Chapter 75 Deli
Deli
The night was starting to feel like everything would be okay.
Deli nearly cried with laughter as she spun in circles.
She had no idea what she was doing, but she was having a great time doing it as she danced the ceilidh with Blair and Andrew’s families, Douglas, and the kids.
The band played “The Flower of Scotland,” and a rowdy group of kilt-clad cousins, groomsmen, and tipsy aunties went wild singing along with so much passion Deli picked up the chorus and a secondhand distrust of the English by the end.
Then the music changed, and William’s hand appeared over hers as his other materialized around her waist—and they were slow dancing.
He grinned at her like he knew he was pushing it. Still, neither her family nor Lachlan had followed them out. It was better than all the . . . than everything waiting for her back inside.
She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re delicious,” he murmured into her ear.
“Gross,” she said, but she smiled. It was nice to be a girl twirling on a dance floor with a boy she’d never pine after—made simple for a moment.
He spun them in a dizzying arc and she laughed.
The sky was miraculously clear, the night unseasonably warm.
Blair and Andrew rocked back and forth beside them while Douglas held Kieran’s small frame up in a dramatic waltz and their little feet dangled.
The band played a folk song’s melody that was hopeful. Reverent.
Under the glow of starlight and friendship, Deli felt, for the briefest moment, that she might still belong there.
William twirled her back toward him for a dip. Her balance shifted as he lowered her body toward the floor, and she saw clouds beginning to eclipse the sky.
Her mother’s yell was so unexpected she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard it.
“Delilah!”
Two more voices called her name.
“Deli!”
Lachlan and Aunt Mo chased behind Deli’s mom as they poured out onto the dance floor. Everything was upside down.
“What is this supposed to be?” Lorraine’s heels stepped inches from Deli’s brow.
“What are you talking abo—” She realized William hadn’t pulled her up, and she summoned every chin she had to look at the man who’d frozen in place, his eyes locked on something coming toward them. “Um, Will?”
Her phone, which she’d given to her aunt for safekeeping, as she had pockets and Deli did not, started ringing in Aunt Mo’s pocket as William brought her to her feet.
Lachlan’s shadow fell over them. “Get. Away. From her.”
William raised an eyebrow. “Are you mad?”
“She’s not one of your toys, William.”
Deli was lost. “Wait, me?”
Lachlan looked at her quickly before homing in on his brother again. “I said, get away from her.”
William rolled his shoulders. Then he smiled, and Deli knew she’d missed something very important about the Scott brothers.
“Make me.”
Lachlan launched at his brother, but Deli wedged herself between them and brought Lachlan to a full stop. His chest heaved against her palms.
“Boys, stop it!” Aunt Mo started toward them like she was going to haul them away by their ears, but her hand went to her pocket and she stopped as Deli’s phone rang again.
Deli pushed against Lachlan’s chest. “What the hell is going on with you?”
“Has he told you?” Lachlan demanded.
“Told me what?”
She spun to look at William, but he looked as confused as she was.
Lorraine grabbed Deli by the upper arm, her nails pinching as she yanked her away from Lachlan and William. She batted her lashes. “Trust me, William, it’s not worth all this fuss. Besides, we’re going home.”
Deli balked. “Who’s ‘we’?”
Aunt Mo stared at the phone in her palm. “Deli . . .”
“Stay out of this,” Lorraine snapped over her shoulder as the ringing ended and picked up again immediately.
Deli pulled her arm free. “She didn’t do anything, Mom. Leave her alone.”
Lorraine’s jaw fell open and she took a half step back. Her eyes ran from Deli’s head to her toes and back. A raindrop landed on Deli’s cheek.
“Deli?” Aunt Mo said. “You . . . you might want to take this.”
“Don’t you dare defend her, Delilah!” Her mother blocked her path. “Not to me!”
Deli kept moving toward Aunt Mo. “Mom, relax—”
“No!” Lorraine’s shout echoed around the garden as chatter fell silent.
Deli froze, every nerve recognizing the danger then. Lachlan shifted his stance the slightest bit toward Deli’s mother. Deli spoke through her smile, quiet and slow.
“Mom, please—”
“No!” It was a roar. “You don’t know your precious Aunt Mo, Delilah. Do you know what happens after she makes you feel special? The second you disappoint her—”
Lachlan began to say something, but Aunt Mo held up a hand to silence him. The phone rang again, and her face contorted with worry.
“—she abandons you.”
Deli looked between them, bewildered. Aunt Mo didn’t interject.
“Tell me, Delilah—weren’t you lonely for your hero over the last twenty years?”
Thunder shook the sky. The treetops shuddered with the sudden storm’s first rain. Hurried voices began to call for people to head inside as guests peeled their attention away.
Deli’s instincts tried to kick in from a lifetime of surviving—placate the beast. Get out of the way. Stay quiet.
But there on the dance floor, as the sky began to weep, there was nowhere to hide.
After a month in a different world, Deli had let her guard down, and her mother’s blows left her reeling. She tried to find her voice, but it was buried. The only word she caught hold of was a hollow sounding plea, like it had been scraped out from the middle.
“Stop . . .”
“You don’t belong here, Delilah. Your grandmother and I—we’re the ones who have kept you safe, attended to your every need. What has Maureen sacrificed for you? You will never be enough for her.”
Deli’s blood was pounding in her ears. She swayed on her feet.
Lorraine frowned. “She didn’t love you enough to stay. And you want to be like her?”
Lachlan stepped between Deli and her mother.
“Enough.”
“You,” Lorraine growled.
He was a wall of sheer rock. Unmoving. “Aye, me. And your sister? She’s my family. You won’t speak another word against her while you stand in our home.”
Aunt Mo gave Lachlan an attaboy smile like her sister hadn’t just eviscerated her for fun.
Lorraine was still for a moment, then her face softened. She held out a hand to Deli. “Delilah, honey, it’s time.”
And suddenly, her voice belonged to a woman who was tender and patient and kind—quick to laugh and quick to comfort.
It was the voice of the person who’d pressed cooling rags to Deli’s sick forehead, who’d shaped her pancakes like dolphins and taught her how to tie shoes with bunny ears and patience.
It was the sudden arrival of her mom. Her actual mom.
“Come home, sweetheart. We’ve missed you. We need you. You belong with us.”
All her life, Deli felt like her head had been forced under. She’d never found dry land, paddling and paddling to get moments of air before she was tumbled back into an ocean of things she’d never be or do. She’d never found rest. Her life was one of striving.
Then a few words from her mom and . . . suddenly, land.
She took a small step forward.
Lachlan’s arm blocked her path. His eyes were fixed to her mother, churning like storm waters turned golden.
“You don’t deserve her.”
He said it with such conviction, Deli almost believed him.
Lorraine took in the man standing between her and her daughter, astonished. “What?”
Deli’s phone chimed again as the heavy clouds blotted out the moonlight.
“I said”—Lachlan shielded her body with his—“you don’t deserve her. You act like she’s a burden.”
He looked back at Deli over his shoulder. Though he spoke to her mother, his eyes were only for her.
“You don’t see her. You have no idea who she is. Deli is kind—do you know how rare that is? She’s smart and curious and funny. She meets every challenge with humor. She makes everyone feel important. And my god—”
Lachlan smiled, and it was like a floodlight spilling into a dark room. She wanted to bask in it. She wanted to cower.
“Deli is brave. I knew the moment I saw her—”
Memories of a day long ago. Her scraped knees. Lachlan’s gentle hands putting her back together.
“—if I lived an entire life beside her, it would not be enough.”
For a single, shining moment—it was just Deli and Lachlan. A girl who knew only how to stand alone and a boy who wanted only to stand beside her—tethered together despite the ocean, the losses, the time.
Lorraine’s laugh sliced through it.
“Oh god, you’re in love with her? You poor, pathetic boy.”
Blair stuck her head out of the pub, waving the landline in her hand. “Will! Someone keeps calling for you. PR or something? They say it’s an emergency?”
Will hesitated.
Lorraine shook her head with a smile. “Delilah doesn’t love you, Lachlan. She’s in love with someone else. Someone who sees her potential, not who settles for . . .”
Deli’s mother looked at her—and Deli caught a glimpse of her fear. Her mother’s guilt. Her love. Her secret self-loathing.
“. . . this.”
Deli’s phone rang again. She forced her eyes from her mother to her aunt’s outstretched hand.
Lachlan’s focus didn’t sway. “Get out of my pub.”
Lorraine was gobsmacked. “What did you say to me?”
Deli touched Lachlan’s hand and heard the sharp intake of air as their fingers brushed.
“Lachlan, it’s okay.”
Then, right there in front of her family and his brother—while the clouds surrendered their last grip on the rain—Lachlan cupped her cheek in his hand, pressed his forehead to hers, and said simply, “No, Deli. It’s not.”
If the raindrops that found her skin were cold, she didn’t feel it. She only felt the very old, aching thing wake up in her heart and stir—to lift its eyes to the light and fight through the pain of something so bright finding something so long in the dark.
Aunt Mo’s voice was soft and urgent. “Deli? I just know you’ve been waiting for this call.”
Everything felt like a movie as Deli took the phone from Aunt Mo’s hand. William stole away to answer the urgent call of his own. As the screen lit in her palm, Lachlan touched her shoulder.
His face was shadowed. His voice changed. “Deli, I’m so sorry. I never meant for this to happen.”
Before she could ask what he was talking about, she heard the special chime she’d set only for texts from Chloe. Her stomach was in her throat as she clicked on the text—a photo sent, finally, from her best friend.
It was a screenshot from an infamous celebrity-gossip magazine.
A gritty photo showed romantic light cast onto the handsome face of Billy S.
Burns as a mystery woman was pressed to his chest. He wore a secretive, flirty smile as he whispered in her ear and tucked a strand of her raven hair touched with golden firelight.
What it didn’t show was her pinning a boutonniere on his chest.
The title read:
Who has stolen the Highlander’s Heart?
All Chloe said was:
Is that really you?
And Deli just wanted to know—more than who had taken the photo and more than why—was how, after a lifetime of friendship, that could be all Chloe had to say?
Deli felt something double over inside her, struck by a killing blow.
William burst from the pub and started toward Deli in the rain.
“No.” Lachlan moved to intercept his brother. “You’ve done enough.”
William ignored Lachlan as their shoulders collided. “Deli—”
Lachlan caught his brother’s arm, an unstoppable force meeting an unmovable object, and the two towering men struggled to keep their balance on the rain-slick dance floor.
The phone rang again. She read the name of the person desperately trying to reach her . . . the person she’d desperately been trying to reach.
Trey Evans.
Two days had passed since she’d told him—not that she was over him, but that she needed to move on.
And it had been two days since he’d written frantic messages begging her not to go.
She hadn’t gotten the chance to even think about it in the aftermath of Will’s and her family’s arrivals.
It was like her hand moved on its own as she held the phone to her ear.
“Trey?”
“Deli? Thank god!”
Lachlan and William were locked in some half-falling, half-wrestling struggle.
“God, it’s so good to hear your voice, Del. You have no idea. I’ve been going crazy.”
Deli’s eyes widened as the Scott brothers’ momentum carried them off the dance floor and sent them stumbling toward the archway.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking a lot. And . . . I can’t lose you, Deli. I can’t. Come home to me?”
“Trey, I—” was all she got out before William escaped Lachlan’s grip and shoved him backward.
Lachlan’s feet couldn’t find purchase on the slick grass and fresh mud.
Rain ran down her phone in rivulets, seeping into the speaker.
The last thing she heard was Trey’s crackly voice before the phone went dark.
“Deli, please? Please! I lo—”
She dropped the phone. “Lachlan!”
There was a snapping sound as Lachlan’s body collided with the archway. Dogwood petals sank to the ground and were pinned by the rain. Deli ran toward him past a trail of white buttercream smeared across the ground.
Back on the dance floor, Lorraine spun on her sister. “Look what you’ve done!”
Aunt Mo’s voice came out steel. “I suggest you think about the next thing out of your mouth, Lorraine.”
“Lorraine! Maureen! Delilah!” All of Rosemary’s girls turned to see her standing in the doorway, hand braced against the frame, pale as the moon. “I need to speak with you three.”
“Grandma?” The air turned to ash on Deli’s tongue. “Are you alright?”
A lull in the storm fell over them like a blanket. Rosemary’s voice was so loud in the pocket of quiet.
“You should all know”—Deli thought she saw her stumble—“I’m dying.”
The other two rolled their eyes at the announcement of another illness. But Deli didn’t.
Lorraine sighed. “Oh really? What is it now, Mom?”
Rosemary answered without emotion. “Cancer.”
“Inspired,” Lorraine snorted.
A sharp crack shook the night as silver lightning sliced through the sky, and Deli watched a surreal scene unfold in black and white. Her grandmother, Rosemary McDonnell—bitter and witty and critical and constant—collapsed into the rain.
A scream tore from her mother’s throat, and Deli felt the concrete slab she’d built her life upon crack in two.