Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
F inding a few things out about Dylan Roselyn Beck hadn’t been too hard. He’s started by asking around town about her. Everyone in Pride knew who she was and exactly what she had been doing for, well, her entire life.
From what he found out, young Dylan had been a loner who was bullied.
Her mother had taken off shortly after her birth, leaving her and her father all alone.
Her dad, who had been the town vet, had been almost forty years older than Dylan’s mother, which had caused quite a stir in the small town.
Dylan had apparently paid the price of all those rumors for most of her young childhood.
Everyone in town also mentioned the friendship between Dylan and Lucy McDonald, now Lucy Gilbert after she’d married Troy Gilbert, an engineer up at the Coast Guard base. They thought it was a shame that Lucy had treated Dylan the way she had, considering how close they’d been early on in school.
That could account for why Lucy had changed her life around after she had children of her own.
After graduation, Dylan left town and headed to Portland, where she worked for a small PI firm while going to college. Shortly after graduating, she’d started her own firm. She’d only returned to town for a few months last year to look after her dad until he passed.
There were other small bits and rumors, but nothing everyone could agree on.
Still, he felt as if he barely knew her at this point. When they’d been in the barn, she’d opened up to him for the first time and he had to admit, he desperately wanted it to happen again.
He’d guessed that it had been her who’d broken into the house after finding out what she did for a living.
Besides, when he’d seen her run on the beach, he had recognized her as the person he’d seen running across the dark field.
When she’d confirmed it, he wasn’t mad. Oddly.
She hadn’t disturbed anything and, after finding out that her main goal was to find out what had happened to Kara, how could he be mad?
After all, he had been desperate for answers for years himself.
After he’d walked Dylan to her car the night before, he’d tried to muster up some anger towards her the whole way home.
But none came. Instead, an eagerness to work with her had sprung up.
The excitement about possibly solving the riddle that had torn his heart apart all those years ago had him flying high.
More importantly, the thrill of seeing her again outweighed any anger. The fact that Dylan had made his broken heart beat rapidly for the first time since Kara tickled the back of his mind.
The next morning, he rose before the sun, while the sky was still bruised in shades of deep navy and violet.
He pulled on a sweatshirt to ward off the salty morning chill, grabbed his worn notebook and guitar case, and made the slow trek up the spiral stairs of the lighthouse.
He’d wanted to watch the sunrise from up there from the moment he’d seen the place and figured it was the perfect spot to write what he’d been feeling for the past few days.
The salty breeze bit at his skin as he stepped out from behind the protective glass walls. The view at the top, miles of ocean stretching in every direction, made it worth every step.
He sat down on the chair he’d dragged outside and, with the ocean to the right and the rising sun to his left, settled down. After tuning the guitar, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
While the first sliver of light broke the horizon, he strummed his guitar and started playing a new melody that had been circling in his subconscious.
The lyrics came slowly at first.
A woman made of shadows and smoke,
with eyes that promise, but words that lie.
Her lips are like wine, shakes me like thunder.
Will she ever truly be mine.
Mystery woman,
Questions and riddles,
She’s a midnight flame in a world gone cold,
Slipping through fingers I thought could hold.
Every kiss burns, every glance deceives,
But I chase her still, ’cause I need to believe.
Oh, mystery woman, don’t disappear,
Tell me your truth or whisper your fears.
He stopped occasionally, writing down each line. He didn’t think too hard, just let everything flow out of him.
Dylan. She was everywhere in this song. In the longing, the uncertainty. In the ache behind each word.
You came to town with stories stitched,
A smile rehearsed, the truth bewitched.
But every secret that you keep
builds a wall too high, a silence too deep.
She’s a midnight flame in a world gone cold,
Slipping through fingers I thought could hold.
Every kiss burns, every glance deceives,
But I chase her still, ’cause I need to believe.
Oh, mystery woman, don’t disappear,
Tell me your truth or whisper your fear.
She’s a midnight flame in a world gone cold,
Slipping through fingers I thought could hold.
Every kiss burns, every glance deceives,
But I chase her still, ’cause I need to believe.
Oh, mystery woman, don’t disappear,
Tell me your truth or whisper your fear.
When he finally looked up, the sun had fully broken over the hills and trees, spilling molten gold across the waves of the Pacific.
He closed the notebook and leaned back with a sigh, playing his new song, her song, one last time from memory.
He let the song echo in his chest as he watched the world wake in front of him.
He didn’t know what to do with it yet. But it was hers. All of it.
He made his way down from the lighthouse and cleaned up, then grabbed a hot mug of coffee. He drove into town to clear his head. He wasn’t planning to stop at the bookstore but figured he’d browse the new releases for something exciting to read later that evening.
The bell over the door chimed, and the scent of aged paper and cinnamon hit him like a memory. How many days had he spent in the bookstore his mother had worked in most of her life? Too many to remember.
She’d been the reason he lost himself in pages. The reason it was so easy for him to twist words into songs. She’d never known how successful he had become, having died a year before Kara had.
While Kara’s death haunted him with all the unanswered questions, his mother’s hadn’t been so complicated.
Heart failure due to the medications she’d been on all her life while she’d waited for a transplant.
Death had been a known possibility. She should have never had him.
His birth had weakened the already frail body she’d been born with.
Still, they had been lucky to have as much time together as they had, and he was so thankful for every moment he’d had with such an amazing soul.
When he stepped inside the book store now, his eyes took a few seconds to focus in the darker room.
And then he saw her.
Dylan was sitting in the corner booth by the café section, laughing. Her long hair lay across her shoulders in two braids, and her sunglasses sat on top of her head as if she’d pushed them up and had forgotten them.
She had on a white and blue striped shirt with white shorts that showcased her long, tan legs, and his heart skipped several beats. She looked like a sun goddess. Tan. Toned. Happy.
Then he noticed that she was sitting with Nate Elliott, Juliette’s brother. He’d met the man at Max and Juliette’s rehearsal dinner.
He seemed like a good guy, but Abe wanted to march over there and…
Well, the way that Nate was currently looking at Dylan, like he had all the time in the world and never wanted to leave, made his primordial instincts kick in.
The man’s sandy hair was tousled just enough to look styled, and he was smiling at Dylan like she was dessert.
Abe stood frozen in the doorway, debating what to do. Then someone entered behind him and he was forced to move inside. Without thinking, he moved towards a magazine rack and hid behind it and pretended to browse while he spied on the couple.
Nate leaned in and said something that had Dylan smiling behind the rim of her coffee mug. It wasn’t the same smile that she gave him. It was lighter, almost… guarded. He frowned. Still, it twisted something low in his gut.
Abe didn’t like the way Dylan’s eyes sparkled when she laughed at one of Nate’s jokes. And from the looks of it, the man was a very funny guy. He ground his back teeth.
Then the man leaned closer and flicked the back of a finger across Dylan’s chin and Abe’s vision almost grayed.
Needing a moment, he turned towards a display of new release books, grabbed one that he’d already read, and took a steadying breath as he hid behind the cover.
He wasn’t going to walk over there and make a fool of himself, he told himself several times. He wasn’t that guy. Not anymore.
But dammit, she could at least look like she remembered that she had kissed him yesterday and rocked his world. Like the night had meant something.
Instead, she looked like she was shopping for someone else to wreak havoc on.
He glanced over and noticed how well she fit into this little town, where people smiled and flirted and didn’t carry around the weight of death, lies, or investigations. Or worse, the Hollywood elite, with their snobby parties and flashing cameras.
Abe put the book back and turned towards the exit, his jaw tight, his stomach sinking. He would never fit in here, just like he didn’t fit in the elite LA circles. Sure, he could fake it, but he belonged on his ranch, alone with his horses.
He didn’t know what Dylan was doing with Nate. Maybe there was nothing between the pair? Maybe she just liked bookstores and spending time with a guy who flirted and could make her laugh?
But as the bell chimed again behind him and the door closed, he realized he didn’t want to lose his heart to a woman that had lied to get him.
“Hey.” He turned around a few steps from the bookstore as Dylan rushed after him and reached for his arm. “What’s the rush?” she asked, falling in step with him easily.
He glanced over his shoulder. “No rush, just… three’s a crowd.”
She glanced back and then laughed. “Nate flirts with everyone. With all women, all walks of life. He lays it on thick all the time. Trust me, he’s harmless.
Well, maybe.” She shrugged and then laughed, then her smile grew.
God, why did just seeing that smile cause his knees to grow weak.
“Were you jealous? Honestly, he’s like a brother, if I had ever had one. ”
He shrugged and then surprised her by taking her hand, locking their fingers as they walked down the sidewalk towards the park in the center of town.
“Maybe,” he admitted. They walked for a while in silence.
“So much has changed in town,” she said when they reached the gazebo in the center of the town square. “Some things haven’t.”
“It must have been nice,” he said, stopping and leaning on the railing and looking out over the green grass, the many colored flowers, and the families enjoying the summer day. “Growing up here.”
“It had its moments.” She leaned next to him. “Where did you grow up?”
He tilted his head. “Didn’t you read that in my file?”
She shrugged. “You tell me.”
He smiled. “Just outside of San Fran,” he answered.
“City boy turned music star turned cowboy,” she teased and had him laughing.
“Something like that.”
“Siblings?”
He shook his head. “You?”
She shook her head. “Parents?”
He shook his head a little slower. “Dad died in a car crash when I was ten. Mom passed four years, six months, and…”—he calculated quickly— “four days ago.”
She touched his arm lightly. “How long was she sick?” When he raised his eyebrows, she shrugged and reminded him, “It was in your file.”
“Right.” He motioned towards a bench under a tree.
“Let’s sit in the shade.” When she nodded, he took her hand again and they strolled over to sit before he answered her.
“Mom was sick all her life, it seems. She claimed that she had been just as bad before I came along, but something always told me that was a lie.” He leaned back and lifted an arm to wrap behind her shoulders and played with the ends of her braids.
He glance out and watched as Nate left the bookstore and headed across the street.
He knew it was petty of him, but just in case the man glanced over, he shifted even closer to Dylan.
“After a particularly bad flu the year before her death, things turned worse.” The closeness of Dylan somehow made the pain of the loss sting less.
“My dad got pneumonia a few months before he went. I came home to watch over him.” He saw her eyes turn sad and shifted slightly towards her, wanting to comfort her. He knew how it felt.
“There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wish I could pick up the phone and talk to her.” He sighed. She frowned and glanced away.
He stopped playing with the ends of her hair.
“I… when I went away for college, I…” She shook her head. “I was too busy for calls.”
He nudged her. “You were there when he needed you most.”
She turned and met his gaze, and he forgot all about making another man jealous. Instead, his entire mind and body focused on her. Just her. How the light made her hair shine and warmed her skin, turning it a light pink. Her eyes almost glowed.
He was falling hard and fast for her, even though he knew deep down that he couldn’t fully trust her. She still carried secrets. Deep down, she was hiding something else from him. What? Why? When would she trust him enough to open fully for him?
Her eyes seemed to be searching his as if looking for answers herself. Did she think he was hiding things from her? Did she really believe him when he told her he had nothing to do with Kara’s death?
She moved ever so slightly towards him. Maybe it was in his mind? Maybe it was nothing more than a breeze blowing her towards him. Either way, when she was nothing more than a breath from him, he knew that he was lying to himself.
He was no longer falling in love with Dylan. No. That moment had come and gone in the blink of an eye. Abe Collins was one-hundred-percent already in full-blown love with Dylan Beck. And he had only kissed her twice.
Now, all that was left was to seal his fate with a kiss.
“Dylan,” he whispered, but then someone called her name and Dylan blinked, breaking the moment.