Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Willow was exhausted. She was sweating. She was filthy. Her muscles ached. She felt one hundred percent alive.
Since Dylan had told her to grab a shovel, she’d made a point of not looking at him. Serve him right.
She had snuck a tiny glance, though, when he was off in the distance, Thunder moving like lightning, and the speed and agility had taken her breath away. But then she’d got absorbed in all the other things that needed doing, time slipping away without her realizing.
All the while, Elvis padded around behind her like a shadow, something she found particularly pleasing. Like she’d somehow got one over on Dylan by making his dog like her.
Oh, Willow, you’re pathetic.
When she came back from collecting a barrow of hay, Dylan was in the yard washing the sweat off Thunder. She glanced at her watch and couldn’t believe how much time had passed. She watched him chatting away to Thunder, laughing as he spoke, and despaired at herself for being jealous of a horse.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
“Pretty good,” she said, forking hay into the feeders for Thunder and the gray colt. “It’s surprisingly therapeutic. Time’s just flown.”
He nodded, like he knew exactly what she meant. As he washed down Thunder’s feet, he said, “I guess it’s as different from New York ballet as you can get.”
“Yeah.” She wondered, though, if it was something more than that.
She looked at the gray colt—Mercury—watching her inquisitively over the stable door as she forked up the hay, and wondered if there was maybe something cathartic about taking care of something that wasn’t herself.
“I forgot what it was like to be around the horses, you know? Looking after them. It kind of takes you out of yourself.”
Dylan went and turned the water off. “Sure does.”
Willow nodded as they worked in companionable silence, thinking about the intensity of her normal day’s routine back in New York.
The program tailored to making her the best she could be.
The pressure she put on herself, the emotion each performance drew from her till she’d be standing in the wings of the theater, face streaming with tears, not knowing whether they were real or not.
“I don’t know much about ballet,” Dylan said, leading Thunder to her stall, “but if it’s anything like football, you’re the athlete and the critic all rolled into one every minute of every day.”
Willow stopped what she was doing and leaned on the fork. “That’s very perceptive, Mr. Hawkins.”
He laughed again, eyes creasing as he picked up a bottle of water from the floor and gulped some down. “That’s why I’m good at my job, Ms. Carter.” He took his hat off and poured the rest of the bottle over his hair.
She tried not to watch the water dripping down his T-shirt. “Noah says you’re one of the best.”
“That’s very kind of him.”
She looked down at the concrete just so she didn’t have to look at his eyes, he always seemed to be smiling at something she wasn’t saying. Then she went to put the wheelbarrow away in the other corner of the yard. “Any of your horses ever win big at the track?” she called as she went.
“All the time,” he drawled.
She rolled her lips together, didn’t know if she believed him or not and didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of asking, but found she couldn’t help herself. “Are you being serious?”
“I’m always serious where my horses are concerned.”
She should have known he’d say something like that, his eyes sparkling with cocky self-certainty. She rolled her eyes as she put the barrow away, tipped up against the wall, then went to wash her hands at the outside tap by the horse barn. She heard Dylan say, “What did your dad say about it?”
“You training Thunder?” she clarified, turning off the tap and glancing around the corner of the door. She was surprised to see he was sitting on a chair, eyes closed, ankle crossed over his knee, leaning back with his head resting against the stall. He opened one eye and nodded.
Willow walked back into the barn, drying her hands on her leggings. “He wasn’t happy.”
Dylan nodded. “Didn’t think he would be.”
She stroked the gray colt’s neck as he quietly chewed on the fresh hay, then went over to perch against the old table next to Dylan’s chair.
Him mentioning her dad made her realize that she had to bring up what had happened in the past. “You want to talk about that day when you and your dad came over to our ranch?”
Dylan opened both eyes and turned in his chair so he was facing her. “If I have to.”
She picked a couple of strands of hay off her top. “I think we have to,” she replied. “You know, not have it hanging in the air.”
He cocked his head, eyes narrowing as he watched her. “I was sorry I did what I did. More sorry, though, that he said what he said.”
She looked up, surprised at his answer. Not expecting it to be that easy. She was never quite sure what he thought about the whole thing. Now he looked genuine enough. She nodded. “Me, too.”
She had thought about it the night before at Logan’s and couldn’t get it out of her head.
The memory of Bob Hawkins as he stood in front of Emmett and laughed as he said, “You got a lot to thank those singing sons for.” She’d been forever haunted by the look in her dad’s eyes when Bob’s lip curled and he’d added slow and clear, “It’s a poor man who can’t take care of his family. ”
She hadn’t wanted to, but she’d looked across then at Dylan where he stood behind his father, waiting.
She’d felt herself blush with shame. The shame at what Bob was saying, shame because of him mocking what her brothers did, shame at herself for telling Logan the ranch needed saving.
Shame that what he was saying might be true.
She hated herself for it, but in that moment, with Bob Hawkins in his big jacket with the upturned collar, his black hat and flashy watch, standing over Emmett, she’d pitied her dad.
Closed her eyes in frustration when Bob quipped, “I always knew you were a failure, Emmett.” He patted him on the cheek, patronizing, like her dad was a little kid.
That pat was the final straw, the thing that made Emmett erupt.
He’d lurched forward, fist hitting square on Bob’s jaw.
But Bob was ready. He’d been pumped for a fight since he’d driven in through the gates.
He’d been baiting for that moment, and he hit back with a crack that seemed to echo off the building.
And he was in much better shape than Emmett, worn down by bitterness and loss, was at that period of his life.
It was when her dad stumbled back, that Willow sprinted off the porch, Bob grabbing him by the lapel of his shirt and smashing his chin with a sharp upper cut that snapped Emmett’s head back, cracking his teeth and sending his hat flying.
Willow had thrown herself between them, clawing, shouting. “Stop it! Stop it!”
The sight of a young girl had clearly made Bob pause.
Gave Emmett a moment to right himself. Willow had reached out a hand to hold him steady.
A few paces behind his dad, Dylan stood stock-still while Bob narrowed his eyes at the scene, smirking at the fact that Emmett needed his young daughter to rush to his defense.
Emmett had no fight left in him anyway, his mouth was bleeding, his eye was half shut, hair all messed up and his shirt askew.
Willow remembered looking beseechingly at Dylan, all confusion at how he could stand there and do nothing.
His face in return was unreadable. And as quick as it all started it was over.
Bob gave her dad a derisory once up and down, spat on the floor just by Emmett’s boot then strode away, jerking his head for his son to follow.
It was when they got to their car that Bob handed Dylan a bat and he’d smashed the windshield of Emmett’s truck.
Emmett had stood there long after they were gone. Willow could sense the rage, like fire emanating from his body. She’d felt her own rage and fear coursing through her blood, her own confusion at what she’d seen, her disappointment.
Sitting on the chair now in the horse barn, Dylan said, “We never talked about it.”
“We never talked about anything, Dylan,” she said, brow arched wryly. It was the first mention that they’d ever spent any time together. She saw his eyes sparkle.
His mouth twitched in a smile as he clarified, “What I meant was, you left after that.”
“Yeah.”
They hadn’t acknowledged each other again after that day. Willow didn’t wait after practice any longer. If she passed him in the hallway she kept her head down. She remembered him once walking past with his friends, saw the hesitation in him but she immediately turned the other way.
Now, an underlying tension danced between them like fireflies in the warm air.
She could feel the simmer of past attraction, a secret knowingness.
She tried to skim over it, keep it level on the surface.
“It was the right time,” she said. “If I wanted to dance professionally, I had to go to ballet school. I was later than most people already.” Nothing to do with the fact her dad barely said a word to her after that, that she was drowning in the silence of the house.
But she didn’t want to leave her mom in what felt like a cold, black mausoleum.
It was then, however, that Livvy, Noah’s sweetheart, got sick, and Noah had come rushing back from a tour.
Everyone suddenly had a different focus.
Willow took the opportunity to slip away, accepted the offer to The Cordelia Street Ballet School that she would never have taken were things normal at home—she loved to dance but she loved Autumn Falls more.
But the Autumn Falls she knew, her childhood with her brothers and the life and love in the house, it was all gone and it wasn’t coming back.
Dylan nodded slowly, thinking back. “I wasn’t around much longer.”
Willow remembered one of her friends telling her Dylan had left.
She sat back on her hands, and studied him, seeing momentarily the boy she’d write in her diary about, with the mop of dark blond hair, and the hard, unforgiving gaze that could skewer you at fifty paces.
She always thought she might be the one to save him.
The idea now made her smile to herself. “Everyone said you ran off to break your brother out of jail.”
Dylan barked a laugh in surprise. “Is that so?” Then he shook his head at the idea. “Not sure how they thought I was going to do that.”
“Oh, I think everyone thought you could do anything you wanted.” She said it before she thought about it, the words made her cringe as she heard the echo of them in the air.
They made Dylan’s eyes crease. “I certainly couldn’t do that,” he said.
And she found herself momentarily caught looking at him, couldn’t make herself look away.
The air seemed to vibrate, get smaller and heavier.
Her breath shallower. It was Dylan who looked away first, down at the cracked concrete floor; he scuffed it a couple of times with his boot, then grabbing his hat, he stood up and said, “Okay, I’ve got work to do. ”
He was dismissing her.
She forced a smile, not really sure what she’d been expecting.
“Yeah, I’d better go.” She got up from the table and went and grabbed her sweatshirt, kicking herself for bringing any of it up, for allowing that look to pass between them.
He was the one who’d said there was too much history in the place.
Dylan was standing in the shade, leafing through papers when she came out, he had his hat on, concentrating on the numbers he’d written down.
For a moment, she wondered if he was going to say anything at all as she came past, but as she pulled her sweatshirt on over her vest, he glanced up and said, “You want to come by tomorrow?”
Her body fizzed a little bit. “Okay.”
“Come early,” he said, looking back down at his notes. “You can take Thunder for her morning ride.”
“Really?”
“As long as you promise to take it slow.”
Willow nodded. “I promise.”
He glanced up then tipped his head with a satisfied half-smile.
Willow turned her back on him, biting down on a grin as she walked as casually as she could back to the car knowing he might be watching.