28. Blake
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
blake
D ELANEY’S PARENTS ASKED TO talk to her privately for a few minutes after dinner, and given how her mom spoke to her and about her, I was reluctant to walk away. But Delaney gave me a nod of reassurance, and then another when I still hesitated, so I strode out the front door to wait for her in the driveway.
I felt uneasy. And it had nothing to do with the closeness to the ocean or the gray clouds rolling in from over the sea. For once, my mind wasn’t dragged into the past. Instead, it was wholly present and completely focused on Delaney.
Her expression at dinner was indescribable, but it infused hope in me all the same. There was something there, something real, when I’d spoken the truth aloud for the first time. I could have sworn I saw it. And God , it felt good.
As far as her parents went, it was hard to tell for certain where we landed with them. I thought I’d maybe made an impression, but then again, I didn’t know the Delacroix family as well as she did. I only knew Delaney. Was only really concerned about Delaney. How she was feeling. What she thought about everything I’d said.
I felt her presence and heard her footsteps leaving the house even before I heard her voice.
“Blake.”
She said my name on a shaky exhale.
I turned to face her. God, she was gorgeous. Every day, she was gorgeous, but tonight, she had a blue, flowy blouse on that made her look like a summer angel. It brought out the color in her eyes and the sparkle of the ring on her finger. “Lane. Is everything okay?”
She nodded, pressing her lips together and stopping about a foot away from me.
“I owe you,” she said. “For everything. Everything about tonight.”
I shook my head, tired of this owing me shit. Couldn’t she see that this wasn’t transactional for me? She meant the world to me, and I’d always do anything and everything that I could for her. “How many times do I have to tell you? You don’t owe me anything.”
“But that was…” She sighed and threw up her hands. “You were right.”
That hadn’t been what I’d expected her to say. “I was right?”
Her lips twitched. “Don’t make me say it again.”
“Oh, I definitely want to hear you say it again,” I said, the corner of my mouth tugging upward. “I was what , Delaney?”
She flicked her eyes up in mock annoyance. “Right. You were right.”
I lifted a brow. “About what?”
“About how convincing you could be.” She bit down on her lip, avoiding looking directly at me. “That you would convince them. At least, I’m pretty sure you did. Even though my mom says they still have to talk about it.”
My smile faltered despite the good news.
“It was…really convincing, Blake,” she breathed, so soft that her voice almost got carried away in the wind. “That story that you told. With the ring.”
Sighing, I raked a hand through my hair.
So she still thought it was just a story.
Fuck if I wasn’t done with the pretense.
“There’s a reason for that.”
“A reason?” she repeated.
“For why it was convincing.”
Because it was all true.
Delaney blinked at me like she couldn’t comprehend what I was implying. Like those exact puzzle pieces just didn’t fit together. As though me being in love with her for more than a decade was not something she had ever considered possible. Still didn’t consider possible.
“What’s the reason, Blake?” she whispered, almost like she was afraid of the answer.
Little pieces of my heart were chipping away, falling to the pit of my stomach.
How could she still not see things for what they really were?
I truly thought that she’d been starting to realize the extent of our relationship, how it had always been more than we pretended it was. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it would always be something that only I saw.
“I don’t understand how it’s not obvious.” I looked down at my feet, shook my head, and sighed. “But of course it isn’t obvious to you. Of course you can’t imagine a world where maybe we’ve always been so much more than friends, Lane.”
Delaney remained quiet, and I was terrified of what expression I would find on her face when I looked back at her. So I glanced up at the gray sky instead, wondering if it was going to open up on us. The mood felt right.
Her silence haunted me. But it was my fault. A relationship—a real relationship—was something she had never wanted, and after years of considering that and keeping all my feelings to myself, I’d spilled them all out onto the dinner table. In front of her parents. On a night where she was already emotional and nervous.
“ Always , Blake?” she finally breathed, the words coated in disbelief. “Why are you saying it like that? How was I supposed to have known?”
I risked a glance at her, and the mix of pain and shock on her face gutted me.
She was right. For years, I’d purposefully made sure it wasn’t obvious. But considering everything that had happened between us recently, I guess I’d been foolishly hoping for a reaction that didn’t have so much doubt in it.
“I told you that we needed my parents to believe this was more than just an elopement, that it wasn’t something sudden, and you told me you were going to convince them, Blake. What was I supposed to think? How was I supposed to know that—” She choked on the final words, almost like she couldn’t get herself to say “ you’ve really been in love with me all this time .” Delaney covered her mouth with a shaky hand, and I’d never felt a stab to the chest quite like this one.
No wonder she thought it was just a story.
No wonder she’d looked at me at the dinner table like that when I was telling it.
I’d thought maybe there was hope and love and light in her eyes, but she’d just been playing along.
And now I… fuck .
“Never mind, Lane.” I swallowed past the emotion clogging my throat. “It’s fine, okay? Don’t worry about it.”
I stepped back, putting distance between us, but Delaney stepped forward, chasing me.
“No, Blake. Listen?—”
“Seriously, it’s okay.”
I turned around, ready to get in the car and put this painful moment behind me.
“ Blake .”
I stopped in my tracks, closing my eyes. The way she said my name was sharper this time, and I couldn’t really blame her for being mad. I’d pushed things too far. The difference between reality and fiction had blurred too much, had gotten too jumbled, and it was my fault.
“Laney!” Bryan’s voice rang out, coming from the front steps. I looked back to see him waving her over.
“One sec, Bry!” she called before I heard her footsteps following me instead of going to him.
“Go be with your brother, Lane.” I shook my head. “You don’t get to see him enough, and I know how hard that is for you. I don’t mind waiting if you want to spend more time with him. I’ll be in the car.”
I turned to get behind the wheel, feeling Delaney’s gaze hot on my neck. As soon as I shut the door, she turned and walked toward her brother.
Tipping my head back, I closed my eyes and tried to calm the chaos in my brain. I couldn’t be entirely sure of how much time passed, but it wasn’t long before I heard the door open and smelled the sweetness of Delaney’s perfume. Or maybe it was just her fucking essence. I wasn’t sure. I’d never actually seen Delaney put on perfume. I just knew she smelled like that. It was mind-boggling and exquisite, and I didn’t know how I would ever manage to be less addicted to it and her.
I opened my eyes to find hers on me. It was a mix between a glare and a stare, and I didn’t know what to make of it. So I pressed my lips together and started the car.
The ride home began with a quiet roar. The silence and unease was deafening. The hum of the car and the pattering of rain as it began to fall—those were the only sounds until Delaney suddenly broke through the tension.
“I don’t understand how I was supposed to know,” she said, her voice small but hard. “I don’t know how it was supposed to be obvious that you always ?—”
She clamped her lips together, still unable to say it.
That wasn’t exactly a good sign for me.
“I know.” I tried to focus on the road, but fuck, it was hard. “And I’m sorry,” I added, despite badly wanting to clarify whether she was just stunned by how long I’d loved her or if she truly hadn’t seen my feelings for what they were at all, even in the last couple of weeks. But all I did was try to reassure her by saying, “It’s okay, Lane.”
“But—”
“We can just forget about it. Really.”
I hadn’t made it this far just to lose her because I’d said too much.
“You want to forget about it?” she echoed.
The stark emotion in her voice remained unnamed.
“That might be for the best,” I cemented, keeping my eyes on the highway.
It actually sounded like the worst.
A roll of distant thunder filled the silence that followed. Delaney didn’t say anything else, and I didn’t dare open my mouth again. Not right now, not when I was feeling too many things so intensely.
Neither of us spoke again until we were almost home, and then all Delaney said was, “Thank you for coming with me tonight.”
“You’re welcome.” I dared to look at her for the first time since we’d pulled out of her parents’ driveway, and the unreadable look on her face was almost too much for me to bear. I needed a fucking minute to get a grip and reassess all of this. So I took a breath and said, “I think I’ll head to the gym. Get a quick workout in before the workweek.”
Delaney didn’t look too happy about that, but I couldn’t figure out why. She pressed her lips together and remained silent for a moment before giving a curt nod.
Her response made me hesitate, but fuck, I knew I needed to work out some of my pent-up emotions so I didn’t do something else I regretted tonight.
Delaney opened the car door, and she had one foot out of it when I grabbed her wrist to stall her. Feeling her soft skin beneath my fingertips made my heart burn up.
“Text me when you get into the apartment, okay?”
She glanced back at me, her eyes finding mine, making it momentarily hard to breathe. She looked like she might say something but then shook her head and turned away.
“Okay.”
And then she was gone.
I watched her walk away. Every step she took stomped on my heart a little bit.
Once she disappeared into the elevator, I grabbed my phone and texted Noah. I wasn’t sure if he would be available, but I wouldn’t mind the company. And the distraction from my own fucking head.
By the time I’d shot him a text and gotten a reply that he’d meet me at the gym, Delaney had messaged that she’d made it upstairs. So I took off and thanked God I kept an extra gym bag in my trunk for emergencies like this.
Somehow, Noah showed up only about twenty minutes after I did, and I was grateful because even though I’d been destroying the same punching bag until I had sweat dripping down my temples, the gym was empty except for the owner, Zach, and being alone with my thoughts wasn’t helping my fucking headspace right now.
“What’s going on?” Noah burst through the doors, panting as though he’d run here.
“Nothing.” My glove connected with the bag, and the chains rattled above it. Noah lifted a brow at me but seemed to understand. He threw his stuff down and then got ready in silence before joining me at the bag next to mine. He gave me a look, which I understood.
He was here.
When I was ready to talk, he’d listen.
Until then, he’d be waiting.
He worked on some of his footwork and approaches while I continued to take my frustration out on the swinging bag. When Zach noticed that Noah had shown up, he swung by to let us know that he wanted to head home because of the incoming storm but tossed us a set of keys to say we could lock up when we were done.
I knew Zach pretty well by this point, but Noah’s presence always helped with shit like this. And this time, I wasn’t complaining. I wasn’t ready to go home yet and face reality.
Once Zach was gone, I sighed and turned to Noah. “I think I fucked something up with Delaney.”
Noah cocked his head to the side, observing me. I could tell he wanted to say, “ Already? ” but kept his lips sealed. Instead, he adjusted the straps on his gloves until they were just right and then turned to face me straight-on.
“Fine.” He sighed and threw up his hands. “You can punch me in the face. I’ll tell Gemma it was for a good cause.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t want to punch you in the face. I wouldn’t mind if you punched me in the face, though. Knock some fucking sense into me.”
Noah sighed. “You wanna tell me what you did?”
“The marriage isn’t real,” I blurted, and Christ, saying that aloud really fucking hurt. But at the same time, it felt so good to get off my chest.
“What?” Noah frowned. “You’re not married?”
“No. We are, just…it’s complicated.”
“I see.”
He didn’t really see.
“It’s a convenience thing,” I tried to explain. “For her inheritance.”
I didn’t really have it in me to go down the long rabbit hole of our situation. Hopefully, that would suffice.
Noah’s brows shot up as more understanding washed over him. “A convenience thing,” he repeated. “And you’ve just, what, been pretending to be in love with her while actually being in love with her and hoping she doesn’t notice?”
I glared at him, annoyed at how ridiculous it sounded when he put it that way.
But I couldn’t really be mad, considering he wasn’t wrong .
“Yeah, that was pretty much the plan. Until tonight. When we had dinner at her parents’ house,” I said before turning back to the bag and serving it a right hook.
“I take it dinner went well,” Noah said dryly.
A dry laugh slipped out of me. “Her parents aren’t…entirely supportive of us. With the elopement and everything. Didn’t believe any of it was real, so I tried to tell them the truth.”
“Like the real truth?”
“Yeah, the real truth.”
“I take it that was what didn’t go well?”
“I think it went well with her parents.” I threw another punch. “But Delaney…I don’t think she ever expected to hear me say what I did, and I think I made her uncomfortable, which I’d been trying so goddamn hard not to do this entire time. I’ve been so careful, man. Because I am well aware that I want her in a way that she might not be ready for. Might not ever be ready for.”
“For fuck’s sake, you didn’t make me uncomfortable.”
The sound of Delaney’s voice—her stilted breathing and forceful words—caused me to whirl around with my heart in my throat.
She stood there, the front door to the gym closing behind her, looking like she’d run through the rain to get here. It pounded harder against the pavement outside, a depressing backdrop for the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen and ever known. The damp ends of her hair were dripping onto my old U of M alumni shirt. It was half-soaked, sticking to her skin. Her chest heaved, her eyes bright as she stared me down.
“Delaney… God , Lane, did you walk here?” I scanned her from top to bottom, inspecting every inch of her to make sure nothing was wrong. “Are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay!” she cried, and alarm spiked through me. I lurched toward her, but she put a hand out. “No, stop.”
I stopped, even though it felt wrong. So, so wrong. “Lane?—”
“Just stop and let me talk. Without interrupting me and without telling me it’s fine and assuming what I’m going to say before I say it,” she pleaded before inhaling deeply. “Christ, Blake, I know I told you earlier that you were right, but you’re not right about everything. Okay? Because I don’t think we should just forget about this. I don’t think that would be for the best.”
My jaw dropped; my heart pounded. I did as she asked. I was quiet, waiting for her to go on, and every second that passed was torture. It felt like my heart was in a vise, and I needed her to release the tension pushing in on me from all sides.
“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said finally. Forcefully. It should make me feel better, but relief was hard to come by when she looked at me like that. “You’ve never once made me uncomfortable. In fact, I’m so unbelievably comfortable with you I never ever want to not be with you. And I’m only pissed because I was trying to tell you that, but you wouldn’t let me. I was confused, Blake. You made me think that you’d say anything to convince my parents, so I didn’t know what to believe at first. And just because I didn’t immediately know how to put my feelings into words after learning the truth about everything you’ve been keeping from me doesn’t mean I don’t have things I want you to know, too.”
Pain leaked from her eyes on the last words, and I felt both elated and like something had crumbled into pieces inside me.
“I thought you?—”
“I know what you thought, but you were wrong, Blake.”
My lips parted, but words didn’t come out.
I’d never experienced such happiness and such guilt at the same time.
“Yes,” she emphasized, seeing my expression. “For once in your life, you were wrong, Dr. London.”
Noah chuckled at that, and I shot him a glare. “Shut up.”
“What?” He shrugged. “I like her.”
“I’m going to punch you in the face after all.” I sighed before looking back at my wife. “Delaney?—”
“No, I’m not done talking,” she interrupted, putting her hands on her hips. Her expression grew twisted, and I could feel the choked emotion in her voice. “Blake, do you…”
She had to pause, gasping for a breath as a shiver racked through her as she stood there in soaking clothes, and my limbs shook, too, needing to go to her.
“ Please , Lane,” I whispered, hoping she’d understand. “Let me?—”
But she shook her head and cut me off, speaking in a tortured whisper back.
“Do you even know?” I watched her throat work as she swallowed. “Do you even know how frustrating it is to be trying to tell someone you love them and they act like they don’t want to hear it?”
“ What ?” I breathed, not quite sure I’d heard her right.
I felt dizzy, the gym spinning around me while Delaney’s face stayed still. She was the constant in my life. And I never dared to imagine?—
“Well, I think that’s my cue,” Noah said before shuffling off, grabbing his gear, and slipping out the front door, throwing me a smirk and a wink before leaving me and Delaney alone.
“Please just talk to me,” she said, her voice suddenly small. But it echoed in the empty gym anyway, reverberating through my body. “Was it really the truth? What you said to my parents?”
I didn’t know how to simply continue our conversation after she’d just said what she said. And I really needed to make sure I hadn’t just made it up, fabricated her saying those words. Those perfect, magical, goddamn words.
“Delaney, did you just say?—”
“Answer the question first. Please, I just need to hear you say it.”
She was killing me. Christ, she was killing me. But I owed her at least this much. Fuck, I owed her the whole world.
“Every word.” I held her gaze, that gorgeous sapphire gaze. “Every word was true.”
Her breath visibly hitched. “Always? From the very beginning?”
I nodded slowly. “From the very beginning, Lane.”
She stared, taking that in. Rain began pelting against the front windows of the gym behind Delaney as the moment stretched between us. She was making me suffer, and I deserved it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t dying inside as I watched her fully comprehend the truth.
She held up her hand. “The ring?”
“Has always been for you.”
“Blake.” Her brows furrowed adorably as she walked forward with determination in her step, and I thanked God for every step she took closer to me. And I kept being grateful, even when she reached out to give me a little shove. I took the opportunity to keep her close, grabbing her by the wrist as soon as her hand hit my chest, tugging her into me. Her wet clothes against my bare skin never felt so good. Fuck, I loved this woman. Even when she was mad at me. Even when neither of us knew what the hell was going on.
“Why?” she cried, not resisting but pounding her free fist on my chest. “Why have I never known? Why the hell didn’t I know?”
“Because you never wanted that.” I spoke softly, my chest feeling like it was cracking open. “You had no interest in dating or marriage, and I wanted to respect that. You grew up never getting to experience life the way you wanted, and the last thing I ever wanted to do was take that away from you.”
Her lashes fluttered as she looked at me without responding, her chest rising and falling against mine, in time with mine. Thunder clapped outside, but it was nothing compared to the resounding roar of my pulse in my ears, thumping loudly.
“Why do you think I turned down the attending position at Mayo and moved away when I found out you were engaged, Lane?” I added, my voice full of gravel and emotions as I brushed her damp hair out of her face. “Why do you think that hurt so hard? I spent years keeping my distance because I thought you didn’t want to settle down and then found out you were marrying some guy who you barely even knew, and it fucking killed me. I couldn’t stay and watch you attach yourself to someone who wasn’t me. I just couldn’t do it.”
Delaney gasped like she’d never in her wildest dreams imagined that her engagement might have hurt me. Like she was horrified that it had. She blinked at me, those long, wet lashes taunting me as her lips parted. I counted the number of heartbeats until she responded.
“Blake…I’m sorry.” Her expression crumbled, and I knew she meant every word. “I’m so sorry. It wasn’t real. It was never real.”
“I know that now, baby.” I released her wrist and cupped her face with both hands. My gaze dropped to her lips because hell, I wanted to kiss her. Fuck , I wanted that so bad, but I also wanted other things. Wanted to know other things, wanted to hear other things. “But why didn’t you ask me ? You said you’d always known I would marry you. You should have come to me from the beginning.”
She bit down on her lip, chewing on it for a moment before admitting, “Because I think I always knew.”
Tears had welled along her lash line, slowly leaking down her cheeks. I brushed them away with my thumbs. “Knew what, sweetheart?”
“That it was inevitable what it would do to me to be married to you. And I didn’t know…I didn’t know how you felt. I was scared, okay? Scared to feel something real when I’d run away from it for so long.”
Now I knew how she felt earlier, when she’d learned a new reality about us. And I understood why that had knocked the wind out of her to the point where she hadn’t known what to say right away. Because I was speechless. A part of Delaney had always known we were inevitable? Fucking speechless.
But I did have one question. One question that everything depended on.
“Are you still scared?”
“A little.” She exhaled a shaky breath. “It’s not you. It’s them. It’s reframing what family and love means and seeing it through your eyes. It’s just new for me, Blake. But today, I saw what it might look like.”
“I don’t blame you for being scared, Lane. We can take this one step at a time, okay?” I could do slow. As long as we were on the same page about the direction we were moving, I could do slow. “Let me keep showing you what love means, what love is. Let me prove to you that I can give you all of it, baby.”
“I want that,” she whispered, and hearing her agree so simply made me feel like I was soaring. “As long as you know this—me and you and this marriage—is real. It might be unconventional, but this is real for me.”
Holy hell.
Real. This was real. We were real.
Delaney London. Delaney London. Delaney London.
“Say that again,” I begged as my hands began to move, needing to feel every bit of her, assure myself that she wasn’t just a figment of my imagination and she was here in the flesh, saying all the things I’d always wanted her to say. “I want to hear it. I’m sorry you felt like I didn’t earlier. I’m so sorry. I want to hear everything you have to say. Everything. Say it, Lane. Please.”
My thumbs brushed over her mouth, her soft lips, wanting to feel the words as she spoke them.
“This is real, Blake.” More tears lined her lashes, making them glisten. “I love you, and this is real.”
Nothing in this world had ever felt as good as the shape of Delaney’s lips saying I love you.
“Oh my God,” I groaned, dropping my forehead to hers and bracing myself for an explosion. Because my heart was on the brink of one. Bending down, I scooped my hands beneath her legs, lifting her into my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist, clinging to me, and I felt her tears roll down my cheeks. “I love you, too. Baby, I have loved you since the very moment you came into my life. It’s unbelievable how ingrained you are in me. You are everything to me, Lane. Absolutely fucking everything.”
Delaney nodded, accepting my words as the truth, her forehead pressing against mine as we stayed locked together.
“You moved here because you couldn’t watch me marry someone else,” she whispered, her voice wavering through gasping breaths, “but you didn’t realize I’ve only ever been attached to you, Blake. I’ve only ever been drawn to you, only want to be with you, only ever want to call you on a hard day, only look for you in a crowd. It’s no wonder I spotted you so easily that day in the SCMC lobby. I just didn’t realize…for so long, I didn’t fully realize what that meant.”
Her confession stunned me into silence. She exhaled, and I inhaled her breaths, if only to collect that much more of her.
“Why do you think I moved to Boston?” Delaney tipped her head, and her lips grazed mine as she spoke things that made my head spin faster, my heart beat louder, even louder than the storm crescendoing outside. “There were reasons. So many reasons I told myself. Reasons I told you. But there was only ever one real one. You. It’s because of you, Blake. It’s because I didn’t know how to be in a place where you weren’t. It’s because the only heart I’ve ever been attached to is yours.”
“Fuck, Delaney.” I tightened my grip on her, reeling from her words. “I don’t want to interrupt you if there’s more you want to say, but I really fucking need to kiss you. Tell me I can kiss you now, baby.”
She nodded, and my mouth captured hers in seconds. Goddamn, this mouth. This mouth and all the things it had just said. It tasted so fucking good. Those words tasted so good. She tasted so good—unbelievably real and perfect and good . Fuck, I’d never get over it—never get over her. This kiss was the kiss I’d always wanted, and it was better than I ever could have imagined.
Delaney moaned, and my whole body, my whole being, was at her command.
“The answer is always going to be yes,” she whispered against my lips. “For you, it’s always yes.”
Every time she opened her mouth, she opened my world just a little bit more. I didn’t know existing could feel like this until right in this moment.
“Only for me, right?” I gasped, not needing the reassurance but wanting to hear it anyway.
“Only for you,” she murmured before I slanted my lips over hers again and got lost in the feel of them. My tongue dove into her mouth, tasting and exploring and never wanting to come up for air. Especially not when she was kissing me back in the exact same, greedy way—like she would never get enough.
But then her body started writhing against mine as I held her, and I knew she needed more. Fuck, I needed more.
“And what if it’s not enough right now for the way I need you?” I nipped at her lip, tugging on it because I couldn’t keep away from the feel of her mouth for long. “What will the answer be if I ask for more? Will that be a yes, too?”
She whimpered. And then, “Always.”
“Thank God, Lane. Because fuck , I want you right now in ways I can’t even describe.”
A second later, Delaney whispered words I should have expected in my ear.
“Then put me out of my goddamn misery and take me.”