Chapter 77 Lachlan
Lachlan
Lachlan had loitered outside The Wallflower’s Crown long after Will had stalked off, avoiding the moment he had to go inside to get Deli. He had a sinking feeling that by the end of the short ride to Mo’s, things with Deli would never be the same.
Maybe not. Maybe things would be okay.
He was trying to be optimistic.
But he’d opened the door and watched Deli say a clipped goodbye to Blair, and now she was storming out of The Wallflower with her arms crossed over her chest. She didn’t even look at him. He jogged to catch up.
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
She shot the word like a bullet, and he heard it in her voice. Anger, pain. It tore through the parachute holding his hope above the waves. Though his legs were so much longer he had to take wide strides to reach the passenger door so he could open it for her. He reached for the handle.
“No.” She opened the door so quickly he had to stumble backward to avoid being knocked to the ground. She got in and slammed it closed.
Lachlan’s hands shook as he walked to his side and slid into the truck, useless to comfort her in her pain.
He couldn’t imagine how Deli must be feeling after all that had happened in the last few days, especially the last few hours.
He closed his door, muting the sound outside to a fuzzy gray. He counted a second. Two.
“Are you alright, Deli?”
“I’d like to go home now, please.”
He looked away. “Right. Of course. Sorry.”
She snorted at the word as he turned the key.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Deli looked out the window. “It’s just funny.”
He drove all the way to the main road before he asked, “What’s funny?” He flipped on his indicator. Its hollowed clicking sound was too loud.
She shrugged. “That you’re sorry.”
Lachlan was sorry. Sorry for ruining her work on the archway.
Sorry for scaring her. He was sorry for embarrassing her in front of her family.
He was sorry for ever letting William into her life and sorry for trying to hide her from him.
He was sorry he’d promised to keep her safe and had let her down.
He was sorry he’d ever tried to stand between her and Mo.
Sorry he’d misjudged her so harshly. Sorry for the way he’d treated her from the moment she got off a train.
He was sorry he’d seen her break for freedom twenty years ago and forced his way into her life. He was sorry he’d become another thing to escape.
“I am sorry.”
“Sorry I found out about your little plan?”
“Huh?”
She shot him a scathing look that could have rivaled what he’d seen from her mother.
“It’s a little too late to play himbo, Lachlan.” She stared back out her window and added in a half mumble, “God, it’s so annoying that you’re smart and hot.”
“Okay, I know I’ve done a lot of things wrong, but I’m not playing at anything.”
She stared at him with her eyebrows raised. When he didn’t go on, she shook her head.
“Wow, that’s it? I’m a little disappointed. Guess the acting chops went to Will after all.”
Lachlan readjusted his grip on the steering wheel. If he had hackles, they would have been raised.
“See?” Deli gestured toward his hands kneading the wheel. “You have to get a grip about your brother. The lengths you’ve gone to . . . ridiculous.”
William had risked exposing her to invasive, endless media scrutiny—to deep dives into her life and hate mail from his rabid fans.
He’d risked exposing their town—exposing Mo and her cottage—to teeming masses of sightseers who would trample Fearnhall underfoot and never look back.
William had staged those photos for another fifteen minutes of attention, no matter the fallout for everyone else.
“His behavior was unforgivable.”
“Seriously? Okay, one—you don’t get to decide that for me. And two? That doesn’t give you the right to—” She cut herself short.
“To what?”
“To do what you did!” The words exploded from her.
Her anger hovered in the air. Lachlan almost never got calls to The Wallflower’s line.
He’d hung up on the reporter before they’d finished saying, “. . . in a green dress with dark hair,” and had torn after his brother.
Seeing Deli dangling in Will’s arms, unguarded and vulnerable?
His rage slid into place like blinders, and then there was scrambling, and slipping, and finally a crack.
A shattered picture frame.
White petals, browning in the mud.
And a thing that he and Deli had built, lying broken.
Lachlan was suddenly sure that if he spoke, he would hear his father’s voice.
“Listen.” She started to reach for him before staring at her own hand in the air like it was someone else’s and pulling it back into her lap. “Whatever bullshit is between you and your brother? Just, please, leave me out of it.”
They rode in silence for what felt like a very long time.
The glow of Mo’s cottage tinted the windscreen. Lachlan could hear the ticking clock.
He parked and reached into the back for the leather jacket Deli had left in his room that perfect night that was pierced and left bleeding.
As he twisted, he felt the place his ribs had collided with the archway throb, felt the tear in the skin of his arm tug.
In the dark cab, Lachlan felt all the things he’d hurt come back to him.
He sucked in a breath of pain and pressed a palm to his chest.
Deli’s eyes went wide with worry. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.” He tugged his sleeve over the wound.
“You’re hurt?”
Hearing the alarm in Deli’s voice was so much worse than if she’d been apathetic. Her affection, her concern—just more he’d taken.
“Just let me look at it—” She reached for his arm, but he pulled it away. They stared at each other in the dark.
She started to reach for the door.
“Wait—”
He caught her wrist and his skin crackled. Her body stilled. He let go.
“Take this.”
He set the jacket in her lap and her face went blank. She smoothed it with her palms.
“Deli?”
She hesitated. “Yes?”
God, there were too many things to say. Disgrace clamped its hand over his mouth. All the time he didn’t have overflowed as he silently began to cry, leaving streaks down his face where they caught in the moonlight.
He steadied his breath. “I meant every word.”
Deli watched a tear dip into the hollow of his cheek, but she didn’t respond. Lachlan chose the last thing he’d say to the person he’d always loved. The person he always would.
“I promise, I never meant to hurt you.”
“I believe you.”
The despair in her whisper could have drowned him on dry land.
Deli didn’t move, and neither did he. They sat together in the silence. Finally, she spoke, and he was sure the wrenching cry of pain that chased her words would stay with him forever.
“Lachlan, what if she dies?” Deli doubled over in the front seat, trying to mute her grief with her hands. “What am I gonna do if she dies?”
He ached to help. To do anything to make it stop for her. All he could do was watch. As her breathing inched its way back to normal, Lachlan would have given his soul to send her forward in time to a place where it all was over. She closed her eyes until she’d stopped crying.
Then she spoke a death knell—a dove shot from the sky.
“I just don’t think I belong here.”
She got out and closed the door behind her.
Lachlan watched Deli walk all the way up the path with stones still sunken into heather.
He narrated it over and over in his head—memorizing the pale glow of her skin, the hair curling at the base of her neck, the soft fabric falling over her shoulder.
She bent on the doorstep, hand to her mouth in a silent sob, before standing up tall, rolling back her shoulders, and slipping into Mo’s jacket, and he branded it all into the flesh of his heart.
As she stepped out of his life and into the cottage where her family of women were grappling with another unjust goodbye, Lachlan pressed the feeling of her into his mind.
He didn’t care that it hurt.
Lachlan had wasted so much time forgetting the truth of Deli once—the girl made of fire and kindness and courage.
He would never forget her again.