Chapter Fifteen
Delilah couldn’t find her car key.
It was Zero’s fault. She never took the key fob out of her purse, but she’d forgotten to lock the doors before she got out and then had to fish it out to click the button, which felt stupid in retrospect, given there were no other cars or people in Miller’s parking lot this morning.
But she’d needed to focus on anything other than what he’d said.
Because it would be far too easy to fall for you.
And now the key had vanished.
Carol Miller dusted off her hands as she climbed to her feet after thoroughly inspecting the area under the register. “Not there. Did you look in the parking lot?”
Zero stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking far less perturbed than he should at the delay. “We both did.”
It would be fairer to say he’d looked while she’d continued to panic.
It was one thing to admit to herself that she had a very small crush on him and do a little flirting, then put the brakes on when things got out of hand.
It was another thing entirely to throw down the gauntlet like he had, spilling secrets and impossible things all over the center console of her car.
“I’ll look again,” Delilah said and sprinted out of the feed store for some much needed air.
Her face was on fire. Her lungs were on fire. Everything inside felt scorched as if she’d swallowed hot coals.
“I think this is the part where I should apologize,” Zero said from behind her.
She turned around in slow motion. Of course he’d followed her. He lived to unsettle her, why not continue the tradition? “For what?”
“I shouldn’t have said that in the car. It obviously upset you.”
For many, many reasons and too much so to pretend any longer. “I just need to find my key so we can go home.”
Or rather back to his home. It wasn’t hers, no matter how much she’d come to love the family dinners and the fact she could see the pond from her window whenever she felt like it.
Not to mention the shared bathroom that meant she always heard Zero through the walls, sounds that were both comforting and provocative at the same time.
Home wasn’t a thing in her world.
“Delilah.” His quietness stilled her rollicking insides. Somehow. “Breathe for a minute. I asked Carol to call Sheridan. She’ll come get us. It’s okay.”
Nothing was okay. Nothing would ever be okay again. “I can’t leave without my key.”
“I’ll take you to the dealership. You can get a new one made.”
“I don’t have any extra money,” she cried, and yes, it did sound as hysterical out loud as it did in her head. If only she hadn’t ordered all of those chew toys on eBay. “Key fobs are expensive. Why do you think I needed a place to live? It’s not because I was running away from home.”
Well, technically she’d done that a decade ago, drifting from place to place while she put herself through school, desperate to keep her grades up so she could maintain a partial scholarship.
If only she could get her loan processed, she could get back to art history, where everything made sense and nothing exciting ever happened, because the people involved had been dead for a century.
“Okay, let’s take a time out,” Zero said in his Army Captain voice, the one she had no doubt had lined up plenty of guys in fatigues back in the day.
He hustled her over to the side of Miller’s where the roof extended over a picnic table she suspected might actually be the employee breakroom, based on the crumpled napkins and straw wrappers that had blown out of the round metal trash can near the wall.
“Please sit down,” he instructed and waited until she sank to the weathered bench seat, then he vanished around the corner.
When he returned, he carried two Sprites and a bag of potato chips that he handed to her, along with one of the soft drinks. “Eat something and get some sugar in you while I take my foot out of my mouth.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” she lied, wondering when on earth he’d clued in she liked Sprite the best. “I led you on with all the flirting, and I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
Zero settled heavily onto the bench, popping the top on his own drink. “I’ve done plenty of my own flirting. I don’t seem to be able to help myself.”
She had to laugh. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
They sat in silence for a beat, and then he did the strangest thing. He reached out and captured her hand in his, holding it as if they did this kind of thing often. The really weird part? It felt totally natural. Comfortable. He’d known exactly what she needed to calm down.
How?
Finally, he glanced up, meeting her gaze. “I’ll let go if you say so. I just…couldn’t sit here any longer without seeing how it feels to be normal for once.”
A tiny bit of sadness crept through his expression, capturing her thoroughly, and she couldn’t have released his hand at gunpoint. “It’s okay. I don’t have a lot of normal in my life, either. I’d almost forgotten some people have that as a matter of course. I’m sorry you’re not one of them.”
His mouth lifted up in a brief smile, the first one she’d seen in a while. It reminded her that up until he’d thrown down the falling-for-you speech, they’d been having fun together. She had anyway, and that’s what they needed to get back to. Pronto.
“Also my fault,” he told her. “Sheridan is a widow because of me.”
Her mouth flattened in a line as she swiftly assessed the falseness of that statement based on everything she knew about him, which he clearly did not realize was a lot.
“I doubt that seriously, or that she believes that. What happened? Her husband did something boneheaded and you were in the vicinity but couldn’t save him? ”
The scowl that flashed across his face told her she’d guessed correctly.
“That’s not what happened. Insurgents ambushed us at a checkpoint.
They demanded to know who was in charge, so of course I raised my hand, expecting that I’d be executed on the spot.
Instead, when they pulled their triggers, Rob jumped in front of me.
” He scrubbed his hands over his face but not fast enough to hide his ravaged expression.
“I still don’t know what he was thinking.
Maybe that he’d knock me out of the way.
Maybe he didn’t think at all, just reacted.
I didn’t get to ask him before he died.”
“Oh my God.” She stuffed a fist against her mouth, but it didn’t stop the tears from welling up and spilling over to splash on her cheeks as she internalized the anguish of what he’d gone through.
And that she’d trivialized his brother-in-law’s sacrifice by calling it boneheaded, when in fact what Rob Bassett had done should go down in history books as the most heroic thing she’d ever heard of.
Zero’s unfocused expression didn’t change when she squeezed his hand, shifting his fingers deeper between hers as she held on for dear life. The scar around his eye took on new, deeper meaning, and she’d never look at it the same way again.
“We got out, though, thanks to him,” he murmured. “The distraction worked to allow the rest of my team to take down the insurgents. He saved us all.”
At an enormous price. Hunter had lost his dad, Sheridan her husband. What had Zero lost? The question felt huge, important. It might even be the biggest key to what he was going through day in and day out as she watched him push himself to the point of exhaustion around the ranch.
“I’m sorry, Zero,” she told him quietly. “That’s a tough thing to have to deal with.”
He nodded his agreement. “Yeah. I can’t stop blaming myself. If only I hadn’t raised my hand. If only I’d thrown myself in front of my team instead of the other way around. It’s an infuriating game of round robin that churns through my head constantly.”
She could only imagine. “I appreciate that you trusted me enough to talk to me about this.”
More than she could possibly express. She’d been so focused on her goals for so long, simple human companionship had fallen by the wayside.
The fact it was Zero heightened everything to a whole other level.
One she should be slashing and burning immediately, but she couldn’t go back and unfeel everything he’d created between them.
She’d rather rip out her fingernails than destroy it.
It had been so long since she’d let herself have any kind of emotional connection to another person. She didn’t trust easily, either, after the fiasco of a relationship she’d had with her father.
That’s when he seemed to remember they were still holding hands across the picnic table, turning hers over in his to brush his thumb across her palm.
She ignored the little feathers of delight that shivered up her arm, completely aware she should be ashamed of herself for registering pleasure in the midst of so much of his pain.
“See, that’s why I’ve made such a mess of everything,” he told her earnestly, his gaze begging her to understand.
“I’m struggling to move on, to feel like it’s okay to live when Rob isn’t anymore.
Most of the time, I don’t try. But I couldn’t stay away from you.
I still can’t. Even though the timing sucks and I have no right to be saying things like this to you. So I have to apologize.”
Horrified he thought this way, she shook her head vehemently. “That’s ridiculous, Zero. You have every right to talk to me about whatever you want to. I’m the one who should be apologizing.”
Everything came together in an enormous wave of guilt and grief over the impossible situation she’d created for herself.
She had to tell him everything, about the dogs, training Elizabeth Swann and Will Turner to be emotional support animals, art history.
All of it. Regardless of what it might cost her.
And given the direction of the conversation, the price might be a lot higher than she’d ever realized.