me with the truth of what really happened the night of the accident.”
Delaney was the driver.
“You got her a deal?”
“Actually, no. I told her you had requested I look into her father’s case. And since I was working with her father, I couldn’t take her case.”
“What the fuck, Gav? You didn’t help her?”
My brother snorted. “Unlike you, I didn’t leave her high and dry. I said I would get her a lawyer, a good one. I just needed a day.”
Still flinching from his barb, all the more painful because of its accuracy, I rolled onto my back and released a deep breath. “And?”
“And nothing. The girl walked right out of my office and into the Bronxville police station.”
“What?” I bolted upright, my brain banging painfully against my skull. “Where is she now? Did they arrest her?”
“No. The cops told her to come back with her lawyer.”
Thank God. “Then did you go with her?”
“Yes. Right after I sent a notice to the court terminating my relationship with Colin Fraser.”
“So, what happens now? Is she okay?”
“There was a bit of legal wrangling, but in the end, the cops didn’t want to have dirt on their faces. Turns out there was a red-light camera that caught the whole thing. They never checked it because Fraser confessed. Delaney has agreed to plead down to a misdemeanor. She’ll do community service, but no jail time.”
No jail time. I wouldn’t have to see my girl behind bars.
I considered Gavin’s news. Did it make a difference?
“Shane? You still there?”
A long breath shuddered out of me. “Yeah, I’m here.”
“She’s going to be there, waiting for him. Tomorrow morning.”
I grunted as a vision of Delaney, naked and beautiful, her lush body wrap
ped in a nearly translucent white sheet, flashed against the back of my eyelids.
“I looked at your tour schedule. You don’t have a show tonight.”
“You’re a master of subtlety, Gav.”
“Fine. Fuck subtlety. What happened between you two?”
I barked out a laugh, the sound reverberating painfully within my throbbing head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“I asked her to marry me.”
The silence on the other end of the phone was blissful. I closed my eyes, suspecting that of all the explanations Gavin could have imagined, a marriage proposal was possibly last on his list. “What happened after that?” he finally prompted.
I pressed my lips together. What would be the point? I’d screwed up my life a long time ago, and there was no use pretending otherwise. Delaney had fucked up, too. Big-time. But she was making amends, putting things right. Took me thirteen years to do what she was doing.
My hands fisted at my sides as my heart rattled around in my chest, all flimsy and cracking. I hated myself for being weak. For feeling. For loving. For hating.
I wanted to go back in time and do everything differently. Everything.
Because I would make the right choices, the smart choices. I wouldn’t destroy families. I wouldn’t hurt people.
I’d fall in love, and stay there.
“Shane.” My brother’s voice pulled me out of my roiling thoughts.
“Yeah. I’m here. But I gotta go.”
“Jesus Christ, Shane. That’s the best you can do—you gotta go?” I winced at his tone, but didn’t hang up. “You know what? You’re right. You do have to go. Get the fuck up, get in the shower, and go to Delaney.”
“You know what she’s done, Gavin. Same thing I’ve done. And she lied to me about it. You think we can be together? We can’t.” I reached for the empty bottle and threw it across the room. It didn’t even have the courtesy to break into a million jagged pieces, merely thudding against the wall and rolling, none the worse for wear, across the carpet. “Leave it alone, Gavin. Delaney deserves a chance to start fresh. Not sure I know how to do that—and if she does, I can’t be the one to get in her way.”