Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Noah did not get Thunder back. Nor did he see Dylan.
He went to the Hawkins ranch and couldn’t see any sign of someone living there, but he did see Thunder grazing in the wildflowers.
She wouldn’t let him anywhere near her. He gave up when he sensed her getting too stressed.
The following day was the same. “I’ll work something out,” he said unconvincingly.
“Make sure you do. And fast,” Emmett muttered with a sidelong look at Willow, shaking his head as if to remind her that she had brought on the problem.
Willow had to get out of there. She felt like a teenager, stifled by the weight of her dad’s annoyance while also battling a sinking disappointment that she had imagined the whole Dylan Hawkins episode.
She feared it was her mind playing tricks on her all along, searching for some kind of thrilling distraction from being trapped back in Autumn Falls.
She borrowed the truck and went to the gym. The only one in town was Charlie’s. It was a boxing gym with equipment from the dark ages—it was no Cordelia Street Ballet Company state-of-the-art fitness center, but it did the job, and Charlie had always been fond of Willow.
“If it isn’t the little Carter sister,” said the old man as she came down the stairs into the dimly lit workout space, gripping the rail to take the weight off her knee.
“Hey, Charlie, how’re you doing?” She grinned when she saw him, it took her back to the years before she went off to ballet school and she was in there almost every weekend. He looked practically the same, just a few more lines on his weathered face.
He watched her crossing the gym floor. “Should you be here?” he asked, nodding toward her injured leg.
“Please don’t you start, too, Charlie,” she said, taking a seat on the mats to start stretching. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”
He narrowed his eyes like a concerned parent and said, “Make sure you are.” Then went back to training the young boxers sparring in the ring.
Willow got on with her exercises, but she could feel an urge inside her for more.
She was used to training for hours every day, putting her body through the rigorous routines needed for the intensity of the roles she danced.
She thought of them all back there, warming up for rehearsals.
It made her exhale long and slow, she couldn’t bear to feel everything she had trained for, all those years, slipping away.
The tension of her confinement, not to mention her idiocy with Thunder, made her move from the mat to the punch bag.
It wasn’t ideal for her leg, but she put all her weight on her good knee and started to batter the life out of the hanging leather bag.
It felt amazing to get some of her frustration out. She made herself visualize the moment she fell again and again. It was like a war between her two selves; the stupid one that kept on dancing through the pain, and the weak one that couldn’t sustain the pace and pressure.
“You looking to murder that bag?”
Willow stopped immediately. Sweat dripping off her brow, arms glistening, vest soaked at the neck. She knew that voice. Swiping her damp hair off her face with the back of her hand she glanced around as nonchalantly as she could.
Dylan was casually loading weights onto a bench press, almost like he hadn’t said anything.
Marl-gray trackpants and a white T-shirt.
Hair just long enough for a ponytail, with the bits that were too short tucked behind his ears.
He was clipping the collars onto the bar when he looked up to see if she’d responded, same lazy glint in his eye as there’d always been.
Willow wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.
“You hit pretty good,” he said.
“For a girl?” was the best she could come back with, defensive and curt. They shouldn’t even be talking.
He laughed, not out loud, just an intake of breath. “Your words not mine.”
Just then, the main door to the gym swung open and Willow’s brothers Brodie and Logan walked in, dressed in their training kits. They were chatting about something, pretty easy and casual until they saw Willow, and as quickly, their eyes landed on Dylan.
Logan’s face hardened. “Everything all right here?” He directed his gaze to his sister.
Dylan watched with a smirk on his face. “If it isn’t the boyband.”
Willow’s brothers were famous in Autumn Falls—and everywhere—for winning a TV talent show as part of the band Silver Sky, named after the ranch and put together when they were in their teens as a beacon of hope because their mom was sick.
The group was long disbanded, but people still came over for autographs.
Brodie feigned a laugh. “You crack me up, Hawkins.”
The rivalry between Brodie and Dylan went deeper than any of the others.
They’d played on the football team together, battled it out for quarterback.
It was almost impossible to choose between them on the pitch and everyone reckoned that when the coach eventually picked Brodie it was simply because he was the more reliable character.
Dylan reluctantly swapped to running back.
Brodie crowed. Dylan sulked. Neither of them forgot it.
They spent half the practices in each other’s faces, spitting fury, being dragged apart by the coach.
From across the gym, Charlie looked over and said sternly, “I don’t want any trouble.”
Dylan glanced at the boxing trainer, bright blue eyes under thick black lashes. “No trouble from me, Charlie, I’m just here to work out.”
“Well, keep away from us and we’ll all be happy,” Brodie muttered, pulling his cap a bit lower.
“Why, what are you gonna do, Brodie?” Dylan folded his arms over his chest. “Sing?”
A couple of the guys on the other weights machines sniggered.
Brodie’s cheeks flushed the same red as his T-shirt and he took an irate step forward but Logan said, “Leave it.”
Willow watched it all with her heart thumping in her chest. It was like someone had turned back the clock and forgotten to tell her.
She had a sudden vision of standing under the bleachers, the sharp angles of Dylan’s face as it hovered over hers in the shadowy half-light, the piercing look in those electric-blue eyes, the wry tilt of his lips.
“Willow,” Logan said, jerking his head for her to move away from where Dylan was now lying back on the bench press, the flat planes of his stomach showing where his T-shirt had ridden up.
She grabbed her towel and water and followed like an obedient puppy.
“That chat had better have been about your stray horse, Willow,” Logan warned, chucking his own towel on one of the plastic chairs at the side of the room before loading up his weights bar, “or you’re asking for trouble.”
In the past, Logan had endured a near constant battle of one-upmanship with Dylan’s older brother, Tyler Hawkins. All the way through school, if one of them was some place, the other tended to go elsewhere, unless they were in the mood for a fight.
At Autumn Falls High, kids picked a side—Hawkins or Carter—and stuck with it.
Everyone except Willow.
Standing in the gym, she shook her head, bristling inside at the over-protectiveness that went hand in hand with her brothers being around. “It wasn’t a chat. It was just…” What was it? Thirty seconds long and she was flustered and on edge.
Thankfully, Noah strolled through the door, wearing cut-off track pants and an old blue Silver Sky Ranch T-shirt. He walked straight over to them without paying the blindest bit of notice to anyone else in the room.
When he got there, Brodie said eagerly, “Dylan Hawkins is over there.”
“Where?” Noah looked around, clearly surprised that Willow had been right and Dylan was back in town.
For the first time, Willow wished he had been a figment of her imagination.
Brodie gave a subtle nod in the direction of the bench press, then taking his cap off and running his hand through his hair he said, “He’s looking for trouble.”
Noah frowned. “He threaten you?”
Willow stopped Brodie before he could answer—she knew he liked nothing more than a bit of drama. “He didn’t threaten you, Brodie. He mocked you.”
“You defending him, Willow?” Brodie raised his brows in challenge.
Logan paused where he was crouched, loading up the weights bar, seemingly to gauge her reaction. Dressed all in black, there was a foreboding to his presence, reminding her of when she was a little kid and was often in fearful awe of her oldest brother.
She had to look away to remind herself that the hierarchy didn’t hold any longer. “Grow up,” she replied, mistakenly glancing back to where Dylan was pounding out the reps, biceps tensed, skin glistening with sweat.
He seemed to sense her looking and racked his bar, eyes locked on hers as he sat up.
It made her remember suddenly the times when football practice ended.
When she was young, she’d wait in the bleachers for her brothers to give her a lift home, idolizing all the players as they jogged to the locker room, knowing exactly the two she wasn’t allowed to look at—Dylan and Tyler Hawkins—but sneaking a look anyway.
As she got older, she’d be in the school gym at the same time as them, working out on nights she wasn’t driving to ballet.
Somehow, however hard she tried not to notice him, Dylan would always catch her eye, doing it on purpose, she figured, to leave her blushing as she tried to focus on her exercises.
Now, however, Dylan’s attention moved to Noah who had taken the break in his reps as an opportunity to walk over. Wiping his face of sweat, he looked up as Noah stood in front of him, hands in the pockets of his cut-off pants.
“I heard you were back, Hawkins.”
“Did you now?” Dylan took a swig of water, took his time putting the bottle down on the floor and giving his face another wipe with his towel, tucking his hair behind his ear. “This about your horse?”
Noah frowned. “How’d you know she was ours?”
Dylan glanced fleetingly in Willow’s direction. “Just a hunch.”
He’d seen her watching in the trees? She swallowed, felt her cheeks redden.
Noah nodded, didn’t look directly at Dylan but off at the wall. “I need to get her back,” he said, matter-of-factly.
Dylan lay down on the weights bench again. “You can come any time you like, Noah.”
Willow watched as Noah paused, rolling his shoulders awkwardly. “I’m er—” he started, stopped, ran his hand over his mouth. “I didn’t realize anyone was on the property and I’ve actually tried a couple of times already but Thunder…”
Willow tensed, watching as Dylan sat up again, clearly surprised by the fact Noah had been on his land. She turned and saw Charlie behind them watching warily from the edge of the ring.
Dylan looked down at the ripped leather of the weights bench, hands on his thighs. The air seemed to pulse with anticipation.
Logan stood up straight next to Willow, watched the interaction warily. Brodie strained to get involved like a dog on the leash.
Willow waited uneasily for what would come next, but Dylan just looked up at Noah and said simply, “She can stay with me for as long as she likes.”
Willow felt her face soften in surprise.
“I’ll make sure she’s safe,” Dylan went on, running his hand through his sweaty hair, pushing it back off his face. “Then maybe when she’s ready, I’ll bring her back.”
Noah seemed as caught off-guard as the rest of them. “That’s very good of you,” he replied. “I appreciate it.”
Dylan tipped his head, his hair flopped back over one eye. “It’s not a problem, Noah.”
When Noah came back to where Willow and their brothers were watching, no one said anything. They got busy with their own weights, all of them pretending they hadn’t been braced for the interaction to end badly, yet there was an undeniable sense of relief in the air.
Willow made the mistake of sneaking a furtive glance back in Dylan’s direction and to her dismay found him watching, waiting maybe, with that same wry smile on his face that she remembered so vividly, and when their eyes met, he winked. Cocky and knowing. She couldn’t look away fast enough.