Declan shifted from one foot to the other impatiently, waiting for Iris to show up. She’d been damn mysterious in her text messages, asking him to meet her at The Glade at one o’clock, and his curiosity was growing stronger by the minute. 

He’d known what she’d meant by The Glade, of course. In high school, when they’d been caught one too many times by parental figures in some…pretty heavy duty make-out sessions, they’d started trying to find new places to neck. 

Ones where parents were less likely to stumble in on them.

It had been a search for just such a place when Iris had caught her foot on a tree branch and had fallen down a ravine, breaking her leg.  

Whoops.

As soon as her leg healed, they were right back at it. They’d finally found this place – a beautiful clearing in amongst the pine trees with a small creek bubbling past – and had christened it on the spot. It was where they’d lost their virginity to each other, actually. 

Yeah, he wasn’t likely to forget about The Glade any time soon.

It was three weeks until the wedding, and Declan was also deep into planting and taking care of his new piglets. In other words, they had about three seconds to spare per day for each other, before falling, exhausted, into bed each night. Maybe Iris was feeling neglected, and wanted some alone time with him.

He shifted on his feet again. He was happy to give her what she needed, but she also needed to show up. If he didn’t see a head of gorgeous red and golden hair making its way towards him in the next five minutes, he’d be forced to go back to work and try this again later.

But just before he gave up and started the long trek to his truck, he saw the glow of her hair and grinned to himself. She’d made it. He headed towards her, jogging through the underbrush to make it to her side quickly. She stopped and grinned at him when he finally made it. “Are you that…quiet while hunting?” she asked dryly. “If so, may I suggest some changes to your hunting strategies?”

He laughed.

“Some prey have already been caught,” he informed her pertly, and then leaned down to give her a quick peck on the lips.

Well, what he intended to make a quick peck on the lips. Minutes later, he finally made himself pull away. Her eyelashes fluttered open and she looked at him with a dreamy smile on her face. “Hi,” she breathed.

“Hey,” he whispered back. He took the blanket and small basket from her arms, leaving her with just her handmade walking stick, and together, they wandered towards The Glade. A part of him wanted to push her for information – to have her tell him right away what was going on; why she insisted on doing this now – but even he realized that letting her sit down and get comfortable before he started peppering her for info would be a good idea.

No matter how curious he was.

He laid out the blanket on a patch of soft green grass, just poking up into the spring air, and helped her settle in before opening the basket up to peer inside. He found containers from Betty’s Diner and a couple of small ones from The Cupcake Man. 

“I see you’ve been cooking again,” he teased her. 

She threw her head back and laughed. “I make a shitastic farmer’s wife-to-be, don’t I?” she said dryly. “I think I’m going to have to skip the pie baking contest for the county fair this year.”

And every year.

But he decided to keep that particular thought to himself. Finding someone who could cook was easy. Finding someone who made him as happy as Iris did? Impossible.

He should know. He tried to do just that for 15 years, and failed miserably.

They settled in, dishing out the food and then mumbling to each other about how good it was around bites of it. Finally, they’d cleaned out the two dessert containers – which had contained chocolate cheesecake for her and apple pie for him – and there was nothing left to do but tackle the elephant in the room.

Or glade, as the case may be.

“So,” he said quietly, and he could feel the air change around them when he said it – the easy, relaxed atmosphere instantly morphing into stiffness and worry. He plowed ahead anyway. This had to be big enough to make it worth it to push through. She wouldn’t have pulled him away from farming; she wouldn’t have pulled herself away from her business and from planning their wedding, if it wasn’t truly dire. “I’m guessing you wanted to chat with me about something?”

She sent him a weak smile. “Am I that transparent?” she asked quietly.

“As Saran Wrap,” he confirmed. 

She grimaced. 

He laughed.

“I’ve…been telling myself to talk about this for a long time,” she started out quietly. His chest tightened in panic. Maybe she’d changed her mind about dyslexia. Maybe she’d done more research and had decided that dyslexia really does make a person stupid and she really shouldn’t marry him, and– 

“We need to talk about why we broke up all those years ago.”

His panic instantly changed directions. This wasn’t the topic he’d been panicking about, but it might as well have been. He didn’t want to talk about this either, because…

Well, because it was an awful time in his life. He didn’t exactly want to think about it very hard. Why was it that girls wanted to talk about things so much? Couldn’t they just forget about stuff and move on? He—

She put her hand out on his arm, jerking him out of his thoughts. “I know this isn’t an easy topic to discuss. There’s a reason why I’ve held off talking about it until now. I am a giant chicken, and I wanted to just forget and move on. But Declan, we lost 15 years of our lives that we could’ve spent together but didn’t, because of whatever it was that caused you to break up with me, and I can’t help but worry that whatever it was will rear its ugly head again.”

She drew in a deep breath. “What if I accidentally step in it – just splash around in the deep end and cause all sorts of problems, without even knowing that I’m doing it? I can’t risk it. I can’t risk our marriage by ignoring this between us. If I don’t find out what caused you to break up with me before, then I can’t keep it from causing you to divorce me in the future.”

That wasn’t possible, of course. What had happened before…well, it was literally impossible to be a repeat event. 

But the bigger issue…

Well, he knew she was right, dammit all. As much as he hated to admit it, she was. Why did she have to make sense all the time?

He closed his eyes and groaned.

“Is it really that bad?” she asked quietly. Her hand was stroking its way up his arm and he reached over with his other hand to take it into his.

“Yes.”

It was silent then, with only the distant bubbling of the brook and an industrious frog croaking out its thoughts. He opened his eyes and stared at her for a moment. 

He had no choice. He had to tell her. 

Even if she hated him for it.

“I killed my mom,” he said into the stillness.