Chapter Seven
Delta
The ballroom glows in gold light, chandeliers sparkling above a hundred gowns and tuxedos while the Casper Symphony owns the room.
They start polite and classical, but then the conductor smirks and turns “Before I Let Go” into a lush orchestral arrangement.
When the first violins hit that bassline, I almost lose my mind.
Then they slide into a strings version of “Hypnotize,” and the entire ballroom shifts.
The music is divine and Trace dances like he’s been doing it his whole life.
He holds me like he knows what he’s doing and exactly who he’s doing it with.
His palm is firm at the small of my back, fingers sure around mine, reading my body.
When I hesitate, he leads. When I need space, he gives it. When I melt, he catches.
A waltz turns into a tango, then a smooth foxtrot, then stepping, then a slow sway that makes my bloodstream fizz. Every time I think we might sit down, he looks at me like he dares me to stop. I don’t. I like being wanted.
When we finally take our seats, breathless and warm in all the right and wrong places, the orchestra eases into a classical version of “Knockin’ Da Boots,” and I have to take a long sip of wine because Trace looks so damn good.
He leans back lazily, ankle propped over his knee, eyes hot and unbothered about it. “I’m so damn glad we came tonight.”
My smile wobbles. “Me too.”
He studies me like he’s memorizing my happiness. “I might have to buy your mama’s season tickets off her. I’ll take you every year. Make this our thing.”
The words hit too hard, so I look away.
“Don’t do that, Delta.”
“Do what?” My voice is lighter than I feel.
“Pull back.” He doesn’t raise his voice. “I don’t know how to do halfway. I don’t know how to do casual. When I decide something matters, I go full throttle. I’m hoping it’s like that for you too.”
My chest tightens. “Trace…” I don’t know if I’m warning him or myself.
“You’re a grown woman, Delta. You know what you want. And you know you want this.”
He’s not wrong. That’s what scares me.
“I’m not coy,” I say finally. “I’ve built too much and survived too much to pretend I don’t know what I want. I do want you. And this. I’m just… scared.”
His expression softens in a way that shakes everything inside me. “Let’s walk.”
We slip out to the River Walk. Night air is cool and sweet, the water glittering under string lights. Somewhere, a guitarist plays something soft and slow.
“Tell me,” Trace says quietly.
I know what he’s asking. So I tell him.
“I was married,” I say, the words heavier than I expect.
“Preston wasn’t the villain in the beginning.
He believed in me. He told me that my thesis wasn’t just a paper, it was a business.
He pushed me to launch when I didn’t think I was ready, and helped with the start-up money because I had some, just not enough, and he said he wanted to see me win. Back then, I thought we were a team.”
I draw a breath. “Then the company took off. And when it became clear the success was because of my ideas, research, instincts… something in him shifted. He kept trying business after business to ‘catch up,’ and every one either failed or closed fast. Each time, he got more bitter. More resentful. More determined to drag me down.”
“He didn’t just sulk,” I say quietly. “He sabotaged me. Undermined my decisions. Turned most of my board against me. And when that wasn’t enough, he used company money behind my back to fund his failing ventures.”
My voice roughens. “He stole from the company I built to keep his pride afloat. And when that still wasn’t enough, he started sleeping with anything that would bend over for him.”
I let the truth hang there, because some wounds need silence before anything else.
“So I burned it down,” I say. “Every lie. Every shell corporation. Every fake invoice. I fired everybody on the board who betrayed me. Froze assets. FBI. Marshals. Audits. Indictments. I didn’t just walk away, I went scorched earth so nothing he touched could grow there again.”
The last part sticks before I force it out.
“Then I came home. Daddy was sick. I realized I’d spent so long trying to save a marriage that didn’t deserve me, I almost missed the time I had left with a man who did.
I got a few good months with him before he passed.
I’d burn a hundred more companies if it meant I didn’t miss a second of that. ”
I braid my fingers together. “Most people think I left because I lost my business and my husband, but truthfully, I left because I refused to lose myself.”
He takes a breath like he’s bracing for impact. “My turn.”
I nod.
We walk slower, like the memories weigh down his steps.
“We were sent on a mission that should never have been greenlit,” he says. “Intel was wrong, and command ignored it. They sent us into a region that was already a powder keg. We walked into hell.”
He stares at the river like he’s seeing something else. “They were going to let a village get wiped out women, kids, elders and let my men die with them to bury the screwup.”
My stomach knots.
“I wasn’t letting that happen,” he says.
“So I broke from command. Went in first, pulled people out house by house. My team joined once they realized what I was doing. We fought till sunrise. Some of my men walked out missing limbs. Some walked out whole but broken inside. Some didn’t walk out at all. ”
His jaw flexes. “Every night since, I smell the smoke. Hear the sounds. And every night I know exactly who I couldn’t save.”
I take his hand without thinking. He grips mine like it’s the only solid thing in the world.
“The rescue got caught on camera,” he continues. “Brass tried to make me the villain to cover their asses, but the footage went global. They had to pin a medal on me to save face—but they pushed me out of the Marines, so I’d shut up.”
He laughs once, bitter. “So yeah. Nightmares, rage, guilt. None of it really leaves.”
“You saved lives, Trace,” I say.
“I didn’t save enough.”
“You’re still saving people,” I whisper.
He looks at me and something raw flashes across his face. My heel wobbles. He catches me by the waist, steadying me; then something clicks behind his eyes.
“Hold on,” he says.
He guides me to a bench and kneels in front of me. He takes my heels off slowly, when his thumbs press into my arches, I groan before I can stop myself.
Then he reaches down inside each pant leg and pulls out my slides.
I gasp. “You did not steal my shoes.”
“Oh, I did.” He slips them on my feet, eyes on mine. “I wasn’t letting those torture devices distract you tonight. I want you thinking about me, not your feet.”
“You stuffed them in your socks,” I say, half horrified, half charmed.
“Baby, you have no idea the lengths I’m willing to go to for you.”
He talks then about coming home and not being able to stay in one place, losing jobs, losing his apartment, going back to his parents’ house, angry and ashamed.
About waking up in their bedroom with a gun in his hand and no memory of getting there.
About realizing he was more afraid of hurting someone than dying himself.
About Silver Creek. About Andy. About Copper Ridge.
“And then there was you,” he says finally, voice low. “And I knew I was where I should be.”
I can’t breathe for a second.
He stands, still holding my heels, and offers me his hand. I take it, and he laces our fingers like it’s instinct.
“If after everything you’ve learned,” he says, “you still want to be with me… if you’ll have me…”
My voice shakes, but the words come out clear. “I want to be with you too.”
He cups my face and kisses me. It’s not tentative. It’s hungry, like he’s wanted this for weeks. I kiss him back just as hard because I’m done pretending I don’t.
It’s deep and slow and claiming, the kind of kiss that rewires gravity. When we finally come up for air, he rests his forehead against mine.
“Tell me to stop if you don’t want this.”
“I don’t want you to stop,” I whisper.
He kisses me again, softer, then we start walking the river path hand in hand, my slides on my feet, my heels hooked in his fingers. Every few minutes, he stops just to kiss me, and I am not mad about his lack of restraint.
At some point, I yawn for the fifth time. He chuckles against my temple. “Let me take you home.”
The drive back is quiet in the best way. At red lights, he lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my knuckles, my wrist, my bare shoulder, like he can’t not touch me. My heart becomes an unmanageable thing in my chest.
When we pull into my driveway, and he puts the car in park, we sit there in one suspended breath before he turns and kisses me again, slow and sure. There’s no going back now.
We get out. He walks around and opens my door. My hand finds his automatically. The heels dangle from his fingers, my slides are snug on my feet like we didn’t just dance ourselves stupid for hours.
At the top step, I turn to him. The porch light catches the gold beading on my dress. He just looks at me, like he’s trying to memorize every detail.
“Trace,” I whisper.
He bends and kisses me one more time slow, intentional. My hand curls in his lapel, his settles low at my back, and even though it’s gentle, the heat of it rattles both of us.
When he pulls back, he rests his forehead against mine. “I’ll see you tomorrow. At breakfast.”
“Stay,” the word drops between us like a bomb. Fuck it! In for a penny in for a pound.
“Delta,” he warns, “You don’t…”
He doesn’t get the rest out because I cover his mouth with mine. I don’t know what I’m doing and this could seriously blow up in my face but he is the first man since Preston to make me want to take a chance and I’m not going to let that slip through my fingers.