Chapter 2
2
DOMINIC
The winding roads of Avalon are a far cry from the towering skyscrapers and crammed sidewalks of Manhattan. As I drive at a snail’s pace through the narrow lanes, past the storefronts that look like they haven’t changed since the 1800s, I’m reminded why I was so relieved to put this whole town in my rearview in the first place. The air of numb complacency is suffocating, clinging to every person, building, and fucking tree like a thick fog.
Everybody’s grandma knows everybody’s grandma, and they’re all perfectly content with just being small-minded, small-town people. Fuck, just the idea of growing old in a place like this is enough to make me physically ill…
So why did I even come to this town full of irreverent people?
Oh, yeah. Her.
I arrive at the coffee house twenty minutes early, parking across the street where I have a clear view of the entrance. The building is an old, converted church, its weathered stone fa?ade now adorned with a bright, tacky sign reading ‘ Heavenly Brews ’.
I roll my eyes at the painfully unoriginal pun, just like I used to do every time I passed it as a teenager. The bad joke is almost as ridiculous as the fact that this place is an old church, but everyone in town knows it as the coffee house by the old church. That’s because it sits beside the crumbling ruins of an even older church, complete with glassless windows and an overgrown graveyard.
So many churches in such a small place.
I check my watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, drumming my fingers impatiently on my steering wheel as I warily eye the cobbled street that stretches before me. The urge to start the car and head straight back to my city is a lingering temptation, though not as strong as the one to stay.
Just as I’m about to write both impulses off completely, a flash of golden hair catches my eye. My heart stutters in my chest as I watch a young woman who can only be Shiloh march down the street, a reluctant sort of determination in her every step.
She’s something entirely different from the awkward teenager I remember, yet undeniably familiar. Her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, a chaos of escaping strands framing her face as if meant to tell the world she doesn’t give a damn about her appearance. Yet, the effect is frustratingly appealing.
I, myself, have a certain appetite for reducing a woman to an artful kind of mess.
My gaze travels down her body, spurred on by primal curiosity. The years have been kind to my little Shy Girl, filling out soft curves in all the right places. Even in simple jeans and a worn leather jacket that I’m pretty sure was handed down from her dad, she looks good enough to eat.
Fuck, it’s been years since I’ve seen her.
She was fifteen back then, just a year younger than I was when my own father requested that I go and live with him in New York. I was always taller than her when we were kids, but now, eleven years later, I stand at a healthy six-three. When we’re face to face once again, I know that I’ll tower over her five-foot-four-ish frame.
A sudden, unbidden thought flashes through my mind as I watch her approach the coffee house. A forbidden musing on how easy it would be to pick her up, throw her around a bit maybe. She looks like a fragile little thing I’d very much enjoy toying with. I wonder what it’d be like to devour her…
We wrestled sometimes as kids. Or rather, I’d chase her and pin her down. She always claimed she hated our silly game, but I knew differently. I could see the thrill in her eyes every time. Perhaps if I hadn’t moved away, if we’d carried on playing for a couple more years, I might have done more to feed my addiction, seeing that look on her flushed face. I’ve never seen its allure matched in any woman I’ve pinned down since.
I shake my head and force a frustrated exhale through my nose. I left that messy confusion behind me a long time ago.
Shiloh hesitates at the door to the coffee house, her shoulders rising and falling as if she’s taking her own deep breath. I allow myself a small smirk.
Good. I hope she’s nervous. It was always fun to watch my Shy Girl stumble.
Unable to resist any longer, I slip out of my car and cross the street, timing my arrival so I reach the door just as she’s pulling it open. She nearly jumps out of her skin as my fingers close around the bar above hers. I try and fail to not relish her stunned little yelp.
“You’re late,” I say by way of greeting, keeping my tone clipped and distant. She doesn’t need to know I was craving this moment the entire two and a half hours it took me to drive here.
Her sharp, ice-blue eyes narrow. “I was late by like, two minutes,” she snaps. “And for the record, it’s nice to see you too, Dom.”
I don’t respond, simply holding the door open with an expression of exaggerated expectation, as if I’m not sure she knows that these things were originally invented for walking through. She rolls her eyes and stalks inside with a loud scoff, making her way to a vacant table in the corner of the almost-empty establishment.
And just like that, I’m reliving my old favorite hobby. Pissing her the fuck off.
An awkward silence settles over us both as we sit. I lean back in my chair, adopting an air of bored indifference while I covertly study her. Shiloh fidgets with the zipper on her jacket for a full minute before finally shrugging it off and signaling the waitress for two cups of shitty coffee. Her uncomfortable squirming and avoidance of eye contact give me ample opportunity to rake my gaze over her T-shirt clad chest.
“So, um…how’s New York?” she finally stutters, the feeble attempt at small talk grating on my nerves already.
“Let’s skip the pleasantries.” I dismiss the question with a swipe of my hand through the air. I haven’t bothered to take off my own thick overcoat, or my black leather gloves–a fact that seems to snare Shiloh’s attention. “I’m not here for a cozy catch up.”
Her plump lips press together into a thin line that has me immediately missing their fullness. Eventually she nods, taking another deep breath before starting again. “Right. Well, about the Halloween Ball–”
“I didn’t come to talk about that either,” I interrupt, taking a perverse kind of pleasure in watching her hopeful expression dissipate, and then shift to barely concealed rage.
“Then why did you come, huh?” she blurts out. “Why drive all this way just to tell me to forget about it? Again? ” The way she spits at me through her teeth is fucking delicious.
I shrug, letting my own lips curve slightly into a mocking smirk. “The way you begged me over the phone made it sound like the town was crumbling down around your ears. I figured I would pass through and see for myself. Perhaps Blackwood Enterprises is interested in bulldozing the whole thing and building a bunch of warehouses. You know…something more useful .”
“I did not beg, ” she says incredulously, missing the rest of my insult to her pitiful little forever-autumn town.
“Oh, Shy Girl, I beg to differ.” I chuckle, unable to stop myself as that familiar enraged flush creeps up her cheeks.
Oh yeah, this was worth the drive.
She glares at me. “This isn’t a joke, Dom. The school really needs–”
“The school’s financial circumstances are not my concern,” I cut her off again, certain if I do it one more time, her head might actually explode. “Nor are your pathetic, small town traditions.”
“They are not pathetic,” Shiloh argues, leaning forward with a sudden furious intensity that almost catches me off guard. “The Halloween Ball has been a part of Avalon’s community calendar for more than a hundred years. It’s a celebration of our collective history and something that brings everyone together. And my students need it as much as everyone else loves it.” She takes in a long, hefty breath, and then opens her mouth to say more.
I hold up a hand. “Really? Do you have more to add to this heartfelt spiel?”
More daggers come from her pretty blue eyes. “Seriously, Dom, even you have to admit that everyone’s lot in life is propped up on the quality of their education. That was your whole fucking shtick, wasn’t it? Before you escaped. ” She punctuates the end of her tirade with air quotes, throwing in my face the memory of how I used to rant to our parents about our shitty high school and its shitty facilities.
Hmm. It seems as though nothing ever really changes.
Shiloh’s eyes still glow with that blue flame any time she gets into a passion vent about something. She used to always find any excuse to yell at me from some fucking soapbox or other. Before I left, I found myself starting to enjoy her rambling. But of course, that was before I came to my senses–and shoved those thoughts where they belong, beneath even my darkest layers. They’re trembling inside of me now, reminding me of what I left behind.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
But I swallow it. “Yes, yes, that’s all very touching,” I say, lacing my words with as much condescension as possible. “Poor, lonely Shy Girl, on her own for so long she’s desperate just to be a part of something. You’re like a nauseating Hallmark movie trying to save this fucking party of yours. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s not my problem. Blackwood Enterprises is not a charity. We don’t throw money at bullshit lost causes.”
The flash of hurt in her eyes is unmistakable, even as she tries to mask it with outrage. “Lost causes, huh? That’s what you still think of all of us here? Of me?” Her voice wavers a little this time, some of that bite softening as she questions my disregard for everything she clearly holds so dear.
Seeing her start to crumble so quickly is immediately boring.
Pathetic. It’s a shame really. Shiloh was always a smart girl, she could have done almost anything she wanted if she’d grown a fucking backbone and left this town for longer than it took her to get some worthless degrees at the nearest irrelevant college.
I refuse to pity her for making stupid life choices.
“What I think,” I answer, standing abruptly, “is that this was a waste of time. You need to grow the fuck up, Shiloh. This town is a worthless smudge on the map of a much wider world that’s leaving you behind.”
I stalk out without bothering to wait for a response. It would likely be weak and stuttered anyway. Little Shy Girl, still so disappointing.
And yet, as I climb into my car, I can’t quite name whatever impulse is holding me hostage as I fail to put the Mercedes in drive, once again watching the damn door of the coffeehouse. I tell myself I just want to enjoy that defeated look on her face a little longer. That I’ll be immensely satisfied to witness how her purposeful steps will have morphed into a sad dawdle when she finally drags herself from that table.
I’m momentarily distracted from my vigil by an incessant buzzing from inside my coat pocket. Fishing out my cell, I grind my teeth a little at the string of messages I find from my father.
Dad: What’s this I hear about you leaving the city?
Dad: I didn’t give you permission to take time off.
Dad: Turn your sorry ass around and get back here.
Dad: I have tasks that require your immediate attention.
I close my eyes and force another deep inhale, in serious danger of cracking a molar if I don’t get myself under control. I deserve some time off.
For all my lofty privileges and army of subordinates at the firm, I’m barely more than a glorified enforcer for my CEO father. My extensive capabilities are sorely wasted while I spend my days following his every order. Dante Blackwood couldn’t give less of a fuck about my ideas for the future of our company.
No, until my name is written in the top spot, all he wants me to think about is whatever he commands me to think about. More often than not, he has me thinking about how to make sure everyone else is also following his orders. Quickly and fearfully and without fucking question.
Maybe it’s some petty kind of late-stage rebellion that has me now emailing my assistant to cancel the rest of my week. Maybe it’s the intoxicating allure of watching my pretty little sister squirm some more.
Whatever the cause, all I know is that I feel the need to stick around in dear, old Avalon a little longer. And when Shiloh finally makes her exit from the coffee house, leather-clad arms wrapped around herself as she wanders back in the direction she came from, some phantom instinct has me turning my key in the ignition.
Just this once , I tell myself. I’ll probably be bored of her tomorrow.
But right now, all I desire to do is follow her.