Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
“Happy holidays!”
The signs greeted Dash at JFK—in six different languages—but he was feeling anything but merry.
He’d spent all night travelling: first the long drive from Sweetbriar to Boston, then a stand-by flight out to New York.
Eight hours to feel like a complete worthless bastard, remembering the hurt look on Ellie’s face, and how she was trying so hard not to cry.
It had haunted him the whole journey, lingering like a shadow of guilt and regret he just couldn’t shake.
Now it was morning, and all he wanted to do was check into a hotel and sleep for three days straight.
Drinking sounded good too.
His cellphone rang as he was falling into a cab.
“What’s up?” It was his buddy, Blake. “How’s the wilderness treating you?”
“Change of plans,” Dash told him, then leaned forward to instruct the driver, “Manhattan. The Crosby Street Hotel, thanks.”
“Wait, you’re in the city?” Blake snorted. “I knew you couldn’t hack that rustic place for long.”
“I was hacking just fine,” Dash told him reluctantly as they drove away. “Until…” he stopped, feeling another tidal wave of guilt. “Well, there was this girl…”
“Uh oh.” Blake must have heard the weight in Dash’s voice. “What did you do?”
“Why do you think it was me that did something?”
“Because you have a long history of fucking things up,” Blake said, blunt but good-natured. “I know you don’t mean to,” he added. “But the minute some girl doesn’t live up to being the main character in that movie in your head, you call it quits and move on.”
His words cut, but Dash couldn’t deny there was truth in them too. “This was different.” He sighed. “I didn’t build her up to be some perfect dream girl, I knew all along she had flaws. That’s what made her so fascinating,” he explained. “I wrote sixty pages in two days flat. She was my muse!”
“And how did she feel about that?”
Trust Blake to cut right to the point.
“Not so great,” Dash admitted, feeling worthless all over again. “When she found out, she flipped. Wanted me to delete the whole thing.”
“And let me guess, you refused,” Blake finished for him.
“It’s good,” Dash said, pained. “The best thing I’ve ever written.”
“Then I guess that Oscar better be worth it,” Blake joked, then moved on like it was no big deal at all. “You going to be back for the holidays then? We’re having a get-together at our place, my brothers are coming out too, the whole family.”
“Sounds good,” Dash replied dully.
“OK, see you there. And Dash?” Blake paused.
“Maybe this girl isn’t the one, you wouldn’t be walking away if she really meant something, but one day, you’re going to meet someone who is.
Like I did with Zoey,” he added. “I was ready to quit the biggest movie of my career just to be with her, and I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
I know your writing matters to you, I understand that. But some things are more important.”
He said goodbye and hung up, but his words lingered.
You wouldn’t be walking away if she really meant something…
Ellie asked Dash to leave, she’d flat-out ordered him to go. He didn’t have a choice—did he?
Dash tried to shake it off. It was easy for Blake to say that; he was riding high, an A-list star with Hollywood at his feet.
But it was different for Dash, he still had something to prove.
He didn’t want to be on the cover of magazines, or his name up there in lights.
He wanted to make movies that changed people’s lives.
Where you walked out of the theater feeling like you saw something in the world that wasn’t there before.
That script had come pouring out of Dash like nothing else, the way it did when you knew those words are meant to be.
He could already tell this movie would be great.
Career-defining, door-opening, the kind of movie that would take his career to a whole new level.
And lose Ellie for good.
There were no two ways about it: he couldn’t have both.
If Dash turned in this script and moved ahead with the production, she would never forgive him.
He wouldn’t ever be able to take it back, this character would be out there in movie theaters and live on for years on DVDs and old cable reruns, lasting evidence of the choice he made and what he’d chosen to give up.
But if he deleted the draft and tried to cobble together something new, he would know his best work was in the garbage, and he might never produce something quite as good.
Ellie or the movie. His career, or a chance at love.
How was he supposed to pick?
The cab driver met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “Traffic, man,” he tutted, as they crawled along the airport road at a snail’s pace. “Heading home for the holidays?” he asked, friendly.
“Something like that.”
His folks were in Ireland. He would have booked a trip, or flown them out to LA, but he was too busy with this deadline.
“Best time of the year,” the cabbie continued cheerfully. “Got to be with the ones you love. Nothing like it.”
“Uh huh,” Dash murmured, staring out of the window at the bleak winter view.
The snow was piled in ugly slush on the side of the road, exhaust fumes clouding the air from all the cars honking and growling to get through.
He thought of Sweetbriar Cove, the powdery snowfall and crisp air.
Already, it felt too far away, like a scene in a movie he’d watched years ago and only vaguely remembered.
But Ellie, he remembered too well. Those blue eyes, mischievous and teasing. Her sassy mouth, the cascade of silky blonde hair…
And her body. Dash would remember the feel of her body against his until the day his mind wasted away.
She’s just a fling, he tried to tell himself.
Blake was right. She wasn’t the one. When Dash met the right woman, he’d know.
It would be easy, simple, no argument about it.
And life with Ellie would be anything but simple.
Hell, just a couple of days with her had turned his life upside down, scrambled Dash so badly that he couldn’t get her off his brain.
He sighed. What was he supposed to do, just turn around, go all the way back to Sweetbriar and beg for her forgiveness? Trash the best script he’d ever written and for what, the slim chance that their whirlwind romance could turn into something real?
Despite all the logical arguments playing out in his head, Dash realized he was playing with his phone, turning it over in his hands. The urge to hear Ellie’s voice was too strong to resist. He tapped to find the number at the inn and dialed.
It rang for a couple of beats. His heart was pounding.
Pull it together.
“Sweetbriar Inn, home of the Starbright Festival,” Ellie’s voice came down the line, so familiar it cut right through Dash’s chest. “How can I help you?”
He could picture her clear as day: leaning on the front desk, wearing another one of those crazy holiday sweaters, surrounded by the paperwork of some other small business she was busy rescuing.
“Hello?” she asked again, and he heard her stifling a yawn. “Can you hear me?”
There was another pause, then she hung up.
Dial tone.
Regret crashed through him, stronger than ever. He wanted to be right there with her, bringing a smile to those perfect lips, seeing the way her face changed when she was trying not to laugh.
He missed her.
He needed her.
He wanted that smile beside him, not just for a few days, but for good.
Damn.
The enormity of his mistake finally hit Dash, hard.
He had walked away. The first sign of trouble, and he’d bailed. He didn’t fight for her, he didn’t choose her the way he should have done. He’d let his own stupid insecurities and ambition drown out everything else, until he couldn’t see what was right in front of him.
The best thing that had ever happened to him.
Ellie.
This was one situation a last-minute rewrite wouldn’t fix. No words on the page could mend what was broken between them. He couldn’t just sit around and imagine their happy ending. He had to make it happen.
Right now.
“Change of plans,” Dash told the cab driver. Luckily they were still stuck circling the airport, not even out on the freeway yet. “Drop me off at the car rental center, right here.”
The driver raised an eyebrow, but didn’t disagree. “Sure thing, man.”
Dash quickly used his phone to search for direction back out to Cape Cod. It was a six-hour drive at least, more in this weather. That meant he could be back to Ellie before the end of the day.
The thought felt so damn right, he didn’t need to question it anymore. All he had to do was figure out a way to make this right.
He would think of something. He had a long drive ahead of him.