Elliot #3
“So, about dinner…”
I clear my throat, trying to remember what the fuck I came here for in the first place as I turn back to face her. “Yes?”
“What time on Friday?”
“Uh, six.”
She nods. “Okay. I’ll be there.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“Why can’t I just meet you at your parents’ house?”
“It would look odd if we showed up separately, don’t you think?”
She hums. “Right. Sorry, it’s just…”
“Hard to remember what it’s like being in a relationship?” I finish for her.
She huffs out a laugh before heading over to the bucket seats resting on the ground beside the car. “Uh, yeah. You could say that. Although seeing Vinnie at the press junket brought back a bunch of shit from our relationship I’d rather forget.”
A twinge of jealousy squeezes the center of my chest. “You saw him?”
Her eyes meet mine again. “Well, yeah. He was there for press stuff too. I was hoping to avoid him, but…” She inhales deeply and then mutters, “No such luck.”
“What happened?”
She shakes her head before bending down to lift the seat and carry it over to the car. I race over to help her, but she laughs. “What are you doing?”
I attempt to take the seat from her, but she pulls it away from me.
“I was trying to help you.”
Her eyebrow arches. “You think I haven’t done this a thousand times on my own?”
Twisting back to the car, I consider her words before turning back to face her. “Okay, fair point.”
“Besides, no one is touching the Porsche except me.” When I move out of her way, she slides the seat into the body of the car and then stands upright again.
“Why?”
“Why what?” she asks, clearly confused by my question.
“Why aren’t you going to let anyone help you?”
“Because I’ll be damned if anyone else tries to take credit for it.” There’s a bite to her words that makes me want to know exactly what she means.
“Has that happened before?” She darts her eyes from mine and moves over to the other seat, ignoring me. “It has, hasn’t it?”
“Don’t worry about it, Elliot,” she says, moving around me and back to the car, this time placing the seat in the driver’s side.
“Don’t you think this is something that I should know, Dilynne? Especially if you’re my fiancée?”
Sighing, she relents and looks me straight in the eye when she says, “Yes, it’s happened before.”
“When?”
“The last time I was at Motorlux.”
“You’ve entered this show before?”
She shakes her head. “No, but my boyfriend did, and I’m the one who helped him win.”
And everything finally clicks into place. “Vinnie?”
“Yup,” she nods. “So now you understand why this event is so important to me.”
I watch her move around the shop, gathering tools so naturally like she could do it in her sleep. This is her domain, her home away from home.
And that’s when it hits me: I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Dilynne at work.
I scour the garage, feeling like I just entered an alternate universe, and on some level I have. I have no clue what any of this shit is. Dilynne has done all of the maintenance on my truck over the years, and I’ve never thought twice about it. But that’s because I knew she was the expert.
But seeing her in her element now is making me wonder why I never really appreciated her skills before.
Maybe because she’s been too busy hating you and vice versa for you to notice, Elliot.
“Your interview was great, Dilynne. There’s no way anyone is going to doubt that you belong there.”
“Ha. Easy for you to say. The thing is, I did that interview before I ran into Vinnie, thank God. Because after that conversation, the drive home was…” Her jaw tightens as she looks away from me. “Not fun.”
“He really did a number on you, didn’t he?”
Our gazes lock.
“Tori did a number on you too, huh?” she fires back.
“She did.”
Dilynne didn’t just check on me over the past year because she was trying to be my friend. She did it because she has firsthand experience with the type of betrayal I went through—something she’s vaguely communicated to me, but tonight, it all became so much clearer.
Fuck. Why does this make me even more drawn to her?
“When you let someone in and they make you question yourself, it’s pretty hard to recover from it.”
“I can see now why you understand that so much.”
She lifts her eyebrows. “Yup. Lucky me.”
Before she can close herself off again, I step closer to her, her eyes tracking my movements until our chests are practically pressed together once more. Every nerve in my body fires, burning hotter and faster with each time we touch.
I’m in so much fucking trouble, but I’m beginning to think there’s no better person to get in trouble with than Dilynne.
Tipping her chin up with my thumb and forefinger, I wait for her gaze to soften before I speak. “I promise that while I’m at that show with you, I won’t let anyone doubt that you belong there, okay?”
Her eyes widen. “Is that so?”
“Well, I mean, that was one of the rules you suggested, right? For me to show admiration for you?”
She nods once. “It was.”
“If there is anything that I have learned about you over the years, Dilynne Clark, it’s that you are not someone to underestimate in the slightest. And I’m sorry that some insecure man made you doubt yourself in the first place.”
Dilynne grows so quiet that I’m afraid I’ve said the wrong thing. But when she finally replies, it nearly rocks me. “Thank you,” she says in barely a whisper. “You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”