“You want to tell me your sob story now?” Cody asks and he makes fun of himself, trying to downplay it all, but I see right through him and I love what I see there.
I answer his question with one of my own, “You want to get out of here?”
Marcus
I was correct in my assumption that Delilah would call the front desk and then call the local floral shop when she received the roses. Both of which would give her nothing. I was right about her not telling Walsh as well, beyond asking if they came from him.
With the pad of my thumb running down the stubble along my jaw, I wonder if she would have told him had she not been in the position she was in. If the stress of that article and her family dynamic didn’t make her so tense and she was more clearheaded.
I can practically hear her laugh as the waitress gives her another glass of white wine. I’m not sure what Sandy told my Delilah, but it brings a glimmer to her gaze that’s been missing for days.
It still surprises me how easily she hides so much pain behind that gorgeous smile. I lean my head back against the leather headrest, listening to the police scanner and diverting my gaze to the front of the bar as opposed to the window I can so easily see her through. For a moment I wonder if I should have sent her wine instead of roses. The smile slips across my face, the feeling unusual as I imagine her uncorking it just to dump the bottle down the drain, not knowing who it’d come from.
She would have enjoyed the smell of it, though. I’ve seen her inhale deeply so many times when that cork is popped from her go-to bottle of Valley Pines Pinot.
The leather seat groans under me as a familiar operator announces a disturbance four blocks from here. Nodding, I recognize the address and continue to hear the flow of conversations, but I’m not listening as intently as I should. Instead, my gaze moves back to Delilah as she talks to her coworker, Aaron Curtis. She doesn’t know how he watches her.
She doesn’t see but I do. As does Walsh.
At least the young man knows she’s out of his league. He doesn’t have the balls to admit he wants her. There’s a small bit of gratitude I offer him from a distance. It’s one thing to know Walsh takes care of that need for her. It’d be different if the man fucking her was … so inferior.
As if it’s his cue, Cody comes into view, sidling up beside her at the bar-height table. She stiffens, becoming far more serious than she’s been all night. A voice alerts me that the scanner is still on, the shrill white noise of it filling the cabin of the car before I lean forward to turn it off, silencing it to keep any more interruptions from disturbing this moment. The days have turned to weeks of this. Him approaching her, the two of them pretending there’s nothing between them.
The act may have fooled most of them, but Aaron knows just like I do. He saw it months ago, when they started to drift together.
Unlike Aaron, it only makes me watch more closely. I want to know what Cody says that convinces her to leave when he does, to let him meet her at her house and let him through the door.
I want to know what she whispers in his ear when he enters her late at night when they think they’ve gotten away with it all. When they think that no one knows that he comforts her at night.
He must know that I know. How could he not? We had a deal. Maybe I hadn’t made myself clear enough.
Rage simmers inside of me, but it’s easily subdued.
Cody Walsh had to know what he was doing by bringing her into this mess. The article was his warning. I know he read it and received the message loud and clear. Perhaps he doesn’t care and he’s going for her, giving in to the temptation regardless.
I’ll bring up the past, then I’ll bury him in the present. Even worse, I’ll start the chase all over again and lure little Miss Delilah back to me.
I was so close to having her before. I wonder if she remembers.
She’s still the same, even if years have passed. Still the same vivacious woman with a heat in her eyes and yet there’s an innocence about her.
The vision of her is only obscured for a moment by Cody walking around her to speak to someone else. I watch her watch him.
Her lips part slightly before she forces herself to look away.
The ache is indescribable. She could look at me that way. If things had been different, she could look at me the way she does him.