Page 80 of The Life We Left Behind

Abandoning the food, I walked over to where she’d parked before and waited for Delaney to pull up. She’d barely made it out of the car before Cade was throwing his arms around her.

“I went on a quad bike, and Uncle Booker is going to get me a horse!” Cade happily told her.

Ahhh, that might have technically been what we’d said, but it also wasn’t. We were going to have to be more careful about how we tried to win this kid over. Thankfully, rather than getting annoyed as she probably should, Delaney laughed and just hugged Cade back.

“It sounds like you had a fun morning,” she said, looking over Cade’s shoulder at me as she raised one eyebrow in question.

“It was amazing!” Cade cheered and then ran back over to where Booker was standing at the grill, getting ready to put the burgers on.

I watched him run with a dopey grin on my face before turning back to the woman who occupied my nearly every thought. “We actually said he could have a go at riding Doc, and if he liked it, we’d need to get a smaller horse for him to learn toride on. I’m sorry, Laney. We should have asked before we told him that.”

She didn’t look annoyed at all. In fact, she was watching Cade with the same dreamy expression on her face that I probably had.

“It’s not a problem,” she finally said as she turned to me. “I’m just glad he’s happy. Everything went okay?”

“Yeah. He’s an amazing kid.”

She nodded and a flicker of sadness came across her face before she shook her head and started to walk toward where Booker had the grill set up.

“How was the bank?” I asked, grabbing for anything to say to her.

Delaney shuddered dramatically. “Very banky.”

“Hmmm, I’ve heard that said a lot about banks,” I agreed, poking fun at her.

“I don’t think there’s anyone working there under fifty, and they all looked at me like I was about to commit a crime.”

“Well, the last time you were there, you did super glue pompoms to all the checking pens at the desks while they were distracted.”

“Oh my god, I forgot about that!” Her laugh was exactly the same as Cade’s. “If I remember correctly, though, you and Gage were the ones distracting them.”

“And they’ve never let me forget it,” I told her seriously. “Mrs. Burns still tuts at me every time I walk in, and I swear they make the security guard follow me.”

Delaney just laughed harder as we joined the others, and Booker passed her a drink. She smiled down at the glass of lemonade in her hand. It had always been her favorite when she was a kid and neither of us had forgotten, apparently.

“You want cheese on your burger, Mom?” Cade asked as he carefully slid a spatula under a burger and flipped it on the grillunder Booker’s supervision. Val licked her lips at his feet in hopeful anticipation that one would drop.

How mad would Delaney be if I got Cade a dog?

“You know it.”

Cade gave her a thumbs up over his shoulder and carried on concentrating on his burgers.

Lunch was the perfect end to a perfect morning. We sat out on the porch eating our fill and telling Cade about all the trouble we’d gotten into as kids growing up in a small town, which, when you thought about it, wasn’t exactly that much. We must have been massive pains in the ass for every adult in our vicinity.

When Delaney told Cade that it was time to head out, the way that he seemed so reluctant to leave was enough to make me happy. I had to get into the office, and I knew Delaney was saying it mostly for my own benefit, but even then, I didn’t want them to go, either.

“You can come back any time you want,” Booker told him. “We’ll get you on Doc next time.”

Cade nodded sadly before turning to me. “And we can go out on the quads again.”

“Any time,” I told him happily.

This was the most fun I’d had in years. I’d happily do it anytime he wanted.

Cade dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around Val, nuzzling his face in the fur at her neck. “I’ll see you soon, Val.”

“Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?” Delaney asked. “We’re just having pizza, but you’re both welcome to join us.”

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