Chapter 17 Dalton
DALTON
Afew days later, Dalton stood by the old red barn and watched Ella watching the snow swirl down over the farm.
Last night, she had agreed to go to the diner in town with him for dinner. And maybe it was wishful thinking, but instead of keeping him firmly in the friend zone, he thought he’d caught her gazing at him dreamily once or twice over their BLTs and chocolate milkshakes.
The Hometown Holiday Celebration changed things for both of us, he thought to himself. We both realized that this is special.
But realizing something silently was worlds away from making it official. And he had meant what he said when he talked to Grayson the other night.
He didn’t want to talk to her in front of a diner full of people, or even in the house with her parents, so he’d asked her to walk around the farm with him tonight after dinner, figuring it would be better to speak his piece with a little open space around them.
Ella turned back to him now, her eyes shining.
“I feel like a little kid again,” she admitted softly. “I haven’t just walked outside on a snowy evening in forever. It’s so beautiful.”
Not as beautiful as you are, he wanted to say. But he would have to go deeper than that if he wanted her attention.
He cleared his throat and said a silent prayer that he might miraculously overcome his awkwardness.
“I love spending time with you,” he told her, his voice deeper than usual, but steady. “These last few weeks have been really special for me.”
Her dark eyes stayed locked on his, and there was worry in them mixed with something brighter that he clung to.
“I’ve had fun too,” she told him.
Her words hung in the air as the snowflakes drifted down around them. He waited for her to say something more, something deeper.
But as the seconds passed, it seemed that she had nothing more to say.
Every instinct told Dalton to curl in on himself and protect his heart. He’d been hurt so many times by so many people that he couldn’t even remember them all.
But Ella was worth more than that. Ella was worth fighting for.
“I’ve never been serious about a woman,” he admitted to her. “But what’s between us is different. You and Dove… you’re everything to me. And I’m ready to do whatever I have to do to make you happy and be the man you need.”
He wanted to keep talking, to try to find the words to tell her what was in his heart, but he forced himself to stop and listen.
Ella only looked away, her teeth locking down on her lower lip.
“Talk to me, Ella,” he said softly. “Am I reading things wrong? If you don’t feel the same, it’s okay to say so.”
She spun around at that, and when he saw the tears in her beautiful brown eyes he wished he could take back everything he had said. Nothing was worth making her hurt.
“You’re not reading anything wrong,” she said softly. “I care about you, Dalton. You’re so good to us. To all of us, not just Dove and me, but my parents too.”
“Your family is important to me,” he told her honestly.
“I… can’t be in a relationship,” she said softly, casting her eyes down at the snowy path in front of them.
“Lee,” he breathed. “You still miss him.”
He’d been worried about that.
“I’ll always miss Lee,” she said. “But no, that’s not it.”
“Dove?” he guessed.
That would hurt, but he understood full well how important it was to Ella to raise her daughter the best way she could. Maybe she didn’t want her to split her attention.
“It’s me,” Ella said flatly. “I’m not who you think I am.”
Dalton tried to take in her words, but they didn’t even make sense. Ella was Ella—she was Dove’s mother, Michael and Mary’s daughter, Andy’s sister, and she was the woman who made Dalton feel like he was burning up from the inside with hope.
“Of course you are,” he told her.
Who else could she be?
“I know you think I’m brave,” she said, frowning. “Everyone does. But when things really got bad, I just… I was selfish.”
“What do you mean?” Dalton asked, wishing she would lift her chin and look at him so he could read what was in her eyes.
“Lee was so sick,” she said softly, moving further down the path as if her feet were carrying her without her meaning to take a step. “By the time Dove was born, he was already weaker. And she didn’t sleep much…”
“That must have been so difficult,” Dalton said softly, trying to picture Ella as a young mother with a sleepless infant and a sick husband.
“It wasn’t Lee’s fault,” Ella said. “I knew that then and I know it now. But I felt so… alone. Both of them needed more than I had to give, and I was exhausted and…”
Dalton pressed his lips together. He wanted nothing more than to fill her silence with declarations that she was a saint and had never done anything wrong in her life, but he could tell that she needed to get this out.
“I was resentful,” she said suddenly, the words cutting through the snowy air as if they had been ripped out of her chest. “I tried to hide it from him, but I know he felt it…”
It was an awful thought, but Dalton figured it was pretty normal. He’d felt resented plenty in his life, and he hadn’t caused the kind of obligation Lee had, whether he’d meant to or not.
“I spent a lot of time thinking about what my life should have looked like,” Ella went on. “Like I was owed a healthy husband. Like I deserved to do nothing but take care of my perfect baby and decorate my perfect apartment.”
“So you felt angry?” Dalton asked her.
“Yes,” she agreed. “If I’m being honest, I still do.”
He nodded. He couldn’t blame her for that, not at all. Her burden had been a cruelly heavy one for such a young woman.
“It should have been the happiest time in your life,” he said softly, nodding. “And instead, it was… the opposite of that.”
“It was the last of the time I had with Lee,” she said, shaking her head. “It wasn’t going the way we hoped, but it was all we had, it was everything. He saw that, he understood it. And I can see it now. But at the time I just… I just spent it wishing I could escape.”
He could feel her hurt and guilt, pulsing in the air between them. He wished he could hold her close and let her break into sobs against his chest. But that wasn’t what she needed.
“I promised to love him in sickness and in health,” she said after a moment, then bit her lip again, like she was trying not to cry.
He waited, letting her process.
“When Lee passed, and I got back here with Dove,” she said softly after a moment.
“That first night, I was so happy to be back with my parents and finished taking care of Lee and Dove by myself that I just lay in my bed and cried like a baby. I felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders. What kind of wife would feel that way?”
Dalton figured probably any person alive would be relieved to be out from under such a terrible responsibility. Ella had been overwhelmed. It was natural to be happy to have family near at last.
But telling her that wouldn’t help her, and he knew it. The woman held herself to an impossible standard. He understood that now and it made sense of so many things he’d seen since he arrived, so many sacrifices she made every day for her daughter and her parents.
“Would you have done anything differently for Lee?” Dalton asked her plainly. “If you hadn’t felt angry and overwhelmed? Is there any action you would have taken that you didn’t?”
Her eyes flashed to his in confusion.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean did you ignore him when he needed your help?” he asked. “Did you not go to him when he called for you?”
She shook her head mutely, eyes widening like she was horrified.
“So you did everything you promised to do,” he said gently. “You cared for him, you talked to him, you sat with him. You gave him all you had?”
She nodded, her eyes serious.
“You’re right, you promised to love him, Ella,” Dalton said firmly. “And that’s love.”
Tears sprang up in her eyes and he almost couldn’t continue, but he knew he had to. He had to make sure she understood.
“You put his comfort over your own, and you cared for him all the way to the end,” he went on.
“That’s exactly what love is. Anyone can show their love when everything is sunshine and roses.
That’s easy. You did it when things got tough, and that’s when it matters most. You never made any promises about how loving him would make you feel.
That’s not a promise anyone can make, because none of us can predict how hard times will impact our outlook.
But it doesn’t matter how you felt, it’s what you did that matters.
I know Andy agreed with me about that, and if he was the kind of man you say he was, then Lee would, too. ”
Ella seemed to almost freeze in place for a moment before looking away and inhaling through her nose.
Maybe his words were landing, giving her some kind of alternate perspective. Or maybe that was just cruel hope coloring what Dalton saw. He was past trying to convince her to care for him now. He could let her go if he had to. He just wanted to take away a layer of her pain.
“I think I need a few minutes by myself,” Ella said softly.
She leaned back against the barn, looking out over the snowy fields before closing her eyes, as if she were praying or maybe remembering.
It hurt his soul to do it, but he nodded once and headed back toward the house to give her the space she needed, his boots feeling as heavy as his heart.