Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Eliot Brooks was kissing her in the middle of the Heart Shaped Clouds Festival. The crowd was making a rumbling high pitched noise that sounded like joy. Dalene couldn't take in any of it because she was too busy feeling this.
Eliot's hand at her jaw. His mouth warm and unhurried and entirely certain. The smell of cedar and underneath it the warmth that was just him, just this, just the way he kissed her like he'd thought about it and had decided temporary was no longer necessary.
He'd said it was for the crowd. But a crowd kiss would've been a peck on the check. Or maybe a quick brush of his top lip against her lower lip. That's not what was happening in this crowded meadow.
She forgot about the crowd.
She forgot, entirely and without effort, the name of the man she was supposed to still be upset about.
It was gone. Whatever that chapter had cost her, whatever she'd carried for a year and a half down Main Street with her assembled smile and her careful breathing exercises and her four AM baking sessions — Dalene couldn't locate any of it right now.
There was just Eliot.
This was supposed to be fake. They had ground rules. An expiration date. A clean stop at the end of the festival, which was today, which meant—
She felt it before she could stop it. A sob. Small. Involuntary. The kind that came from the place where you kept the things you hadn't let yourself want because wanting them felt too dangerous.
She wanted this to be real.
She wanted him to be real.
She wanted a man who had known her for barely two weeks and had learned how she took her coffee and which Fleetwood Mac songs she sang wrong on purpose and that she baked when she couldn't sleep — she wanted that man to be hers.
As though he heard her thoughts, Eliot broke the kiss. He pulled back just enough to look at her. His eyes moved across her face. Dalene saw the moment he understood. Not what was wrong; just that something was.
He didn't ask. He didn't say anything at all. He put his arm around her and turned them both away from the crowd and walked.
He found a gap in the tree line at the far edge of the meadow. Far enough from the festival noise that it was just the trees and the afternoon light coming through in long slanted gold pieces. The distant sound of the crowd, muffled now, belonged to another world entirely.
Eliot stopped. He turned to face her. Dalene looked up at him. Whatever words she'd prepared on the walk over failed her. Tears came instead.
She hadn't cried when Tristan left her. She hadn't cried when he'd gotten back together with Brooke. Not even when they announced their engagement. But she cried now. She cried because for the first time since her grandmother had died, she felt seen.
Eliot pulled her in. Both arms around her, her face finding the space between his chin and his chest, and he held on. He held on like he meant it, his hand at the back of her head, his chin resting in her hair. He didn't say a word.
He didn't ask what was wrong. He didn't tell her it was going to be okay. He didn't try to fix anything. He just held her tight.
His heartbeat was steady under her ear. His hand was warm at the back of her head. The gold light came through the trees and the festival hummed in the distance and she stood in the quiet of it and breathed.
In. Out.
Not four counts. Not her doctor's exercise. Just breathing enough air to slow the sobbing down.
Footsteps sounded on the grass, fast and certain. Eliot's arms didn't loosen. But his head came up. Hers came away from his heartbeat.
"What did you do to her?" Tristan stood at the edge of the tree line with his jaw set and his eyes moving between Dalene's face and Eliot's.
The concern on his face was real, which was the thing about Tristan that had always made everything so complicated.
His feelings were real. They were just never quite in the right order.
Dalene felt tired. She just wanted to lay her head back on the pillow that was Eliot and find rest.
"He's using you." Tristan looked at her directly. "That's what this is. You know that, right? He needed a story, and you were convenient."
That was all true. She and Eliot were using each other, and pretty soon they were going to let each other go. But Eliot didn't let go of her. He ran a soothing hand up and down her spine, coaxing her head back to his chest. Dalene went.
"There are no cameras here." Eliot's voice was even.
Not raised. Like he was giving one of his forecasts.
"There's no story to put on display. You want to talk about using someone?
You ended things with her for closure. Thank you for that by the way.
For ending things with an extraordinary woman so I could have a beginning with her. So, thank you."
Dalene paid no attention to the argument happening over her head. She listened instead to Eliot's heart beating under her cheek. Steady. Unhurried. The same rhythm it had been keeping the whole time, through the crying and the crowd and Tristan's arrival, completely unaltered.
She wanted it to be true. She wanted every word of what he'd just said to Tristan to be true so badly that she felt it in her back teeth.
"Dalene." Tristan's voice dropped. The earnest one. The one she'd believed for over a year. "I made a mistake. I know that now. I'm going to end things with Brooke. I want to try again with you. Just — give me another chance."
Dalene stayed where she was. Her cheek against Eliot's chest. His arms around her. His heartbeat steady under her ear, patient as weather data, telling her the same true thing it had been telling her for the past ten minutes. You're safe with me.
She lifted her head. Not away from Eliot. Just enough to look at Tristan. "You're going to break it off with Brooke."
"Yes."
"Meaning you haven't yet."
Tristan opened his mouth. Nothing came out.
Dalene looked at him. At the face she had once memorized. At the man who had needed to see what she said before he decided what he was going to do. Which meant Brooke didn't know he was standing here. Which meant he had come out here to test the water before he committed to draining the pool.
Dalene had been here before. Different words. Same architecture.
"You were going to see what I said, and then go back to Brooke."
"That's not—"
"Tristan."
He stopped.
Dalene looked at him for a long moment. Not with anger. Not with the assembled smile. Just with the clear, tired eyes of a woman who finally, fully, understood the pattern.
Then she looked up at Eliot. He was already looking down at her. Gaze steady and asking nothing.
"Take me back to the festival," she said.
Eliot kept his arm around her as they walked out of the tree line and back toward the meadow and the lights and the music.
It didn't matter to her if it was real or not.
She needed this. She needed Eliot's healing touch, his heart beat.
If this was the end, she was going to make this night last forever.