Page 64 of Severed Heart (The Ravenhood Legacy #2)

Chapter Thirty-Six

T YLER

B LINK .

The screen door slaps behind me, delivering another brutal nostalgia hit as my eyes easily find and fix on the woman who’s been haunting me for nearly a decade.

I blink and blink again at the surrealness of this moment in addition to the soul-searing moments before it—at the reality that it wasn’t Delphine or me that initiated our collision today.

No, the utterly paralyzing face-to-face that took place hours ago was due to the act of a clueless girl with a selfless heart. A girl who, in mere minutes, ripped my mental barrier away, unknowingly forcing me to confront what I’ve been battling for eight long years.

What seems like just a short collection of minutes ago, I was contentedly rolling a shopping cart, with Cecelia teetering on the end as we debated our favorite Kevin Smith movies. The two of us perusing the cleaning aisles as Cecelia dodged my increasingly inquisitive stares.

“Clerks.” I offer my choice as Cecelia lifts and weighs a big and small bottle of Windex in her hands.

Making the decision for her, I grab the big bottle, tossing it amongst the growing mix of cleaners she’s already collected in preparation for an errand.

One she specifically summoned me for but has yet to clue me in on.

“Of course, you’d choose Clerks,” she snarks as I roll us a few feet, halting me with a jerk of her chin. A movement very Dominic King in nature, and I can’t help but grin at the arrival of it.

“So, what’s yours? Mallrats?”

“No way, Chasing Amy,” she delivers as if it should be obvious while scanning the wall of products.

“That’s because you’re a die-hard romantic,” I quip with an eye roll.

“Proud of it, and toss in a young Ben Affleck to boot,” she fans her face as she coos, “yes, please.”

I quirk a brow, keeping my voice low and free of any condemnation, knowing the topic is still settling within her. “You are aware you have two boyfriends, right, Cee?”

She waggles her brows. “Ain’t it cool?”

“Pulp Fiction,” I retort confidently, continuing our ongoing quote game for all movies nineties, a game we’re evenly matched in with Adam Sandler lines.

“Two points to the Marine.” She winks. As she tosses in more supplies, I study the former bookworm and good girl who has been in a rapid state of metamorphosis since she invaded Triple Falls along with my brothers’ hearts.

In discovering the nature of her heart, I’ve recognized why they would risk so much.

In living in the townhouse Dom, Sean, and I share, I’ve been forced to witness the three of them falling, in every stage, since day one.

At first, I was raging against their coupling in fear for all three of them, despite my stance on the personal, but for the sake of the club.

At this point, there’s no fighting about her presence in any of our lives any longer or denying that Cecelia’s heart is remarkable in a way that few are.

Because of that, every bird in our close-knit circle is now smitten with her.

Over the course of the summer, Cecelia and I have created a sincere friendship, and I’ve already made the decision to shield her in the future.

Whether she chooses the ink or not, I’m grandfathering her under my wing like I have Jane and Charlie.

Because, like them, Cecelia is the best of people, admirably having made the most of the shit hand life has dealt her while blindly trusting with her heart.

Which is why protecting her both for and from my brothers is becoming a high priority. Tobias’s imminent homecoming guarantees she’ll need it. It’s the tectonic plates shifting beneath her blind footing—dangerous ground she’s not aware of, that has me keeping close watch.

As I study the girl who’s completely altered our world for better and worse by simply trying to survive her life and the circumstances created by the people in it—something I identify with—she senses my weighted stare. Grinning adorably over at me, she tilts her head with a “What?”

“What?” I parrot, glancing down at the cart loaded with cleaners and TV dinners. “Either you’re prepping for the end of times in the most spotless underground cave, or . . .?”

“Or?” she prompts.

“Cee ... it’s time to fess up,” I coax gently, “what are we doing today?”

“Before you say no”—she holds up a palm in an ask to hear her out—“just know that I chose you specifically for this because I know you’ll get my reasoning.” She lowers her beautiful navy blues. “At least, I hope so.”

“All right.” I stop the cart, crossing my arms and giving her a pointed stare. “Out with it.”

“I want to clean Delphine’s house,” she blurts as my heart stutters to a full fucking stop.

“Come again?” I blink, my whole being lighting with awareness.

“She’s so, so sick, Tyler.” Cecelia’s eyes water with concern. “And so thin. So thin. She looks like death, and it’s fucking terrifying. She can barely walk from one room to the other. I don’t know if she’s going to live much longer or if I’m just seeing things grimly, but she’s all alone—”

Cecelia’s voice faded after her delivery as I blinked into autopilot while my heart went fucking hummingbird with fear.

Everything slowed as I swiped my card at the checkout, mustering words for a mock argument with Cecelia about paying and, after, somehow summoning return conversation on the drive to Delphine’s house.

Coming apart at the seams as I loaded the bags and followed her up to the porch steps to the door, a door Cecelia forced me to see still existed.

A blink later, coming face to face with a woman I’d spent endless days and nights believing was utterly out of my reach.

Until, with the swing of her front door, Delphine was merely an arm’s length away as our eyes collided and held.

Shock was evident in our expressions until devastation took its place within me at the state of her.

Every agonizing second after was a surreal blur, up to the one where I knelt in front of Delphine’s chair and truly took her in.

Our mouths moving in a heavily camouflaged exchange with Cecelia close by, tuning into the tension our collision was creating as our eyes carried a different conversation altogether.

Both of us greedily drinking the sight of one another in as I searched for any sign of my fighter and glimpsed only a pathetic trace .

A majority of Delphine’s words were predictable, as if she, too, had partially flipped to autopilot.

Only her return gaze told a different story, one that she didn’t verbalize.

Her soft whispered “thank you” to us back at her door, ringing sincere but defeated before she unexpectedly snatched me into a hug.

An embrace Delphine held for long seconds that felt every bit like a goodbye—as if she was stealing the time for us before she forced herself to let me go.

Those seconds in her embrace ignited a hellfire in my chest before I was released, and the door was again snapped closed, with Delphine behind it.

That snap ending any real chance at an honest exchange or confrontation.

Reeling and disbelieving once we were back in my truck, I confessed the true nature of our relationship to Cecelia, though I heavily camouflaged some of the surrounding details. I was left reeling when Cecelia left me with a hug back in the shopping center parking lot... until anger kicked in.

Anger, which had me driving straight back to Delphine’s fucking door in search of an answer to one question.

I break the speed limit before exiting my truck and pounding back up the steps.

Ripping open a door I can now so clearly fucking see.

A door I stand just a step inside of now as my pulse kicks heavy with fury.

Fury which roars inside the man hosting the kid who fled this house.

A man who takes the fucking wheel now, who is hell-bent on seeing this through and getting his answer.

“My first crush?” I scoff as seconds continually tick by while Delphine doesn’t so much as look at me, eyes lowered as she sips her glass of vodka. “Is that what we’re calling it, Delphine?”

Cecelia might have unknowingly destroyed my mental barrier today with her insistence on coming here, her abundant heart ignorant of what it was asking of mine.

But those cumulative years full of repressed heartache are being replaced with resentment as I glance around the tomb encasing Delphine, as the question burns a hole through my brain. The question of why?

If her decision didn’t include a life with me , fine. But this is what she chose instead—eight years stuck back in her starting position? Regressing a thousand steps back from the state in which I left her?

Why?

She doesn’t so much as look up as she lifts and pours more vodka into her glass, her French translation bible sitting open in her lap.

Probably due to Cecelia’s impromptu study with her, in which I dismissed myself to clean the other two rooms. In truth, I’d locked myself in Tobias’s room before sitting on the edge of his bed, utterly wrecked and trying to get my shit together from the look of her. The fucking loss of her.

All that trepidation is obliterated now as I glare over at her where she sits in her recliner, mind-numbing TV the only background noise to the war brewing inside me as I sweep her thoroughly and unabashedly.

As Cecelia described, she’s terrifyingly thin and so sickly—it’s gutting. A description that neither of my brothers included in their short updates. Maybe because they assumed I would or should know.

Of course, I expected her to be sick, to look sick , but this ? The state of her indicates she’s committing nothing short of slow, purposeful suicide.