Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
TRACE
D inner had been one of the best of my life. You couldn’t go wrong with pizza, but it was the people that made it. Even the news about Chelsea couldn’t ruin my mood. I should have expected something like this. She never did take any responsibility for the things she did.
“I brought you something,” I said nervously to Cade, standing up and quickly retrieving the bag I’d left in the hallway. “It was just an idea, and you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Why was I so nervous about this?
I glanced at Delaney, and she nodded in encouragement as I pulled out the baseball glove from the bag. “You’ve probably got your own, but I didn’t know if you’d have it with you.”
“Oh, cool!” Cade jumped up from the table to peer inside the bag as I passed him the glove.
“This one was mine when I was your age.”
“You played baseball too?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t all that good at it, though,” I joked. “I brought Booker’s old glove too. If you want?—”
“You wanna play catch?” Cade asked excitedly before I could even get the words out.
“Yeah, I’d really like that.”
Cade looked at the kitchen window and frowned. “It’s dark though. Why does it get so dark here?”
I could hear the hint of annoyance in his voice, but the question confused me.
Delaney jumped in, thankfully knowing what he was talking about. “It gets this dark everywhere,” Delaney said. “You’ve just never noticed it because of all the light pollution in the city.”
Cade nodded, heading to the window and peering outside.
The city. I’d never really taken the chance to think about their life away from Willowbrook. The life they probably had to get back to at some point. I didn’t even know about Delaney’s job or Cade’s friends. There was so much I wanted to know and so little time to…
“Can I decorate my bedroom now that we’re moving here?” Cade asked, and my heart stopped beating as I looked at Delaney hopefully.
Her eyes locked with mine as she answered his question. “Yeah, of course you can.”
“You’re…you’re staying?” I knew it was what they’d just said, but part of me didn’t even dare to hope.
“Well, I dunno. I’m kind of in the middle of a deal to sell the farm, and this guy was all like, ‘If you pull out, I’m going to sue you,’” Delaney said with a mock grumpy face.
“I’m sure he can be persuaded to pass on the land,” I told her as the smile slowly spread across my lips. “I’ve heard he can be very reasonable normally.”
“I’m going to go and measure.” Cade darted out of the kitchen like a kid on a mission while Delaney and I sat at the table, staring at each other.
“You’re really staying?” I asked again.
She shrugged. “I told Cade we’d give it six months. See how he feels. I don’t see him changing his mind, though.”
“And you?”
“It’s a lot,” she admitted. “I never saw myself coming back here. But now that I have…everything’s changed. Everything I thought I knew was true. I don’t know how to deal with this, what I’m supposed to do. But I’m not going to take him away from you when you’ve only just found out about him, Trace. You deserve a chance to be with your son if that’s what you want.”
I was out of my seat before she even finished speaking and pulling her into my arms only a second later.
“It’s everything I want. It might be what I’ve wanted for my entire life without even realizing it. It was always you, Lanes. You, me, and the family we wanted to build together. If I have to go to the city to be with you, then I’ll do it. If you can’t stand to be in this place, I’ll leave it all behind. I don’t care. All I care about is the two of you and having a chance to keep you in my life.”
She rested her head against my chest, and I kissed the top of it as we stood in the middle of the kitchen and just held each other.
“I wish my dad could have been here for this,” she whispered. “That he could have seen his family come home.”
I clung to her all the tighter, not knowing what to say. I’d never really lost anyone before. When my grandfather passed, he’d been ill for so long that it had been more of a blessing. He wasn’t in any pain anymore, and he was ready to go. We knew it was coming. I refused to think of anyone else as gone. I might not be in contact with all my brothers, but they were out there living their lives, and I was happy they were doing what they wanted, even if I would have preferred them to be here with us instead.
“I think he would have liked that, too.” It didn’t feel like enough, but there had always been something so understated about Barrett James. He lived life on his terms: no fuss, no nonsense. He was a stand-up guy and an amazing father. He was everything I wished my dad had been.
Wrapping one arm around Delaney’s shoulder, I pulled her into the living room and onto the couch with me. We needed to talk, and now that we were on the subject, it was time to rip off the Band-Aid. So, to the sounds of furniture dragging across the floor upstairs, I took a deep breath as I gently ran my fingers up and down her arm, unable to bring myself to pull away from her.
“How are the arrangements for the funeral coming? Is there anything I can help with?”
Delaney shook her head. “No, it’s all done. There was barely anything for me to do. Dad had most of it arranged before he went to the hospital.”
That was just like Barrett. Taking as much of the burden as he could for himself to save the people he loved.
“Okay, what about here? Do you need to make a run to the city, or do you have what you need?”
Delaney looked around at the mostly empty living room and sighed. The furniture was still in the same places it had always been, but the room had been stripped bare of anything that made it a home. The collection of boxes pushed into the corner, evidence of where they’d all gone. It was like that in every room I’d seen so far.
“I still need to go through all these boxes. Decide what to do with them. And everything is still in our apartment. I guess we need to go and box it up and bring it here.”
I nodded. Finally, I could see where I could be of some help to her.
“How about I get Booker and Dex over here tomorrow, and we move all the boxes out to the barn? Then you can bring them in one at a time when you feel like it. There’s no rush.”
Delaney nodded, but I could already see that she was in her own head, making arrangements and figuring things out. She’d always been like this.
“We can do a run to the city at the weekend if you want? Grab a U-Haul and box everything up.”
I knew I was moving fast, but I wanted them here. The reassurance that they were here to stay.
“That’s a good idea. Blake’s probably going to want to bring some of her stuff as well.”
I was nodding now as I started to build a plan. The deal with Delaney’s land was dust. It didn’t matter. We’d think of something else. The hotel wasn’t happening. It was a blow to the regeneration plan, but honestly, before Barrett had passed, we’d already reached the point of looking into alternatives.
The important thing was getting Delaney and Cade settled. To set them up so that they could get back as normal of a life as possible.
“Delaney?”
“Hmmmm.” She was still lost in her mind, working through the details. Damn, she was cute when she did that.
“What’s your job?”
It felt like such a stupid thing to have to ask the mother of my child. The woman who occupied every single space in my heart and soul.
“Oh. I’m not working at the minute. After Aunt Adelaide passed, I took some time off to figure out what I wanted to do. I was in marketing before that, but I kind of hated it.”
Delaney was a single mother. Yeah, she’d had what sounded like a good job before, but how long could she sustain living without an income? I looked around at the farm as if I was seeing it for the first time. The property taxes on this place would be steep, and it was an old house. There was going to be stuff that needed doing.
“I’m going to help out,” I declared. “Cade is my son, and I should be contributing. I should have been contributing for years. I can’t believe my damn mother.” I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket, thumbing open my email. “I’ll get my accountant to set up?—”
“Trace, what are talking about?”
I looked at Delaney in confusion. “Money, Delaney. I won’t have you struggling if I can help. This place is going to be expensive, and kids aren’t cheap, right? You have to, like, feed them and buy them clothes.”
Okay, I was grasping at straws now. What other stuff made kids expensive? I had no idea what I was doing, and this was a cold hard slap from reality right now.
Delaney laughed, pulling me out of my head as I concentrated on her. “Is this what I do? I can see why Blake finds it so funny now.”
I shook my head. It was impossible not to smile when she sounded so happy.
“I don’t need your money, Trace. That’s not why I’m here.”
“I know that’s not why you’re here, but Delaney, you’ve been doing this all on your own. It couldn’t have been easy. I’m kind of in awe, if I’m honest. But you’re not working, and I’m making you move here…”
“You’re not making us move, Trace. We’re coming here because we want to. And I have money.”
I must not have looked like I believed her—I kind of didn’t—because she continued, “Adelaide left me everything when she passed. She had a massive condo in Manhattan that I ended up selling. You know how much those things are worth, right?”
I blinked, the numbers coming up in my head not really feeling like reality.
“Okay, you have money. But Cade is still my son, Delaney. And I want?—”
“I get it,” she added quickly. “But can we do it later?”
I started to pull back, thinking that this was when she’d tell me I wasn’t going to be as involved in their lives as I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be some part-time dad. I’d missed so much already, but that wasn’t the point. I wanted Delaney. I wanted them both. I knew I had to show her that I could be trusted. That my parents were out of the picture. Whatever she needed from me, whatever it took, I’d do it. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for them.
“No, I don’t mean it like that.” She grabbed my hand that limply cradled my phone now, and after tossing the phone on the couch cushion, she threaded her fingers through mine. “Your mom…she gave me a check.” My blood boiled as the words slipped through my lips. “I never cashed it. And if we’re going to do this. If we’re going to try to make our family work, I don’t want her, or anyone else, to ever be able to say that I was doing it for the money.”
The rage inside me at the mention of my mother’s actions bubbled to a point where I thought it would slip loose from the hold I’d had over it since I’d learned what she’d done. But the woman sitting next to me didn’t need that right now.
And what she was saying made complete sense.
I’d want the same thing if I was in her position.
“For now,” I told her. “I can give you this for now. But not forever, Delaney. I need you to listen to me right now and hear exactly what I’m saying. I’m not going to be a part-time dad. I won’t wait in the shadows for a few hours here or there. You’re everything. You always have been, and now so is Cade. You’re back, Delaney, and I’m never letting you go again. I want it all. I want the cold winter nights where you put your ice-cold feet on my legs. The maddening moments when you can’t make a decision until you’ve written fifty-six lists. I want the fun and the laughter, the hard times and the arguments. I want to give you everything, all that I have and anything I find throughout the years. I don’t deserve you. I don’t have anything to offer that’s of any use to you. Not even my heart, Lanes. Because it’s been yours all along, but I’m hoping you’ll give me a chance, anyway. Let me prove to you that I’m worth it. Let me show you that I can be the man you deserve to have at your side.”
“Trace,” she whispered, “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
I leaned forward, pressing my forehead to hers as I breathed her in. “Yes, I do, Delaney. They forced us apart, and they never should have been able to. I should have fought for you.”
“You were a kid…”
“So were you. And look at what you did. Look at Cade and how much of an amazing kid he is.”
I’d never been so sure of anything in my life. Everything had changed, and it needed to. Every priority I’d had before now was cast aside. They were all that mattered.
“I don’t need you to prove anything to us, Trace. I just need you to be here.”
“And I am. For as long as you’ll have me and probably even longer still,” I joked. “You’re stuck with me now. I’m never letting you go.”
“I can think of worse places to be,” she murmured, leaning forward and pressing her lips to mine.