Page 107 of Delta
“It’s silly.” I shake my head, almost ashamed to even look at him. “I’m not even the one he hurt, but I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Emma.” Dylan wraps an arm around my shoulders and guides me over to the couch. I take a seat, and he sits beside me, taking my hand in his own. “It may have been me he hurt, but it was you he tortured.”
My eyes so full of tears I can’t see, I shake my head. “No, he was hurting you, Dylan. It’s all I can see. The pain on your face as you pretended you weren’t hurting. I can’t unsee it. It’s branded in my brain. On repeat, alternating with the sight of Jesper—” My stomach rolls just thinking about it.
“Baby, we survived. I’m right here.” He takes my hand and presses it to his heart. “God brought us through it. I’m sorry you had to see what happened to Jesper, and I’m so sorry Heath used me against you. But we’re okay. We’re here,” he says again.
I nod, but I can’t speak. No thanks to the lump burning in my throat. One single word, and I’ll completely lose it.
“You can’t let it fester, or it’ll eat you alive. Trust me. I’ve been there. For the first time in my life, I’m fighting the demons I buried deep within me. The parts of me that I let blacken because I was so angry.”
“I’m trying to let it go. And it’s not anger I’m feeling—it’s fear. Fear that I’m going to wake up and Heath is going to be standing over me. Fear that our rescue has been a figment of my imagination, and at any moment now, that picture is going to shatter, and I’ll be back in that safe—the water rising.”
Dylan is quiet for a few moments, then he releases my hand to lift the vase he brought me. “Do you recognize this?”
I study the glass. “No.”
“It’s the vase that broke when you threw that box at me,” he says with a crooked smile.
My stomach falls. “Oh, Dylan. I’m sorry. I did break one.”
“No, no. Don’t apologize. Look at it.” He runs the tip of his pointer finger over one of the golden veins. “Have you ever heard of kintsugi?”
I tilt my face up to look at him. “No.”
He smiles. “It’s the Japanese art of fixing what’s been broken. Instead of throwing something away, they use an adhesive to piece it back together, then dust those cracks with powdered gold, silver, or platinum to make it even more beautiful than it was before it was broken.”
I follow his gaze back down to the vase, his words saturating my soul. “Dylan, that’s lovely.”
He sets the vase back down and places a finger beneath my chin so he can tilt my face up to his. “I was broken. Shattered into a million pieces, sure that I would never be whole again. But God pieced me back together. While I don’t know that I’ll ever be the man I was before, I’m on my way to being me again, because of Him.” He turns to me. “You gave me a reason to want to change, Emma. You’re the lifeline that pulled me back to Him.”
Tears burn in my throat. “Dylan.”
“And just like this vase, just like me, you feel broken, but He’ll put you back together too. You just have to let Him and give it time.”
Dylan leans in and kisses me gently, then pulls away and rests his arm around my shoulders again. I lean into him, and we relax against the back of my couch. As we sit here in silence, I stare at the vase overflowing with wildflowers. It was broken before—into a lot of tiny pieces, from the look of it. But it’s back together now. Not the same as before, but beautiful because of the brokenness.
Just like Dylan.
He’s a haunted man—and probably always will be on some level. But he’s beautiful in his pain. A living testimony to the grace of God. A man returning to the light after spending a good portion of his life in the fiery furnace of his past.
Is that what I’ll be someday? Beautiful despite the pieces that broke in the bottom of that boat?
On some level, I understand Dylan even more now. Not because we suffered the same but because I gave in to the hopelessness that was seeding in my heart during our time in captivity. And it’s taking all I have to rip it out by the roots now so I can find the version of myself I was before all of this happened.
“Thank you, Dylan.”
“For what?”
“For being here.”
“I spent enough time away from you, Emma. I don’t ever want to be separated again. I want to give you everything I promised you before. A family. A future. A house surrounded by wildflowers.”
The smile that spreads across my face erases some of the darkness. I tilt my face up to look at him. “You remembered.”
“I remember everything,” he says, expression serious. “And if you’ll have me, I promise that I’ll fight to be a man who deserves you.”
“Dylan. You already do.”
