27. Delia
twenty-seven
Delia
With a conflicted heart, I walked back toward the car where Jeremy and Tyler were sitting, waiting for me.
Part of my heart was soaring, knowing that Robert wanted to be with me. Another part was wrenched into a tangle, knowing that I was pregnant and he didn’t know. Knowing the impact it was going to have on his friendship.
There were so many moving parts to this that I was sick just thinking of them. It was like a rollercoaster.
As I got to the car, Jeremy slipped out of his seat and opened the door for me. “Where’d you go?” he asked.
I froze, guilt washing over me. “Hey, sorry, just had to help with the cleanup.”
“Okay, well, let’s get going. We’ve been sitting in the parking lot so long my legs are starting to cramp up,” Jeremy teased, his fingers tapping on the top of the car door.
I chewed on my bottom lip and blurted out, “Well, actually, they’re not really done in there. I figured I should stay and help.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “I’m thinking of teaching some of the classes, too, so I might stay and learn about that.”
His eyes narrowed slightly for only a second before returning to normal. “You’re clearly a…dedicated student.”
“Well, you know how I am about school. Can’t help it, I guess,” I lied, the lie rolling off my tongue so easily I felt like I didn’t recognize myself. I’d never been a good liar, and here I was, acting like a pro.
“Sure. Well…” Jeremy turned to look at Tyler, who shrugged. “I guess we’ll just head back to the house then. Tyler mentioned you were cooking…?”
“For tomorrow,” I said, panic rising as I remembered the cooking. “Oh!” I reached over, handing Tyler the pie I’d slipped out with. “This is for you.”
Jeremy lingered, disappointed, as if waiting for me to change my mind, but I shoved my hands into my pockets, staying silent.
“Tyler, are you okay with it?” I asked suddenly.
He grinned. “Go! I got what I wanted.” He waved the pie triumphantly.
I spun on my heel and walked back into the library, happy to escape Jeremy. My face burned hot as I pushed through the doors. I hated lying, hated who I was becoming in pursuit of Robert.
“Hey, are you okay?” Robert asked as I entered the auditorium.
“I just… I feel like I’m doing everything wrong,” I whispered, tears stinging my throat.
He sighed and pulled me close. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We have to clean up,” I muttered, avoiding his eyes.
Robert shook his head, a smile crawling across his face. “Nah. I’ll let them do it.” He waved his hand toward the auditorium. “Come on, let’s go get Corinne.”
As he walked back to go get his daughter, I realized that I might be in a tangle of unsureness, but I knew one thing. I’d had enough of the lies. It was time I came clean about the secret in my womb.
***
The drive to Robert’s house was strangely fun. Corinne peppered me with questions from the backseat, with Robert looking at me through a sideways glance at each one, gaging if I was bothered.
I turned around in my seat as I answered, making direct eye contact with the wild little girl. Her eyes were a deep, chocolatey brown, and her face got pinker as she talked, her excitement visible.
“How did you meet my dad?” she asked, and I could feel her kicking the back of my chair absentmindedly with her feet.
“I took his self-defense course,” I answered with a smile. “He’s a good teach—"
“Did you learn a lot?”
“I did. I even used one of the lessons to—"
“Delia, how old are you?” Save my life, I finished my sentence in my head.
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Daddy’s forty-two,” she said. It might have just been an observation, or she might have been making a point.
“Corinne, you’re not supposed to reveal a gentleman’s age,” Robert said with a grin.
I could barely keep up with her questions as we pulled up to the mansion, its expansiveness taking my breath away yet again. She continued as we carried the food inside, following so close behind me that, at one point, she stepped on the back of my shoe.
“Corinne, back up,” Robert said sternly, and I smiled gratefully as Corinne apologized to me and stepped back, continuing her chattering.
“Sorry. So is my daddy your boyfriend?” she asked, and the question hung in the air for a second. I didn’t know how to answer that yet.
“Corinne,” Robert shot a look her way, and the little girl looked down apologetically, “That’s enough.” His phone buzzed, and he looked at it for a moment, reading a message. He opened it and started typing, his face intensely set on the screen.
While he glanced at his phone with an intense look, I glanced down at Corinne and mouthed, ‘No, he’s not.’ She smiled mischievously, then hid her smile in her tiny palm.
Sighing heavily, Robert stopped typing and said, “I need to make a work call. Show Delia where the kitchen is and put the food away, please.” Oh, I know where the kitchen is. My face burned at the mention of the kitchen as I remembered how we had defiled it together. He pointed his phone at her like a wand and commanded, “No more personal questions.”
As soon as he was out of earshot, Corinne started walking toward the kitchen and asked, “If he’s not your boyfriend, is he going to be?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, thinking of the child I still needed to tell him about. I didn’t know what we’d be after I told him.
Corinne looked at me for a minute and then opened the fridge door. From behind the door, she asked, “But do you like him?”
I considered her question. It was a tricky one. I knew that she probably had complicated feelings about her father dating another woman after her mother. Instead of answering directly, I asked Corinne, “Hey, can you tell me where the bathroom is?” as she sat down at the counter to steal some bites from a blueberry pie.
“Sure!” she chirped, hopping off the chair. She skipped to the entrance of the kitchen and pointed down a long hallway. “Second door on the right. Just don’t go into the room across from it. That’s Daddy’s room, and he doesn’t like people to go in there.”
I nodded and saluted. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
She giggled as I walked away and down the hallway.
From down the hall, I could hear him on the phone in his office, speaking angrily with someone. I heard the words, “Is this a joke? I told you what I wanted to do already,” and cringed. Whoever he was talking to was getting chewed out good.
Curiosity gnawed at me. I glanced toward the bathroom, then at his bedroom door. Before I could stop myself, I pushed it open just a crack and peeked inside.
The first thing I noticed was an office chair near the door—strange for a bedroom. The bed, with red wine-colored sheets, caught my eye next. Hanging from one of the posts was a pair of handcuffs. Anger boiled inside me.
How dare he talk about wanting to lay claim over me? How dare he say that I needed to commit to being with only him when his bedroom was like this?
I felt my anger boiling at the idea of him having kinky sex in this bedroom, the very bedroom he wouldn’t let me stay in because of his daughter, supposedly.
Was this why he wouldn’t have me in here? I might see the evidence of his escapades?
I turned to leave, fury etched on my face, but I ran straight into Robert. His expression was unreadable like a shut door, but his crossed arms and piercing green eyes made me stop in my tracks.
He crossed his arms, his forearms bulging, and tilted his head. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Excuse me,” I said, trying to get past him, but he narrowed his eyes, the green piercing me like a knife through the heart.
“I asked you a question.” His voice was stern, not budging from the doorway.
“I had to go to the bathroom,” I said, not technically a lie, but I felt a blush flooding my face anyway.
“And you thought it was in my closet?” he quipped sarcastically. He was angry. His daughter had warned me, and I’d done it anyway. Not that I cared. I was done with Robert Hastings and his idiosyncrasies.
I stepped closer to him, trying to worm through the gaps between his body and the doorway. “No,” I said finally, stepping back and looking him in the eyes, “I got curious, okay? And I’m glad I did because I don’t know how else I would have found out that you’re…” I glanced past him, where I knew his daughter could hear, and whispered, “…entertaining guests in here. Or worse. Maybe you’re a murderer.”
Robert’s expression softened, and he leaned his head against the door frame. “Is that really what you think?”
“What part? The murderer thing? No, not really. But I do think you’re handcuffing women to your bed and then telling me you want to be with me, which is so…” I grappled for the words and ended up with, “messed up!”
“Messed up? That’s what you’re going with?” I could hear a smile in his voice, and it frustrated me even more that he wasn’t taking me seriously. It was like I’d always been a joke to him.
“I guess so. I don’t want to curse near your daughter.” I set my jaw, glaring into his smirk.
“That’s very thoughtful,” he said, stepping toward me. He lowered his voice and whispered, “But what if she’s in on it? What if she helps with the murders?”
“That isn’t funny.”
His smirk melted me, and I ignored my instinct to fall into his arms even as he reached out for me. I shook his hands from my body, stepping back.
“Delia,” he said in a strained voice, like he was trying not to laugh, “Come sit with me for a moment.” Brazenly, he walked over to the bed, sat down, and patted the spot next to him.
In disgust, I said, “I don’t want to sit on the old sheets you hooked up with women on, thanks.” Finally, I turned to leave, my path unobstructed.
“For fuck’s sake, Delia, that’s not what the handcuffs are for! Come in here and close the door!” he boomed, so loudly that I jumped. I could see a hard swallow traveling down his throat.
Chewing on my bottom lip, I closed the door. I sat next to him and felt the immediate pull of his body. Even being near him felt like a trial. His heat, his smell, was magnetic.
“Delia,” he said, gathering my hands into his lap and stroking the backs of my hands, leaving little zaps of lightning under my skin.
“I—how do I say this?” He looked up at the sky, considering his words carefully. “Lately, my PTSD has gotten worse. I told you about my daughter and her crush and how it’s been a lot on me. Well, I’ve been having these nightmares, nightmares where I’m fighting off her mother’s murderer or nightmares where I’m trapped on enemy soil, and I need to claw for my life. I don’t know where I am when I have these, and they feel real.”
Swallowing hard, I said simply, “I’m sorry that you suffer. But that doesn’t give you the right—”
He put up a finger, shushing me, and I bit my tongue as anger sparked in me. “They feel real, and I have a daughter to take care of. Do you know there are men out there that hurt their loved ones when they’re in the middle of a flashback? Men who even kill their loved ones?”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I felt like my stomach was hollow. I didn’t understand his point, but I felt his pain. “So,” I cleared my throat, “what are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that at night, I set that chair up against my bedroom door. And then I take double the recommended dose of sleeping pills. And then I handcuff myself to that bedpost. And I put the key somewhere that’ll be hard to reach in my sleep. And only by doing all of that can I be certain that my daughter is safe.”
He looked at me with a serious stare, his jaw squared and his eyes clear. His hands were on mine, but still now, like he’d forgotten he was holding them.
“That isn’t a part of some kinky sex ritual, Delia. It’s about survival.”
All that hollowness in my stomach, and it still dropped. “Oh.”
“Do you understand now why I couldn’t let you sleep over that night? I couldn’t risk your safety. And… I couldn’t risk you finding out that this is where I am in life. That I’m not always a strong guy who will keep you safe. Sometimes I’m a guy who could hurt you. And I can’t risk being that guy.”
He pushed my hair back behind my ear while he talked, his fingers trailing down my back, and I shivered in an automatic response to his touch.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered back, my voice hoarse.
“Well. You should be,” he responded simply, his eyes still on me.
I wanted to argue, but I’d overseen and participated in hundreds of therapy sessions with veterans, and I knew what he was talking about.
I felt tears swimming in my eyes with compassion for Robert. I could feel the pain in his admissions, the fear of failure, and more than failure. Something that people struggled to say out loud. That fear that our fears are stronger than our love.
I had wanted to tell him I was pregnant, but as I looked at the man before me, broken by fear, I realized that he was barely handling the small changes in Corinne’s life. I needed to be sure that he could handle the news.
I reached out and hugged him, whispering, “I’m sorry you’ve carried this alone.”
His arms circled around me and squeezed me tight. His chin rested on my shoulder, and he nuzzled his face into the crease of my neck. He kissed me lightly and murmured into my skin, “It’s mine to carry.”
I hugged him back tightly, running my hand over his hair, and thought of how I would face his nightmares for him if I could.