Discovering Delilah (Harborside Nights, Book 2) (25 page)

My hands begin to shake and I grip the steering wheel tighter and move over to the right lane as I near the point of their accident. I’ll never be able to drive by this mile marker
and not think of them. The skid marks have faded from the road, and broken glass no longer litters the pavement. They’ve been swept away like they never even existed. Thousands of people drive by this spot every day. Did any of them see the accident? Hear about it? Does anyone think about the children my parents left behind?

My Jeep veers onto the shoulder as if it has a mind of its own. I
park way off to the side and put on my hazards. I can’t take my eyes off the middle of the road where the truck hit them. My father’s face appears before me, and it’s not the loving face I want to see. The warm eyes I desperately
need
to see right now. It’s the disheartened look of disappointment staring back at me, his green eyes hooded and serious. His lips curved down slightly at the edges.
Sobs rumble from my lungs, burning my throat as my vision blurs and my tears wash away my father’s image.

I bury my face in my hands and close my eyes tight. My fucked-up mind conjures my mother’s face with her own disconcerted look.
 

Stop. Please, please stop.
 

I stumble out of the car and run into the grass, away from the blurry headlights coming in my direction. My fisted hands
press against my eyes, and at first the screams seem like they’re miles away, and I wonder who’s yelling. Then I realize the pained cries are coming from my lungs. My burning chest. My broken heart as I collapse to my knees and claw at the grass, like I can dig my way out of the pain. Every tear I’ve ever held back is falling, one chasing the next and the next, with no reprieve on the horizon. I
sink back on my heels and my arms fall limply to my sides as I give in to the sadness.

“I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” My words are drowned out by the sounds of the traffic whizzing by.

By the place where my parents lost their lives.

The place where their lives were
stolen
from me and Wyatt.

The place that swallowed my hope of being able to talk to them again. To try to wipe
that look of disappointment off their faces.

Fucking hell.

Life sucks
.

It’s so unfair
.

I sit on the side of the road gulping in air, trying to regain control of my breathing.

I can’t go back.

I can’t fix what happened. I can’t change what I said or make them look differently at me
.

I can’t do a damn thing
.

I listen to the fast noises of the traffic. No one stops
to see if I’m okay. Wyatt doesn’t come racing up behind my Jeep to swoop me into his arms. Ashley doesn’t come to my rescue.

There’s only me and the fucking pavement that will forever mark my parents’ deaths.

Me and the memory of their disapproving looks.

Me and the guilt of knowing they think it’s wrong for me to love Ashley.

And I do love her.

I love her so much.

But
of course I can’t tell her, because my fucking parents have left me buried in guilt so thick I can barely breathe. They left me scared of never being able to love a woman—to love
Ashley
the way she deserves to be loved. The way I want to love her—publicly, without concern over looks and disapproval from others.

They left me a broken girl.

I imagine Wyatt telling me it’ll be okay. I can
practically feel his arms around me, and I see myself falling into that comfort—and it pisses me off.

I don’t want to be that broken girl.

I don’t want anyone else to fix me. Not even Wyatt.

I push to my feet and wait until my wobbly legs become solid again, and then I force myself to walk back to my Jeep with one goal in mind.

Every step, every breath, comes a little stronger,
with more determination.

I’m going to heal myself, because no one else can do that for me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow my parents’ guilt and disapproval to take me under.

I pick up my phone and type a text to Ashley—
I miss you already—
but I don’t send it. I can’t give her hope for us until I know I can be whole. She told me herself not to tell her I loved her until I could
say it loud and proud.

I’m going to try.

~Ashley~

I DON’T WANT to get out of bed. I don’t want to shower, and I don’t want to go to work, and I don’t want to do anything but lie here smelling Delilah’s shampoo on my pillow with the phone in my hand while I wait for her to call. She didn’t return my texts last night, and even though Brandon called to tell me that she left for Connecticut, I wish she’d
call. Wyatt called me too, to ask what the hell was going on. Or rather,
to demand
to know what was going on. There was no use lying. He was worried, and honestly, so was I. Driving to Connecticut by herself in the dark without telling Wyatt, without even mentioning it to me, tells me just how bad our situation is.

There’s a knock on my apartment door, and I fly out of bed, hoping it’s Delilah.
Funny how a sliver of hope can instantly heal a broken heart. I fling open the door and feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut when it’s not Delilah, but Brandon leaning one hand against the doorframe, his head hanging between his shoulders. He lifts his head just enough for me to see his eyes and raises his brows.

“Nice outfit.” His voice is craggy and thick.

I don’t say anything to defend
wearing Delilah’s T-shirt and shorts. I simply turn and walk into the living room and flop on the couch, leaving Brandon to follow me in and close the door behind himself.

“What’s the lowdown?” He sits beside me in his black jeans and T-shirt, leans his elbows on his thighs, and locks his eyes on the floor.

I shrug, which he obviously can’t see, but he must feel the couch move. He cocks
his head so he’s looking at me out of the corners of his eyes.

“Bullshit.”

I get up, walk into the bedroom, and grab my phone, then return to the living room and toss it to him, before sinking onto the couch again.

He eyes me carefully, as if I might get up and do something else, then scrolls through my texts. When he gets to Sandy’s, he eyes me again, then proceeds to read them. He
doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t have to. I know how it looks. I watch him scroll through texts to Delilah. I’m not embarrassed by the number of texts I’ve sent her or what they say. I don’t really care who sees them, least of all Brandon. He’s never judged me, not once since the day we met.

He leans back, hands me my phone, and drapes his arms over the back of the couch. We sit in silence,
me with my feet tucked beneath me, hovering in the corner of the couch, and him sprawled out like he hasn’t a care in the world. Only his dark eyes are treading in a pool of worry. Upon closer inspection, I notice that dark circles hang beneath his eyes and his clothes are disheveled and wrinkled. I worry something in his life has gone awry, and I’ve been too wrapped up in Delilah to notice, but I
don’t have the energy to ask.

“Wanna go out for coffee?”

I shrug again. I’ve decided that shrugs can take the place of any answer. It makes it easier to let the other person make the decisions.

“Wanna go for a…
walk
?”
Walk
is full of sarcasm.

I shrug again.

“Strip club?”

I laugh softly, then wipe the smile from my lips. “Don’t make me laugh.”

“Okay, no laughing. Well,
this fucking sucks, doesn’t it?”

I nod. Nodding works almost as well as shrugging. Brandon’s not much of a talker, but I can tell he’s got something he wants to say.

“Go shower. I’ll make coffee.”

“I don’t want to shower.” I sound like a petulant child.

“Well, I need to think, so get in the fucking shower.” He stands and lopes into the kitchen.

I sigh loudly enough for him
to know he’s annoying me and head back into the bedroom. I shower and brush my hair, put Delilah’s shirt back on with a pair of my shorts, then join Brandon on the couch again.

He nods at a mug of coffee and a plate of burnt toast he’s set on the coffee table.

“Never said I could cook. Eat.” He nods to the toast and pats the seat beside him.

“Thank you for the coffee.” My tone is not
very thankful, but I know he’ll forgive me. I’m exhausted after not sleeping and worried about what’s going down between me and Delilah.

“And the toast.”

“That’s still up in the air.”

We both smile, and I feel a little better.

“What’s your plan?” he asks.

I shrug.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You’re not me. You’re not a fucked-up guy. You’re a smart girl who
loves Delilah.
Another
smart girl. So…spill.”

“How can I
spill
when I have no idea how to get through to her? I’ve apologized. She won’t talk to me.”

“She’s in Connecticut dealing with her parents’ shit.”

“I know. Wyatt called me.”

“She had a nervous breakdown on the way down there.”

“What?” My heart stops.

“I followed her on my motorcycle. She doesn’t know I did, but I
was worried about her driving with how upset she was. She pulled off the highway and screamed and cried. I parked way down the road and walked close enough so I could watch her but she couldn’t see me.”

“Brandon, I have to go to her.” I stand, and he pulls me back down and shakes his head.

“No. It wasn’t a put-me-in-the-loony-bin type of breakdown. She stopped at the sight of her parents’
accident. She’s working through shit.”

“What did she do?” The fear in my voice catches both of our attention, and he sets his hand on mine. “How do you know she’s okay?”

“I followed her all the way to Connecticut. She got there okay. I called her as she walked inside her house just to be sure everything was copacetic inside the house. Made up some bullshit about needing to know where shit
was at the beach house. She bought it. I talked to her for almost ten minutes. She’s okay, probably not fine, but she arrived safely.”

“Is that why you look like crap?”

He shrugs, closes his eyes, and rests his head back on the couch. “So, are you going to tell me what your plan is, because whatever you did, if it’s fixable, I’d say you have a day or two to figure out how to fix it before
she comes back.”

“I have to see Sandy.”

Brandon lifts his head, and his tired eyes spring open. “Why the hell do you have to do that?”

“Closure. She’s still in her apartment by the university. Want to come along for old times’ sake?”

“Can I sleep first?” He closes his eyes again and kicks his feet up on the coffee table.

I can’t believe he drove to Connecticut to make sure
Delilah was safe, but then again,
this
is the Brandon I know. The Brandon who led me to her in the first place.

“Yeah, but you’ll be more comfortable lying on the couch or in my bed than with your legs on the table.”

His breathing is already shallow.

~Delilah~

SOME PEOPLE DON’T believe in ghosts. I never have, but I feel my parents looking down on me so often, I’m not sure what to think. And this morning, as I was thinking about how I chickened out and didn’t call Wyatt when I arrived last night, texting him instead, I started to wonder. I didn’t answer his call, which came through seconds after I sent the
text, and I didn’t answer the next four calls from him either. I thought I’d feel my parents around then, for ignoring my brother’s call, but I didn’t. Then Brandon called and caught me off guard when I was carrying my stuff into the house, so I talked to him. I was glad to have the company as I walked through the empty house. I hadn’t thought about how strange it would feel to be in the house after
being gone for so long. I’m still not sure if I believe in ghosts or not, but I wonder if objects can
feel
like ghosts, because that’s how the house felt last night.  Like the ghost of the house I used to live in. From the moment I walked in, it felt different, colder, not like the house I’d grown up in.

Between texts from Cassidy and Tristan, telling me they were here for me, and Janessa’s
text wondering where in the hell I was, I didn’t really have time to be too unsettled by the changes in the house. I didn’t respond to Cassidy or Tristan, but I did reply to Janessa, because after the way she lost her sister, I worried that she’d think I committed suicide or something. So I sent a quick reassuring text.
In CT dealing with house stuff.
Jesse’s text, which came in later than the
others, gave me pause. I hate to worry him almost as much as I hate worrying Wyatt and Ash, but I can’t keep leaning on everyone else.

They love me too much
.

They want to protect me from
everything
, but
everything’s
already upon me, and they are standing in my way.

I need to do this on my own, and I’m not even sure what
this
is, but I’ll figure it out.

The hardest part of last
night was not getting in touch with Ashley. I was worried that if I let her back in, even that one tiny bit, I’d cave and give up on taking care of the things that I fear might strangle me forever. I can’t give up. If I’m ever going to be whole in our relationship, I need to deal with this stuff.

I still don’t know if I believe in ghosts or not, but while I was lying on the couch thinking
about being loved
too
much and wanting to love Ashley without being mired down by guilt and insecurities, I swear I smelled my mom’s perfume. It was as if she’d walked right past me. I’m not crazy, and I didn’t see an apparition or speak to her from beyond the grave or anything like that. I just smelled her perfume. I’m sure it was probably just from thinking about her so much last night, but
the most surprising thing was that it didn’t scare me. Instead I was comforted by her familiar scent, and the tears that followed weren’t tears of anger or guilt. They were tears of longing to see her and feeling like she was right there with me at a time when I needed her most.