Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Lucas didn’t get a say.
Jacob took the choice away.
Chapter 18
The cabin welcomed Lucas inside to the quiet heat that instantly wrapped around his broad shoulders like a hug as he shed his outdoor clothes. “Jesus, it’s cold. My fingers are icicles.”
The tips of his fingers throbbed with sharp pain as the warmth started to seep into his frozen skin.
Delaney, flipping through an old magazine next to a plate of warmed up leftovers, didn’t glance up from the glossy pages resting on the kitchen island. She sat cross-legged, quite a sight in painted-on white skinny jeans that accentuated her hips and legs in the best ways, on one of four stools rounding the makeshift table and countertop that helped save space.
“Two hours in twenty-below weather will do that to you.”
“It’s definitely closer to thirty,” Lucas returned. “Only two?”
She peeked over at him, then, and the corner of her lips lifted into a half smile. “Yeah, a little more. Did it feel longer?”
Lucas had been positive it was, actually.
What did it matter, now?
Delaney nodded across the cabin toward the sitting room. “I put your plate on the coffee table.”
“I could eat out here with you,” he said, toeing off the boots that, in his opinion, would not work for up to below forty-degree weather. They barely survived the temperature outside. At least, he was smart enough to put on a thicker pair of thermal socks that morning.
Lucas used some forethought.
Where it counted.
“But do you want to?” Delaney asked. “That was the question I asked myself, and I think we both know the answer. You look like you want to be alone.”
Lucas tried not to take her comment to heart, but that was easier said than done. They hadn’t even been at the cabin for a day, and already, he gave her the impression that she wasn’t wanted. The furthest thing from the truth.
Lucas moved closer to the wood stove in the middle of the floor, keeping his back to Delaney as he mulled over his thoughts and warmed his hands over the iron top where a kettle sat full of simmering water. “Would you eat in there with me?”
“Of course.”
The stool scraped against the floor the instant those words left Delaney’s lips. She passed him by at the stove with her plate of food balanced in her hand on top of the magazine. He snagged her wrist in his grasp a second before it was too late.
“I asked you to come here with me because I didn’t want to be alone, actually,” he told her.
Delaney nodded. “I didn’t think I upset you earlier, but—”
“You didn’t.”
“Okay, good to know.”
“I’m sorry if you felt that way,” Lucas said, wanting to explain his sometimes loner-like nature. It wasn’t always a choice when it felt like a requirement for his mental health, more often than not. “It may come as a surprise to you, as we haven’t known each other long, and you don’t have an inside look at my personal life, but I live a very solitary one. I have a handful of people I consider friends, but whom I don’t spend a great deal of time with because my days are entirely wrapped up in work. I care about people deeply, more than I should, I’m told—but it’s hard to see that in between putting on the suit and tie for work and the scant handful of hours I have at night before I close my eyes. I can only give so much; that doesn’t change the fact that I also need to take time just for me.”
He released her wrist as Delaney asked, “You can’t be all alone, all the time, right? Don’t you have some family … your brother, maybe?”
Her gaze darted to the wall closest to them, and the many photographs in a collection of different picture frames he, Jacob, and even their grandfather, at times, had picked up at yard sales in the area over the many summers. It seemed she must have caught onto the likeness between the siblings in the photos and made a safe assumption about the relation between Lucas and Jacob.
The dull ache in his heart didn’t let up.
It even hurt to think of his brother’s name.
How long would that last?
“You didn’t mention your parents, either,” she noted softly.
No, he hadn’t.
Not now.
Not on their first date.
Never—that would be Lucas’ ultimate preference. He never wanted to talk about Ronald and Penelope Dalton if he could help it. The nuances and complexities of his strained—fractured, really—bonds with the people who created him made them feel unimportant to what he was doing here. At least, where Delaney was concerned.
She didn’t need to be affected by the toxicity of people who would likely care nothing for her existence, other than how it related to him.
“We’re not close,” he settled on saying.