Chapter 46 Lachlan
Lachlan
For as long as he’d known Deli was returning, Lachlan wished she would go home.
He’d formed a plan, and he’d been executing it—acting as unpleasant as possible whenever he could.
Sure, he’d slipped now and then and forgotten to be somewhat hostile, but that was normal, he reckoned.
In fact, in his general life, he had worked hard to become the opposite of hostile, but he reasoned it was for the best, even if it reminded him of something he was desperate not to be.
Lachlan hadn’t considered that during his quest, however valiant in intent, he might catch his passing reflection and see his father.
Each polished surface a minor resurrection. It set his teeth on edge.
Still, he soldiered on. Of course, there had been small problems with Deli herself.
There had been tension he hadn’t been able to unknot in time to call it adversarial, and not admiring.
That was all it was—miscategorized conflicts, not connection.
Lachlan was loath to admit he’d been unconcerned with dating for so long he’d had to remind himself that the body concocts meaning out of biology. Which was not the same as fact.
Though there had been moments of . . . confusion—Lachlan’s goal had not changed.
So he didn’t expect panic to crack through his body like lightning through a storm-dark sky when Deli MacDonald closed her eyes and whispered, “I think . . . After the wedding, I think I just need to go home.”
Her tears wet his skin where Deli’s cheek was still pressed against his palm. He felt her heart beating too quickly as his fingers brushed her neck, and his jumped to beat in time.
He searched her eyes for a clue. Had her boy hurt her? Lachlan was hesitant to call him a man. Had it been the friend she’d mentioned? Was it her family?
Or had it been, god forbid, him?
“Why do you want to go home?”
She sat straight up, adjusting her shoulders to angle away from him in a small but significant way.
Sobered, Lachlan pulled his hand back to rest on his knee.
She wiped her tears and ran a finger under each eye, then closed them and set her jaw.
He didn’t know how he should move—sit in the chair across from her and leave too much dead air between them for tender things to be said?
Tower over her like an oaf? He heard the stream of rapid whispers Deli spoke—he realized too late—to herself.
“Stupid, stupid girl, Delilah. Selfish, stupid girl.”
The sickly treacle feeling of seeing something intimate and private crept through him. He wanted to leave her alone. He wanted to build her a shelter from his arms and stand sentinel against all who had harmed her.
“I shouldn’t have come here. What a ridiculous idea.
” She shook her head. “I just quit my life and bought a ticket and showed up! Who does that? Who just says ‘Oh, hey, aunt I haven’t stayed in touch with or bothered to know—mind if I take over your entire existence for a second? Oh, how long? Unclear.’”
Deli was like a dammed river finally set free, and the words poured from her so quickly Lachlan was almost lost to the current.
“Grandma Rosemary is my mom’s mom. Mo’s mom! You don’t know her, right?” She looked at Lachlan expectantly. He tried to keep the acidity from his voice.
“I haven’t had the pleasure, but I’m familiar.”
Deli’s face turned pleading. “I know, I know. I know how she can be, but . . . she loves me. She really loves me, you know? The stuff about my body”—Lachlan watched a patch of red creep from her neck up her jawbone and bleed into her cheek like ink—“she doesn’t mean it.
She’s from a different time. She’s in her eighties, and I run to the other side of the world—to the one person that would double-break her heart? ”
Lachlan could guess what types of comments from her grandmother Deli was referring to. He opened his mouth to say something, but the river flowed on.
“Oh, and Trey? Some great soulmate I am. One bump in the road and I vanish? Like his world was going to stop without me. And now someone named Scarlett is in all our secret places while I’m on some ridiculous quest to make him jealous. As if that would ever work.”
Lachlan’s thoughts were sharp. “Why wouldn’t that work?”
Her laugh was short and biting. “Please. Just look at me.”
“I am looking at you, Deli.” Lachlan felt the shock of her attention pulse through him. “You could make any man jealous.”
She was very still, but her nostrils flared and her chest rose and fell quickly. The electric energy between them swelled until she shook her head, like a dog shaking off a nagging insect.
“And, you know . . . Chloe.”
A sob stole the name from her mouth. Whatever misery Deli had been keeping back surged forward and wrapped a hand around her best friend’s name in her throat.
“Chloe,” Lachlan repeated.
“Yeah . . . She’s . . .” Her voice broke, the tears coming quiet and constant. “She’s been my best friend my entire life, Lachlan.”
The sound of his name so unexpectedly in her mouth lit a small fire in his heart, slow and boiling, like molten metal settling into a thing to crack open.
“I just left. Like I owed them all nothing. My mom is right about me . . .”
“What do you mean, Deli?”
She shrugged with a wet chuckle. “There is a lot I need to fix.”
Every time they were together Lachlan hunted for proof of Deli’s selfishness, her callousness, her covert narcissism hiding behind the charm.
He’d searched for shades of her family and for shadows of his own brother.
He had been certain of little else than when it came to the wellbeing of his best friend, Deli was a threat.
But hearing her accuse herself of the same thing he’d been desperate to prove settled the argument in his head as clearly as a bell ringing in an empty church.
Deli was not who he had thought she was.
Her breath hitched as she battled against the bleeding emotion. She closed her eyes and spoke with a sort of inevitable finality that made him ache.
“Lachlan? I don’t think I’m a very good person.”
And all at once, Lachlan Scott knew two things: 1. Deli MacDonald deserved better love than she’d gotten, and 2. All he wanted was for her to stay.