1. Novel

  2. Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

  3. Severed Heart: Chapter 36
Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

Severed Heart: Chapter 36

BLINK.
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.
Deep etched half-moons look like stains beneath her eyes. Her typically poised, perfect posture sagging—more evidence of defeat and the poisonous cells multiplying inside her, weighing her down. Or a side effect of the poison chasing those cells to rob them of their job. One she purposefully thwarts now, pouring even more fucking poison in her glass—her mission clear. But it was the defeat in her eyes when I knelt in front of her, so little left of her in her silver return stare, that had my heart remembering who broke it.
A fighter.
A fighter that’s imperceptible now. One I’m actively deciding to pick a fucking war with the longer I stare at her. She was embarrassed when she locked eyes with me initially at her door, but she’s flat-out refusing now. It’s because she knows exactly what I’m piecing together because she’s guilty. Rage replaces all anger as I do what I can to temper myself.
“Back so soon?” she finally drawls in pure condescension as she tops her glass to the brim, the sight nauseating, the amount indicative she’s well past numbing sips and measuring her pints.
“Why this sudden hostility, Delphine? Wasn’t that you who just hugged me goodbye?”
She lifts and drops a shoulder. “The last time you left, you were gone for a very long time.”
“If recollection serves, you fucking asked me to,” I spit in contempt that I don’t bother to mask.
“Ah, I see. Well, Soldier, over the years, I’ve come to believe we have a different opinion on the nature of your promise.”
“Is that so?” I shove my fists into my jeans. “Well, by all means, clue me in, General,” I bite out, cutting all bullshit, not missing the slight but visceral reaction to her spoken nickname—one which still glides easily off my tongue.
“You know very well what I’m speaking,” she states. “Why are you here, Tyler?”
“I’m afraid not only do I not know, Delphine, I have no fucking idea. So, I’m afraid cryptic replies won’t do. What do you mean we have a different opinion on the nature of my promise? And you might need to refresh my memory,” I lie, “because I’ve done a lot of living since that day . . . seems like I’m the only one.”
“So many words coming from you, but you haven’t answered my question,” she says above a whisper, knowing I can hear it.
“I’m here for her,” I state, cutting through the bullshit pretense we used for almost the entirety of the time Cecelia and I were here.
“For the woman I first laid true eyes on when I was sixteen after she helped me breathe through taking one of the hardest hits of my life. The woman I befriended when I was seventeen who challenged me, taught me about necessary evils, and how to soldier. The woman who, despite our age difference, somehow became my best friend at eighteen. Who I trusted with my darkest secrets. The woman who broke my fucking heart when I was a blink away from nineteen because she thought it was the right thing to do. I’m here for her, and I want to spend time with her before she dies—if she dies—and that’s still a very big if, according to your oncologist.”
“That woman . . . is no longer here,” Delphine delivers on exhale, lifting more poison to her lips. “And by the way you refuse to spare me from your disappointment and continue to condemn me with your eyes and tongue—you are very aware that’s the truth of it.”
“How would you know? You haven’t looked at me once since I walked through the fucking door,” I snap, taking a step in to engage the long-awaited battle awakening inside me. “And she’s fucking here,” I declare, taking another menacing step toward her chair, “and I want her back.”
“Hmm.” She makes a mockery out of my words with that trite jab, and it’s all I can do to keep from smashing the bottle she’s continually draining with my fist.
“You better enjoy that bottle,” I snap, “because it’s your fucking last.”
She takes a long sip, hesitating briefly before putting the glass down.
“This seems familiar, Soldier,” she relays cooly, “an appearance and another demand.”
“I know what I did. I did exactly what you expected me to do. What they’ve all done to you, but you knew just what to say and how to get me to leave you, though I realized that not long after I left.”
“But you didn’t return,” she states, her purposeful lack of eye contact infuriating.
“I’ve since made it a healthy habit of taking people for their word when I’m not wanted, preferring to be in the company of those who do.”
“I see . . . well, that was long ago, Tyler, so there is no point in arguing or bringing up the past,” she counters.
“That’s rich,” I snark, “since you live in a fucking shrine to your own past. From the looks of it, you haven’t bothered to—”
“Let’s not fight. Come. Sit, tell me how you are,” she prompts.
“I’m quite comfortable staring down at you, making you uncomfortable. Seems like no one has managed to successfully do that in years. But what I do know, Delphine, is that as of right now—and because of what you’ve fucking done to her, to the woman I came for—my tap shoes have fucking ceased to exist. So, I’m afraid I’m not up for tap dancing around the truth today.”
It’s then she finally lifts her gorgeous gray eyes to me to reveal why she’s been avoiding contact. Because they’re not only fully bloodshot but severely swollen. I take a few more steps closer to see her face is heavily splotched, indicating she hasn’t just been crying since we left—she’s been sobbing. My heart cracks instantly at the sight, and that I was dead on in interpreting what that hug meant. She has no plans of surviving or trying to. None. That hug was goodbye.
Hold steady, Jennings.
“Why did you come back?” she asks, her voice shaking, even as her eyes ice over in preparation. “To further humiliate me? To gloat? You have no audience this time.”
“You’ve made that all too easy, whether intentional or not. And I just fucking told you why.” I stand my ground unapologetically.
“Because you still care for me?” she scoffs. “Still love me?”
“Yes,” I reply simply as her lips part slightly in surprise as I take another step toward her chair. “I’ve just been doing it from a distance as ordered.”
“My order remains the same,” she states, turning her head away from me. “Leave me, Tyler. You are obviously thriving and . . . very happy. You only came here because you were forced. That girl,” Delphine sighs, “has a naïve heart, and as much as it annoyed me today, it’s her heart that brought you here, my lost soldier, not yours,” she condemns.
“Oh, is that the truth of it?” I shake my head in annoyance.
“You’ll be a fool to try and convince me otherwise. So”—she waves me away—“take your fucking pity and condemnation with you when you go. And whatever obligation you might feel you have”—she turns her head and pins me with her glare—“allow me to relieve you of it.”
“Love might be the only thing I have left for you, and it’s not romantic in nature.” Her eyes dull as if that’s not news as I continue to lie through my fucking teeth while blurting the rest of the truth. “Respect, gone. Admiration, gone. Everything that once attracted me to you, gone, and it has little to nothing to do with the way you fucking look but what you’ve done to the woman I knew. For that, you will fucking answer to me.”
“You have no right to me,” she utters in lifeless defense, “or to speak to me this way.”
“I have every right because you’re fucking killing yourself!”
“I’m taking treatment—”
“To pacify your nephews, but I see right through it. Do you really think you can fucking hide this from me?!”
“Tyler,” she sighs in annoyance, as if I’m a fly refusing to be batted away, “I am not worth this effort. Go find a woman—”
“Worthy?” Another step. “Yeah, you’re definitely not that, either. But my fucking heart remains here, as it always has, loyal to you, faithful to you, as much as I hate it, so here we fucking are. But again, I’m not here for that. My promise remains intact. Look at me.”
She lifts her eyes to mine as I keep the mask she’s forced me to sport for eight years firmly in place, knowing I’ll be forced to keep it there indefinitely in order to win this war. “Do you see any sign of a lovesick teenager?”
Her gaze instantly drops.
“Yeah, didn’t think so. So now that I’ve held up my end, I’m going to have to ask for my fucking general back.”
“That is a very tall order, Soldier. One I regret I cannot fulfill.”
She takes a large sip of her drink, and it’s all I can do to keep from snatching it from her.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Delphine, there’s no one left. They left you to live their lives while you’ve continually suffocated in this fucking prison you built.” The brief pain my statement causes in her eyes is dismissed a second after it appears.
“As did you,” she admonishes with surprising pride. “You left to live your life, and look at you, Tyler. Mon Dieu, look at you.” Her eyes roam me greedily, softening as they did briefly when I was here.
She’s in there, Jennings. She’s just buried.
“You have finally become what you’ve hoped to be, non?”
“And you didn’t. Why?” I utter, looking around. “Jesus, you’re wealthy, have been for years, why are you fucking living this way?”
“It would be money wasted.”
“I made sure—” Her eyes snap to mine, but I don’t bother to deny the accusation there. “We all made sure you didn’t have to fucking live this way. Why haven’t you moved? Jesus, do you still need a daily reminder to keep men at bay? Because we both know you’re more than capable of that feat without continuing to dwell in this shithole.”
I stalk over, snatch the bible from her lap, and snap it closed as she keeps her gaze lowered, her voice resigned. “You have continually insulted me from the second you walked into my door with no remorse. I had hoped to have a conversation, but I understand now that’s not possible. Please keep our friendship in your memory, and please be well, Soldier. I want nothing but happiness for you, always. I truly mean that.”
“I’m sure you do, General. Thanks for your blessing and send-off, but I’m an adult now and not so easily swayed or intimidated anymore. Where I come and go remains my fucking decision. And if I’m unapologetic, it’s because the shell you’re dwelling in is resigned to fucking kill my best friend. So, I think it’s pretty important I don’t tap dance around that. Why are you killing her?”
“I’m taking treatment,” she whispers.
“That’s not what I fucking asked you.” I take another step, my posture as demanding as my eyes. “Answer me, Delphine.”
She licks her lips, keeping her eyes lowered. “Why can we not just keep this civil? Tell me of your life—”
“You need someone to confess to?” I cut in, refuting her diversion and tapping the leather spine of her bible to my chest. “Confess to me. Keep your relationship with Him, but He’s going to let you die if that’s His will, right? But, you see, General, I’m going to be the man to witness it, so I deserve your fucking confessions as well.”
A small part of her exterior cracks at my words, and her lips begin to tremble. I make peace with the fact that might be the most of what I get from her—if anything.
“It’s a pointless choice to stay here. Your faith in me is—”
“Scarce at most because you’ve lost twenty years grieving the fictional life you wanted and are still mourning while your real life might be ending with the help of your own fucking hand.”
“It’s a little early for this.”
“It’s too goddamn late!” I roar.
She doesn’t so much as flinch. Her reaction the same as if I’d whispered it to her. She seems to have hardened herself to me. Just another man who swore he loved her and abandoned her. To others, she’s a junkyard dog everyone believes should be put down. But wounded animals—especially when cornered—are their most vicious because of hurts others can’t see. I’m so intimate with her wounds at this point—they’re my own, a part of me.
“Tell me where the guilt still is,” I demand, “and who is it for?”
She remains quiet, her gray eyes steadily boring into mine, all pretenses between us gone.
“You hate yourself, and that’s evident. Jesus Christ, Delphine. Why? For being a victim?”
“I am not a victim,” she states emphatically.
“The fuck you aren’t,” I counter. “That’s all you’ve ever been. First, by the men who wronged you and then by your own maliciousness. I’m not sure who won in that fucking battle, but Jesus, have you tried to outdo them since I left.”
“Just leave, Tyler,” she says in a whisper. “Spare yourself this pointless argument.”
“Don’t waste your breath by repeating that again. I’m not leaving. I was cut short of finishing our argument years ago, and that’s my biggest regret in the eight years since you ripped my heart out and sent me packing with it.”
I’ve explored psychology for over half my life for several reasons—to better understand the actions and decisions of those I’m close to, as well as my opponents. An education that has served me well and that I desperately need now as I try to decipher what’s happening inside her—why she’s made the decision to stop fighting. Looking at her from a psychological standpoint, there’s nothing I can do for her but enable her if I want to keep things civil. Fuck that.
“What did you do, Delphine, that you can’t live with?”
“I’m tired, Tyler.”
“Neither of us is moving an inch until you fucking answer me.”
“And who are you really?” she snaps icily. “Who are you to me now?” She shrugs. “A boy I spent a few years with when you were younger to teach, to train.” She shakes her head in exasperation. “What do you think you can mean to me, Tyler, after all this time away?”
“Then why the red-rimmed eyes, Delphine? Who the fuck were you crying for when we left? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of Cecelia’s gesture.”
“Get out.”
“Truth?” I shrug. “My reasons for being here are more selfish than anything at this point.”
It took me the anger-filled drive back here to face the fact that if I make this my sole mission and fail, it will haunt me until my fucking dying day. That if I fail, she dies in this state, and as I stare down at her, I decide I can’t live with that any more than I can live with the failure of trying. In loving her, I’m already haunted enough.
My head screams for me to run—that she chose her fate over and over again for close to two decades—it’s my masochistic fucking heart that still wants to be with her in any way I can. As of right now, she’s just as much of an obstacle for me in living my own life as she is for herself.
“More truth? This delusional man is the only person on earth who will grieve you long past your death. Who wants and cares about your confessions.” I hold her gaze. “The only man who’s ever truly loved you, despite the fucking mess you’ve made and continue to make of yourself.”
“I tried!” she booms in a sudden outburst, and I damn near jerk back at the sight of it. “I have tried! Many times!”
“When?” I cross my arms. “When have you fucking tried?”
“Many times, I—” She shakes her head. “I tried after Celine died, before Tobias left for France, before you. I tried when we were friends and only drank during the night. When I only drank pint. I tried many times in the years since you left, so that when—” She clamps her mouth closed.
“So that when what?”
Her eyes spill over as she shakes her head. “Oh, fuck you! Fuck you, Tyler! You know nothing. You’ve been absent for nearly a decade, and here you are, coming back with your condemnation. I don’t need your fucking judgment and—”
“No, no, you need another fucking drink!” I take the bottle and pour its contents until it floods the glass on the table, the liquid soaking the surface and trailing onto the carpet beneath. “You need to continue to live the very definition of insanity, right?”
She watches raptly as I continue to pour the vodka until it’s running in rivulets off the table.
“Take a good look at your life,” I grit out. “Isn’t it beautiful? Every single one of your memories, they all look the same.”
“Stop.” The word comes out faint as I empty most of the bottle, saving a few drinks for myself. Tapping her glass harshly, I motion toward her to lift her glass as I lift the bottle to my lips.
“Stop, why? You’ve never pussy footed around how you thought I was wasting my potential. Allow me to do the same, or better yet, lift that glass, Delphine. Let’s toast to your wasted fucking life.”
I toss the vodka back, the burn only fueling my anger. Fully expecting defiance, instead, she bows her head, her hands visibly shaking as she folds them in her lap. No fight. None. It’s utterly gone.
“What future do you see for me?” she utters softly. “Even if I battle the drink, I might not survive.”
“Years ago, you told me you didn’t know who you were, but we both know who you are beyond your past, what life you want. What future you’ve longed for. That future is so fucking easily attainable, Delphine, it’s laughable. You beat the alcohol, and you’re already halfway there. You want to be a soldier? I know of a club that could use your expertise.”
She stares at me, her gaze solid.
“You want to fish and hunt? Well, it’s in your backyard. You want to watch sunsets in every season? There’s a show every night. You want a place to do that at? I happen to know a place you fucking love.”
She whips her head up where I now tower over her. “So easy,” she scoffs.
“Absolutely not. At this point, you’re close to institutionalized in your thinking. The bottle is step one. Step two is sorting your past and finally putting it behind you. Step three will be you actually living your dream. I know exactly what life you want, and I’m offering it to you right now. You once told me that it’s the tests in life that make or break you. You can do this, Delphine,” I state. “You could have all along. My only condition is this, as long as you try, really try, and even if you fail, I won’t fucking leave you.”
“You can’t make that promise,” she whispers.
“I just did,” I declare with certainty.
“You have so much—”
“I know what I have. I’ll do what I need to do. If I can make this happen, then you can too. Show me, Delphine. Show me you want it, and I’ll move heaven and earth to be there for you, to help you succeed, and won’t ask for a damn thing in return.”
She bites her lip, eyeing the glass before lifting it, her eyes meeting mine in challenge.
“We both know it’s not the drink we’re up against,” I state emphatically. “It’s not the fucking drink.”
Doubling down, I pull out the last of my armor and decide to fight dirty. To forcibly try to create that shred of hope and pull out my arsenal. An arsenal I’ve been building in the years since I left her.
“You turned down life with me for what? For this?” I fist my hands at my sides. “Well, that’s fucking insulting, but again, I’m not here to win your heart. I’m here to fight for what life you have left. Long or short, I want you to have it because it’s clear you’re no longer fighting at all for yourself and haven’t since the night Alain tried to kill you.”
Report chapter Comments
Tip: You can use left, right, A and D keyboard keys to browse between chapters.