Chapter Forty

The nurse rolls Delphine to my open passenger door before helping me situate her in the seat. She surprises me when she calls after the nurse with a seemingly appreciative goodbye. Scrutinizing her when I’m in my driver’s seat, I notice a difference in her demeanor. “You good? You seem . . . good.”

She gives me an easy nod as I turn the ignition over, eyes the same rare gray staring back at me. “You seem good, too.”

“A rarity for us,” I jest.

My quip dims some of the light in her eyes before she speaks. “Can we . . . can we go somewhere?”

Her request has me pausing my hand on the gearshift. “You don’t want to go home?”

“I would like to see a sunset,” she declares, her attention darting out of the windshield and back to me. “Do you know of a place?”

“We live in a mountain town. There are plenty of places to choose from.” I glance at my dash clock and see we have two hours at most before sundown.

“Take me to one,” she orders, clicking her belt and settling in.

“You don’t feel sick?” I ask, pulling out of the circular drive.

“I have cancer and poison pumping through me to chase it,” she expels a breath, “I always feel sick.”

An ill feeling runs through me as I question her motive. “Planning on dying today?”

“Non, why?” She reads my expression. “I’m just trying to make good use of the time I have.”

I mull that over. “Did the doctor tell you something?”

“Non.”

“I can call the oncologist, Delphine,” I remind her.

“Non,” she sighs. “I only had my treatment.”

If I hadn’t caught her wiping a tear away, I would never believe it was there. The only tears I’ve ever seen the woman shed were when I was still of single-digit age, and those were for my parents and her ex-husband.

“You can take me home if you want to, I just wanted to spend some time with you. Is that such a crime?”

“Considering you never have, it’s surprising.”

“We are . . . friends now, are we not?” She asks.

“If you say so,” I jest.

“Fine, take me home.”

“I’ve got a place to take you if you tell me why you’re leaking,” I prompt, spotting another fast tear trailing down her cheek. The sight of it jogs the memory of Cecelia that day she came to me. Her eyes were pouring, just as emotional, because something significant had happened, and it appears to be the case for my aunt.

“Why are you so upset, Tatie?”

“I don’t want to talk about me.” She appraises me as I pull to a stop light. “You are a handsome man. So much of Celine I see in you.”

“Are we seriously having a heart-to-heart?” I ask, utterly confused.

“You have found love,” she states, not at all a question.

I blink back at her. “Why would you think that?”

“We are so alike, Dominic. I know you might not want to hear it—and maybe do not believe it—but we are. In many ways. I’m happy if you have.”

“Happy if I found love with Roman’s daughter?” I query incredulously.

She stares back at me, lips quirking. “You deny you are?”

“That wasn’t the question,” I redirect.

She turns back to stare out of the windshield. “I am happy you are capable, that you embrace it.”

“Wouldn’t go that far,” I mutter, almost inaudibly, but that’s not exactly true anymore. We spend the first of the drive making small talk, which makes me feel a little like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone. She laughs, twice, and loudly. The unease increases, and I start to wonder if she’s lying about her treatment progression and is now on borrowed time.

A little under an hour later, we’re coasting up the narrow, winding road to the top of the mountain with twenty minutes to spare for the sunset. Delphine remains quiet, trusting me to get her there, anticipation radiating from where she sits with a rare hope in her eyes. When I pull into a parking lot which consists of nothing but a small building sitting to the right of us, she looks over to me skeptically. “Here?”

I nod and walk around the car to help her out. She practically falls against me when she hits her feet, sweat beading her brow and upper lip as I grip her tightly to keep her upright. “You okay?”

Her lips tremble, her pride at stake as she eyes the distance to the building. “I’m weaker than . . . we don’t have to—”

“I’ll walk you,” I assure her. Her eyes again mist and I clutch her to me, walking her toward the building. When we reach the steep stairs leading to the door, she looks at them warily, shaking her head. “Dominic, I’m too wea—”

“I’ve got you.” Sweeping her securely in my arms, I take the stairs toward the doorway just as a man opens it and spots us, quickly ushering his wife through and holding it for us to pass.

“Thank you,” I mutter, and Delphine echoes it. Her eyes trail the couple, who curiously stare back at us as I step in, cradling her to my chest.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Tatie,” I tell her just as she buries her face in my shoulder before I slowly start descending the heavily inclined steps passing the vacant pews which sit to our left and right.

Once I reach the bottom, I glance around satisfied before nudging her with the lift of my shoulder. “Just in time for the show. Look at your sunset, Tatie.”

She slowly lifts her head and gasps when she sees the view before us. Feet ahead stands a twelve-foot cross secured in a brick foundation, and to both sides of it lies a low-lying border wall. Beyond that is an endless sea of Blue Ridge Mountain peaks, which are quickly becoming saturated in various hues of orange, gold, and pink.

“Mon Dieu!” My God! She exclaims, her voice shaking as I lift her gently to her feet. She soaks in the scenery for several quiet seconds, her hand still clutched to my bicep as we watch mist and color steep through the mountaintops. “What is this?”

“It’s called Pretty Place Chapel,” I answer, just as taken aback by the sight before us, which is almost too surreal to believe.

She shakes her head, shock and awe in her expression, appreciation in her voice, and follow-up question. “How do you know about it?”

“I’ve been here a few times,” I admit.

She narrows her eyes in suspicion. “You do believe.”

“Still in negotiations,” I tell her.

We spend a few quiet minutes as I glance around the small chapel and back to the blocked out view the size of a theater screen. It’s when I look back and glimpse the fear that’s been crippling her expression since she was diagnosed that I speak up. “I did a little research a few years back . . . when I was curious.”

“Curious about what?”

“Your good book of morals,” I grin, “the climactic ending, and what happens after.”

She nods in encouragement for me to continue.

“During my dive, I read a dozen or more stories and testimonies and came across one that took place back in the eighties. It has kind of stuck with me since.”

I glance over to see her focus on me.

“It was an account from a Texas housewife who was driving a station wagon on her way to JCPenney to pick up some curtains she’d ordered. Her two young daughters were coloring in the back of it.” I search my memory for the details that stuck out. “What that housewife didn’t know as she sped down that highway to run her everyday errand was that she would die three times that day.”

Delphine’s eyes widen.

“She didn’t know that just ahead, an eighteen-wheeler had stopped on the highway due to some debris—rolls of chicken wire. He hadn’t turned on his signals or laid out traffic cones, so she didn’t slow or brake and slammed into the back of it at full speed.”

Delphine listens, rapt, her eyes drifting back to the view.

“The woman was considered medically dead three times. Twice on the way to the hospital—once while waiting for the helicopter, once in transit, her longest flatline took place on the operating table. The medical staff wanted to call her death, but the doctor who’d been working on her refused to stop trying to bring her back—he was thinking of her two daughters being stitched up just a few rooms away. She was considered medically dead for longer than acceptable to have a decent prognosis if revived—to ever fully function again—but the doctor tried one last time and brought her back.”

The chapel fills with a misty pink hue as I relay the rest. “She had significant brain damage, had to learn to walk and talk again, read and write, but she made a full recovery.” I turn to Delphine and see she’s hanging on every word. “And do you know what her only complaint was?”

She gives a subtle shake of her head.

“That they brought her back.” I grin. “She’d seen what was waiting on the other side and didn’t want a damn thing to do with the world anymore.”

Simmering tears fill her eyes.

“She claimed that in the time she was down, she experienced enough of the afterlife that she never wanted to exist anywhere else. That for the entirety of the time she spent there, she was enveloped in a perpetual state of love—nothing like the human love we experience, but magnified by a billion and then some. That every being there reverberates that love, and the second you brush against them or pass through them, you know every single thing about them, every detail of their lives. That the first time it happens, you become part of a collective consciousness. There’s no judgment, no shame, no suffering, regret, or pain. Nothing but an inconceivable type of feeling no human mind could ever begin to comprehend. She swore that no living soul should ever worry about the question of an afterlife.”

Delphine breaks at that moment, crying in her hands, and I whisk her to sit in the first pew, leaving a palm on her back as her body shakes with her cries.

A few beats pass before whispered apologies are amplified by the hands covering her face, and I’m just able to make them out. “Je suis désolé, je suis désolé, Dominic,” she gasps, before lifting red rimmed eyes to mine. “Truly, sorry for the way I treated you.” Tears of regret roll down her face. “I was so horrible to you both in the beginning.”

“You can still beat it,” I tell her.

“Maybe, but this apology is long overdue,” she sniffs. “It is one of my biggest regrets.”

“You were young, heartbroken, and penniless, and don’t forget I know what got you to the place you were in. This life hasn’t given either of us very many breaks. In that we are alike.”

“You were just a little boy . . . you shouldn’t have had to suffer for it. I was selfish,” she admits hoarsely. “I’ve been selfish for a very long time.”

“You were, but I forgave you a while ago.”

“You did not,” she dismisses.

“Okay,” I grin. “I’ve been trying.”

“I will understand if you don’t,” she stares back at the view. “I do not deserve it.”

“Maybe . . . but you could have abandoned us, which could have separated us. I keep that in mind when memories of you piss me off.”

She grins. “You grew into a good man, Dominic. I do not take any credit for that. Though I should warn you again that we are very much alike.”

“Think so?”

“Sadly, I know so,” she turns back to take in the last of the setting sun. “Do not let your heart harden you like mine did. I’ve lost too much because I could not forgive.”

“I’ll do my best.”

We watch the last of the sun sink before we stand, and she turns to me. “Thank you for that story.”

“There are hundreds, if not thousands like it, all claiming that there’s something waiting. For every person fiercely claiming there’s a deity, there’s another hell-bent on proving nothing exists. At the end of the day, both are so bloated with ego, so firm in their beliefs that neither can prove it. It’s the world’s best-kept secret, one that none of us become privy to until we become a part of it. But there’s got to be some truth to some of those stories, right?”

She nods.

“So, try not to worry too much,” I nudge her shoulder, and she gives me a rare, full smile.

After a silent but peaceful drive home, I lead her into the house to get her settled, my chest aching a little at her admissions and the isolation she’s endured for so long. We dwelled in the same state of desperation, both recluses for fucking years, never mending the bridge even as we both suffered the same type of existence. She wasted half her life as an alcoholic recluse to heartbreak because every single man in her life had failed her—robbed her of security at every turn. It started with her father and ended with her husband and every man between those two. Despite her admirable resilience up until her husband left her, that final blow had her withdrawing, drinking her secrets silent with her daily bottle until her existence was nothing but background to others who were living.

The idea that we are a lot alike in some of those respects starts to instill a sort of fear in me.

The minute we step into the house, the scent of lemon and other household chemicals hit hard, jarring me. Clicking on the light, I spot a notice on top of an empty plant stand for a recent extermination. Glancing around, I see that the house is spotless—the shelves are dusted. Walking into the kitchen, I open the cupboard and see the dishes have been washed and neatly stacked. Glancing over at Delphine as she settles in her recliner, she answers my unspoken question without so much as looking at me. “She didn’t want you to know, but now you do.”

Cecelia.

Instantly, the liquid passing through the beat in my chest solidifies her name inside before passing through to the other.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

I can’t even imagine the reception she was met by when she showed up.

Chest aching with the need to get to her, panic briefly seizes me. “Fuck, did she—”

“No,” she squelches that fear, reading my thought. “His room is still locked.”

When she finally looks at me, I see that same guilt I saw the night Cecelia knelt at her feet begin to seep into her expression.

“What?” I ask, walking over to where she sits and crossing my arms. “We’ve been sharing bluntly all night, Tatie. Why stop now?”

“I’ve wronged her,” she whispers low, gaze distant, “in the past.”

“Wronged Cecelia?”

She nods, her eyes watering.

Fuck.

“It’s the most despicable thing I’ve ever done.” Her eyes gloss with memory. “When I,” she shakes her head as a sharp pang of protectiveness thrums through me.

“Tell me,” I demand.

“It was a long time ago,” she assures.

“I’m listening.”

“When I worked at the plant. I told you . . . I was close to her mother, Diane, for a short time.”

I nod.

“After they died, I knew she knew what happened and that Roman had something to do with it. I was angry.”

“Delphine, what did you do?”

“Cecelia was an infant,” she whispers as if her timbre will have any bearing on the delivery. “I got really drunk and broke into her mother’s house.”

“And?”

“I put a loaded gun in Cecelia’s crib,” she grimaces, “while she was sleeping in it.”

“Jesus Christ, Tatie.”

“I wanted to send a message to Roman that we knew that fire wasn’t an accident.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” she assures. “I left the safety on.”

“Oh, well, that changes everything.” Fury seeps into me as I pull the keys from my jeans pocket when lightning flickers just outside the living room window.

“Dominic,” Delphine calls behind me, but I ignore her, my chest thundering as the rain begins to pour off her roof. Whatever confessions Delphine has left, I decide she can take them to her grave or find a priest to confess to. The image of Cecelia with a loaded gun at her head sends a shiver through me, making me physically ill as I pound down the steps and start my Camaro. Tearing out of the drive, the need to come clean surges through me as I race toward the townhouse—toward her. As much as I fucking hate Roman, as it turns out, my own family is just as guilty of the same malicious intent concerning her. It strikes me on the drive that no matter who guards them, secrets—especially those that are most fatal—have a way of poisoning those who keep them, as well as those on the receiving end of discovering them. When it comes to my tie to Cecelia, we were damned before we met—through no fault of our own—and in discovering each other, we’re both slowly being poisoned.

Pulling into the drive, relief covers me at the sight of Cecelia’s car. Thunder rolls as I exit, and get drenched in the seconds it takes to get to the door. Cracking it open, I see Cecelia bundled on the loveseat facing the sliding door, earbuds in as she reads along with the audio on her Kindle. Closing the door with a soft click, I creep in, ducking behind the couch when she senses she’s not alone. Waiting until she’s comfortably reading again, I pounce from behind, soaking her with my dripping hair as I grip her and pull her over the back of the couch.

“Dom,” she shrieks, palming and pushing against my soaked T-shirt as I shake my head, shedding water and soaking her in the process. Twisting her to face me, I scoop her into my hold before resting her ass on the edge of the couch.

“You’re terrible,” she laughs as she sinks into me, and I shut up the rest of her protests with my kiss. When I break it, I pull back to admire the heat in her eyes, lids hooding, breaths coming fast, a slow smile spreading across her face with her greeting. “Hi.”

Her legs tighten securely around me as I lift her up and walk us toward the stairs.

“God, you’re soaked. Let’s get you dry,” she says, squirming in my hold.

“Let’s get you wet,” I counter.

When she bites her lip, the divot in her chin brings my cock full mast.

“How was work?” she asks.

“Work.”

She rolls her eyes. “How are you?”

“Still me,” I jest.

“Motherfucker.”

“Only the once,” I taunt.

Her body tenses. “I didn’t need to know that.”

I widen my eyes. “But you seem to need to know everythingelse.”

She sobers and takes offense. “You really just want me pliable and mute?”

I press my lips together as she slaps my chest playfully and tries to pry herself away when we reach the top of the stairs. “Such an asshole.”

“Told you I was.”

“You can tell me many things, but you’ll never convince me of that, sir. Not that way.”

“You should believe me,” I warn.

“Stop trying to scare me away from you, Dom. I’m not going anywhere.”

I set her on her feet as she surveys my room. “So, what’s it going to be tonight? We could read . . . I could make you dinner or breakfast? How about runny eggs and a movie?”

I nod.

An hour later, we’re stretched out beneath our freshly laundered blanket—inhaling the fresh scent I can’t place. I glance around the townhouse. It’s just the two of us, with Sean working his night shift at the plant and Tyler unaccounted for—as he has been the last week—spending both his days and nights elsewhere. I suspect that if I drive back to Delphine’s, I’d find his truck in the driveway, but I don’t bother trying to draw that out of him.

I’ll make peace with Delphine for her confession at some point, but that’s not happening tonight, as the same surge of protectiveness sweeps me. Swallowing, I fixate on Cecelia as she watches the movie, completely rapt, hand still in the popcorn bowl. Grabbing her hand, I lift it and suck the remnants of the cheddar from her fingers. She turns my way briefly, and I release her, feigning interest in the story playing out on screen. When she turns back to the TV, I keep her hand in mine, running my thumb along the back of her delicate hand before splaying my palm next to hers. Mine rough and calloused, hers smooth against it. My digits thick in comparison to her slim, delicate fingers. Mine covered in blood and wrath, while hers remain unsoiled.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

“You have found love.” Delphine’s whisper trickles in.

It found me.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

“I love you,” I whisper in declaration just as thunder rattles the sliding glass doors, the confession dying with that warning as she looks over to me in question. “Hmm?”

Whoosh. Whoosh.

Whoosh. Whoosh.

I jerk my chin slightly as she turns back to the movie. I soak in her profile, taking note of the length of her lashes, the utter perfection of her nose, and the fullness of her lips. Legs draped over my lap, she sinks further into the couch as I watch in wait.

Eventually, it happens. Her chest begins to pump, emotions emanating from her, a whimper leaving her throat as tears form in her eyes. Turning back to the screen as the clueless asshole professes his love, I glance back to see Cecelia buying every second of it.

It’s so easy to see that love is her life force, her reason for being—what drives her. I didn’t need to witness her watching this to know it because she’s just as emotional with me. When I lose myself in her, when she lingers after every spoken sentiment and the way she looks up at me when I fuck her slow and deep. She’s a hundred percent fucking heart, and it leaks everywhere, no matter where she is or what situation she’s in. She’s incredibly brave in that respect.

For that, I admire her.

For that, I respect her.

For that, I fucking fear for her.

When her tears finally spill over, I lean over and snatch one with my lips. Her breath hitches, and her watery eyes zero in when I sweep the salt collected away with my tongue. Biting back the words that were never supposed to slip from my lips, I give her another truth.

“You’re beautiful, Cecelia.” It’s the first time I’ve said it without anything physical happening between us, and her eyes widen a little with the sentiment. This woman has completely consumed me in every way that matters, and she needs to know.

Instead, I press a promise into her as I take her lips in a kiss—a vow without words that I’ll protect her perfect heart as much as I can.

A vow without words but a promise just the same.

A promise I’ll do everything in my power to keep.

Looking into her eyes, I vow she’ll never know about the monsters she can’t see because I’ll slay them all before they have a chance to get to her.

Even if that monster is me.