Delilah

I stare at the man beside me. There’s not much light in the room, but there’s enough afternoon sunshine sneaking through the bent blinds for me to see the differences between the boy I once thought I’d spend my life with and the man sleeping next to me.

Restless.

Like most of my nights.

Even behind closed lids, his eyes never seem to settle. With my hand on his chest, his heart beats fast even in slumber. There are small lines that remind me more of cat’s whiskers than crow’s feet. They’re soft, but I see them digging in for the long haul. They look so much more distinguished on him than the ones setting in on my face from too much squinting in the sun.

Jason’s nose has a small bump that wasn’t there before. I like it. I’m tempted to run my finger over it and land on the lips that look like pillows where my lips could rest easy. The stubble is thick, but not so thick that it’s a beard needing to be shaved. It’s hard to decide if I like this look or a clean-shaven face on him best. Both highlight the jaw that’s gotten sharper over the years.

I see the clouds of the design of his tattoo so much better now. The sun is barely peeking through. The artwork is both beautiful and sad. I hope that was him then and he can find happiness now because I love the comfort of being in his arms again.

Too soon?

I’m not sure.

I don’t like to think about it. I want to enjoy this too much to overanalyze it to death. Why did I walk away from this man? He’s never been anything but honest with me, so forthcoming with how he feels. I won’t be that stupid again. I need to trust in the journey. I won’t deviate from this path again if it feels this good to be with him.

“Hey,” I whisper.

As if he’s been awake the whole time, his eyes open, showing me those gorgeous brown eyes that always held too much emotion for him to hide from me. Despite his body’s restlessness, his soulful eyes are at peace, staring into mine. His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer. “Hey,” he whispers, brushing some strands of my hair behind my ear. “Everything okay?”

Resting my chin on his chest, I look at him. “Everything’s good. Better than good.”

A languid smile moves into place and holds steady. “Guess we should get up. I slept harder than I thought I would for an afternoon nap.”

“I’m glad. You needed it.”

He bends his neck to the side, stretching it. “Something about this place.”

I don’t beat around the bush. Neither of us has time for that. “I like having you here.” Pushing up, I slide up and kiss him. Our bodies move the way that feels so good, and we fill the afternoon with moans, expending our desire, and satiating our lust.

Left with smiles that feel shy, although I don’t know why, we take a shower and get redressed. Watching me as he puts his jeans on, he says, “I told Billy I’d fix your chicken coop.”

“Do you know how, city slicker?”

Laughing, he dips his feet into his shoes and winks. “I think I can manage, but I need to start tomorrow if that’s okay. I promised my mom I would change her oil today.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Jason. I can manage.”

Coming over to me, he rubs my arms. “I know you can. I want to help. Is it okay for me to take that job off your hands? You have plenty to take care of yourself.”

My arms go around his middle. I rest my head against his chest and close my eyes. His heart is strong like his muscles that make me weak in the knees. “Thank you.”

I love being tucked inside his arms. It’s safe here, like the world can’t touch us, and all our problems belong to someone else. He kisses my head. When we part, he asks, “You busy tonight?”

“No,” I reply, laughing lightly. “My schedule is pretty wide open most days.”

“Let me ask you something.”

Here it comes—the questions I’ve been happily avoiding. “Okay.”

“Will you come to dinner tonight at my mom’s house?”

“He, uh . . . wait. What?”

His forehead crinkles from my response. “Dinner. You. Me. My mom. Will you join us?”

That’s not what I expected him to ask. I thought for sure he’d bring up Cole, but I’m so glad he doesn’t let him invade our time together. “Dinner?”

“You know,” he says, his hands motioning like charades as he feeds himself. “Food. Eating. Talking. That kind of thing.”

I smile. “I’d love to.”

A wide smile appears but there’s always a little mischievousness in his eyes. “How’s seven?”

“Perfect. I’ll bring dessert.”

“I always loved your desserts.”

“Are we still talking about food?”

“Nope.”

I roll my eyes and head for the living room. “I’m not sure I can keep up with your appetite.”

“I’m insatiable because of you.”

Stopping in the hall, I turn around and press my hands against his chest. I rub lightly over the cotton of his shirt. I want to feel his hard muscles through it . . . yeah, I do, and I’m not making any apologies for it. “What are we doing, Jason?”

By the way his smile turns light and his eyes darken with the change in my tone, he says, “We’re getting to know each other. Again. That’s all.”

“I like that.” I nod, and then take a deep breath before exhaling. “I come with baggage I didn’t have last time around.”

“We all do.” Kissing my cheek, his mouth lingers on my skin, sending goose bumps across my arms. “I lied earlier.”

“What about?”

“When I said I rest better because there’s something about this place. I lied. It’s not this place.”

“What is it then?”

Cupping my face, our lips meet, but he doesn’t kiss me. “It’s you. You give me the peace I’ve needed, and the emptiness inside isn’t so empty anymore.”

He fills the emptiness inside me too. Our lips meet, and we kiss, exchanging the words that aren’t needed.

“I’ll see you tonight, Delilah.”

He walks around and right out of my front door like it’s his own to return through. I lean against the frame and watch him through the screen door. He starts his truck and looks back at me, leaving me with a nod of his head and smile on his face that feels genuine. Dirt fills the air behind his tires, and I watch that old beat-up pickup drive away, feeling anxious as the distance grows.

What are we really?

Are we playing a game or is this real?

I miss him already and it hasn’t been a minute since he left.

That feels pretty darn real, to my heart at least.

With more than four hours until I need to be at dinner, it’s time to wrap up some chores.

This goofy smile on my face might be the answer I’m looking for. I head out back and return to chopping the wood I’m going to need to store for winter. It’s backbreaking work, but I can’t afford the wood delivery service anymore. At least I don’t have to work out anymore. The chores around here are enough to keep me in shape. And Jason seems to really like my body . . . perhaps more than before, which surprises me. I haven’t felt attractive . . . well, since Jason used to appreciate me—emotionally and physically.

After the wood’s chopped, I inspect the coop. I can fix this easily, but I like that Jason wants to help, and I like him hanging around more than taking the job away from him. I hop on the ATV and drive around the fields to the two active ones. Ricardo oversees the plots with Billy, but he also lives on the acreage that bumps against the fields in a two-bedroom cottage my dad built when I was little. I used to dream of living in the little white house with its gingerbread trim and door.

Paloma, his wife, takes care of the house, keeping it in shape despite time wanting to wear it down. She brings me food too often, but she knows how I love her cooking. She also says I’m too skinny. I’ll happily take her pralines to help widen my hips to bear children, as she puts it. They’re too delicious to pass up.

She’s watering the flowers out front when I drive up. “Hi, Delilah.”

“Hi, how are you today?”

“It’s a beautiful day,” she replies with a motherly smile on her face. “I saw a truck leaving the property earlier.”

Her mothering instincts go beyond a smile. I’ve known her since I was eight, so we’ve been through a lot of changes together through the years. I don’t have to say much. She’s happy to fill the air with her wisdom and observations, which have often been comforting over the years since I lost my mom and dad. “Your old boyfriend, the one I liked, used to drive a truck like that.”

I take the watering can from her and take over the task. As the water sprinkles across the flowerbed, I keep my tone level, careful not to give more than I have a right to away. “He still does.”

I don’t have to see her face to hear the smile in her voice. “It was a good visit?”

Looking at her, her hands are clasped together in front of her chest.

“You don’t have to pretend. Tell me what you know.”

“Ricardo said the truck stayed overnight.”

I giggle, the usual burdens feeling lighter, almost effervescent today. “It did. Along with Jason.”

“Jason,” she says in such a dreamy way. “I always did like how he treated you.”

“Even in the end?”

“The end? Hmm. You weren’t one to reason with back then.”

I’ve yet to process what Jason said last night. I felt like a fool. No, more than that, I felt heartsick at what I must have put him through. How could he come back here and want to reconnect with me? He must have hated me, especially when he saw me with Cole that time at Red River. Why? Why hadn’t I gone back to him and given him a chance to speak? He wasn’t a selfish man. He never had been. My assumptions were based on an insecurity that I placed on myself, not from his actions. Cole is to blame for his part; he was devious. But I fell for it. Naïve. My heart hurts thinking about what I did. God, how I hurt Jason, but here he is despite the pain he’s felt, and potentially offering a second chance. He’s so much stronger than I ever was.

I set the empty watering can down and move to sit on her steps. Resting my arms on my knees, I stare ahead at the field that meets the end of her yard. When I glance over at her, I say, “He wasn’t going to break up with me. That’s what he told me.”

“I could have told you that too.”

Softly laughing, I reply, “You probably did. I just wasn’t able to hear you through the noise in my head.”

“But you hear him now?”

“I’m not sure.”

She sits next to me. Resting her head on my shoulder and wrapping me in a loving embrace, she says, “Sometimes it’s not the loudest voice we hear, but the soft whisper our heart feels. Back then the sting of perceived betrayal clouded your judgment and clogged your ears. Someone took advantage of that pain and twisted it to meet his own needs.”

Although I can’t remember exactly when Cole first talked to me about Jason leaving, I can recall some of what he’d said.

“I’m sure you know what guys are like, Delilah. He’s leaving this town—you, me, Billy—and moving on.” He reaches over and rubs my shoulder, as if consoling me. I’m not even sure what he’s talking about, which worries me more. Is Jason keeping secrets from me?

My hands tighten around the handles of my cheerleading bag, and I look toward the stadium tunnel that leads to the locker rooms. Jason is long gone, the coach calling him in to talk about something. Is it about leaving? Leaving school? Leaving me?

As I worry my lip, he continues, “He’s kept you on a string, someone to come back to when he wants you.” He runs his hands through his sweaty hair. When he looks back at me, it’s a look of excitement . . . like? Lust? Surely not. I’ve seen this look before, but dismissed it as nothing since I’m with his best friend.

He says, “I’m sick of the rumors I’ve heard about him when he’s visiting State’s campus. Rumors about him and other girls. You deserve better. Why do you put up with that?”

. . . I remember doubting Cole, thinking that wasn’t the Jason Koster I knew and loved. But each time Cole looked at me with sympathy and held me as if to comfort me, I believed him. But was it true?

No.

That wasn’t Jason at all. But somehow I fell into more confusion when I didn’t hear what Jason had to talk to the coach about, or why he suddenly had to stay after practice a few times for meetings.

Was Jason lying to me or waiting to tell me what he considered good news? I know now, but I wish I had known then.

Cole had pursued me. Had turned up every day to spend time with me, to help a friend he’d said. And when I saw Jason at Red River just before he left again for college, I didn’t know how to understand the look in his eyes. He’d looked angry. At me. Definitely at Cole. But I remember what I felt that night. I’d been just as angry. By then Cole had told me story after story of all the women Jason had been with on every visit to other campuses. He’d told me about the many crude jokes he’d heard Jason say about me when out drinking with the guys.

Were they all lies? And if so, why had I been so stupid and naïve to believe him?

Because I’d been devastated. I’d believed he was leaving me and heading off to his world, a world I had no place in.

“Cole was a force to be reckoned with. He played upon my insecurities until I couldn’t see anything beyond the lies he was feeding me. I owe Jason an apology.” My swallow is heavy like my heart thinking about how I hurt him.

Sitting up, Paloma pats my back. “If I still know Jason at all, I have a feeling he doesn’t want or need an apology.”

“What does he want?”

“The same thing he always needed. You.”

“Can I be what he needs, what he deserves now? Am I stronger?” After last night, I think I am.

“Strength is found in the ashes of the fire. You’ve been burned, but you must rise because there’s so much life ahead of you to live. Wouldn’t it be nice to share that life with someone who cares for you so deeply?”

Pushing up off the little cement steps, she takes the watering can in one hand. With her other, she covers her chest. “Trust what’s in here, Delilah.” Then adds, “Ricardo is in the back quarter if you’re looking for him,” before she disappears behind the house.

Paloma has never needed to fill her days with a lot of chatter. I think the love she feels for life is fulfilling enough. Her thoughts aren’t veiled. She always makes her views heard. I screwed up four years ago, and it cost me the future I once dreamed of. I won’t make that mistake again. I stand and head for the field to find Ricardo and get an update on the farm.

* * *

Freshly showered, I’m baking with my robe on. I put the cobbler in the oven and return to the bedroom to get ready. I’ve timed things perfectly and am dressed when the timer goes off. Dashing into the kitchen, I hit the timer button to turn it off and set the cobbler on the stovetop while I gather my purse and slip on my shoes.

One final once-over in the mirror and a big smile in place, I’m ready to go. I stop under the arch in the kitchen.

What the hell?

As he scoops cobbler onto a plate, I watch in horror, frozen to the spot.