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)
“Oh,” she whispered. “Sorry. I’m not really close to my parents, either. Although, to be fair, I desperately wanted to be. I wanted them to love me and tried to do what I could to make that happen, but it never worked out for us in the end. My mother and father’s love came with conditions I couldn’t meet, and so, they made it clear in a lot of hurtful ways that they would have nothing to do with me.”
Lucas chuckled from the irony of the fact that she, too, had a difficult relationship with her parents while he nervously scratched a spot over his eyebrow. “An interesting pair we make, eh?”
“As long as it’s not a sad pair,” Delaney joked with a grin.
Ah, shit.
Well …
“Give it a minute,” he muttered.
That melted her happiness away in an instant. “I’m sorry?”
Not yet, Lucas.
Shouldn’t they eat, at least?
“Let’s sit down and get some grub before it goes cold, huh?” he asked, gesturing toward the sitting area.
The press of his hand against the small of Delaney’s back kept her from asking questions as he guided them into the small room that also connected to the cabin’s tiny bathroom off to the side. The cabinets meant for storing bedding, and the stackable washer and dryer, took up most of the space in the bathroom while a toilet facing a pedestal sink and a standing shower in the corner made up the main facilities. In order to use the washer and dryer, however, one had to redirect the power supply from the appliances in the kitchen to the bathroom through the wiring in the cellar panel by flicking a switch.
There wasn’t a lot to see.
The place wasn’t fancy.
It did the job, though, and for the moment, the cabin out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere served the purpose Lucas needed. To be away from the city where he couldn’t take the time to privately process and accept what had happened to Jacob because there, his life was so intrinsically woven into work and his dysfunctional family.
Here, he didn’t have that.
Just memories of his brother.
The peace of nature.
And a woman with a kind smile, Lucas thought to himself as he took a seat on one of two recliners.
Delaney sat across from him on the couch and pointed at the plate next to his on the coffee table with two chocolate frosted cupcakes. “I hope you plan on sharing dessert with me, by the way.”
“Shelly did send two,” he noted of Mack Smith’s wife.
His joke, and tone, fell flat.
Delaney didn’t miss it. “Whatever it is, I hear it in your voice.”
“I know,” he murmured. “I do, too.”
Worse yet, he had to feel it.
All that grief, it compounded, grew like weeds full of thorns in his chest from his heart, and now seemed as if it would swallow him whole.
A never-ending, inescapable prison.
He did his best to stuff the sorrow down, reaching for the plate and utensils Delaney had placed on a napkin for him to use. “Let’s eat, yeah? I’m starved.”
He welcomed her responding silence, and the comfortable quiet that followed as the two dug into the reheated food the neighbor had been kind enough to send. It wasn’t lost on him that, other than his secretary who also handled his assistant duties, had been the only person in his life that knew the truth of what happened Monday morning.
He didn’t tell his pilot.
Or the neighbors who probably suspected Jacob had come along with Lucas for the trip as he usually did.
Not even his family doctor when he requested an official written order for time off work to handle an emergency family matter. Even if that note hadn’t been technically needed, sending it into the brewery would make it clear to at least one person that Lucas was unavailable and unreachable for an undetermined amount of time.
Ronald, that was.
No excuses.
Unfortunately, soon, everyone would know. Once the newspaper ran Jacob’s obituary, whether Lucas wrote it himself or not, on Friday—everyone across the province would see the news.
Jacob Dalton, youngest son of the Dalton brewery dynasty, was dead at twenty-five.
Lucas could already see the headline; his father’s complaints about family matters and privacy, and other shit that didn’t matter, were distant echoes in the back of his head. Hell, he didn’t even know if someone let Penelope know her youngest child was dead or not. Someone eventually would.
Frankly, at this point, Lucas didn’t care.
His parents hadn’t come to the hospital when calls were made. He was the one who remained steadfast at Jacob’s bedside, angry and confused as he poured through weeks and then months of his brother’s public social media profiles in an effort to explain the clear signs he must have missed.
People didn’t just fall right back into addiction.
Lucas had tried to prove that to himself by staring for hours into the glowing screen of his phone while he combed Jacob’s timelines of posted photos made up of animals he handled at the rescue, gym shots, and candid ones with friends at college.