Chapter 51 Lachlan
Lachlan
Deli landed a playful punch on his arm.
“I knew you’d been flinging me all over this car for your sadistic pleasure.”
Lachlan had taken to driving a bit quickly around corners, but that was before. Now all he wanted was to surround her with things that were gentle.
“Today I won’t rattle a tiger’s cage. I’m smarter than I look.”
Deli laughed, watching the Highlands blur through the window.
Lachlan didn’t want to have feelings for her.
But they’d kicked in the door and announced their name the night he’d watched Deli cry—helpless as she became her own judge and jury.
Seeing the peeled-back heart of her pain had galvanized him.
He’d found his hands shaking from anger.
And terror. Lachlan hadn’t felt so strongly about anything in .
. . a long time. It was unexpected. He was unprepared.
“Erm, how have you been since the . . . the other night?”
“Since my meltdown, you mean?” Her words had an edge turned inward. “Yeah, not my best moment. Sorry you had to see that.”
“There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“No, I shouldn’t have put that on you. I’m just ridiculous.
” She laughed, a harsh, punishing sound.
“This whole plan. If I wasn’t enough for th—for him before, how the hell would all of this help?
I just need to call it.” She stared out the window with her arms wrapped around her body so tightly the varnish on her fingernails disappeared into the fabric of her jacket.
If anyone was laughable, it was Lachlan. The man falling for a woman who declared she was in love with someone else as often as she could—the woman he’d been trying to send away every brief moment they’d had. Fool, he thought, thy name is Lachlan.
“That’s not true.” The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to consider them—another newness that had arrived with her. “It’s a good plan.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Did you hit your head since the last time I saw you?”
“No, really. It is. The male mind, Deli . . .” He tapped his temple. “It’s an enigma. You couldn’t hope to understand all its wee nooks and crannies—”
“Seriously?”
“However, you have homed in on one basic truth: When it comes to women, men are simple. Throw in an arch nemesis? You’ve got a trap laid well.”
She was uncharacteristically quiet. Deer scattered into the trees as they rounded a curve in the road. “That wasn’t even my plan.”
“No, but it’s mine. Listen, we’ll strike a pose, get you proof that you’re moving on, and in a few days?” He snapped his fingers. “I’m an incredible actor. We’ll have Trevor believing I’m coming for his girl and his job.”
Lachlan hated that Evans had lived off Deli’s good heart so long, but still. If she thought there was still a chance the fool could be won, she might stay a little longer. Just a day.
Even a day more with her would be worth it.
The hollow, hungry ache of things unrequited chewed at his insides. Then Deli laughed, and it was the antidote.
“I can’t imagine you as an actor. And I know you know his name.”
Lachlan ignored the last part. “A shame you weren’t around to see me play the role of Romeo in school.”
She smirked, and he sketched the lines of her face in his mind. “Makes sense. You are tragic.”
“The audience wept.”
“And you’re sure it’s because you were good?”
“A granny in the front row swooned.”
“Admitting you gave an elderly woman a coronary isn’t convincing me of your talent.”
“Anyway, we’re taking these photos today, and you’re gonna post them tonight when we get back. He’ll be blowing up your phone by morning.”
Her voice was small, unsure. “Do you really think that will work?”
From what he knew, Trey was exactly the sort of toddler to throw a tantrum when he saw someone else with his favorite toy. But Trey was what Deli wanted. And Lachlan wanted Deli to be happy.
So, even though the words stuck, barbed in his throat, he said, “Aye. It will work.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“It’s not stupid to think he could love you, Deli. It’s stupid to think he couldn’t.”
Deli punched him in the arm.
“Um, ow?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she demanded.
“I’m not.”
“You are, and I don’t trust it.”
He looked at her scrunched nose and suspicious glare, and it clicked into place.
Deli’s eyes were Highland winter, when the cool sunlight filters through the clouds and falls softly on the rain-slick green—the shimmering, iridescent dance of silver-blue streams and emerald hills.
A hazel starburst, the rusting fern forests.
Her lips were bramble berries grown ripe and sweet on summer vines.
Her laugh like the lap of water against wood, the call of gulls over music, the millions of raindrops filtering through an ancient forest. The dark line of Deli’s hair against her jaw, like the sacred place where the land meets the ocean.
Deli was the wild, fierce, loyal, earth his heart longed for. She was the land he defended, where he longed to stay and rest, but that he could lose to another. Deli MacDonald felt like home—the only place that he knew and that knew him to his bones.
His name would never be known to history, but Lachlan Scott was born, for better or worse, a man beholden to his duty. A soldier for his homeland.
How quickly this woman had claimed his heart’s country.
It knocked him off his feet.
Lachlan knew what he had to do, like he had known he’d need to remember and had taken her photo before the red door. He wondered if he’d always loved her in a small, boyhood corner of his heart.
He would care for her the best he could before she needed to go, and Lachlan would never be the same. But it didn’t matter what happened to him.
“You’re definitely being too nice to me, Lachlan. Did my aunt say something to you?”
“It was Beans. He threatened my life.”
“He does that all the time.”
“But this time he meant it.”
“I think I’m just growing on you.”
You have no idea, he thought. “Yeah, that’s it.”
“I knew it.” She grinned and turned to the rugged beauty passing by, her chin cupped in her palm and her other hand laid lazily in her lap. He could just make out her reflection, sheer over the wild land—and Lachlan decided it was true, what some people say.
Maybe you only get one big, real love of your life—one soulmate, one shot. And for some people, that love is unrequited. To Lachlan Scott the truth was quite simple: Knowing Deli MacDonald only to lose her would never be a tragedy.
What would it have been like? To have lived and died with his capacity to love undiscovered, forever cold and still?
Even now, grief held an hourglass in its hand and a sign with his name in the other, but it was a price he gladly paid to have met the far corners of his heart.
Deli would leave him anguished when she went, and it would be proof he had finally lived.
Lachlan would let the loss of her anoint him. He, a man who had loved, could call the pain holy.