“Huh?” His eyebrows drew together.
“You said one of the reasons you came here was to apologize.” Why couldn’t she breathe when the AC was blasting cold air into the car? “What’s the other reason?”
“Oh.” His face cleared. “It’s to tell you I’ve fallen in love with you.” She gasped as her heart instantly filled with happiness. Then, he kept talking, and that happiness began to fade. “I didn’t want to. I fought against it. But, in the end, I couldn’t help myself.”
His words weren’t necessarily an insult. But they sure as shit weren’t the declaration of adoration and undying love she’d dreamed of.
“That’s a backward compliment if ever I heard one,” she said flatly. Her frown deepened when he threw back his head and chuckled.
When he finally sobered, he nodded. “Lord, I love your candor. And in the spirit of being brutally honest, I’ll tell you the reason I fought so hard against my feelings for you is that I was scared of them. Scared of letting myself fall in love with you, because if I did, I knew that love might grow so big that it’d swallow me up and I’d lose myself in it.”
This speech was certainly better than the one before it. But there was still something…off. How long could his love possibly last if it wasn’t freely given? If he didn’twantto feel it?
He saw the misgivings in her expression and sighed. “People say the past is the past. As if it’s gone because it’s over. But it’s never gone. We carry it with us. It’s imprinted in every cell of our bodies. It echoes in the beat of our hearts. I love you, Cami. I love every inch of you. But I’m still in love with Lily too. And I’ll never be finished with her.”
How was it possible to feel completely elated and completely confused all at the same time? “Who says you have to be finished with her?” she asked.
The hum of the air conditioner was the only sound inside the car for a long moment. And Doc? He just sat there blinking at her.
Then a look of wonder came over his face. “My mother was right about you,” he whispered, almost reverently.
She didn’t want to, but she let him change the subject. “You told your mother about me?”
He nodded. “I owed her an apology too. Because how could I hold her love for Randall against her, how could I blame her for not cleaving fast to my father’s memory, if I was guilty of doing the exact same thing with you?”
Usually Cami was quicker on the uptake, but she was having a tough time following his line of logic. “But I thought you just said youarecleaving fast to Lily’s memory.”
“And that’s the other thing I want to talk to you about.”
She considered shaking her head like a dog shaking off water. Maybe that would jar her brain around enough for his words to make sense. Instead, she simply admitted, “I’m so confused.”
He turned to her fully then. When he took her hand between both of his, she felt the flutter of longing in her chest at the same time his somber expression had dread falling over her like a dark blanket. “You remember that shoebox I ran to get during the storm?”
Sweet heavens, she was suffering conversational whiplash. “Y-yes,” she said haltingly.
“I keep one of Lily’s silk scarves in there. And sometimes I like to take it out and hold it to my nose, because it still smells like her. At sunset, I talk to her. She was always partial to sunsets. Said they beat sunrises by a country mile.” A melancholy look came over his face even as he smiled in memory. “But I think that’s because she wasn’t much of a morning person. I was scared to talk to her until she’d had her first cup of coffee. That woman had a mean streak that only caffeine could cure.”
When he saw the line that’d formed between Cami’s eyebrows, he was quick to push ahead. “Anyway, sometimes at sunset I like to go out to the end of the pier and fill her in on what’s been happening with me. I buy lilies on her birthday. I keep the locket she wore when we were teenagers in my sock drawer. And I always stop and wish on the first evening star, because it was a tradition she started when we were young.”
His grip tightened on Cami’s hand and his eyes turned troubled. “I don’t want to stop doing those things, Cami. Because if I do, I’ll lose her. And I don’twantto lose her. She was my best friend from the time I was thirteen. And yet…” He trailed off and shook his head. “I want you too. I want your wide smiles and your brilliant mind and your sarcastic tongue that always keeps me on my toes. I want your big laugh and your honest takes on life and your ability to cut through the bullshit. I wantallof you. But how can I ask that when you won’t have all of me? When there will always be a piece of my heart that belongs to her?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.That’swhat all this has been about?she thought with no small amount of frustration.
“Let me see if I have this right,” she said slowly. “You’ve put me through all this hell and heartbreak because you were afraid I would…what? Be jealous of your dead wife? Not want to share you with her?”
He lifted one shoulder and nodded at the same time.
She sighed heavily. “You’re a damn fool, Dalton Simmons. I don’t know whether I want to kiss you or kill you.”
“If your dead set on the latter, mind doing the former first?” He looked so earnest. But there was definitely a wicked sparkle in his eyes. “At the very least you’d make a dying man happy.”
She sent him a quelling glance. “Now is not the time for jokes.”
He sobered immediately. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You say you want all of me. But you don’t know how you can ask me to give all of myself to you when there will always be a part of you that belongs to Lily, right?” He nodded and had the grace to look adorably miserable. “You can ask because life isn’t all or nothing, Dalton. You can ask becauseloveisn’t all or nothing. Loving me doesn’t mean you can’t still love her.” She frowned. “Quite frankly, I’d find youandyour love a little suspicious if youcould. Because what would that say about the depth and breadth of your love?”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Cami?” His voice had gone so hoarse she was reminded of truck tires over a bad gravel road.
