Stay with Me by Awesomekristii (jenna bush book club .TXT) 📖

DELILAH

“Lilah…” I heard a familiar voice. The one, I know the depth and the timbre of. The loud cadent sound of the waves, almost made it difficult to hear, but maybe I had my ears sharp for that, or I was way too familiar to miss it.

I felt him, sitting beside me, on the cold sand. He didn’t say anything, and I dared not to open my mouth. The feeling from before was still there. And I didn’t want to disrupt the peaceful silence we were in. Under the moonlight, above the sand, and in front of the oceanic waves.

However, the tension still hung in there and the elephant in the silence was still left to mention. I felt a slight touch on my pinkie, when I found his hand lying close to mine, his pinky finger trying to grab mine, before succeeding and intertwining them. A smile threatened to escape my lips.

Was he no longer upset with me?

“I…” I began but was cut off by him.

“Shh… can we stay like this, for a while? It’s peaceful.” I just nodded at him, staring back at the ocean. Under the nightly darkness, and the moonlight, the water shimmered, as if billion of diamonds were thrown all over it.

The cool spring wind blowing over my face, felt extra soft tonight. I sighed, wanting nothing but to wrap my arms around him and weep, saying all the sorry-s that were needed.

“How long were you here?” I gulped, looking down at the little doodle I made on the sand.

“I didn’t look in the watch. Maybe more than two hours.” He didn’t say for a while, before asking again. “And where were you before that?”

“The Spring market, I've never been to one so I thought I would just…” He nodded and didn’t say anything. My throat dried as I imagined all the possibilities laying across.

“I'm sorry.” My head whipped at him, looking all confused. Why was he apologizing? Wasn’t it me who read his sister’s diary without even asking? 

“Huh?” He turned to face me and I saw the mess he was looking at. No doubt a hot one.

Delilah stop!

His hair was disheveled as if he had run his hand through them way too much, he wasn’t wearing the overcoat, the shirt button was undone at the top. And tiredness and exhaustion were resting in his beautiful eyes. What happened?

I couldn’t look at him, having a different pain and sadness residing in there, which made my heart clench. I faced him, my knees almost bumping with him. “What happened?” My palms moved on their own to cup his face, feeling the same craving inside my chest.

“Where have you been all day? I searched for you for so long. Even Steven was there helping me. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been that rude to you. I was being such an asshole. You didn’t deserve that when I was fucked up myself. I couldn’t forget the regret I was feeling, the moment I reached home and found you gone. You weren’t there like on any usual day, dancing in the kitchen, cooking or singing, or sometimes laying on the couch watching television. I was-“

My palms moved over his mouth, shushing his ramble. He looked cute doing that. I moved closer to him, wrapping my arms around his neck, pulling him closer while he buried his face in the crook of my neck. “You don’t have to apologize, En. When it was me who crossed the boundary and read something way too precious to you.” I felt him shaking his head.

“No, you didn’t. I was just being an idiot.” His nose ran up and down on the side of my neck, making me shudder. “For a second I thought, I lost you, Lilah.” His arms around me tightened and I couldn’t stop my fingers from digging in his hair, running through them. He sighed, his voice coming out tired and regretting.

“I wasn’t doing right, keeping you in dark with my past. It’s something, I was and am always afraid to speak of, Lilah. I fear maybe you may leave me, hearing all of it.”

“No, I will not. I can’t go away from you, a part of me has always been yours and I can’t leave with just the half of me.” We sat there in that, him occasionally dropping a few kisses before nuzzling in there.

“I was the cook's son in the Twilight orphanage.” My hand in his hair stiffened, as I heard him say the familiar name.

“Declan…” I breathed, not knowing how to wrap up the new information.

He pulled his face out and stared at me. Apprehension resting on his physical features, “Yes, that’s my middle name now, after I had been adopted when I was seventeen, two years after you.” I couldn’t even express my surprise as I heard him.

“Staying in that basement for five years, I had lost a fraction of my memories of my childhood in the orphanage, even though I had my little gut feeling that you looked way too familiar to someone I had known… the same dark eyes..” Damien nodded, his head hung low as he took my hand in his. His tattooed fingers contrasted with mine, yet looked way whole.

“Maybe they gave some drugs or something to you.” I shrugged not knowing while a dark look crossed his face.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. They’re dead and even my father too, by the third year of me living there. I heard one of the men saying, it surprisingly didn’t bother me.” He grabbed my shoulders squeezing me.

“Now,” I grabbed the hands resting on my shoulders, “enough about me. Tell me after that.”

He gulped, and I know he was struggling to open up, “Christian Black, he once visited the orphanage I didn’t know then that it was one of the contributors there. My birth mother didn’t want me to stay with her anymore. I was born out of a drunken night when she was still in college and struggling. He took me in under his wing, his wife, Josephine, was someone I have always looked up to as a mother. The ideal image one ever wanted.”