Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
After Willow left, the rain didn’t stop.
The days merged into one ceaseless, gray drizzle.
Dylan stayed in Autumn Falls longer than he was expecting; every time he planned to leave someone came along asking him to look at one of their horses.
For some reason, he took on a couple of jobs that he had no need to.
Part of it, he had a niggling feeling, was because he didn’t want to give Thunder back.
The other part, maybe, was the connection to Willow.
It was strange to think of her gone, no longer across the strip of pine trees, up there in her bedroom with the pink drapes.
Also, he wondered whether there was maybe unfinished business with him and the house. He sat on the steps of his van at night thinking about what Willow had said before she left, the words going over in his head. That maybe it was time to stop running away.
He’d got to a point where he didn’t know what he was doing—running away by leaving, or putting things off by staying.
So he called Noah and set a date and time to return Thunder to Silver Sky.
He also sold him the gray colt, Mercury.
Unsure where he was headed next, Dylan couldn’t take him with him this time.
Once that was done, there was nothing keeping him at Autumn Falls.
After the call, he looked across at the paddock.
Thunder was out there nose up to the rain, she loved it.
Mercury was less fond of the weather, even in a rain sheet.
Dylan looked away, trying to ignore the pang of regret.
He was ignoring a lot of feelings lately.
When he turned, however, he caught sight of his reflection in the cracked glass of the front door and was surprised for a second by the fact there was a man staring back not a teenage boy.
He tipped his head back and looked up at the windows of the first floor, felt a shiver of what might be up there.
Then he looked back at himself, tall and broad in the reflection, yet hiding from the inside of a house.
Without giving himself time to think and change his mind, he went up the front steps and yanked open the front door.
There were the hallway and the kitchen and bathroom, the living room where Bella had sat.
He knew all of that. It was further down the hall and up the stairs that he’d avoided, being right there in the heart of the house.
He made himself head toward the staircase, past the living room and the mark on the wallpaper where his dad had hurled a hot iron.
The further he climbed up the stairs, the more he felt the walls closing in on him, heard the shouts and the crying.
Had to pause for a second with his hand on the banister.
He carried on up to the landing, the yellow patterned wallpaper reminding him what hell looked like.
He saw his parents’ bedroom, Tyler’s, Ruby’s—all her little dolls still lined up on the top of the dresser.
He wanted to step back but forced himself to stay.
To face it all. To keep looking. Heart thumping like a jackhammer, he pushed open the door of his own bedroom.
First thing he saw were his football trophies, and the sight made him close his eyes with a gut-punch of nostalgia.
And there was his jersey thrown on the back of the chair where he’d left it.
He walked forward without thinking and picked it up, held it tight in his hands, rested his face against it.
He could close his eyes and see the games, the wins, the feeling in those moments that was like nothing else.
He looked up and sighed. He’d never felt more trapped in his life than in that room and a single minute back in there was enough.
He turned and walked away, jersey still in his hand.
His dad had left Autumn Falls not long after Dylan did.
It turned out that after the whole loan business, Bob Hawkins didn’t have much interest in sticking around.
Took his money, settled on the other side of the country.
It was only when he died that Dylan discovered he’d met someone new.
When he met up with her, she said that his father was always a real gentleman.
Dylan wanted to but didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise, to destroy the legacy of his father in this woman’s eyes, in her heart. Where would have been the good in that?
It was the past. The only way to beat it was to make it live where it belonged.
He walked out of the house without looking back and headed over to the paddock.
He thought of Emmett Carter, how he’d looked that day when he came to find Willow, so different to how Dylan remembered him as a kid, his cheeks hollower, his arms thinner.
Was that what his dad had looked like at the end?
Weak? Small? Had he left him and his brother the house as a stark reminder of who they had been, or as a gift?
He knew what Tyler would say. Dylan left the question unanswered.
He wondered what it would have been like to confront his dad.
What would he have said? As he walked across the grass away from the house Dylan tried to picture Bob, the angry disgust on his face with every threat that Dylan had flinched from, every glib retort that had been beaten out of him.
Maybe he’d have asked him if that was what a father was meant to look like?
He reached the paddock where Thunder was out in the drizzle and Mercury was happily munching on straw in his stall.
Dylan went into the barn to get a saddle; he remembered Noah and Brodie being there and the three of them riding back to the Silver H together.
Growing up, Dylan had been so envious of the Carter brothers.
Of Emmett Carter being their dad, the way he looked at those boys.
Always a hand on their shoulders. Everyone knew how devastated Emmett had been when they’d left for the band.
Dylan wondered what his dad had felt when he’d gone upstairs after Dylan left and found his bedroom empty—anger at being defied most likely.
He took Thunder out. The rain gave way to broken shards of sunlight. They went toward to the Redemption River, crossed the water and rode out to Starlight Mountain. He felt different having faced up to what was in the house, unexpectedly lighter. Like he’d shed some of the darkness inside himself.
When they crossed back over the water, he let Thunder take things up a gear and she went off like a rocket, fastest he’d ever seen her. Sun breaking through, lighting the whole place up, Dylan found himself grinning the entire ride back.
They slowed only when they approached the wildflower meadow, and it was then that Dylan suddenly had the feeling of being watched.
He sat up in the saddle and looked around.
His eyes settling on the strip of pine forest that divided his land from Silver Sky just in time to see the slow rolling gait of a horse and its rider disappearing away through the trees.
He couldn’t make out the figure, but the horse looked decidedly like Emmett Carter’s. Bandit.
Dylan watched them go, his heart settling from the gallop, feeling strangely at peace.
He imagined Willow being smug if he told her.