Flawless Surrender (The Surrender Trilogy, #2)(28)

The fact that he understood what she was saying without her having to explain it made her relax her guard a little more. It was as sure sign she should stand up and walk back into the house as quickly as possible but instead, she heard words coming out of her mouth. “So what skeletons are you trying to overcome?”

“Do you really want to know?” he asked, tipping his head and looking at her thoughtfully. When she nodded, he slowly rose to his feet, and held out his hand. “Come on, I think better when I’m moving.”

She let him help her up, and they left their half empty bottles on the stump to retrieve later, before slowly walking down the road away from the house. It was several moments before he spoke, but when he did the sadness in his voice strangled her heart.

“I know you didn’t have a great childhood here. It’s a small town, so I heard the rumors, and after your mom’s recent stunt, I have a pretty good idea of what life has been like for you. For me though, Stone River was a great place to grow up. I was lucky enough to have a great family, and a lot of freedom. Part of that freedom was that I could run wild with my best friend, Ben White. We were double trouble, believe me. I can’t even tell you how many times the Sherriff picked us up causing problems for one of the local businesses and took us home. One of our favorite things to do during the summer was to go swimming at Devil’s Drop.”

“Devil’s Drop? That place is a national park or something, isn’t it?” Zoey frowned at him, and tucked her hair behind her ear.

“It is now, but it wasn’t back then. You were probably only 4 or 5 when it happened…God that makes me feel old.” He stopped moving and his head dropped dramatically.

“When what happened?”

“Ben and I went swimming one afternoon, just like always. Jumping off the rocks into the pool. You know, the thing about Devil’s Drop is that it’s spring fed from an underground cave system. The pool itself is almost fifty feet deep, or so I’ve been told.” He started walking again, but he seemed to have forgotten she was with him. She stayed quiet, listening to his story, and fearing she knew how it ended. “Ben was a great kid. He got straight As, he was the star of the little league team, and he was a loyal friend.”

There were several more breaths between them, where the only sound was the crunching of grass under their feet. Dalton’s tone changed when he spoke again, dropping an octave and filling with emotion. “He jumped off the rocks one last time. We had to go home because his mama was going to take us shopping for fireworks. We were eleven-year-old boys, so we loved shooting off fireworks and the stands had just opened for the season. Before we could go, Ben wanted to jump just one more time. I climbed out and I was drying off when he went in. He slipped as he got to the top of the rock, and fell. His head cracked against the granite before he tumbled into the pool. I could see the blood spray from his forehead when he hit, and then he was gone. Disappeared under the water. Just like that. I panicked, and took off for help when he didn’t come back up. I never even went in the water to see if I could save him.”

Dalton stopped moving and stared up into the dark sky. His body was so tense he looked like he would snap like a rubber band if she touched him, but she chanced it. Wrapping her arms around him, she held him against her, trying to absorb his pain. He tensed only for a moment, before his arms came up to clutch her to him. He pressed his face against the top of her head and continued his story.

“It took divers to find his body, and the autopsy said he died of blunt force trauma. He was dead before he went into the water, but I didn’t know that. He was my best friend and I never even went into the water to try to help him. I ran away. What kind of a coward runs away and leaves his best friend behind?”

“Dalton, you were only a kid. You couldn’t have gotten him out alone even if you had been able to reach him.”

“Oh I know. I’m a doctor after all. I know that it was a hopeless situation, but in my heart, I can’t forgive myself. After that, every time I ran into his mom, Minnie, she would see me and start crying. She couldn’t even stand to speak to me. His dad, Walt, would move to the other side of the road to avoid me. So I knew when I was eleven that I would have to leave Stone River behind. There was no way I could face what I had done, or make Walt and Minnie relive it for the rest of their lives. I left. I went to med school and after med school I found the program that would send me the furthest possible distance from Texas. Like any good coward, I kept running hoping I could outrun my past. I feel like I’ve been running for twenty years, ever since I turned away from Ben. Until two weeks ago, when my program was shut down and I was shipped back. Now I’m just trying to figure out how to take it all in, and what to do next.”

They held each other in silence. Zoey tried to put all of the compassion she had in her heart into that hug, and Dalton seemed to absorb it readily. His hand stroked her hair gently, as though petting her to calm her, but she knew he was really doing it to soothe the turmoil inside of himself. She began running her own hands up and down the hard line of his back, trying to give him the comfort he sought. When he leaned back to look down at her, she gave him a small smile. “How about we go in and get that second beer you promised me, then maybe we can see how good you are at the seduction part of your plan?”

“I don’t want you to sleep with me out of pity, Zoey. I like you, and you mean more than that to me,” he said, shaking his head.