30. Delilah #2
“I’m not saying it for sympathy. I’m saying it because it was true.” I meet his eyes. “I had let myself become so invisible that in the moment I thought I might die, I genuinely believed you wouldn’t notice. That’s how far we’d fallen.”
He’s crying.
Actual tears, sliding down his cheeks in the candlelight. He doesn’t try to hide them. Doesn’t wipe them away. Just sits there, this powerful man, weeping in a restaurant because of what he did to me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know you are.”
“If you had - if anything had-” He can’t finish.
I reach across the table. Take his hand this time.
“I didn’t,” I say. “I’m here. We’re here.”
The waiter approaches, sees Lucas’s face, and quietly retreats.
We sit there. Holding hands across the table. The candles flicker. Somewhere, a guitar starts playing softly - live music in the corner that I hadn’t noticed before, an old man with weathered hands coaxing beautiful sounds from worn strings.
Neither of us speaks for a long moment. The weight of what I’ve said hangs between us, heavy and raw. Lucas keeps his eyes on our joined hands, his thumb tracing slow circles on my knuckles. I can see him trying to compose himself, his jaw tight, his breathing uneven.
“I ran,” he finally says, his voice hoarse.
“When you fell. I don’t even remember getting out of the stands.
One second I was watching you ride, and the next I was pushing through people, screaming your name.
” He swallows hard. “The investors - I left them mid-sentence. Aimie tried to follow me and I didn’t even see her.
I didn’t see anything except you on the ground. ”
I didn’t know that.
“They had to hold me back,” he continues.
“The medics. I was trying to get to you, and they kept saying I was in the way, and I-” His voice breaks again.
“I thought you were dead. For about thirty seconds, I thought you were dead, and I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think. The whole world just… stopped. ”
“Lucas-”
“So when you say you wondered if I’d notice-” He looks up at me, his eyes red-rimmed and devastated. “I would have noticed. I would have died right there beside you.”
The tears I’ve been holding back spill over. Just a few, sliding down my cheeks. I wipe them away with my free hand.
His tears don’t stop either, but something shifts in his face.
“You’re right to have thought that,” he says, and the words seem to cost him everything. “Not because it was true - it wasn’t, I swear to God it wasn’t - but because I gave you every reason to believe it.”
I don’t respond. I just wait.
“Before you fell, I was already losing you. I just didn’t see it.
” He stares at the candle flame like it holds answers.
“I let that phone call pull me away from you in our own bed. I brought Aimie into our home and let her sit in your chair, wear your clothes, feed our daughter - and when you told me something was wrong, I called you paranoid.”
His voice breaks on the word.
“I stopped seeing you, Delilah. Not because you became invisible - because I stopped looking. The investors, the business, the pressure… I told myself I was doing it for us, for our future. But somewhere along the way, I forgot that you were the future. You were the whole point.”
He finally looks at me. Raw. Undefended.
“I can’t take back the months I made you feel like a ghost in your own life.
I can’t undo the fact that you thought about dying and your first thought was that I wouldn’t care.
That’s on me. All of it.” He reaches across the table, palm up - an offering, not a demand.
“I’m not telling you about running to you after you fell to prove I loved you.
I’m telling you because it was the moment I realized how badly I’d failed.
That it took almost losing you for me to wake up. ”
“And if I hadn’t fallen?” My voice is barely a whisper.
He doesn’t flinch from the question.
“Then I might have lost you anyway. Slowly. The way I was already losing you.” His jaw tightens. “And I would have deserved it.”
I stare at him across the table. This man who just laid himself bare with no excuses, no deflection, just the raw ugly truth of what he did and who he was.
Part of me wants to hold onto the anger. It’s been my armor for months. The thing that kept me standing when everything else crumbled.
But watching him sit there, tears still wet on his face, owning every single failure without flinching… the armor doesn’t feel as necessary anymore.
“I’ve been waiting for you to say that,” I admit. “Not the apologies - you’ve given me plenty of those. But this. You actually understanding what you did. Why it hurt so much.”
“I should have understood sooner.”
“Yes. You should have.” I take a breath. “But you understand now. And that… that matters to me. More than I expected it to.”
Something shifts in his eyes. Hope, maybe. Fragile and terrified.
“I’m not all the way there yet,” I continue. “I can’t promise I won’t wake up angry sometimes. That something won’t trigger a memory and I’ll need space.”
“I can handle that.”
“But I want to forgive you, Lucas.” My voice cracks on his name. “I’m not just staying for Allana or because it’s easier. I’m staying because when I imagine my future, you’re still in it. Even after everything.”
He closes his eyes. A tear slips down his cheek.
“I don’t deserve that.”
“Maybe not.” I reach across the table and take his hand. “But I’m giving it to you anyway. So don’t waste it. This is your last chance.”
His fingers tighten around mine like I’ve thrown him a lifeline.
“I won’t,” he whispers. “I swear to you, I won’t.”
We sit there for a moment, hands clasped across the table, the weight of the past few months settling into something we can actually carry together.
“We’re a mess,” I say, trying to laugh. It comes out watery.
“Complete disaster,” he agrees. His voice is still thick, but there’s the ghost of something lighter underneath.
The waiter hovers at a distance, clearly unsure whether to approach. Lucas notices, clears his throat, waves him off with a small gesture that says give us a minute.
“He probably thinks we’re breaking up,” I say.
“Or getting back together.”
“Is there a difference? Both involve a lot of crying in restaurants.”
Lucas huffs out something that’s almost a laugh. “I’ve never cried in a restaurant before.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“I’ve never cried in front of anyone before. Except you and Allana, but she doesn’t count because she was crying too and neither of us knew what we were doing.”
I smile despite myself. “When was that?”
“The first night you moved to the cottage.” He reaches for his napkin, dabs at his face with the kind of awkward dignity that only a man uncomfortable with his own emotions can manage.
“She asked where you were, and I tried to explain, and then she started crying, and then I started crying, and Rosa found us both on the kitchen floor eating ice cream straight from the container late at night.”
“You hate eating ice cream from the container. You always say it’s unsanitary.”
“Desperate times.” He takes a breath. Then another. I watch him slowly pull himself back together, piece by piece. “She asked if you were coming back. And I didn’t know what to say, so I just… scooped more ice cream.”
“What flavor?”
“What?”
“The ice cream. What flavor?”
He blinks at me. “Seriously? That’s your question?”
“I need to know if you and my daughter have good taste.”
“It was-” He thinks. “Rocky road. Her choice.”
“Acceptable.” I nod gravely. “If you’d said vanilla, I would have had concerns.”
“You and your vanilla vendetta.”
“It’s not a vendetta. It’s standards. Vanilla is what you order when you’ve given up on joy.”
He laughs - a real laugh this time, surprised out of him. It breaks something loose in my chest, hearing that sound. It’s been so long since I’ve heard him laugh like that. Like he means it.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he says, shaking his head. “I’ve missed this. Just… talking to you. Even when you’re being ridiculous about ice cream.”
“I’m never ridiculous about ice cream. I’m passionate.”
“You once refused to go to that gelato place in Austin because they had ‘too many vanilla options.’”
“They had seven. Seven vanilla variations. That’s not variety, that’s a cry for help.”
He’s smiling now. Really smiling, even though his eyes are still wet and his face is still blotchy from crying. I probably look the same - mascara definitely ruined, nose probably red. We’re both absolute wrecks.
But somehow, sitting here in this tiny restaurant with candles flickering and guitar music playing and the ruins of our emotions scattered between us, I feel lighter than I have in months.
The food arrives eventually. I don’t remember ordering, but it’s perfect - grilled fish and roasted vegetables, nothing fancy, just fresh and good. We eat slowly. Talk about Allana, about Storm, about the small things that used to fill our conversations before everything got complicated.
He asks me questions. Real questions. What I’ve been reading. What I dream about. Whether I still think about competing on the national circuit.
“Sometimes,” I admit. “Late at night, when I can’t sleep. I watch old videos of my runs.”
“You could do it again. If you wanted.”
“Maybe.” I push a vegetable around my plate. “But it wouldn’t be the same. I’m not the same rider I was before.”
“No.” He sets down his fork. “You’re better.”
I look up.
“I mean it,” he says. “I’ve watched you train, these past few weeks. The way you handle Storm now - it’s different. More intuitive. Like you don’t even have to think about it.”
“Pain teaches you things.”
“So does loss.” He reaches across the table again, and this time I let him take my hand without hesitation. “Delilah, I need to ask you something. And I need you to tell me the truth.”
“Okay.”