Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
DELILAH
The motel was called the Mountain View Inn, which was a lie.
The only view was a parking lot and a dumpster.
But it was cheap and it allowed dogs, so I didn’t complain when I showed up after one in the morning with red eyes and a German Shepherd mix who smelled like he’d been stress-shedding in a Honda for five hours.
“Rough night?” she’d asked, sliding a key card across the counter.
“Something like that.”
“Room 112. Checkout’s at eleven.” She’d glanced at Ruffy. “He housetrained?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Last dog we had chewed through the mattress. Had to charge the guy four hundred bucks.”
I’d promised Ruffy wouldn’t chew through anything, grabbed the key, and escaped to the room before she could ask any more questions.
I didn’t sleep. I tried. I lay on the scratchy bedspread and stared at the water stain on the ceiling while Ruffy curled up at my feet. Every time I closed my eyes I saw that photo. Mia Monroe’s arms around Levi. His hand on her back. The headline that called her his “new romance.”
And then I’d see Penelope’s face. That satisfied smile. You told me yourself why you left. You didn’t think you were good enough. Maybe you were right.
Around three am, I gave up on sleep and scrolled through my phone instead.
Bad idea. The photo was everywhere. fEntertainment sites, gossip blogs, even a few actual news outlets that should have had better things to cover.
Everyone had an opinion. Most of them were some version of Levi Cole finally moving on from mystery ex or Pop star power couple in the making?
Mystery ex. That’s me, the florist from the small town who thought she had a chance with a rock star.
I clicked on one of the articles even though I knew I shouldn’t. The photo was there, huge and unavoidable. Mia Monroe looked like she’d been styled by a team of professionals. Everything about her was polished and camera-ready.
And there was Levi, looking blindsided but undeniably caught. The same embrace, frozen. A moment that could mean everything or nothing.
The comments were worse.
They look so cute together!
She’s way better than whoever he was dating before
I closed the app and threw my phone across the bed.
Ruffy lifted his head and gave me a look that clearly said, That seemed unnecessary.
“Don’t judge me,” I told him. “You eat garbage.”
He sighed and put his head back down.
The hours crawled by. I watched the red numbers on the alarm clock flip past four, then five. I listened to trucks rumble past on the highway. I thought about calling my mom, but what would I say? Hi, I ran away again. Yes, I know it’s the middle of the night. Yes, I know this is a pattern.
At 5:30, I gave up and took Ruffy for a walk around the parking lot.
The sky was just starting to lighten, that gray pre-dawn glow that makes everything look uncertain.
A trucker was filling up at the gas station next door.
A woman in scrubs was getting into her car, probably heading home after a night shift.
Normal people living normal lives. Not running away from rock star ex-boyfriends before dawn.
We went back inside. I showered (the water pressure was terrible, but at least it was hot) and changed into fresh clothes from my hastily-packed bag. The mirror showed me exactly what I expected: red eyes, blotchy skin, hair that had given up on life.
A woman who’d driven all night to hide from her problems.
The cemetery opened at eight. I grabbed a bad cup of coffee from the gas station next door and waited in the parking lot until the gates opened.
Dad’s grave is in the older section, under a big oak tree. The headstone is simple, just his name, the dates, and the words “Beloved Father.” I picked those words. Mom offered to help, but I said no. I said a lot of things back then, most of them unfair.
“Hey, Dad.”
I sit down on the grass. It’s still damp from the morning dew, and I can feel the cold seeping through my jeans almost immediately. I don’t care. Ruffy settles beside me, his head on my lap, watching me like he’s waiting for an explanation.
Fair question, honestly.
“I messed up,” I tell the headstone. “Again. I know, I know, you’re shocked. Delilah making bad decisions and running away? Unprecedented. Alert the press.”
The headstone doesn’t respond. Obviously. But I keep talking anyway, because that’s what I do when I come here. I talk to Dad like he can still hear me, like somewhere out there he’s listening and shaking his head at his disaster of a daughter.
“There’s this guy. You’d remember him, actually.
Levi Cole? The one I met the summer I was seventeen?
The one I cried about for approximately six months after I left?
You told me I was being dramatic and I told you that you didn’t understand love and then I locked myself in my room and listened to sad music for a week. ”
A squirrel runs across a nearby headstone. Ruffy’s ears perk up, but he’s too tired to chase it.
“He’s famous now. Rock star. Platinum albums. The whole deal.
You would have loved it, or hated it, I’m not sure which.
You always said fame was a trap for people who didn’t know who they were.
But Levi knows who he is. That’s the problem.
He’s the same person he was twenty years ago, just with better hair and a private jet. ”
I pick at a blade of grass, pulling it apart piece by piece.
“He came back to Twin Waves for his brother’s wedding, and we…reconnected. That’s the polite way to say it. The honest way is that he walked into my flower shop and my entire brain short-circuited and I’ve been a mess ever since.”
The morning sun is starting to filter through the oak tree’s branches, casting dappled shadows across the grass. It’s beautiful, actually. Peaceful. The kind of place where you could almost believe everything was going to be okay.
Almost.
“It was going really well. Scary well. The kind of well that should have been my first warning sign, right? Nothing that good ever lasts. Not for me. Something always goes wrong. Someone always leaves. Or I leave first, which I guess is the same thing in the end.”
I think about the pier. The fish that smacked Levi in the face. The way we laughed so hard we could barely breathe, the way he looked at me when he told me about his mom, like he was handing me something precious and trusting me not to break it.
I broke it anyway. That’s my specialty.
“There was this photo. Him and some pop star. Mia Monroe, you wouldn’t know her, she got famous after you died.
She’s basically what would happen if you put glitter and ambition in a blender and gave it a record deal.
” I sigh. “She was hugging him and it looked like they were together. Like he’d moved on to someone shinier and more his level. ”
The words taste bitter in my mouth.
“I saw it and I panicked. I didn’t even ask him about it. I didn’t give him a chance to explain. I just packed a bag and left like a coward. Like I always do.”
Ruffy makes a soft sound, not quite a whine, not quite a sigh. More like agreement.
“Yeah, I know. You don’t have to rub it in.”
The words hang in the morning air. Saying them out loud makes them sound even worse.
“That’s what you always told me not to do, remember?
When I was a kid and I’d get scared about something?
You’d say, ‘Delilah, talk about it. Don’t let it fester.
’ And I’d roll my eyes because you were my dad and what did you know?
” I wipe at my face with the back of my hand.
“Turns out you knew a lot. I just didn’t want to listen. ”
A car drives past on the road beyond the cemetery gates. I watch it until it disappears around the curve.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whisper. “I’ve never known how to stay. When things get hard or I get scared, I just…leave. And then I end up somewhere like this, talking to a headstone, wondering why I can’t seem to get it right.”
Ruffy licks my hand. His version of comfort.
“You’d probably tell me to go back. To apologize. To try again.” I shake my head. “But what if I can’t? What if this is just who I am, the woman who runs, who keeps hurting people no matter how hard she tries not to?”
The question sits there, unanswered. Dad can’t answer it. He’s been gone for a year, and I still haven’t figured out how to have a conversation with someone who can’t talk back.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out, expecting another text from Levi that I’m not ready to read. But it’s not Levi.
It’s Mom.
I stare at her name on the screen. We share locations, so she knows exactly where I am. She’s been watching my little dot move across the state all night, wondering what on earth I’m doing.
I should let it go to voicemail. That’s what I usually do.
But something makes me answer.
“Hi, Mom.”
“You’re at the cemetery.” Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“With your father.”
“Yeah.”
Silence on the line. She sounds tired. Of course she’s tired, she’s been up all night worrying about me. Because that’s what she’s always done, even when I was too angry to notice.
“I found your note,” she says finally. “When I got home from bridge club.”
“I’m sorry. I should have...”
“You should have talked to me. But you didn’t. You ran. Just like you always do.”
The words sting. They’re supposed to.
“Mom...”
“No, let me finish.” Her voice is steady.
Not angry, exactly. Just…tired. Bone-deep tired, the kind that comes from thirty years of watching your daughter make the same mistake over and over.
“I’ve watched you do this your whole life, Delilah.
Every time things get hard, every time you feel scared or hurt or overwhelmed, you pack a bag and you go.
At seventeen. At twenty-seven. With your marriage, every job and relationship in between. ”
“That’s not...”