Page 99 of The Life We Left Behind

Delaney sighed and leaned back into me as she thought about what I’d said. This whole situation was going to be so much harder on her than me because Barrett was her family, and this betrayal cut deeper for her. In a way, it cut deeper than my family’s betrayal had for me. I could almost expect this sort of thing from my mother. She’d already shown me through my entire childhood that she was a terrible person. I couldn’t claim to be surprised that she was capable of something like this.

“You’re right,” she finally admitted. “Is it terrible that I just don’t want to think about it anymore? I don’t want you to think that I don’t care about what they did to us. Or that I’m in any way excusing it. I’m just done letting my life revolve around these people who thought they got to decide how our lives should be. I want to live for us. I’m tired of it all.”

“I think that’s a really good idea, sweetheart.”

“We need to talk to Cade,” she said almost distractedly.

“Cade? You want to tell him about this?” I didn’t know how I felt about that.

Strangely, I was fine with him thinking my mother was the devil, even if we hadn’t put it across to him in those exact terms. But ruining the memory of Barrett for him just felt wrong.

“What? Oh, no. It’s just if you’re going to be properly moving in here with us, I think we should at least sit down and talk about it. It doesn’t feel right to just…what?”

She must have felt me tense beneath her in surprise. I was almost afraid to move in case she changed her mind. It was everything I wanted, and yet I was worried there was some way the universe would find a way to fuck me if I said it aloud.

“Are you…”

“Oh my god! I’m sorry, I just assumed. I should have asked. There’s absolutely no pressure, Trace. If you want to take things slower?—”

I cut off her words with a kiss, pressing her back into the couch as I did. My hands slipped beneath her shirt to feel the soft skin of her waist because it was impossible not to want to touch her.

“You…” I kissed her again. “Are…” And again. “Incredible.”

Delaney sighed against my lips before she smiled. “I take it that’s a yes, then.”

“Hell yeah, it’s a yes. Are you sure, though? It’s a big step, and you’re yet to experience any of the annoying things I usually do at home. I know, because I’ve been making sure to keep myself on the tightest of leashes so I can trick you into loving me.”

“You don’t have to trick me. I never stopped loving you, Trace. Even when I probably should have hated you, I loved you. There was never going to be anyone else for me. The time I had with you was perfect, and no one was ever going to be able to beat that.”

I pulled back then, a twinge of guilt hitting me, but also needing to know if she was saying what I thought she was saying.

“You didn’t have anyone else in your life after me?”

“No. Well, I had Cade. He kinda kept me busy.”

Was it strange to feel sad about that? That all this time, Delaney had been alone and no one else had been there to love her when I couldn’t.

“I’m…I feel like I should apologize. I…Chelsea.” I didn’t need to say anything else. She already knew exactly what I was thinking.

Delaney sat up and reached for my hand. “You don’t have to apologize for having a life, Trace. I had one. I might not have had another man in my life, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t live it. It’s okay that you had feelings for someone else.”

“Feelings?” I laughed incredulously. “I don’t even know if I did. Is that awful? Everything with Chelsea was…well, you know. And now that I know she was involved, now that I’m starting to see all the manipulation and the lies, I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t.”

Delaney nodded thoughtfully. “I always knew she liked you. I can even understand why she’d go to my dad. She was trying to make me talk to him, and I wouldn’t. I needed time to figure out what I wanted, and she was worried about me. I just don’t see how it went from that to…well, everything that happened afterward.”

Chelsea came from one of the other founding families in our town. I knew exactly how it reached the level it did. She was everything that my mother wanted in a wife for me. She completed the image Regina wanted to show the world. It didn’t matter to my mother in the slightest about whether I was happy. In fact, I think a part of her wanted me to be just as miserable as she was.

“How is your dad taking all of this?” she asked, surprising me.

“Honestly, at the moment, it seems like he’s finally done with her. Apparently, he’s staying in the pool house. Part of me thinkshe’ll be pretending that none of this ever happened within a week. He always did take the easy path in life.”

I cringed then because there was something that had come from my meeting with him this morning that I hadn’t been expecting, and I had no idea how Delaney was going to react to it.

“Oh god, what now?” she asked in exasperation. “I swear I’m nearly at my limit for life-altering revelations. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

“I had a meeting with him this morning.”

“I know. Is he pissed about the land?”

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