Chapter 91 Deli
Deli
“A little to the left.”
Lachlan tilted the painting.
“Other left.”
He hung his head and did as told.
“Stop!” Deli held up her hands like a frame, peering through with one eye. “Perfect.”
Lachlan marked the spot and hammered nails into the wall to hang the frame.
“Tell me again why you want to hang this mystery painting while it’s still wrapped?”
Deli looked up from the flower recipe she was planning for a wedding next month.
“Because Douglas made it.”
“And you trust this to be something suitable for polite company?”
“God, I hope not.”
“Why aren’t you unwrapping it?”
“Because it’s not time yet.”
“It’s not time yet.”
“Nope.”
“How will you know when it’s time?”
Deli looked up and shrugged. “I’ll just know.”
Lachlan kissed her forehead. “I’m sure you will.”
Deli grabbed his hand and brought it to her lips.
Things with Lachlan had progressed quickly, but to them it just felt like they’d always been.
In the eight months they’d been together, he’d never wavered.
Even in her grief or her anger or her fear that still reared its head in the quiet sometimes.
Lachlan was so sweet to her—so endlessly loving no matter how hard she could make it for her to be loved—now and then she fought the urge to run.
But she never did.
She tilted her head backward until it rested against his belly and traced circles on his hand with her thumb. “Can you go feed Mrs. Peevis?”
“Of course.”
He slipped on his winter coat and wellies and disappeared with a blast of late-November wind into the still-blooming garden—full of every part of meaning a poet could need to write.
Deli ran to the kitchen window they kept having to prune out of wisteria and gorse, and spotted Lachlan reaching for something in the grass.
Deli yelled through the glass, “Also, can you refresh her Flower Crown?”
He kept walking with his back to her and held up his clenched fist full of white daisies, off to adorn a giant Highland cow who liked to nuzzle against his chest. Daisies. Gently given, gently received.
“Thank Youuuu.”
Deli smiled to herself as she watched him from the kitchen, thinking about all the ways she loved to make Lachlan laugh and roll his eyes.
Sometimes both at once. She’d often forgone the more traditional Hey, you up?
and instead left flowers with arguably spicy intent, like devil’s bit (scratch my itch) at his doorstep or on his pillow.
More than once, she’d answered Lachlan’s call for him to ask “why in the National Treasure nonsense must he decrypt a bouquet booty call,” and could he just come over?
Once, they’d locked the pub and stumbled upstairs, kissing and tearing at buttons the whole way until she was sitting on his countertop while he kneeled between her knees.
In the throes, with her hands knotted in his hair and his face buried in her business, he’d mumbled something about how much he loved her taste.
“You like it?” she’d asked.
“Yes,” he’d answered in a rasp.
She’d tugged his eyes to hers with her hands in his hair, forcing his stillness, savoring the surprised look on his face.
She glared, voice like ice. “That’s ‘Yes, Chef.’”
He’d closed his eyes, pressing his lips together to stifle his laughter, then went back to work as Deli chuckled until she couldn’t make coherent sounds anymore.
Then there were the moments that were even more intimate than the way Lachlan gave her a safe place to become acquainted with pleasure, like the way he made it safe for her to learn her heart—her grief.
He held her in his arms while she cried herself to sleep thinking of the best friend who had changed—or who she’d never really known—and who was gone.
He patiently told her how he felt about her every single time she wondered if she was good enough.
Lachlan wanted to be with her in the light of day, the dark of night—in the depths and in the heights.
He just . . . wanted to be with her. He never asked her to name something or to give him a timeline or an answer.
But he’d made it clear that for him, the only option was her.
He wasn’t waiting on something better. He didn’t need any more. He already had what he wanted.
And Deli came alive with someone who let her love him fully.
She’d never had more fun. She’d never been more excited about what she might find or learn each day—with or without him.
Deli had spent months on her garden dictionary.
She’d painted a mural on the back of The Wallflower overlooking the new gathering spot.
She’d laughed and played and professed her heart, and Lachlan was her partner in all of it.
Except, of course, the laugh-till-they-cried hours of hikes and pub nights and laundry days Deli spent with her brilliant friend Blair.
It had almost been a year since Deli came to Scotland with a heart left in pieces by the people she had truly loved.
And even though the wrecking ball of that invisible grief—all the memories and time and growing up that were synonymous with their names—would sometimes hit her like a blow to her stomach, Deli hadn’t gone back. She had decided to let love be easy.
She was choosing differently.
The day after Aunt Mo left, Deli opened her new bedroom closet to find the leather jacket with a letter in its pocket.
It had all the details she’d need to run the house and manage the event business, as well as her Grandpa Cal’s birth records with a printout about the right visa.
Aunt Mo had also written just to Deli—about how thankful she was they were back together, and who Aunt Mo believed Deli to be.
And Deli knew, even though she didn’t have Chloe anymore, she did have a best friend who could really, truly see her.
One who was on a parallel journey as they both tried to untangle and understand the bad of their family from the good.
It was not an easy thing—to find the parts you thought were you, only to learn so much of you is made of reactions to someone else. There weren’t any quick how-tos on how to decide what you could forgive, what you needed to change, and who, if anyone, was to blame.
But they were doing it. And they were doing it together.
Deli spoke with Aunt Mo on the old landline all the time—twirling the cord around her finger and watching Lachlan grimace as it got tangled time and time again. She’d only spoken to her mother once, and it had been tense and happy and aching—like always.
Grandma Rosemary sounded strong when they talked.
The doctors expected she’d be in good health at least until the new year.
Deli and Lachlan would go to Los Angeles in a month for Christmas, and Grandma Rosemary would buy him a stupidly expensive watch he would never use, and it would warm Deli’s heart.
Deli looked up as the phone rang. She didn’t have a call planned until later when she and Aunt Mo would recap the latest episode of Love Island.
“Hello?”
“Delilah, it’s Mom.”
Deli’s mouth went dry at the taste of her mother’s grief. “Grandma?”
Her mom began to cry. “She’s taken a turn.”
“How long?”
“Come home as quickly as you can, baby.”
Deli stood for a long time in the same place. Lachlan knocked the toes of his boots on the mat at the back door. He had a daisy tucked behind his ear.
“Peevie wanted us to match—”
He saw her face and left muddy footprints across the kitchen floor until she was in his arms. The first wave of Deli’s tears after she learned her grandma was almost gone came and went while Lachlan held her.
She sniffled. She had a feeling. “Let’s open the painting.”
He looked down at her and cocked his head. “Now?”
Deli nodded. “It’s time.”
She stood back as Lachlan carefully peeled away the paper Douglas had taped against the frame months before.
Whatever it was, it would hang over a photo of Deli tying her shoe in the Highlands while Lachlan stood behind her, a photo of Aunt Mo in Lachlan’s pub surrounded by their family, and a drawing Kieran had made of a field of purple flowers.
Lachlan gasped as the paper fell away.
The painting of the Campbell Farm was teeming with life, but the sky was marred by a streak of black and gray. The smoke rose from the hills where a fire licked down the hillside, setting the heather ablaze.
Deli thought back to the feeling as she’d sat beside Cairn after he’d set the fire—like everything she’d known about love and what it made her was eaten up right in front of her.
But Cairn was right about how death could be a friend and how loyalty could be a foe.
Deli’s life had bloomed in ways she’d never known to imagine since she’d let Trey and Chloe go.
She’d been freer than she’d ever felt since she’d turned her back on a life that felt safe in exchange for one that held promise.
Heather—protection—sometimes needed to burn.
“I have to go back.”
Lachlan peeled his attention from the painting. “When?”
“Soon. Tomorrow.”
“So it’s time.”
Her chin started to quiver. “It’s time.”
Lachlan stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders as he rested his chin on her head, and they swayed before the painting, which was always meant to hang right in that spot.
“Do you need me to come with you?”
Deli could still smell the smoke on the hillside. She could still feel the grass beneath her as she’d wept onto a friend’s shoulder.
“No, I can do it myself. I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. You’re still training Blair.”
“Please, Blair doesn’t need any training to run the place. But I should make sure wee Kevin doesn’t catch wind of the tour buses full of women coming to see the famous birthplace of Hamish the Highlander.”
Deli chuckled. Lachlan and William had agreed to give the thing a shot after Deli told him it was her mother who had put Fearnhall on the map, and that shot had hit its mark.
“I still hate that my brother was right.”
“I know.”
They took a moment just to breathe and soak it in.
“If you get back and find I’m missing, Beans killed me and ate my body.”
“That seems fair. This is his house.”
“Agreed.”
When Deli boarded a flight the next day, she didn’t feel like she was headed home.
She felt like she was leaving it.