We both fall silent. There were so many nights I met Declan out here as he dealt with his loss. So many times he wanted the solace of being close to the woman who loved him with her whole heart. She was why he fought for his brothers. The promises he made her as she died were what fueled him to take blow after blow from his father.
As much as the abandonment I felt from my own father hurt, I couldn’t imagine what he endured.
To face his father and know it would end in bruises and cruelness no one deserved broke my heart as a kid as much as it breaks my heart as an adult.
I would do anything to go back in time and do something to save him. I kept his secrets after he begged me to. He was so sure they’d take him and his brothers away, separate them, and that would’ve been more than he could bear. I never knew if I did the right thing, but then, the idea of losing him was enough to make me want to stay quiet, and for what?
It broke him, and it destroyed us.
I failed him, and I lost us.
Declan lifts his head to the sky and then finally speaks. “He loved her.”
“He did.”
His father, for all his faults, never let Elizabeth Arrowood’s final resting place crumble. Each time I came, thinking it might be overgrown, it wasn’t. The headstone is black with her name etched in white as though time stood still here. No matter how many years passed, this little patch of Arrowood land has been maintained. The grass was always cut, and the flowers were rotated based on the season.
In the eight years of their absence, this was the only place he took care of.
“Did you come out often to check?”
“Yes. I knew that even with you gone, you’d want her cared for.”
I close my eyes, remembering how he would drag the push mower from my home to this spot. It’s equal distance from both our farms, but he kept it at my barn so his father could never take it from him as a punishment.
We’d walk out here, and it would take him hours to ensure that everything was just right.
“She loved him too,” Declan says after a moment.
She loved everyone. There wasn’t a soul that Elizabeth met that she didn’t find the goodness in. Her heart was ten times too big for her body and was the epitome of what people should strive to be like.
However, nothing came close to the love she had for her boys. No matter what, they came first. She fought through whatever she needed to in order to keep them safe, and everyone admired her for it.
When she fell sick, it was as though the angels wept.
“She would’ve wanted you to be free, Declan.”
“How?”
There’s so much beneath that one word. Years of hatred, self-doubt, and sadness for the things he’s endured. If I didn’t know his pain as well as I know my own, it would be so easy to hate him for breaking my heart.
I’ve tried over the years to blame him wholly for walking away from me. There was so much effort put into wishing to see only my own struggles, but I always saw that Declan was struggling too. He had to be. Regardless of what we said that day, I knew him, and in my soul, I knew that whatever he was doing, he believed was right.
Not that it eased my broken heart, but it made it so that I could stifle the pain.
Without pause, I reach for his hand.
He laces our fingers together, palms kissing as though it were always meant to be this way. Two souls whose fathers destroyed them, search for comfort in one another. Here, between us, I find the peace I’ve been without for years.
I could tell him what he wants to hear, but I won’t. Not because I don’t want to console him, I do, but because I know there is no consolation because the pain is there.
“He’s gone, Declan. He’s gone, and you’re not. There’s no answer to your question because the only man who could tell you—can’t. And ...” I pause, trying to think of the right way to say it. “And there’s nothing he could say that would ever make it okay. What he did to you, Sean, Jacob, and Connor was horrific and wrong and unforgivable. But she wouldn’t want you to live like this.”
He finally meets my gaze, and even though I can’t see his eyes through the darkness, I feel him in my core.
This is why I should’ve stayed away. This deep feeling of being exposed and open to him is what scares me.
Declan squeezes my hand and then leans his head down. Our foreheads touch, and I can do nothing but breathe.
“Why, Syd? Why after all this time?”
My hands lift, resting on his chest, needing the feel of his heartbeat to anchor me to this earth. His question leaves me feeling as though I’m floating.
Only, I don’t know what he’s asking.
“Why what?”
“Why do you make me feel this way? Why does being near you ...” His hands grip my hips, pulling me closer to him. “Why does it make me feel so lost and so found at the same time?”
Maybe it’s the darkness and the dance we shared.
Maybe it’s my insane pregnancy hormones.
Maybe it’s because I want him more than anything but am too selfish to give him the easy road.
All I want is him. Us. This closeness and understanding.
“Because we’re still searching for what we lost.” Declan sucks in a breath. “I’ve been lonely and lost for a long time. I’ve waited and hoped for you to come back because I’ve needed you. Now that you have, I feel it even more. You
