30. Delilah
— ? —
Delilah
Lucas knocks on the guest room door at exactly six in the evening.
I’ve been ready for an hour. Changed my outfit four times - the blue dress too casual, the red one too desperate, the black one too funereal.
Told myself I was being ridiculous. This is my husband, not some stranger from a dating app.
We’ve been married for years. We have a child together.
I’ve seen him at his worst and his best and every shade between.
But my hands still shook when I put on my earrings.
He asked me to dinner. A real dinner. Not in our kitchen with the ghosts of everything hovering around us. Somewhere new. Somewhere that belongs to the people we’re trying to become.
I open the door.
He’s in a suit. Not the one he wears to investor meetings - a different one, darker, that I don’t recognize.
It fits him perfectly, charcoal fabric that makes his shoulders look impossibly broad.
His hair is styled carefully, and he’s holding a single wildflower.
Not roses. Not anything expensive or professionally arranged.
Just a purple wildflower, slightly wilted, the kind that grows along the back fence near the cottage.
“From the path,” he says, a little awkward. “I pass them every morning when I go check on Storm. They made me think of you.”
I take it. The stem is still cool from the evening air.
“Thank you.”
“You look-” He stops. Swallows visibly. His eyes travel from my face to my dress to my heels and back again, slow and reverent. “You look incredible.”
I’m wearing silver. Not gold - never gold, not anymore.
The fabric catches the light when I move, shimmers like water.
It’s probably too fancy for wherever we’re going, but I wanted to feel like myself tonight.
The real myself. Not the woman who faded into the background while someone else took her place.
“So do you.” I tuck the flower behind my ear, feel the soft petals brush my cheek. “New suit?”
“Bought it last week.” A pause. “For tonight.”
Something warm moves through my chest. I don’t name it.
He offers his arm. “Shall we?”
The restaurant is two hours away.
He drives, which surprises me. Usually he has someone take us everywhere - his schedule too packed to waste time behind the wheel. But tonight it’s just us. His truck eating up the dark highway, the radio playing something soft and unfamiliar, the headlights cutting tunnels through the darkness.
I watch him drive. The way his hands rest easy on the wheel. The line of his jaw, the curve of his ear, the place where his collar meets his neck. I used to trace that spot with my fingertips, my lips, my tongue. I used to know every inch of him.
I still do. That’s the problem.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“It’s a surprise.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“I know.” He glances at me, a small smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “But you’ll like this one.”
I watch the landscape change through the window. The ranch disappearing. The small towns blurring past - gas stations and diners and churches with their steeples dark against the sky. The stars coming out one by one, scattered across the velvet black like someone spilled a jar of diamonds.
“Do you remember our first date?” he asks.
I almost laugh. The memory surfaces, vivid and fond. “You mean when you took me to that steakhouse in Austin and spent the entire dinner talking about the breeding program?”
“I was nervous.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “You made me nervous.”
“I was covered in horse sweat. I’d been training Storm all day.”
“You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” His hands tighten on the wheel, just slightly. “You still are.”
The compliment lands somewhere soft. Somewhere tender and unprotected.
“You talked about bloodlines for two hours,” I say, deflecting. “I almost fell asleep in my brisket.”
“And yet you agreed to a second date.”
“You promised to actually ask me questions about myself.”
“Did I deliver?”
“Eventually.” I smile despite myself. “After the third date.”
He laughs. The sound fills the truck, warm and real, chasing away some of the tension that’s been sitting between us.
“I was an idiot,” he says. “I had this incredible woman sitting across from me, and all I could talk about was horses.”
“To be fair, I also really like horses. I wanted you to talk about them.”
“You do.” He reaches over. His hand hovers near mine on the seat between us - asking permission.
I turn my palm up.
His fingers lace through mine. Warm and familiar. Calluses from rope and reins, the strength that’s always been there underneath the business suits. My body remembers this - the particular fit of his hand in mine, the way his thumb automatically traces circles on my skin.
“I’m trying to do this differently,” he says. “Tonight. I want to know you again. Not the partner I work with or the mother of my child. You. The woman I fell in love with in that paddock.”
“She’s different now. After everything.”
“I know.” He squeezes my hand. “I want to know who she’s become.”
The restaurant is a small place in a town I’ve never heard of.
No valet parking. No paparazzi waiting outside. No sponsors or investors or anyone who might recognize the Montoya name. Just a converted farmhouse with fairy lights strung through the old oak trees and a hand-painted sign that says Elena’s in cheerful blue letters.
“How did you find this place?”
“I asked Rosa.” He opens my door, helps me down from the truck. His hand lingers at my waist. “She said it was where her husband took her on their first date. A long time ago.”
Rosa. Of course. The woman who’s seen everything, who’s been with us since before Allana was born. She would know a place like this.
The interior is intimate - maybe fifteen tables, mismatched chairs in cheerful colors, candles flickering in mason jars.
The walls are covered with old photographs, generations of families, weddings and birthdays and ordinary moments made permanent.
An older woman with gray-streaked hair and laugh lines around her eyes greets us at the door.
“Mr. Montoya! Your table is ready.” She beams at me. “And you must be the wife. He’s been here three times this week, making sure everything was perfect.”
Three times.
I glance at Lucas. His cheeks have gone slightly pink beneath his tan.
“The menu changes daily,” he explains as we’re led to a corner table, the best in the house, tucked away where no one can overhear. “I wanted to make sure I knew what you could order. In case there was something you didn’t like.”
This man. This impossible, infuriating, endlessly surprising man.
We sit. The candles cast soft shadows across his face. He looks younger in this light - less like the CEO who’s spent months making terrible decisions and more like the man who stumbled backward from a screaming horse all those years ago and looked at me like I’d hung the moon.
“Tell me something,” I say. “Something I don’t know.”
“About what?”
“Anything. Something real. Something you’ve never told anyone.”
He’s quiet for a moment. The candle flame dances between us. I watch him think - the slight furrow between his brows, the way he turns his wine glass in slow circles without drinking.
“I almost sold Storm,” he says finally. “After the first year. Before I found you.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“The trainers kept telling me he was hopeless. Dangerous. That I was wasting money trying to save something that didn’t want to be saved.” His voice goes rough around the edges. “I had the buyer lined up. Someone who wanted him for… I don’t want to think about what they wanted him for.”
“But you didn’t.”
“The night before the sale, I went to his paddock. Just to say goodbye, I think. To apologize for giving up on him.” His eyes are far away, lost in the memory.
“And he came to the fence. First time he’d ever approached me willingly.
Just stood there, breathing, letting me stand near him.
And I couldn’t do it. I called off the sale the next morning. ”
“You never told me that.”
“I was ashamed. That I’d even considered it.” He finally meets my eyes. “And then you walked into that paddock, and you looked at him like he was worth saving. Like I’d been right all along to try.”
The waiter appears with bread and oil. I barely notice him set it down.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because you asked for something real.” He reaches across the table. His fingers brush mine. “And because I want you to know - I understand what it feels like to almost give up on something you love. And then to be so grateful you didn’t.”
I blink hard. The candle flame blurs.
Damn him.
“My turn,” I say, and my voice is steadier than I feel. “Something real.”
“Okay.”
“When I fell off Stella-” The words come out before I can stop them, pulled from somewhere deep that I usually keep locked. “In that moment when I was airborne, when I knew I was going to hit the ground and there was nothing I could do to stop it - I thought about you.”
Lucas goes completely still across the table.
“But not in the way you’d think.” I turn my wine glass in circles, not drinking.
“I wasn’t thinking ‘I hope Lucas saves me’ or ‘I need to get back to my husband.’ I was thinking about how the last thing I saw before Stella went down was you in the stands.
With the investors on one side. And Aimie on the other. ”
His face goes pale.
“Delilah-”
“And in that split second, while I was falling, I thought: if I die right now, would he even notice? Or would he just turn to her and keep talking business?” I pull my hand back.
Need the space. “That’s what was in my head when I hit the ground.
Not my daughter. Not my life. Just… would my husband care that I was gone, or would Aimie step into my place and no one would miss me? ”
“God.” His voice cracks. “God, Delilah.”