Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Just to make it clear,” Willow said as she slipped into the red leather booth. “We’re still not doing this.” She gestured between them, her beer bottle in her hand.
“Absolutely not,” he agreed, sliding in opposite.
“Good,” she said, “because it would still be a very bad idea for my family, and I’m not going to be staying in Autumn Falls, so you know…”
As if it were a battle of one upmanship, Dylan said, “Willow, I have no intention of staying in Autumn Falls.”
“Fine,” she said, relaxing into her seat. “I’m glad we cleared that up.”
“Me, too.” He took a sip of his beer, amused blue eyes watching her.
Willow made a point of looking away, around at the bar and the guys playing pool.
Above them, the ceiling had been covered over the years with beer coasters—there must be thousands of them all stuck up there.
Tankards hung all around on hooks, and various racing memorabilia crowded the shelves.
The walls were painted dark maroon, and the lighting was low, making it hard to tell what time of day it was. “So, where will you go?” she said.
He shrugged, took another swig of beer. “Wherever there’s a job.”
“Is that what you do? Just live wherever there’s work?”
“Sometimes,” he replied, leaning back against the booth. “Sometimes, when I’ve had enough and need a break, I just travel. Maybe go up to the mountains. Maybe to the beach.”
“Wow.” Willow didn’t know if she could live like that.
Her surprise made Dylan laugh. “Not your kinda thing?”
“I like traveling, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been loads of places to dance, but I like to know where I’m living. I like to know what I’m doing tomorrow.”
He smiled, just the corner of his mouth, as if that fitted the idea he had of her. “You like to be in control.”
She peeled the corner of the label on her bottle, not liking the feeling of being so transparent.
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. I like structure.
Makes me feel—” She found she was about to say safe and stopped herself.
She had never thought it until the word almost came out.
“Where was your favorite place to go?” she asked, changing the subject.
Dylan didn’t push her on how structure in her life made her feel, he probably had a fair idea anyway.
Instead, he took a sip of beer and said, “Tibet, I spent quite a bit of time there, hung out with the Zen masters.” He grinned when he said it, mocking himself as he looked up at her from under lashes longer than she’d noticed before.
She rolled her eyes. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
She laughed, couldn’t help it. Resting her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, she said, “So what did the Zen masters teach you?”
“All sorts of things.” He looped his arm over the back of the booth. “Meditation, presence, how to let go of the past.”
She sat up straight again, frowning. Wanting to know what it was he wanted to let go of but not wanting to pry. “Did it work?”
He ran his hand through his hair, pushed it back behind his ears. “Not really.”
She laughed.
He sat forward and said more seriously, “It maybe taught me to accept things rather than trying to fight them all the time.”
The words made her think of her dad and her brothers and that feeling of anger bubbling inside her. She thought of that Company Class, her desperation to fit in, to slot back into place and forget about everything else.
Dylan glanced up again through those impossibly thick lashes and with a wry smile, added, “I’m pretty darn good at meditating, too.”
Willow laughed then shook her head at the idea. “I’m terrible at meditating. All I want to do is say something. It’s so boring.”
“You don’t like being alone with your thoughts, Willow?”
“No!” She grinned. “I like being around people. I like it when everyone’s talking and there’s music and life. If I have to sit and do nothing, my mind replays all my steps and performances, everything that’s gone wrong and I just think about what I could do better, you know?”
He narrowed his eyes, elbow on the back of the booth, resting his head on his fist. “Sounds pretty tiring to me.”
She tore the rest of the label off the bottle, feeling like she’d accidentally revealed too much about herself. “What about you?” she asked, her turn to sit back now and assess. “You prefer being on your own? Don’t like being around people?”
He looked up, blue eyes dark in the shadowy light catching hers. “I like being around some people.”
She looked down at her beer bottle, embarrassed, coy. Felt a burst of excitement flutter through her.
The music changed and someone called out about the start of line dancing. A bunch of regulars, who’d obviously been waiting for it to start now stood up from their seats and headed over to a different part of the bar.
Dylan turned and watched them go. Then, glancing back he smiled, kind of mischievous and said, “You wanna dance?”
Willow felt her heart flutter again under that look of his. She watched a bunch of ladies heading toward where the music was. “Well, I have got my boots on,” she said, lifting one foot to show her favorite beat-up brown cowboy boots.
Dylan swigged the last of his beer, stood up from the booth and said, “Let’s go, then.”
The room was like any country bar. There was a band set up in one corner, a disco ball and colored strobe lighting, people were taking their places in the rows—a bit like in Company Class, it felt like they all had their usual positions.
Dylan and Willow went and stood at the back.
She said, “I won’t be able to do it all. ”
Dylan gave the room a cursory glance—most people were over sixty and one of the oldest women in the front row was dancing with a stick—and said, “I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
The music was loud and they played some of Willow’s favorites from when she was a kid and there would be line dancing at the Redemption River Summer Fair. When she was really tiny, her dad would lift her up on his shoulders so she could see everything that was going on.
Dylan was next to her, half concentrating on trying to follow, half smiling because he kept missing his steps.
Willow found herself loving it, half doing what she was meant to, half sidestepping, half just laughing at Dylan.
She took a seat when she needed a breather, then after a moment, Dylan came over and pulled her back up, fixing his arm around her waist to keep her steady.
They danced close, him taking most of her weight, effortless, as if she was on stage.
When the band took a break, he said, “You had enough?”
Willow could have danced all night like that, but she knew she shouldn’t, not just ’cause of her injury but being held close tight by him was dangerous enough. “Yeah.”
They went back to their booth, Dylan got more drinks. Willow pulled her sweatshirt off to cool down and sat waiting, could still feel what it was like to dance next to him, smell his skin, have his arm supporting her, his fingers pressed into her waist.
She watched him waiting at the bar, studied his profile, the stillness in his features.
She thought of the hammock that she’d seen on the back porch of the house.
She imagined him in Tibet searching out peace.
None of that aligned with Dylan Hawkins, swaggering football star with a granite-hard stare and a self-assurance that had all the girls weak at the knees.
“Here you go,” he said, putting a bottle down in front of her.
She thanked him, watched as he took a gulp.
When he put the drink down he said, “What?”
She said, “What really happened to you?”