Page 69 of Chasing Love: The Owens
“Do you want to go for a ride?” I ask.
She looks up, and my heart constricts. All the anger brewing inside me simmers from seeing her swollen, red-rimmed eyes.
“If you promise not to leave me in a ditch somewhere.”
She’s just like Levi, deflecting with humor, but I can’t find it within myself to match her, so I just hold out my hand toward the truck.
We part ways at the front, me not opening her door for probably the first time ever.
Silence extends through the cab as I start the engine and back out of her parents’ driveway. I have no idea where to go, but I’m certain we both want to be alone with no prying ears, so I head to the only spot I know that might be private but isn’t on the ranch—a lookout area in Hickory.
Thankfully, no teenagers are making out when we get here. Probably because the sun hasn’t completely gone down at this point.
I kill the engine and trace the steering wheel with my fingers, unsure where to start, but I forgot how much Delaney hates silence.
“I have no excuses for what I did, and I understand you’re angry with me, but I don’t think that there’s much else to say to one another. I’m sorry, I am. You know it all now, so how do you want to go about this? Do you want me to introduce you to her? I’d like to be the one to tell her, if that’s okay. Should we get lawyers involved, draw up papers around visitation? I’d like to explain myself to Wren, since I’m assuming you want to tell her?—”
I place my hand on her shaking, entwined ones. “Breathe.”
After a deep inhale, she starts right back in. “I have to know what you want and how you want to go about it. I can’t sit here and live in limbo.” She turns to face me, a fresh set of tears running down her cheeks. “I know that’s unfair of me to ask, that you deserve the time to figure out how you feel, but… she’s all I have.” A strangled cry leaks out of her, and she covers her face with her hands, her back shaking.
I tear my eyes away from her, the need to soothe at war with my anger. “I would never try to take her from you,” I say softly, concentrating on the sky in front of us. “But I want a relationship with her. Regardless, she comes first. She and Wren have to be the priority here.”
She says nothing, but I feel the weight of my words heavy on my heart. I thought it might’ve been our time, we were so close to starting something again, but that has to end. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready now.
“I agree.”
“I figure we can do this one of two ways—tell everyone right away or keep it between us for a time. But I have told Emmett, and Levi knows, and when the girls find out, I have a feeling it’ll be harder to keep the secret.”
I’m not sure they’ll even understand the repercussions. Wren won’t. I can see her just thinking “yay, I have a sister.” Since I don’t know Leia, I have no clue how she’ll react.
“I’m sure you’d like to tell your parents,” she says. “I plan on telling mine tonight.”
“They don’t know?” I’d thought maybe since Levi did, they would too.
She shakes her head. “Only Sean and I knew all these years.”
My head falls back onto the headrest, and I sigh. The man who raised my daughter for the last seven years. Suddenly, all the times she tried to tell me he’d never hurt them physically or verbally make sense.
He was good to us.
“He always knew?”
She peeks over at me but quickly looks down at her hands again. “From day one.”
I understand her just wanting to move forward, but I still feel the need to ask. “Did you think I wouldn’t have chosen to be part of her life? I mean… is that why you didn’t tell me?”
Her shoulders shrug. “Honestly, it was more that you didn’t even try with us. You just went back to Kristie, and I was still all wrapped up in that when I found out about Leia. I got very protective and didn’t want her to ever have to feel the same way I did when you left me.”
I have no excuses for picking Kristie in that moment other than it felt like I was making the right decision for my unborn child. If I had to make the decision again right now, I would have said, “let’s coparent, and I’m staying with Delaney,” but I didn’t.
“How did we get here?”
The past creeps into every crevice of the cab. I open the door, escaping into the fresh air. The click of the truck door sounds, then the crunch of gravel as she meets me at the top of the cliff.
“We have to put our past aside and focus on the girls. Figure out this coparenting thing,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself, standing six feet away from me.
The last time I felt this disconnected with her was when I told her about Kristie being pregnant and ended it.
