Chapter 16
Emma
Frustrated, I turn off the television and toss the remote onto the cushion beside me. Ash glances over, annoyed at the noise, as he’s lying on the back of the couch. Apparently, I’m the only one who can’t stand being in one place for too long.
There’s so much to do. So many things I needed to get prepped for the fall festival I’m likely not even going to be able to attend.
I miss my students.
My house.
“Sorry, bud,” I say to Ash as he lays his head back down. “One can only watch so much television before it drives them mad.” Which, unfortunately, is about where I’m at. It’s only been two days, and I’m already so bored I’m ready to risk them finding me again.
Okay, maybe not that bored, but I’m getting there.
Pushing to my feet, I head over toward the large picture window that overlooks the front of Bradyn’s house and the property in front of it. It’s gorgeous, the hills covered with tall grass that dances in the slight breeze.
I may be bored stuck inside, but I can’t doubt the beauty of my view from this gilded cage.
Dylan crests the hill just in front of Bradyn’s house. Without knowing that I’m watching, his expression is far less guarded, and he even smiles at Delta, who trots beside him, tongue hanging out of his mouth, ears perked.
He’s wearing dark jeans, cowboy boots, and a sweat-stained white T-shirt. A dusty cowboy hat sits atop his light brown hair, shielding his hazel eyes from the sun. Gorgeous. The man is gorgeous.
From a distance, you’d never know just how haunted he really is.
I haven’t seen him since yesterday when he’d stormed out of his parents’ kitchen. He hasn’t called, come by—it’s been no-contact, and I’ve hated every minute of it. At least before, I stood a chance of running into him in town.
Of catching sight of him from a distance. Whether it was going into the diner, the post office, or the feed store—which he typically does on Thursday. Trying to see him from time to time, even if it meant going out of my way, was how I coped with losing him.
He was all I had after my parents died.
And then I didn’t even have him anymore.
His gaze lifts to the window, and he stops walking. For what feels like hours, we stand there, staring at each other. Two people unable to have even a simple conversation without it turning into a fight.
Dylan raises his hand.
I raise mine.
Then he continues toward the house, so I cross the living room and pull the door open right as he steps up onto the wooden porch and removes his hat.
“Can I talk to you?” he asks, tension squaring his shoulders.
“Yeah.” I step aside to let him into the house, but he shakes his head.
“Out here.”
“I’m allowed outside?” I ask with added theatrics.
It brings a smirk to Dylan’s face, which catches me entirely off guard. “Right now, I think it’s fine. And I can’t—” He trails off. “It’s better if we’re out here.”
Closing the door behind me, I take a seat on the porch swing. Dylan keeps his distance, opting to lean back against the porch railing instead. He sets his hat aside and crosses his arms.
“Why are we better out here?”
“So we’re not alone.” He gestures toward the pasture, and I see Elliot restringing some fence alongside Riley.
“You don’t trust me?”
He starts to respond, to say something, but then pauses for a moment. “I’m the one I don’t trust.” He swallows hard. Delta trots over and leans against his leg. Dylan drops his hand, and he threads his fingers through his dog’s thick fur. “I tried to kill Riley.”
“What?” I ask. Surely, I heard him wrong. Right?
“Back when he and Tucker pulled me out of the pit. I was so far gone mentally that I attacked him. If I hadn’t been so weak from starvation and dehydration, I probably would have killed him.”
“I didn’t know that.” I try to imagine how Dylan must have felt when he’d slipped free of the nightmare and realized what he’d nearly done. The guy who wouldn’t even kill a spider when we were growing up, nearly murdering his brother.
It must have destroyed him.
“They kept me shackled until I could be sedated.”
“Dylan.” I cover my mouth with my hand as that scene plays out before me, as though I were watching it happen right now. I’d seen him shortly after he got back, emaciated and dirty, so it’s not that hard to picture.
I wish it were.
“Do you remember when you came to see me at the hospital? After I got home.”
“Yeah.”
“When I grabbed your arm?”
“I remember.” Tucker told me I was lucky, but I don’t believe I was ever in any real danger. That’s just not Dylan.
“I knew who you were when you came in, but the moment you got too close—” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “It threw me back into that cave.”
I don’t want to risk saying the wrong thing and stopping him, so I try to remember to breathe as he tells me more than he ever has.
“That’s how it was for the first year. I couldn’t be left alone, just in case I lost my head and ran away, so I lived with Tucker and Riley.
Anytime someone touched me, whether it was an accidental brushing of their hand on me or a simple handshake, I would get so sick to my stomach I’d either throw up or lose my head.
Every second of closeness cost me another piece of myself.
” Dylan doesn’t make eye contact with me, nor does he move from where he’s leaning against the railing.
“Then, it got a little bit easier. I was able to finally hug my mom three years after I got home.”
A tear slips down my cheek. Three years? “I had no idea.”
“You wouldn’t have. In moments of lucidity, I begged my family not to tell anyone. I thought it was because I didn’t want the town to know, but I think—on some level—it was about you.”
“Me?”
He looks at me now, and there are tears glistening in his hazel eyes. “You always saw me as this strong, capable man, and I’d been beaten down to the point where I didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t want you to remember me like that.”
“I would have understood.”
He nods. “That’s what made it harder. For me, it was better if you were angry at me than to know you pitied what I’d become.”
I cross over to stand in front of him, though I keep my distance. “Dylan, I wouldn’t have pitied you. I would have tried to help. I would have done anything you needed because I loved you.”
A tear slips down his cheek. “In the ocean, I asked you if you trusted me, and you said yes immediately.”
“I do.”
“Then trust me when I tell you that it was the best choice. The distance between us kept you safe.”
“I didn’t care about safety. I only cared about you.”
He takes a step closer to me now. “Do you know what it would have done to me if I’d hurt you?
There would’ve been no coming back for me, Emma.
You were all I thought about when I was being held.
You were my only light in that pit, and I lived in our memories during my darkest moments.
” Another step closer. “When I got home, and I saw you, I thought—”
“That I wasn’t really there. That you were living in another memory.” I cover my mouth with a shaking hand as my heart breaks for him all over again. And not just for him—but for me too.
For what we were.
What we could have been.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “For all of the pain I caused you. For being too weak to face you when I should have.”
“You’re not weak, Dylan. You’re the strongest man I’ve ever known.”
“If you’d seen me then, you wouldn’t think that.”
“I saw you in that hospital bed, and I still think that. There’s nothing you could’ve done that would make me feel any different.”
“Emma, I wanted to die. I begged God to take me. To put me out of my misery, and when He didn’t respond, I began to believe He’d just forgotten about me.”
His words shatter what pieces of my heart remain. Dylan had been so lost—so broken. He’d needed me, and I stopped trying to reach him because it was easiest for me. Because I was hurt by believing he’d just decided I wasn’t who he wanted to be with.
How na?ve I was.
How sheltered.
“God doesn’t forget people. People forget how to pray.”
Dylan takes another step toward me, putting us closer than we’ve been since that ocean.
“You saw the scars I carry. That’s only a small piece of what they put me through.
I was forever changed in that prison, Emma.
Soiled. Damaged. And I still don’t think I’m clean enough to even breathe the same air as you. ”
“Clean enough? Is that what you think? That I’m too clean for you?”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “You deserve better than half a man.”
“I don’t see half a man when I look at you, Dylan Hunt. Do you know what I do see?”
His gaze levels on mine.
“I see a man who’s seen the vilest parts of humanity yet still chooses to dedicate his life to saving it.
I see a man who—despite his own pain—came for me when he could’ve sent any one of his brothers.
” The tears continue rolling down my cheeks, but I make no move to wipe them away. “I see you, Dylan. Not your pain.”
A shudder runs through him, and he starts to move back but stops. “I don’t know how to be the guy you knew.”
“Good. Because I’m not the same either.”
Dylan nods, then closes his eyes and bows his head slightly. With trembling fingers, he reaches up and gently touches the side of my face.
I go completely still, afraid that if I don’t, then he’ll pull away.
After a few heartbeats, he does anyway, then takes a step back.
“There’s something I have to tell you. It’s why I came down here.”
“More? I feel like we just had the best conversation we’ve had in years.” I try to smile in order to somewhat defuse the tension between us, but Dylan doesn’t react. “What is it?”
He takes a deep breath. “Felicity is dead.”
“What?” His words hit me, shattering what little happiness I had over this breakthrough with Dylan. “What do you mean she’s dead?”
“She and the boutique owner were murdered. Local police are calling it a burglary gone wrong.”
I stumble back a step, the guilt over their deaths like a dagger to the heart. “It’s my fault they’re dead.”
“No, it’s not,” Dylan says, his tone level.
“Yes, it is. Felicity snuck me out; that woman at the boutique helped her. Dylan—” Eyes wide, I stare up at him in horror. “They’re dead because of me.”
“They’re dead because of the man who killed them—not you.”
“I can’t believe he killed them. Gio did this. Or Mattheus. Maybe Heath. Any of them could have been responsible. They’re all monsters.”
“I’m going to figure it out, okay?”
“You?” I look up at him. “No. You can’t go anywhere near them. The cops—”
“Labeled it a robbery. Emma, he’s going to come for you again, and I won’t risk sitting around and waiting for some fictitious timer to run out. I want this over. I need this over.”
“Why?” That small voice at the back of my mind tells me it’s because he wants his space back.
I’m here, and it’s hard for him with me this close.
Didn’t he just tell me as much? But as much as I want to go back to my normal life, I’m also afraid that, once I leave this ranch, things will go back to the way they were between us.
Distant. Cold.
“Because I need you safe,” he replies, tone soft. “You deserve to be safe. To not spend your life looking over your shoulder. So I’m going to do whatever it takes to finish this.”
“And if he catches you?”
“He won’t.”
“You can’t know that for sure.”
“Maybe not, but I do know that I won’t sit here and wait for him to make a move. Not when there are leads to follow.”