Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Willow woke up with a giddiness in her chest. It was a feeling unlike anything she’d felt in years.
The anticipation of going on stage, for her, was always fraught with nerves—almost a fear—at the emotion and endurance about to be drawn from her.
Afterward, the thrill of the applause was rich and heady, a feeling of not just pleasure and satisfaction but also relief.
How she felt now in contrast was like mayflies dancing in her stomach.
The fear of the absolute wrongness of what she was about to do gave her a teenage light-headedness.
But she had been so busy training for ballet as a teen, she’d never done anything like creep out the house undetected, which was exactly what she was currently doing.
She almost made it out the door, but just as she was pulling on her sneakers, her mom appeared.
“Oh. Morning, honey, I thought you were still sleeping.”
“No, I’m just—” Willow pointed toward the door in a vague gesture of going out. Didn’t want to elaborate, pulling down her sleeves to hide the Band-Aid on her arm.
Her mom came over and said, “I felt bad about yesterday—sending you off on your own.”
“No, it’s okay, I didn’t mind,” Willow replied, shifting toward the exit, hand on the screen door.
“I was going to say we could spend the day together,” Martha said. “But if you’ve got plans…”
“I’m actually going back to the waterfall. I really enjoyed it yesterday, it was good to be on my own.” Oh, goodness, she was lying to her mom. She felt horrible. “Maybe when I’m back later, we can do something?” she offered.
“Whatever you like, honey.” Her mom leaned against the doorjamb, watching Willow backing away toward where the truck was parked. “Just so long as you’re happy, I don’t mind.”
Willow gave a tight smile then headed fast as she could walk to the truck, reversing out of there as her mom waved her off.
She could barely bring herself to look, she felt awful.
She almost changed her mind about going, but the flutter in her stomach was too powerful, threading its way through every muscle as she headed through the gates.
She thought of her NYC self—all manicured and well-groomed, drinking cocktails and going to low-lit restaurants with the kinds of men who wore tailored suits and expensively understated watches and lived in loft apartments.
What would that Willow think of this one?
She’d be wide-eyed in horror at the idea of reverting to a version of herself she hadn’t been since high school.
Dylan wasn’t in the house when she pulled up.
The dog was there, stretched out in the morning sunshine.
Willow got out the truck and taking her sunglasses off went over to knock at the front door.
No answer. She started to walk in the direction of the paddock.
The gray colt she’d seen the day before was grazing.
No sign of Thunder. She walked further, the dog heaved itself up and padded along next to her, all shaggy hair and melancholy eyes.
“So where is he, then?” she said as she bent to give him a scratch behind the ears.
It was when she looked up that she caught sight of Thunder in the distance hurtling back toward the ranch, Dylan in the saddle, his head low, his T-shirt pulling off his back at the speed.
Her hand stroking the dog paused, she stood up slowly, transfixed by the sight of the rider and horse, Thunder almost flying. Even from this distance, she could see Dylan’s brow furrowed in concentration, but also that he was smiling; loving it.
She leaned against the paddock fence and watched until Thunder slowed, the sun glinting off the contours of her muscles. When Dylan saw Willow, he raised a hand in acknowledgment without taking his attention from the ride.
As they got closer, Willow called, “That was incredible!”
Thunder looked majestic as always, barely affected by the exertion.
“Yeah, she’s something special, all right,” Dylan replied, sliding down from the saddle, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’ve trained a lot of horses in my time, she’s up there with the best of them.”
Willow walked alongside him as he took Thunder around into the yard. “Is that what you do?” she asked. “Train racehorses?”
“Among other things,” he replied, refilling Thunder’s water trough after she drank, then cupping his hands under the tap and soaking his hair and face.
Willow tried not to watch him, instead she looked around at the acres of ranch that had been left untouched for years. “You could have a great training center here.”
Dylan glanced over at the pasture. “Yeah,” he replied, noncommittal.
“Would you ever think about starting something like that up?”
“I’m not going to be here long enough,” he said, walking Thunder into her stall.
Willow found herself caught off-guard by the reply. She’d presumed that having inherited the place, Dylan was back now for good. “You’re not staying?” she called after him.
He didn’t turn but she heard him laugh at the idea. “No way.”
As Dylan brushed Thunder down, Willow sat on an old chair in the yard with the dog, trying to ignore the stab of disappointment she’d felt when he’d said he was only passing through.
It shouldn’t matter. She was only passing through herself.
“What’s the dog’s name?” she asked when he’d turned Thunder out and they walked together to the house.
“Elvis,” he replied.
Willow laughed. “That is not what I was expecting.”
“Nothing to do with me,” he said as he went inside to change, “he came with it.”
Willow waited with Elvis, trying to pretend what she was doing was totally normal.
Her leg was jiggling with nerves, she jumped every time she heard a car go by as she imagined her dad or Noah driving in, and all the while she felt the fluttering in her stomach at the fact she was here with Dylan, about to spend the morning with him.
She concentrated on the dog to take her mind off it and realized, as she scratched under his chin, that she didn’t often do nothing on her own, the sun gloriously bright, birds pecking at the dirt.
She looked around, wondering whether Dylan was going to sell the place.
It’d be weird having no forbidden Hawkins land at the back of their ranch.
She remembered as a kid, getting a fierce telling off when she and her brothers were caught in the woods daring each other to sneak as close to the boundary as they could.
She thought of the Hawkins ranch, always messy and unkempt compared to Silver Sky; the dogs barking, the noise of the motorbikes and the sound of bullets shooting holes in tin cans that made her dad’s jaw clench when he heard it.
She thought of when, as a teenager, she’d go up to the forest, just to escape the loneliness.
She’d see Dylan and Tyler, tops off, chopping wood, roping horses.
It was like a different world to Silver Sky—rough and unruly but somehow intoxicating.
She’d watch, silent and hidden, for as long as she could before the fear of being caught by her dad pulled her away.
Dylan came back out, showered and changed, wet hair slicked back. He wandered over to where she was sitting and said, “Ready?”
Willow found herself tongue-tied with teenage awkwardness.
“Yep,” was the best she could manage as a reply, and went to push herself up, but as she did, she realized her leg wouldn’t take the weight.
Before she could do anything, Dylan held out his hand for her to grasp.
The moment their palms touched she felt the shock of awareness at the contact and pulled away the moment she was safely on her feet.
She saw him smirk, looking suddenly like the old Dylan did.
“So, what are we doing?” she asked, trying to gloss over it.
He beckoned for her to follow him around the side of the house, out to the back where an old barn was just about still standing. “You can’t ride a horse,” he said, unlatching the rickety door and giving it a kick so it opened. “Doesn’t mean you can’t ride one of these…”
Inside were a couple of the dirt bikes the brothers used to ride and an ATV. They were old and muddy and had obviously sat for years under the heap of tarpaulin now on the concrete floor. “They work, I checked them last night.”
He checked them … for me.
For a second, Willow thought of the insurance company’s rules, but then she glanced and saw the wide smile on Dylan’s face and the glint of challenge in his eye and she didn’t think about them again.
“You take the four-wheeler,” he said, hauling open the double doors so they could get the bikes out. “There’s a track out in the far field. It’s pretty flat. We used to race there all the time.”
Willow walked over to the compact little four-wheeler, lifted the helmet off the seat. She glanced over at Dylan sitting astride one of the bikes. She imagined her teenage self, watching her now in awe.
“What d’ya think?” he asked, pulling on a helmet.
She climbed on the ATV, tried to play it as cool as she could. “I think, let’s go.”
She set off out of the barn, getting used to the controls, the dog barking where he stood at the entrance.
She didn’t know where she was going, but Dylan had gestured to somewhere in the distance and it didn’t matter anyway, because within seconds he’d overtaken her, his bike faster on the acceleration, leading the way across the grass.
Elvis ran along beside her before getting tired and dropping back.
The speed made her laugh on instinct. It felt like such a basic pleasure compared to her normal life and yet so exhilarating. Her ballet friends would be watching, perplexed.
The track when they got there was a huge expanse of dried, cracked mud. The odd tuft of grass breaking through. There were old jumps made out of now-splintered wood and others gouged out of the earth. But around the edge was a wide, flat circuit, perfect for racing.
She pulled up next to where he’d stopped, the vizor on his helmet raised, he said, “Start with one lap?”
She nodded, taking in the sight of him in his T-shirt and shorts, sitting astride his old bike. She wondered if he, too, craved some no-pressure juvenile excitement. “Your bike’s faster,” she called, “so I need a head start.”
Dylan laughed, deep and rumbling like he was being played and he knew it. “Fine,” he replied. “You can tell you had five older brothers?—”
Willow didn’t wait, cranking the four-wheeler up to full speed before Dylan had even put his vizor down.
She had the best time, better even perhaps than those few moments she’d been riding Thunder.
On the ATV there was no pressure on her knee, it was all just pure exhilaration.
They raced, they messed about on the jumps, they drove through the shaded ground of the pine forest, light glinting on the fallen needles.
All the while, in the back of her mind, was the bewilderment that she was here, hanging out with Dylan Hawkins.
Elvis watched, barking when they lapped him, then ran alongside into the trees.
But when he fell behind, Dylan told her to slow the four-wheeler and the dog climbed into the second seat and sat up, looking over the handlebars like a passenger.
They stopped when the forest opened out onto the river, the sky cloudless, the sun glinting down over the mountain and dancing off the water. Willow sat back in her seat with a sigh.
Dylan had stopped next to her. He pulled his helmet off and after a moment taking in the view, glanced at Elvis asleep next to her and said, “He seems to like you.”
She narrowed her eyes at the sleeping dog. “I get the feeling he likes anyone.”
Dylan tipped his head in acknowledgment.
In Willow’s mind, the look that followed between them was longer than it should have been. Or was she imagining it? As a teenager, a look like that from him had been almost painful, now, though, it shot the kind of thrill through her that she needed to take her mind off her life.
But then he nodded to her clothes and said, “You’re orange, by the way,” and she cringed inside at the idea she’d thought his look was flirtatious.
Glancing down at herself, she saw that her sweatshirt, her leggings, her skin were all bright ochre from the dust kicked up by the bike. “Oh, wow.”
Dylan pointed toward the glinting river. “I might wash off in there.”
“Seriously?” She frowned. “It’ll be freezing!
” Willow wasn’t too bothered by the temperature—she’d swum in cold water in Autumn Falls all the time with her brothers and her friends, jumping off the waterfall, falling out of canoes in the river—but swimming with Dylan suddenly seemed like a bad idea.
He might be exactly what she needed but temptation was better kept at arm’s length.
He strolled to the water’s edge, pulled his shirt off over his head and said, “Didn’t think you’d be bothered by that.” Then added, gaze lazily assessing, like he knew he was laying down a challenge, “Unless you’re chicken?”
Willow could leave now, use her mom as an excuse, say they’d made plans.
She’d had the fun Dylan promised her. The sensible thing would be to head back, get away from the Hawkins land and everything that went with it.
But Dylan was definitely now looking at her in a way he used to when they were at high school, there was that familiar assumption in his expression that she was out of her depth, as if to turn back now would mean the joke was on her.
Willow gave her hair a toss, raised her chin a little bit and said, “No, I’ll swim.”