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)
She wasn’t lying.
Maybe this would be another one of those?
Delaney wouldn’t know if she didn’t try.
“Did I ever tell you that I cried the next morning after the night I lost my virginity in high school?” Delaney asked.
She knew Gracen’s answer.
No.
Never once did she share the memory of her shame after choosing to sleep with a boy she’d been dating for almost an entire year—that she believed she loved, at the time—shortly after her seventeenth birthday. There were some things she hadn’t even been able to tell her best friend.
Things that, tonight, she had shared in hushed murmurs wrapped in the arms of a man that might as well be a stranger who felt like home, as if telling him would somehow release the ache and shame it left behind from holding it all in for so long.
It did help.
It was the sharing part that surprised her more than anything; and how his presence as he did nothing but twirl the only thing she wore between them—her cross necklace—between his fingertips as she talked and even more secrets spilled out.
Things she still wouldn’t tell Gracen.
Things she didn’t even like to tell herself.
“I still thought I was gonna go to hell,” Delaney whispered. “That I’d ruined a part of myself.”
Back then, though, the belief had felt real. As real as anything else that Delaney could touch with her own hands, hear from her ears, or see with the eyeballs in her head. There were certain things from her faith that held her back longer than others. That had been one of them.
“I would have told you that was crazy back then,” Gracen admitted, sounding genuinely apologetic, “but now that we’re older and I know what I do, I just want to say sorry.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” her friend returned strongly. “It’s not, and it’s okay for you to say that now. That the things they taught and forced up on you made you believe you weren’t worthy or bad or … any of it, Delaney. Do you think it would even make a difference—if they did know?”
“They think they’re right,” Delaney said, “and that’s all that matters to people like that, Gracen.”
“Yeah,” came the mumbled, unhappy reply.
It was what it was.
Even if it wasn’t what it could be.
“Even though we are adults and smarter—or should be—now,” Delaney said, finally getting around to the point of her call, “would you still tell me if something was crazy whether it hurt my feelings or not?”
Gracen thought about the question for a second. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“If you’re happy,” her friend returned instantly.
Ah.
Delaney should have known.
Perhaps her best friend had caught onto the point of her call after all.
“I could wrap myself around him and stay in that place forever,” Delaney said, the words coming out on a breath of air that she worried Gracen might not hear.
She did.
Perfectly fine, too.
“Just because it’s happening fast, or feels intense and too good to be true, or doesn’t even make a lot of sense, doesn’t mean it’s not real, Delaney. Sometimes, that’s how this is supposed to be.”
“Yeah, okay,” she muttered, trying to hide the thick rush of emotions lodging in her throat or the wetness welling in her eyes.
“And you don’t have to say it right now—it’s okay to let it all be scary good for a while—for it to still be true inside of you, either,” Gracen added softer.
“You won’t say what it is?” Delaney tried to joke.
Gracen’s seriousness never faltered. “When you do, sure.”
*
Delaney had just said her goodbyes to Gracen—with a promise to call again if she needed anything—as Lucas returned inside the cabin downstairs. The brrrraapp outside as a skidoo put distance under its skis leading away from the cottage, Lucas’ voice traveled upstairs.
“You want another tea, sweets?”
“I want you,” she returned.
“Well,” came his husky reply.
Lucas, having shed his parka and boots, climbed the stairs to the loft as the skidoo’s engine grew fainter in the background.
“What did your visitor want?”
“Ah, that was just Kenzi,” Lucas said, coming to stand at he top of the loft.
Delaney had dropped the quilt to a pile around her naked body where she still sat on the edge of the bed. Lucas grinned at the sight.
“He’s fifteen, and not ready to see a woman like you naked on a bed,” Lucas praised.
She winked. “You put on pants. I could have, too.”
“Nah, he didn’t plan to stay. Just pass along a message.”
That had her curious.
“Oh?”
Lucas crossed the space from the stairs to the edge of the bed where she could reach out and touch him. The fact that the urge made her fingertips practically itch told Delaney she should just do it, and feed into the new monster growing, happily fed because of Lucas, inside her chest.
Her fingers curled around the waistband of the cotton drawstring pants he’d pulled on to go outside after leaving her behind, naked in bed.