It was a second before it clicked in my head.
He just admitted that he loved me to them all.
“You do not love my daughter,” Mom haughtily demanded. “You are just some scumbag military man with a power complex. I mean, for god’s sakes, she’s eighteen years old! You’re, what, twenty-five? Twenty-six?”
William curtly replied on our behalf: “Sarah, don’t call my son a scumbag. He’s many things, but at the end of the day… he’s a good man.”
Mom chortled. “Well, clearly not.”
“Excuse me,” Dalton chimed in, “but I fail to understand how loving someone makes me even remotely a scumbag… but I will say that we started falling for each other before we knew of the complicated relations…”
“I knew it!” Mom cut in.
“Knew what?” I demanded.
“When you two were introduced, you told us you knew that he was a Marine,” she relished in reminding us. “But I hadn’t told you that, because I’d only just found out a few days before… I knew that something was fishy about that. So, where did you two meet?”
“The night before, at a banquet,” I answered.
“A banquet?”
“A Marines’ banquet,” Dalton clarified. “I was in attendance, and we bumped into each other at a nearby bar after the fact. We were… mortified, to say the very least, when we recognized each other at your little family luncheon the following day…”
“And why didn’t you say anything, son?” William asked, having quietly watched us all interact. “We could have maybe done something about this back then…”
“Oh, definitely not,” Mom turned on him. “This is a travesty. Incest? In my family?”
“It’s more likely than you think,” Dalton chuckled. “But it’s not incest.” He pointed back and forth between us. “We’re not related.”
“You’re stepsiblings!”
“Thanks to the two of you, yes,” I cut in. “But not by blood. There’s nothing biologically wrong with our love.”
“Oh please,” Mom laughed. “You two keep throwing that word around. Love. As if you both know what that really means.”
I looked over at his grandparents, who had remained stone-faced and impenetrably sour during this entire exchange. No matter what my mom was saying, I was already dreading whatever would happen the moment that they opened their mouths…
“We do love each other,” Dalton told her, lifting his chin up. “I would die for this woman, if it meant keeping her safe. I’d lay my life down on the line to protect her. As long as she’s with me, she’ll never be in danger, never hurt or scared.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I? I have defended a dying man in the sand beneath a collapsing building with nothing but a goddamned knife. I did this against a man who was intent on killing him.”
He looked positively livid as he stared my mother down. “I don’t expect you to understand, Sarah, and I don’t particularly care if you condone it… but I have personally defended someone in the most literal sense of the term.”
Dalton pointed towards me.
“As much as I love my friend… as much as I’d do it again in a heartbeat… your daughter means more to me than that man. If I’m willing to sacrifice my own life to protect another man, what do you think I’ll be willing to do to keep the woman I love safe and secure?”
Our parents looked back and forth between us, and then at each other. It was William who spoke first.
“Well, I’m convinced.”
Sarah stared at him, mouth agape. “You can’t be serious. You know they don’t really love each other.”
“Darling, you don’t know my son. He’s not a liar, he’s not a scumbag, as you so carefully put it earlier, and he doesn’t give false promises… and I know that he doesn’t let anyone into his heart.” He turned to face Dalton, a proud smile on his face. “If he says he loves Clara, then I believe that.”
Mom was about to burst a vessel.
“Mom, I love him. I love him with all my heart,” I confessed to her. “He’s a real asshole sometimes, but he’s got a strong heart, a courageous spirit, and he’s possibly the best man I’ve ever encountered in my life…” I rose from my chair, standing by his side and threading my fingers into his. “I don’t care if you don’t get it. That’s not important to me. Just understand that we love each other, just as validly as Will and you love one another… and we’re prepared to prove it to you over time, if you’ll just let us.”
“I think I’ve quite heard enough.”
All eyes turned to Raleigh Carlyle, who rose up from his chair. He was staring dispassionately towards Dalton, an unreadable emotion stretching across his old, wrinkled face.
Whatever it was, it didn’t look good.
“Dalton Carlyle,” he spoke, letting his tone carry his grave disappointment, “you have disgraced this family beyond all reasonable doubt. I hereby fully renounce you from the Carlyle Fortune.”
“Yeah, I knew that was coming the second I opened my mouth,” Dalton smirked. “If you think endangering my future to be with the woman I love is reason enough, then you can keep the stupid money.”
“You realize, of course, that the moment my will is rectified, you will be forever barred from this inheritance, just like your father before you.”
“That’s always been the problem with you, hasn’t it, darling Grandfather?” Dalton asked. “You turned on your son when you thought he’d strayed down the wrong path… he pulled himself back, rebuilt his life, and made something of himself without you OR your goddamn money, and you never, ever considered reconciling with him… even after he lost his sister…”
William squirmed slightly in his chair, but nobody else was paying attention to him at the moment.
“You have always thought of yourself as having some sort of moral high ground,” Dalton continued, “but here’s the thing: you are the most selfish, conceited son of a bitch I have ever had the misfortune of knowing… and it’s a real shame, too.”
“Is it?” Raleigh asked apathetically.
“It is,” Dalton confirmed. “Because I’ve never really had grandparents. You’ve seen to that personally. The few times you two were ever around, it was always to pressure me into meeting your ridiculous expectations… tell me, Grandfather, what other family do you have?”
He remained silent.
“That’s what I thought… we’re it, aren’t we? We are the only people in the world that you can turn to as you grow old, and you’ve pushed us away…”
“I will not stand here and listen to this bullshit,” Raleigh Carlyle muttered. He turned to his wife. “Riana, we are leaving.”
Curiously, she didn’t budge.
“Riana?”
“Dalton… has a point,” she mentioned. “These two are all that’s left of the legacy, Raleigh. They are all that we have.”
“They’re not getting my money,” he firmly replied. “They’ve squandered their chances…” He turned back to face his son and grandson. “…They’ve disgraced us, the both of them. If only our darling Gloria had survived, we could have continued on… we could have mattered again…”
“You could have mattered all along,” William spoke up. “Instead, you chose to cut me lose when I needed you most, and you’ve barely been in your single grandchild’s life… you think we’re the disgrace, Father? No. No, that particular distinction belongs to you.”
Nobody said a word.
“The worst part of it,” he continued, “is that Mother’s always wanted more than what you’ve given her… you’ve alienated her from her family. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Your obsession with English high society has blinded you, Father… and in your blindness, you’ve separated your wife from her only legacy. What do you have to say for yourself?”
Raleigh’s cold exterior iced over.
“Fuck you, William.”
He turned to Riana. “We’re leaving.”
&n
bsp; “No, I don’t believe so.”