He pauses there and swallows hard. “She raised me after the death of my parents. But when I was in high school, she started having problems. At first it was silly things, forgetting appointments and wandering around the house with two different slippers on. By the time I realized something was really wrong, her dementia was pretty advanced.”
My heart twists for her.
He gives me a soft smile. “She would often put on her housecoat and try to go to work. She used to run a huge nursery with dozens of employees. She never lost her appreciation for working with flowers. I built her a greenhouse in the backyard. It let her go to work again, and that’s where she spent her last years, happy and free in the greenhouse I’d built.”
“So you became her caretaker as a teenager?” I ask.
“Yes,” he answers. “She took care of me as a kid, and I got the opportunity to take care of her as she aged. Her particular form of dementia was brutal but quick.”
He looks away for a moment, blinking rapidly before turning his gaze back to me. “In a weird way, it felt like a sort of mercy. The fact that it was so fast. She declined within just a couple of years, and then she was gone right after I graduated high school. Like some part of her had been holding on for all those years, just long enough to see me make my way into the world.”
I reach out and take his strong warm hand in mine, wanting to give him comfort. “I can’t imagine how difficult that was.”
“I realized after that I was alone in the world. I didn’t want to be, so I joined the military. The idea of having a brotherhood, a family around me, it saved me and kept me going.”
“That must have taken so much strength,” I say.
He shrugs, looking embarrassed and quickly changes the subject. “What about you? What was your life like? What are your parents like?”
I frown. “Well, they kind of didn’t care much for me. My dad is a workaholic, and my mom had a kid just to make him happy. She told me that once.” My voice wobbles after the confession. It shouldn’t still hurt. The acknowledgement that she never really wanted me, that I was simply a box she checked to make sure she lived the perfect life.
It’s his turn to squeeze my hand now. “I’m sorry.”
“She had me shipped to boarding school as soon as she could,” I admit. “And that wasn’t the hard part. Week after week, month after month, I’d watch as other girls in my school were sent things, gifts, letters, treats. From my parents, there was only silence. I’d go home to visit them maybe once a year for Christmas so that we could have the perfect holiday family photo. I’d attend all the right parties before I was shipped off again, quietly ignored until the next time they needed their daughter as a prop.”
He swears under his breath. “That never should have happened. You deserved so much more.”
“It’s just hard, you know?” I say softly. “But the way they acted, it kind of led me here. The way they are so cold, so obsessed with money and appearances, it made me want to be around people who had figured out life, who knew the meaning of it all. When I started my work in the medical field, I realized that my favorite patients were the seniors, because they understand what’s important in life.”
“That’s how you came to work at the retirement community,” he says softly.
I nod. “I love the community. I love the patients, and I’m falling in love with the people of Courage County. It’s a special little town.”
“The perfect place to raise a family,” he agrees. I wonder if he’s talking about me or him, or just speaking in hypotheticals.
Either way, the sky chooses that moment to rumble again. Lightning flashes, and then ice is falling, pelting my skin.
“Is that hail?” I ask, watching bigger pieces bounce into the grass.
I grab the plates and try to shove them into the picnic basket, but Dalton pushes to his feet.
“Don’t worry about those. They don’t matter,” he says, and scoops me into his arms in a move that makes my heart flutter.
He manages to shelter me from the pelting ice, carrying me quickly to a small structure. When he steps inside, I realize it’s a workshop. An old workshop filled with gardening supplies.
“There’s no light in here,” he says. “All we have is the window. But it’s a shelter from the hail.”
“What about Max and Rex?” I ask watching even larger pieces come down. I remember seeing a video once of a runner getting caught out in hail. His back was a bloody mess by the time the storm was over. It’s easy to underestimate what little chunks of falling ice can do.
“They have the shelter on the far side of the lawn. They’re better at sensing the weather than humans are, and they’re both smarter than most of the jarheads I’ve served with.”
He sets me down on a long workbench and props up my leg, pulling off his faded flannel to use as a pillow beneath it.
I try to protest, to tell him he doesn’t have to do that, but the look on his face is entirely serious when he says, “I want to take care of you.” He cups my face and stares down at me. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?”
Here in the dimly lit shed with no one around, I’m suddenly aware that we’re alone, away from prying eyes. The shed feels even smaller with him pressing against me, our breaths mingling, his body bracketing mine.
I let out a soft whimper before I fuse my lips to his. The moment I taste him, my hands go to his shoulders for balance. Everything in me melts. I’ve found the safe place where I can relax. I found my shelter, my port in the storm.
