Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
TRACE
W alking through the orchards with Delaney’s hand in mine was like a dream, and I never wanted to wake up from it. Seeing Cade darting between the trees like an excited puppy was just icing on the cake.
“Does he ever get tired?” I asked as we watched him grab a stick like it was the greatest treasure in the world and turn to wave it at us before he ran off again.
“I think they continue at this pace until they hit their thirteenth birthday, and then they refuse to leave their room and hate you for the next four years,” Delaney joked.
I shuddered at the thought.
Delaney dropped my hand as she moved to one of the trees, grabbing one of the lower branches and checking the leaves.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if we have any pests we’re going to need to deal with.” She dusted her hands together as she stepped back and then looked down the rows of trees. “How many trees do you think we have out here?”
I looked around the old orchard, counting the rows, and then shrugged. “Probably around sixty.” When I looked back at her, I could see she was running through a list in her mind. I’d missed this about Delaney. She always could get so locked in on a project that there was no other option but for it to turn out perfect in the end. There’d be no scenario she wouldn’t have planned out. She made the best lab partner in school and our whole class knew it.
“Fancy cluing me in on what you’re thinking?” I reached for her hand, and we started walking again, following along in Cade’s wake.
We should get him a dog. That was what was missing from this picture. And I bet he’d never been allowed to have a pet before because they lived in an apartment.
“It might be a bit crazy,” Delaney warned me like she thought I was going to laugh at her. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to do. Honestly, that’s been the last year of my life, figuring out what I want to do. I knew I wanted a business I could build. Something that was my own. And since we came back home, I’ve been thinking about what I used to love doing and, well, I want to make cider. I know it’s strange. But I have so many memories…Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I think that’s an incredible idea,” I said honestly. “Are you thinking boutique label, or do you want to expand into something?”
“Boutique to start with. We don’t have the space or the setup to run much of anything else for the next five years. As it is, I’d need to find a lot of local growers to source the fruit. Sixty trees aren’t really going to cut it, and that’s dependent on there not being any that need taking out. It’s been a long time since anyone has really managed the orchard.”
She looked around, and I could already see her plans starting to grow. If anyone could do this, it would be Delaney. And I could still remember the hard cider we used to steal out of the barn when we were teenagers. If Delaney was making anything even close to that, she’d sell out every batch she made easily.
This had been such a massive part of our lives back then. Delaney’s favorite thing to do with her dad was to work away in the barn on their next batch of cider. He never sold it. It was just something they did together. Although there were more than a few people around Willowbrook who’d got a free supply for parties and weddings.
I could still remember how we used to run around the barn. Delaney checked on the press and other equipment that seemed so much like mad science experiments to me back then. I’d always wanted to know how they did it. What the trick was to making the James Cider that no one in town had ever been able to replicate.
I stopped suddenly in my tracks, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You do know what the special ingredient was,” I accused, remembering back to when we were kids. “You said he never told you.”
“Of course, I know the secret ingredient,” she laughed. “I was the one who discovered it.”
I shook my head in faux disappointment. “The lies, Delaney. I can’t believe our entire childhood was built on this foundation of lies.”
Delaney wrapped her arm around my waist, nestling in against my side as her hand slipped up the back of my jacket. “Maybe if you make it worth my while, I’ll tell you all my secrets,” she teased.
“Oh, you have no idea what you’re in for. Brace yourself. You’re going to be spilling all your secrets to me after tonight.”
She flushed that delicious shade of pink that made me want to kiss her, and I pulled her in close beneath one of the apple trees.
“I don’t know if I can wait until tonight,” I admitted as I ducked down to kiss the soft skin of her neck.
I felt Delaney shiver beneath my hands, and I slipped my hands under her shirt, rubbing my thumbs against her soft skin.
“Trace! Come see this,” Cade called out, and my forehead dropped to Delaney’s.
“Coming,” I shouted back, and Delaney grinned.
“The joys of having a kid,” she said wryly.
I could see why it might get old, but honestly, the fact that Cade had obviously found something and the first person he wanted to share it with was me meant more than I could ever express. There was only one thing that could beat it, and I just had to hope that one day he’d feel ready to say it. I could wait. Cade was one of the most important people in the world to me.
He was so perfect and so innocent. Yet he’d suffered because of my family, because of the actions of one person. He might not have been in pain, and he had a devoted, loving mother at his side. I couldn’t even argue that he’d wanted for anything.
But he didn’t have me.
And I hoped like hell that it meant something, which I was pretty sure made me a terrible person and an even worse father. Because who thought that way? Who wanted their kid to have known there was something missing in their life just to make themselves feel better?
Delaney sensed the change in me. Her hand came to my cheek as she moved so I was looked into her eyes.
“Hey. What just happened?” she asked softly.
“I think I’m just as bad as they were. I think I care about myself far too much to be any good at this. What if I’m a terrible father because all I know is how they act?”
“Oh, Trace. The very fact that you’re worried about this means you’re nothing like them.”
“You don’t understand.” I shook my head, stepping back away from her, but she followed me as I went, not prepared to let me even think this way about myself. “I wanted him to have had something missing in this life. I want to know that he missed me. That he knew he was lacking something because I wasn’t there.”
Saying it aloud, especially to her, made me realize just how awful it was.
Delaney stepped back and my heart just about leaped out of my mouth with how scared it made. “I’m going to tell you something,” she said quietly, looking up through the path of trees to make sure that Cade wasn’t close by. “I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad. Only because I want you to understand that I know what I’m talking about.”
I nodded, afraid to say anything because I had a feeling that whatever she was about to say was about to completely shatter me.
When she saw that I wasn’t going to say anything, she nodded, nervously glancing for Cade again before she sighed and turned back to me.
“When I first went to the city, I was in a really bad place. And all of those bad feelings about myself, about what was happening, they turned against you. I hated you so much back then. I’m not proud of it. But I had all this stuff going on, and it felt like there was nowhere for it to go, and it twisted up inside me.”
I couldn’t take this. I thought I could. I thought I could at least have the guts to stand there and listen to what she had to say. But I was wrong.
“ Delaney .” I stepped closer, but she held up a hand to stop me.
It took everything in me to stand where I was.
“Adelaide got me a therapist. If she hadn’t, I don’t know where I’d be right now. But it was really good, Trace. They helped me see that whatever I was feeling was just a normal reaction, and then they worked me through it. I forgave you a long time ago. I’m not saying that you need to forgive your parents. I’m not sure I’d ever be able to. But I think you’d really benefit from speaking to someone.”
I knew the reaction she was expecting. Denial. Rage. Probably some puffing of my chest as I tried to tell her how I was too much of a manly man for therapy.
But there was none of that inside me.
Because she was right.
It wasn’t just what had happened to Delaney and me. It was everything. It was the shitty childhood, the abusive marriage, the feelings of loss and guilt I couldn’t escape whenever I thought of my brother.
Damn. It was honestly a miracle that I’d made it this far without having therapy.
“Okay. I think that’s a really good idea.”
“Wow, I thought you’d fight me on that, and then we’d do this whole thing where I tried to convince you, and you’d get upset with me, and then we’d get all awkward with each other for a bit before I finally set Blake on you.”
I had a feeling setting Blake on me was something I didn’t want to experience, even if it was to try to persuade me to go to therapy.
With a wry smile, I stepped back to her side and grabbed her hand as we went to find our son.
Our son.
“I don’t know how I feel about you going for the nuclear option of Blake quite so quickly. You do realize that I’m going to have to go for mutual destruction and counter with Dex, right?”
Delaney laughed and then waved as Cade came back into view with the biggest armful of sticks that I’d ever seen.
“Dex? Please. The man loves me like a sister. You have no chance.”
She was right.
And I was so happy that she was.