Chapter 14 - Delilah
My pen almost ripped through the paper as I crossed out another name for a potential sponsor in my journal.
The sound of the creek didn’t do anything to ease my stress, either.
It’d been four days of calls and emails and office visits, and I managed to scrape together seven hundred dollars.
That’s it. Compared to Ethan’s million, it was a drop in the bucket. The ocean, really.
I buried my head in my hands, wracking my brain for something, anything I could think of. So much for proving that I wasn’t the fuck up of the friend group.
“There you are,” Emmett said from behind me.
I gave him a tight smile over my shoulder. “Hey.” My voice was flat, defeated.
He bent down to kiss the top of my head before sitting beside me. “You’ve been hiding again.”
“Yeah,” I sighed.
He took my journal off my lap, looking at all the scratched-out names. “No luck?”
“Nope.” A self-deprecating laugh left me. “But why would I catch a break when I need it most?”
“Someone will bite.”
“Have you heard from Jack? Or found anything with Ethan?” I was desperate at this point, and knowing that Sterling and Preston were behind all of this made me even more so.
“Not yet.”
“Fuck,” I whispered. My head fell back towards the light blue sky as if it had the answers. Or thousands of dollars to drop out of one of those cotton ball clouds.
“Stop beating yourself up over this. It isn’t your fault, sugar.”
I knew that logically, and yet I still couldn’t stop myself from blaming myself. “It feels like it.” I grabbed a random stick, snapping it into little pieces. “If I hadn’t given them anything to go after, none of this would be happening.”
His finger landed on my chin, turning my head and forcing me to look at him. His eyes were sharp. “You didn’t give them anything. And I have a feeling they would’ve found something to use against us regardless.”
“Claire was right,” I sighed. “I shouldn’t have been trusted with this. I always screw everything up.” It didn’t matter that she’d apologized and I’d forgiven her. We both knew there was truth in her words. Everyone did.
“Stop that.” The words came out low and gruff. Agitated. “I hate hearing you talk about yourself like that.”
“But it’s true.”
His expression softened, eyes darting between mine. “No, sweet girl, it’s not.”
“I’ve felt like a failure my entire life, Emmett.
” I wiped away my tear the second it fell.
“I studied my ass off in school and was still a C average student. Every job I’ve had ended in a nightmare for one reason or another.
I’ve never had a real boyfriend because I suck at dating.
I try so hard, and it’s never enough.” I shrugged a shoulder, my chin wobbling.
“The only thing I’m good at is slinging back shots at the Bull Pen and making people laugh. ”
He snatched me up, pulling me into his lap so I was straddling him. His eyes were hard, his body rigid. “I’m so fucking sick of you not realizing how special you are,” he growled.
I shook my head in disbelief. “I’m not.”
His jaw tightened, fingers digging into my waist slightly. “Delilah, I swear to God…”
My eyes narrowed at him, irritation burning in my chest. I squirmed out of his grasp, needing the distance. I didn’t need him blowing smoke up my ass just because we were sleeping together.
“Go ahead then, tell me what makes me so special.”
“Everything. The way you make people feel seen. How you instantly light up a room when you walk into it. How you listen without judgment. Your hair. The way people flock to you, desperate for even an ounce of your attention. You don’t bullshit people.
The fact that your teeth haven’t rotted out with the amount of sugar you consume.
Your infectious laugh. How selfless you are.
How much you adore Luke. Is that enough for you, or do I need to keep going? ”
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. “Would it be narcissistic of me to tell you to keep going?” I whispered, dying to know what else he thought of me after being in the dark for years.
“You’re the therapist, you tell me.”
“I think a few more wouldn’t hurt.” We both smiled. Small, but there.
He took my hand and placed it on his chest just like I had before our first kiss.
A jolt of warmth rushed through me. “You didn’t give up on me even when I gave up on myself.
How about that? Even when I deserved it, you didn’t leave me to deal with all my shit by myself.
” Every word he said dug under my ribs and settled right in my chest.
I swallowed back the knot in my throat, my heart hammering. “Emmett…”
“My best friend died because of me,” he said.
I’d heard him mention that on the phone with Jack the other night, but I wasn’t going to pry.
“I was our squadron leader and made a bad call. Got shot in the chest right in front of me. He had just gotten married the year before and had a baby on the way.”
My blood turned to ice. “I’m so sorry.” I knew the words did nothing, but I meant them all the same.
His gaze went somewhere else. Somewhere dark. It was the same look he always got when he thought of his time overseas. Haunted and vacant. Bone-chilling.
“There was so much blood, Delilah,” he whispered. “It just kept coming, no matter how hard I tried to keep it in. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. And it was all my fault. My best friend, the person who knew me most and trusted me with his life, and I’d failed him in the worst way imaginable.”
And now it all made sense. The fear of intimacy, the safe distance he kept from everyone, the way he reacted when I cut myself in my office a few weeks ago.
“I haven’t even spoken to his wife. Don’t know anything about his kid.” I wiped away the tear that slid down his cheek when his gaze met mine. “What kind of person does that make me?”
My heart crumbled seeing him so broken. I smoothed his hair back and stroked his cheeks.
“It makes you someone who’s doing what he can to heal.
And sometimes that’s protecting yourself in ways not everyone will understand.
Healing from grief and trauma isn’t linear; it isn’t the same for everyone.
Just look at how different you’ve all coped with your mom’s death.
Claire still sometimes struggles to get out of bed.
You and Savvy keep it all bottled up. Tess talks it out with Levi and me in her sessions. ”
“Yeah,” he rasped. “I know you’re right, I just still feel like shit for it.”
“Maybe you feeling like shit is a sign to reach out to her. I’m sure calling Jack was difficult, but in the end, it was nice to talk to him again, right?”
He nodded, and I gave him a tiny smile. “See. This is why you’re special, Lilah.
You could’ve left me in the never-ending cycle of blaming myself and hiding I was stuck in, but you didn’t.
You offered to help me even when it cost you something.
You pushed me. You forced me to live. So when I tell you you’re special, believe it. Because you are to me. Okay?”
My voice came out shaky. “Okay.”
I leaned forward, cradling his face in my hands.
“What happened to Danny isn’t your fault.
” The muscles in his jaw shifted beneath my hands, his eyes growing glassy all over again.
“And I’m sure if he were here, he’d tell you the same thing.
You’re more than what happened on that horrible day.
More than anything you did over there. You’re the brother who protects his sisters.
The friend who is there when shit hits the fan.
The son who took care of his mom when she needed him most. The man that I”—the words got stuck in my throat, and I bit my lip, forcing the words out differently—“love being around.” It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the full truth either.
His eyes fell shut, sending tears rolling down his cheeks. “If I’m special, then you’re special, too, baby. Okay?”
“Okay,” he whispered. His eyes were so green when he opened them—the greenest I’d ever seen. It felt like noticing how beautiful they were for the first time all over again.
Emmett leaned forward, his lips soft against mine, tender. I could taste his tears, all the heartbreak he kept hidden from everyone but me.
And that’s what made me feel special. Not any of the other things he said. Just this. Knowing he felt safe with me.
“Let’s go swim.”
He blinked. “Swim? In the creek?”
I stood, brushing dirt from my shorts. “Yeah. It’ll be fun, and I think we both need to have a little fun right now.” I held out my hand for him. He glanced at the creek, then at me. “So you can jump out of planes, but can’t get in a five-foot creek? Don’t be a wimp.”
“This feels like peer pressure,” he grumbled, but took my hand and stood anyway.
I reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it up slowly, our eyes locked.
Mine came off next. His darkened as he looked me over, but he didn’t act on it.
And we went on like that, undressing one another in turns in the silence that was deafening with everything I should’ve said these last twenty years.
The water was cool, but not so cold that it was unenjoyable. Sunlight bounced off the ripples of water as we waded past the shallow rock bed to where it dropped off, the earthy scent of the water and silt surrounding us.
“This felt a lot deeper when we were little,” I chuckled. The water barely went past my boobs. It made me think of how many years I’d spent coming to this creek. How many memories lived in the trees around us, in the rocks at my feet.
“Come here, baby.”
Emmett lowered himself into the water, probably onto his knees if I had to guess, and when he was close enough, I wrapped my limbs around him, holding him close. “That’s better.” I smiled.
“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “I needed this…and needed to get all of that off my chest.”
“If you ever want to talk more about it, I’m here.”
He nodded, glancing around, and in a snap movement, he dunked us.
My yelp got swallowed up under the water.
And when he pulled us back up past the surface, I sputtered, slicking my hair back.
His laughter carried through the air, and there was no way I could get mad about my hair getting wet, seeing him happy.
“Emmett!” I shrieked, smacking at his chest, but he wouldn’t let me go.
“That’s for sending me the shower picture when I couldn’t do anything about it,” he scolded through a smile. “Do you know how inconvenient it is to sit with a hard-on next to one of your friends?”
I smirked, shrugging a shoulder. “Worth it.”
Then I swung my arm out, sending a wall of water into the side of his face.
He shook the water out, curls dripping on his forehead.
“Oh, Lilah, you shouldn’t have done that.
” His voice was a decadent purr that sent chills pebbling along my skin.
My pulse kicked, a lightness fluttering in my chest that spread through the rest of my body.
I backed up, giggling like a maniac, my feet slipping against the slick rock on the creek floor. “You have to catch me first.”
Emmett’s eyes flashed like a hunter who’d set his sights on his prey as he crept towards me.
Before I knew it, he snatched me up and threw me like I weighed nothing, my screaming laughter carrying through the valley.
I landed in the deepest part of the creek about five feet away, struggling to wrap my mind around the fact that he’d just done that with little effort.
“You sure they didn’t pump you full of some superhero juice overseas?” I swam back to him, drawn to him as if he were my gravity.
His laugh was low. Maybe even a little bashful. “No. This is all me and my insomnia.”
“Thank God for insomnia then.” I grinned, squeezing his biceps. “I just wanna eat them,” I said and wrapped my mouth around one, biting gently.
“Remind me to get my rabies shot when we get out.”
“Whatever.” I wrapped myself around him again, unable to help myself. His arms were warm and safe around me.
His smile softened, and my chest tightened in that familiar way only he could cause. “I have been sleeping better lately, though.” My heart thundered at the unspoken reason why.
“Me too,” I admitted, just as softly.
“Delilah…”
I cut him off with a kiss, not knowing what he was going to say, and not wanting to.
Not yet. I was too afraid of the possibilities.
Too scared that I’d gotten my hopes up and all of this was about to come crashing down in disaster.
But one of these days, I needed to stop being a coward and face these feelings I’d been harboring for so long.