Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
He didn’t need to cry to be hurt or to grieve, but she’d found him on the verge more than once over the afternoon. Eyes shining with unshed tears, he’d quickly step away with an apology to take a minute or two by himself.
His emotions, fragile or not, wasn’t what he wanted her to focus on.
“Did he mean me?” she asked. “Was I a hasty decision you had made?”
Lucas cleared his throat, but muttered, “Among other things.”
Huh.
Delaney didn’t know how to feel about that, so she chose to sit there and stew on it. Lucas didn’t let her ponder for long.
“I don’t necessarily think he’s right about everything,” he said, “but he makes me look at things from perspectives I hadn’t considered.”
His hand found hers overtop his forearm, and then his fingers slid in between her own to grasp tight.
“So, maybe he had a point in a way,” Lucas added, shrugging like it didn’t make a big difference. “You aren’t a hasty decision I made. The best one, if anything. I’m not going to let guilt or anything else change how I feel about that, or you.”
Delaney smiled. “That makes two of us, then.”
“But he also wasn’t wrong—in the way I can’t go into every decision based on how I’m feeling at any given time,” Lucas muttered.
“Like the brewery?”
His free hand, not holding hers, drummed an anxious beat to the padded arm of the chair. “Yeah, like the brewery. Knowing as much doesn’t really change what I want, though. That’s the bit I have to figure out now.”
“Which is what?”
He swallowed audibly and his hand came up to scrub under his jaw as he surveyed the collection of items and photographs that made up the overall picture of his brother’s short life.
“Honestly?” he asked back.
“Even if it’s crazy.”
She wanted to know.
Lucas laughed, but it came off a little hollow. “Well, that’s not possible.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I’d take Jacob to Birch Ridge, and hide away from the rest of civilization for a while. Breathe fresh air everyday and I wouldn’t keep a schedule beyond when the sun’s going up or down. I don’t even want to call it a break, just …” Lucas let out a gusty breath, adding quietly, “I’m not sure I know who I am or what I want in life, and maybe I’d like to take the time to get those things sorted out. For myself.”
Didn’t everybody deserve that?
It hadn’t escaped her notice that she wasn’t something in his crazy dream. She didn’t take it personally. Much.
“Would visits with me be included in this time away from civilization?” Delaney asked.
Lucas’ brow dipped in the cutest way as he glanced over at her. “What do you mean, I thought you were going with me?”
Oh.
She wasn’t included because in his mind, he already saw her there with him.
A given.
“Of course, you’re there,” he said as if he could read her mind. “In my head, I’m always trying to get back to you now. I’m thirty seconds off a phone call from you already thinking about the next time I’m gonna hear your voice. It should be crazy to me how you’re the one thing I feel like I know for sure when not very long ago, we were strangers.”
But it wasn’t.
She heard what he didn’t say.
“It’s like that for you, too?”
She had crawled inside the chambers of his heart to build a home there like he had done for hers—she wasn’t alone?
“It’s like that for me, too,” he echoed. “I don’t know how to tell someone I love them, that wasn’t a popular phrase around me growing up, but I do for you. I love you.” Lucas looked down at the urn between them, and his expression pinched with pain for a split second before his eyes met hers again. “I’m really sorry that I found you at a bad time, and it might make things a little difficult from here on out for a while.”
“I’m not sorry at all,” Delaney replied. “I’ll never apologize for falling in love with you.”
He wasn’t her burden.
This thing between them didn’t have a deadline to the finish or time constraints around what they did or didn’t do together. They got to paint the masterpiece—every inch and crevice; all the colors and shades. It didn’t even have to be perfect.
They wouldn’t be, after all.
“Shit, come here,” Lucas muttered, tugging on Delaney’s hand to pull her closer. His lips found hers for a gentle kiss that had her breath catching before he lifted their connected hand to press rapid pecks along each of her fingers when he flipped her palm over. Keeping his lips connected to her skin, he looked up at her. “And it’s okay if I have to take time to get the rest sorted out?”
What would that mean?
Less contact?
No helicopter rides to the middle of nowhere?