Chapter 14
brOOKS
S leep doesn’t come easily for me tonight.
After a silent drive home from Phoebe’s salon, Delta left almost immediately to see Lake and Bay before their trip to Utah. The moment her headlights disappear down the drive, I want to call her to come back.
I pace the house for hours, replaying the events of the day.
Whenever I remember the way her expression shuttered when Phoebe asked my opinion about her haircut, I’m gutted all over again.
She was happy when I came in, so fucking beautiful she lit up the whole room, and she expected me to take that away from her.
I tried to make it right, tried to apologize and explain, but nothing seemed to help.
All this time I’ve felt so sure I was doing the right thing by keeping her at arm’s length. It might hurt, it might be fucking torture, but it was right . Now… Now, no matter how many times I tell myself it’s for her own good, I can’t dismiss the gnawing fear that I’m just a coward.
When Delta finally comes home, it’s nearly ten, and I barely have time to scramble off the couch before she’s wishing me goodnight and hurrying upstairs with all three dogs on her heels.
I’m trying not to take their obvious preference for her too personally. If I were them, I’d like her better, too.
Left alone beside the dying fire, my heart in my stomach, I’m so lost in my miserable spiral it might be minutes or hours before I finally trudge up to bed.
I pause on the landing, hovering outside her door, warring with the impulse to knock.
I don’t, and my last thought before I fall asleep is that I have to fix this.
There has to be a way to keep her here with me, happy and safe, without more .
It’s still dark outside when I wake, blinking at the ceiling. The house is silent around me, and I’m groggily scrolling through a list of explanations for why I’m no longer asleep when I hear it. Across the hall, through two closed doors, a muffled cry.
As suddenly as if someone had doused me in ice water, I’m on my feet.
Wrenching open my door, I cross the landing in three strides to Delta’s just as another sob shatters the house’s silence.
I don’t hesitate before pushing it open.
Inside, the room is lit only by the first traces of hazy, early morning sunlight filtering through the blinds and I blink, struggling to make sense of what I’m seeing.
On the bed, Delta thrashes, her legs tangled in the sheets, her chest rising in falling in ragged pants. She isn’t sick, or being attacked, or any of the hundred other horrible possibilities that flashed through my mind when I realized what woke me. She’s having a nightmare.
“Delta.” I sink down at the edge of the bed, my heart still thundering in my chest. Her skin is clammy as I smooth back her hair from her damp forehead, trying to wake her gently. “Delta?—”
Almost instantly, she curls closer to me, one hand fisting the hem of my t-shirt.
The blueish light gives everything an oddly surreal feeling, and it’s like I’m watching from outside my own body as I swing my legs up onto the bed, and gather Delta in my arms. She comes easily too, murmuring incoherently as her hand slips beneath my shirt, spreading flat over the skin beneath my bellybutton, her warm touch searing me.
Her heart is still beating wildly and the occasional tremor wracks her body as the nightmare slips away.
Does this happen often? For months, long before the accident, I thought she looked tired.
I’d put it down to too much training, but could it have been this too?
How many nights have I laid across the hall sleeping while she suffers through this?
The possibility makes me a little insane.
After a few long minutes pass and her breathing has become deep and slow, I begin to ease away. I can talk to her about it tomorrow and find a specialist who can help?—
“Brooks,” she mumbles, and the room tilts when one bare, toned leg slips from beneath the blanket to hitch over mine, effectively stopping me from moving an inch.
She’s not wearing shorts, just a pair of polka-dotted purple panties, and I’m hard almost instantly, my cock obscenely tenting the black boxer briefs I wore to bed, inches from where Delta’s hand is settled.
Holy fuck. I need to leave. Now .
“Delta.” I nudge her weakly, trying to wake her up without any real conviction. She only sighs, nestling closer to me, her toes skimming over the top of my foot. I squeeze my eyes closed, determined not to look. “Delta,” I say a little more insistently, and this time, her body tenses.
Slowly, she lifts her head to look at me, blinking in sleepy surprise. “Brooks?”
“Hi.” I grimace, glad she’s looking at me and not down at my fucking cock. “I’m sorry, you were having a nightmare?—”
“Oh!” she starts, as though just realizing that she’s draped herself all over me. Scrambling back to sit on her knees, I take the opportunity to swing my legs back over the edge of the bed, my mouth dry. “I’m so sorry I woke you up.”
I swallow thickly, remembering the fear in her sleeping face when I first came in. “Do you get them a lot?”
Delta’s lips quirk into the usual sheepish half-smile she uses when she’s embarrassed about something. “Sometimes. I’ve been better lately since I stopped snowboarding. I get them more when I’m stressed.”
My heart wrenches and for a long moment, we’re both quiet. My reason for being here is gone, and it’s not even five in the morning. I should say goodnight and go back to my room, but as I begin to move, Delta’s hand shoots out to touch mine.
“Brooks.” I pause, waiting, and see the briefest flicker of apprehension cross her face. “I threw the pills out.”
My breath catches. “What?” It was the very last thing I expected her to say, and I lean forward.
Delta speaks in a quiet rush, as though she’s been thinking about this a long time and wants to tell me before she loses her nerve.
“The morning of my accident, I flushed them. I couldn’t do it anymore.
I know it doesn’t excuse taking them in the first place or being dumb enough to get back on that mountain when I so clearly shouldn’t have been there.
” She looks down at her hands in her lap, and I see a slight tremble in her shoulders.
“I just wanted you to know, because snowboarding is not the same thing as you and me. It’s not even close. ”
I have to close my eyes for a second, processing this piece of information that’s completely shifted the way I see her and our situation.
“How can you be sure?” I barely recognize my voice, and I realize as I open my eyes to look into the beautiful face of the woman I’m in love with, the woman I thought I would never have, that it’s because I’m begging.
Please, let her be sure.
Delta doesn’t answer right away, and I can tell by the bold, defiant squaring of her jaw that she’s mustering her courage for what she has to say next.
“I didn’t love it.” Her words falter and I ache to go to her but force myself to remain still, heart hammering as she gathers her thoughts.
“It’s all I knew for so long . I clung to it because it was familiar and because I wasn’t sure I could do or be anything else.
I know now that isn’t true. I want to surround myself with people who love me and love them back.
I want to be a wife, a mom… I know those aren’t big, exceptional things, but I’m so sick of not being happy, Brooks. ”
She didn’t love snowboarding, but she loves me.
She doesn’t say the words, but I know it’s what she means, and something slots into place inside me.
I’m filled with fierce pride and joy, so powerful and all-consuming I’m positive I’ll never recover from it.
She loves me and I’ve been such a coward, pushing her away again and again, making up excuse after excuse to deny what has been right in front of me for months.
Did I think she wanted an all-star career or to see the world?
She could have done that. She could have left Colorado after her accident and never looked back, but she’s been here. Fighting for me.
She loves me.
She loves me.
She loves me…. and I’m done not loving her back the way she deserves.
I thought I was strong, I thought I was resolute, but I was never enough to resist the storm that is Delta Jacobs.
Our first kiss was an explosion, the culmination of weeks of tension, and I barely slowed down for long enough to make sure she was enjoying it.
This is so much more than that was, and— fuck me —I want to take her goddamn breath away.
Delta makes a tiny noise of surprise as I swing my legs back over onto the bed, curling an arm around her waist to pull her flat onto the tangled sheets.
In seconds, I’ve covered her body with my own, pressing her into the mattress and I barely give myself time to appreciate how fucking beautiful she looks right now before I’m kissing her so fiercely I feel it through my whole body.
She’s right there with me, her legs parting, dragging me closer like she needs this as badly as I do.
We’re doing this.
I have things I need to say, though, and before I lose myself in her completely, I pull back, staring down into her wide gray eyes. “I love you.” My voice is raw and desperate. “ I’m fucking in love with you, Delta. ” I don’t want any more misunderstandings, nothing else left unsaid between us.
Ours is insane and messy and unlike any love story I’ve ever heard. I was so sure I would be alone, and now a whole world of possibilities is blooming in front of me, in front of us .