“Falling – falling for her?” Dad laughed, trying to keep the hysteria out of his voice. “You stupid git, you were always fucking impulsive, weren’t you? Couldn’t just snog your sister, you had to shag her? We’re not talking about this right now. I am laughably ill-equipped for this bollocks,” he snarled, sliding around to the driver’s door.
“Dad, you’ve gotta listen to me –”
My father slammed another door between us, twisting the keys in the ignition. As I rounded to his side of the car, I realized that Sarah was crying into a tissue.
“Dad–”
The tires squealed as he wrenched the car backwards in an arc, flying down the road and around a corner. After a few seconds, he was out of sight and rumbling from what must have been one horrendous nightmare to another.
There was no point in trying to follow him, so I dejectedly stepped back inside and locked the door behind myself.
Clara was dressed in her clothes from last night, sitting at the dining table and staring blankly into space. The window was nearby, so she likely saw and heard every last syllable of that.
At a complete loss, I shrugged at her.
“So, that could have gone better.”
She glanced at me, all emotion stripped from her eyes. “Dalton, what the fuck are we going to do?”
Prepared to console her and offer some bulletproof plan to resolve everything, I parted my lips to speak. When nothing came, I realized that we were truly, honestly fucked.
Chapter 21
I was still reeling from the events of the morning when Mom called us, several hours later… putting into motion the events that would dictate the rest of our lives.
“Raleigh and Riana are here, and they wish to see the two of you,” Mom curtly told me over the phone. “You’d better get over here, quick.”
I informed Dalton of this, and we reluctantly walked to his motorcycle. We drove the hour-plus back to our parent’s house with hearts full of a violent concoction of anxiety, dread, and fear for the future.
When we arrived, William let us in at the door. Without a word, he led us past the kitchen, down the corridor, and to the large dining room table from the day we’d learned that our parents were dating.
Mom was seated on one side, and across from her were Dalton’s grandparents, the fierce Raleigh and Riana Carlyle.
“Greetings, Dalton,” Raleigh nodded slowly towards his grandson as we entered the room together.
He turned back to William, who was taking his seat next to Mom. Dalton and I took the two chairs in the center, leaving the empty chairs across from us.
“I see that we are all here now…” Raleigh continued. “Shall we dispense with the pleasantries and get straight to business?”
William half-scoffed, but didn’t say a word.
“Excellent. Well then, we are gathered here today because, as you may or may not know, my health has begun to suffer. This means that we must discuss the coming inheritance.”
He began to prattle on about some inane bullshit concerning rules, stipulations, and the dangers of family disgrace in the eyes of English high society. After a while of this, Mom and William – particularly Mom, though – were visibly uncomfortable… and even borderline aggravated.
“I’m sorry, is there a problem?” Raleigh finally asked, cutting a glance over at his son and daughter-in-law. “Is something I’m saying disturbing or bothering you? This is rather important to the ongoing wealth, so if either of you find yourselves with some form of a problem…”
Mom pursed her lips furiously, but cast us a knowing, disgusted glance. William, on the other hand, simply sighed and remained quiet. It seemed that neither of them were willing to say a word about what they’d seen.
That’s why I was surprised when…
“They’re angry because they found me in bed with my stepsister,” Dalton casually remarked.
I glanced at him in horror. I quickly realized that every pair of eyes in the room had turned to him, featuring a range of surprised, disgusted reactions.
“Excuse me, Dalton, but would you care to repeat that?” Raleigh Carlyle muttered in indignation. “I don’t believe I heard you correctly…”
“I wasn’t picking up the phone because I was asleep,” Dalton elaborated. “Our parents decided to break into my home and march up to my bedroom. They found me asleep with the woman I love… a woman who, unfortunately, turns out to be my new stepmother’s daughter.”
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 he
r, 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.