My hands shake, and I attempt to steady them with a firm grip on the steering wheel.
“You’re judging me, Delilah.”
“Damn right, I’m judging you. This isn’t like you. Like, who are you right now?” She shakes her head before giving me a sideways glance. “You’re hiding something. This is about Royal, isn’t it?”
My body tremors from head to toe, and my vision blurs. The closer we get to the hospital, the sicker I feel. But it’s an emotional kind of sickness. The kind you can’t fix with modern medicine.
I check my mirrors and veer off to the side of the road, pulling into a row of empty parallel parking spots in front of the Rixton County Courthouse.
“Jesus, Demi, what the hell?” Delilah angles her body toward me and scoots to the edge of the seat. “Are you okay? Tell me what’s going on. Now.”
My body expands with each breath, and still it acts like it can’t get enough air. I roll my window down and inhale the cool air like my life depends on it.
“I knew it,” Delilah says. “This is about Royal. He’s the only one who can make you act like a damn lunatic.”
When I’m finally able to speak, I meet her glaring stare and clear my throat. “This is about so much more than you know.”
“All right. Fine. Enlighten me.”
“The night of the accident, Brooks left me. He ended the engagement.”
Delilah’s judgmental expression fades and her eyes soften. “What? Seriously?”
“His bags were packed when I came home from work. He said he wanted out. And I didn’t try to stop him.”
She takes my trembling hand and sandwiches it between hers.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Her head tilts, her voice just a smidgeon whiny.
“I didn’t think anyone would believe me. I mean, look at the timing.” My throat constricts. “And you love Brooks so much. You’re so excited about the wedding.”
“I believe you, Demi.”
“You . . . you do?”
Delilah nods. “I know you’d never make something up like this.”
“Yeah, but you’re my sister. You know me. All those people who don’t know me—you think they’d believe me?”
She shakes her head. “Probably not. Timing does seem suspect.”
“See?” I almost start to feel vindicated, like I’m not crazy for carrying on this little façade this past week. “But that’s not all.”
“Okay.” Delilah squares her shoulders.
“When he left, he was going to her.”
“Her?”
“He was seeing someone on the side.” It seems so polite to say it that way. Seeing someone on the side. Sounds a hell of a lot nicer than saying he was fucking another woman with his dick while also fucking me with his dick and I had no idea.
Delilah heaves, her hand flying to her lips. “How do you know?”
“Royal told me.”
Her sympathy fades in an instant. “Seriously? Royal told you all this? Okay. I see what’s happening here.”
My brows furrow. “I’m not following.”
“Royal’s manipulating you. He wants you back, and what better way to get you to think Brooks was a cheater?”
I laugh. “No, it’s not like that at all.”
“He’s totally manipulating you, and you don’t even see it. He won’t tell you what happened until you spend more time with him, right? And he wants to make sure you won’t ever go back to Brooks, right? Don’t you see? It’s clear as day, Demi.”
I refuse to believe. And she doesn’t know him like I do.
“Have you been spending more time with him lately?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“So he’s getting what he wants from you. And what are you getting out of all of this?” Delilah’s hands flail when she speaks. She’s always had a penchant for speaking with her hands when she really wants to get a point across. “You’re right back in his web, Demi. He set a trap, and you walked right in.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Do you have proof of this alleged affair?”
I glance to my left, thinking. Racking. Remembering.
“No,” I say a moment later. “No proof.”
“So you’re making life decisions based on Royal’s allegations?”
“What do you mean, life decisions? Brooks ended the engagement. That was his decision, not mine. Don’t you think there had to have been someone else, Delilah? Brooks was crazy about me. Everything was fine in the days leading up to that night. Nothing was out of the ordinary. And then he left.”
She tugs on her bottom lip, staring at the numbers on the radio.
“Yeah, obviously he had a reason for calling it off. But you can’t take Royal’s word for it. You have to find out from Brooks.”
“Royal said he saw Brooks with another woman in Glidden,” I say. “And he said he went up to him, told him he was a friend of mine, and threatened to tell me unless Brooks made a choice. And Brooks obviously chose her, so . . .”
“Okay, assuming Royal’s not full of shit and that really did happen,” she says. “Who is this mystery woman? Did he describe her to you?”
“I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know at the time.” My chest deflates, and I sink against the back of the driver’s seat. “All I know is that she lives in Glidden.”
Delilah rolls her eyes. “Girls from Glidden were always bitches.”
“I know this sounds completely insane, Delilah, but I just have this gut feeling that it’s Afton.”
Her eyes narrow and then grow round. “Afton? Like the reporter from the Herald?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you think that?”
I rake my fingers through my hair and catch the grease and metal scent of Royal, quickly remembering how my hands were all over him just a mere hour ago.
I don’t know why I went there or why I did what I did. The last place I need to be is on my knees before the only man who broke me. Seeing Brooks this morning made me so numb that I just wanted to feel something.
“I don’t know.” I sigh. “I guess it’s silly. And random. I have no proof it’s Afton.”
“That asshole.” Delilah smacks the dash, lips pursed. “If he really cheated on you, so help me . . .”
“What are you going to do about it, huh?” I half-chuckle. My car grows silent, each of us lost in our own thoughts or maybe wrapping our heads around how screwed up this situation is. “We should probably head to the hospital.”
Delilah buckles up. “Yeah. Guess so.”
Twenty-Six
Demi
* * *
“There’s our girl.” Brenda Abbott’s face lights when I step into Brooks’s new room. They moved him today, while I was gone. He’s down the hall from the ICU now, into a larger room better equipped for his recovery. The windows are bigger, and several bouquets of flowers and balloons line the ledge.
Brenda rises and takes my hand, and Delilah and I exchange looks. My sister gives me a reassuring half-smile, a silent promise that the later’s going to be okay if I can just get through the now.