Chapter 43 #2
His green eyes scan the barricades, the path leading into town, before making their way back to me.
I can see the hesitancy written all over his face.
He’s working out what to do. I give him a minute, understanding the weight of the decision he’s trying to make.
The risk he’s considering taking. Finally, he nods, and his shoulders sag.
“Okay, they must not be coming. And the barricades seem to be holding. Let’s go. ”
We turn to run into the lighthouse through the back door I came out of, our feet moving as quickly as they can.
As we start to open the door to go inside, a huge gust of wind roars down, blowing Dylan’s toque off his head before it sweeps across to the barricades, pushing them right over the edge.
I’m shocked. How the hell did that happen?
One minute, they were there, and the next—gone.
Poof. Like they weighed nothing. Like they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.
Dylan looks at me. “Nor’easter. Huge winds can come out of nowhere.”
Panic erupts through my body. My chest is tight, and I have to force air into my lungs. Dylan notices and steps inside with me. His feet are planted, unsure now what he’s going to do. What he’s supposed to do.
“Dylan, we have to go,” I cry out, and it snaps him out of his trance, moving with me toward the entry room, where the red door waits for us.
As I’m about to open it, the pull I feel is so strong.
Stronger than it’s ever felt for me. I watch as his body shifts closer and closer to the door in front of him.
“Do you feel that too?” I ask, and he nods, his gaze darting back and forth from the door to the window, looking out to the path.
Suddenly, his eyes widen, and my worst fear plays out right in front of me. Something in me knows there’s nothing I can do to change what’s about to happen. As I’m opening the door, two small figures appear in my view, moving toward us, one taller than the other.
Dylan’s face straightens, and he looks at me, eyes glistening. “I love you so much, Lucy. Please keep your promise.” With that, he places my purse over my shoulder, opens the door the rest of the way, and pushes me ahead and out as he jumps back and turns.
Before I can even react, I’m outside just as a wrecking ball comes flying near my head.
I don’t know if it’s the bright sunlight or the tears filling my eyes that blinds me, but a scream pours out of my open mouth, and then a man’s yell pierces through the air. Someone grabs me roughly by the waist, pulling me out of the way of the swinging ball, just in time.
“What the fuck are you doing over here?” he screams, his voice harsh and angry as he moves us both away from the lighthouse as the wrecking ball pivots at the last minute, barely missing us both.
“He’s in there! He’s in there! You have to go back for him!” I’m screaming at him like a lunatic, tears running down my face, my whole body shaking from adrenaline. “Dylan is in there! Please stop!”
“Miss, I don’t know what you’re on, but there’s no one in there.
We searched the place this morning. I have no idea where you just came from, but there’s no one else in there.
Now, get out of here! This is a construction zone—it’s dangerous.
” He leads me down the path away from the crew and the vehicles, my feet dragging on the ground, forcing him to push me in order to move me.
I’m crying and trying to fight back, but he’s stronger than me, and when I finally make it to my car, I turn around once more to try to stop him.
Before any words can leave my mouth, I watch in horror as the wrecking ball makes contact with the place I’ve called home for the last two months, taking chunks of concrete out with each hit, cracks running up the sides of the structure.
I scream, my heart shattering into tiny pieces like the lighthouse in front of me.
Falling down on my knees, I cry into my hands as the sounds of it being demolished ring in my ears.
When I finally look up, it’s becoming a pile of white and red rubble, completely knocked in half with loose bits of concrete all around.
Destroyed like my future. Like my hopes and dreams.
In a daze, I somehow manage to pick myself up off the ground and unlock my car, thankful that last night I had parked here instead of in town. Then I get in and buckle my seat belt. I look once more at the rubble and pound my hands against the steering wheel in anger.
Iris was right.
You can’t change the past, my dear.
We did everything we could, we fought like hell, but in the end, Dylan chose to stay behind to save those boys, knowing it meant he was going to die doing so.
As mad as I am at what he did, there was never any other choice he would make.
Of that, I’m certain. He would always choose to save someone else.
Even if it meant risking his own life. And pushing me through that door was a kindness he afforded me, knowing that I would have stayed behind and had to live in 1993 without him.
I start the car and drive away as the yellow truck with a crane attached to the back begins to lift the bottom half of the lighthouse.
It lay flat on the ground after the wrecking ball practically cut it in half.
I look away as I see a flash of red from the faded door I’ve become so accustomed to coming in and out of.
The door Dylan and I were supposed to leave from.
I blink back tears, trying to bring my vision back from blurred so I can drive home safely, determined to keep the promise to Dylan I never hoped to have to uphold.