Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Willow had been invited to Brodie’s house along with her brothers and their respective partners for dinner.
Brodie had taken over the Starlight Apple Orchard when he’d settled back in Autumn Falls and had completely renovated the insides of the place.
He’d kept the mid-century vibe, but everything had been updated, even the rickety lean-to out the back had become a beautiful glass extension, resembling an orangery with trailing plants and terracotta tiled floor.
It was there they had dinner, all seated round a long white table, where they could look out at the apple trees, festoon lights twinkling in the dusk.
She was glad to be away from the ranch, her cheeks speckled as red as pomegranates when her mom asked her about her day.
All she could visualize was the feel of Dylan’s washboard stomach under her hand, which, once she had placed it there, she couldn’t remove for fear of drawing attention to it.
How did he still make her feel like a gauche high schooler?
She’d danced for the British king and queen at the Royal Opera House, sultans in the Middle East, the US President, for goodness’ sake, and yet she could barely sit side by side on a riverbank with Dylan Hawkins without losing all sense of herself.
It was good that he was leaving tomorrow. Yet the thought of it suddenly made her time back in Autumn Falls seem awfully gray.
Brodie had ordered pizzas from Gino’s and there were only a few slices left.
“Imagine if your mom saw us,” said Maeve, Brodie’s girlfriend, as she folded up the finished pizza boxes. “She’d be horrified by the catering.”
“We’re busy people!” Brodie replied waving away her concern.
Maeve still supposedly lived next door with her and Brodie’s daughter, Zoey, but as far as Willow could tell they spent all their time at the orchard. Zoey was currently meant to be asleep upstairs, but they all knew she was reading by torchlight.
Opposite her, Noah slung his arm on the back of Ren’s chair, his fingers toying absently with her cropped blond hair. “I think Mom’s got other things on her mind right now, with Dad fixating on the whole Hawkins thing.”
Willow’s eyes flicked up at the mention of the Hawkins.
She ran her fingertip around the top of her glass, feeling her cheeks get warm and not trusting herself to speak.
She should tell them Dylan was heading off, but that would mean she’d spoken to him.
She wondered where he’d go, what he’d do next.
Where did Dylan Hawkins live when he wasn’t on the ranch next to theirs?
“Can someone tell me what’s so bad about the Hawkins family?” asked Ren, Noah’s girlfriend and the only person around the table who hadn’t gone to Autumn Falls High.
“They’re just bad people,” Brodie replied without much thought. “Bad apples,” he added with a grin, as if the idea just came to him and he liked how it tied in with his orchard.
Ren rolled her eyes. “No one’s all bad, Brodie.”
Brodie tipped his head in disagreement. “They don’t like us, we don’t like them, it’s as simple as that,” he said, grabbing a bit of pepperoni off Maeve’s pizza slice.
Maeve smacked his hand away from her food. “Dylan was in my math class at school—I remember him being really good at math, but he was always being sent to see the principal.”
Willow pictured her palm on the warm, damp skin of Dylan’s stomach.
“Were you friends?” asked Ren, leaning forward eager for information.
“No way!” Maeve shook her head. “I was a goody-goody. He was far too cool for me.”
Ren laughed.
Brodie didn’t like that answer and snorting under his breath said, “All I remember is him thinking he was God’s gift to football.”
Willow felt herself getting hotter, it wasn’t a subject she wanted to discuss.
She saw herself racing across the Hawkins land in the four-wheeler, swimming in her shorts and vest, barely able to tear her eyes away when Dylan pulled himself out the water topless for a go on the rope swing.
All of it so completely wrong. Yet, she had felt strangely alive, something she hadn’t felt since collapsing on stage.
It made her sit forward, chin resting on her hand as she said, “Wasn’t that you, Brodie? ”
There was some laughter around the table.
Brodie threw her a withering look. “Luckily enough, I was God’s gift to football.”
She rolled her eyes. “In your dreams.”
“There’s no way this can all just be about football!” Ren said, aghast.
Logan sat forward then, shaking his head.
“It goes way back, Ren. Our great-grandpa supposedly won a piece of land from the Hawkins in a game of cards. That whole section, from their place up to the north field. They claimed he cheated.” Logan shrugged.
“Everyone else around the table said it was won fair and square.”
Brodie cut in then, “So they stole half of our family’s cattle, drove it out one night, sold it all off and nearly broke Silver Sky Ranch because of it.” He sat back and took a sip of wine, brow raised in Ren’s direction, as if proving that they were indeed bad apples.
Logan carried on as if Brodie hadn’t said anything.
“There’s been a lot of accusations over the years—missing cattle, missing horses, poisoned water, that kind of thing.
I hate to agree with Brodie, but when it comes to the Hawkins family, they’re bad blood.
Everyone in town would tell you the same. ”
Willow saw the lime-green light flickering over Dylan’s face, the water trickling down his cheek.
“Don’t forget, old man Hawkins stole Dad’s fiancée,” Brodie added, smug that Logan had agreed with him.
Ren almost choked on her wine. “He stole Martha?”
Noah shook his head. “No, it was before Mom.”
Bella sat forward then, as if a memory was coming back to her, and said to Logan, “Didn’t you pay off a debt or a loan to a Hawkins that Emmett wasn’t happy about.”
Logan sighed regretfully. “Yeah, that was Bob Hawkins, Dylan’s dad. It was while we were in the band, the ranch was failing. Dad had a bad loan out with some shark, Bob saw his chance, bought it up, hiked up the interest till Silver Sky was teetering on nothing but debt.”
Noah lounged back in his seat. “Bob Hawkins would have loved every minute of that. Can you imagine if Silver Sky was owned by him now?”
Willow didn’t have to imagine that time; she could picture the moments perfectly.
Watching secretly as her mom wiped away tears at the kitchen table.
Her dad sitting silent and immutable. Arguing with him was like fighting against a wall.
She’d never heard her mom shout like she did then.
Bob Hawkins was going to take the ranch and they had no money to stop him.
The only people with the money were her brothers who Emmett had washed his hands of when they’d left.
She remembered her dad thumping his fist down on the table and saying with fierce determination, “Don’t you dare tell those boys, you hear me? I will find a way.”
Willow remembered the next day at school, when she had waited for Dylan after practice.
You couldn’t call what they had a relationship, more an understanding.
They barely spoke to each other. But that day she’d been so desperate that, before he could do anything, she’d put her hand on his chest, the fabric of his football shirt scrunching under her palm, and said pleadingly, “You have to stop your dad from taking our ranch.”
Dylan had taken a step back in surprise.
“Please!”
He’d looked down at the floor. “He doesn’t listen to me.”
“Please, you’ve gotta try,” Willow begged, moving closer. “Please?”
Dylan had shaken his head again, said, “It won’t make any difference. I’m sorry.” Then he’d reached out a hand and pulled her toward him. They had stopped talking after that.
At the table, Maeve was about to take a bite of pizza but paused, looking confused. “Why wasn’t Emmett happy that you paid off the debt?”
“Because he’s a stubborn fool who didn’t want anything off us,” Brodie replied, topping up the glasses. “Hated the band, refused to take a cent of the profits.”
“I think he was struggling with things at the time,” Logan offered, slightly more diplomatically.
Willow scoffed without meaning to and suddenly found all eyes were on her.
“You okay, Willow?” Brodie asked, brows raised like he could sense she had something to say.
“Fine,” she replied. She wondered why it was always her dad who got the sympathy, the attention, always him who was the one who struggled when the boys left. Never their mom. Never her.
As if reading her mind, Ren sat forward and said, “It must have been tough for you, Willow, I imagine. You were still living here at that time, yeah?”
Willow noticed the looks of varying surprise on her brothers’ faces, like the idea had never really occurred to them.
She imagined Dylan watching her now, his half-smile lazily mocking her. Perfect little Willow who always did what she was told.
It was good he was leaving. No more knowing, lingering looks.
“It wasn’t great,” she replied, keeping her gaze on the flickering candles in the center of the table. She felt rather than saw the shift in the room, the brothers’ discomfort. They’d never even thought about who they left behind.
Ren leaned forward, elbows on the table, never one to shy away from a topic, she said, “Did you know about the loan?”
Willow felt her cheeks color again; she reached forward for her water glass.
Remembered the sleepless nights, the fighting, the pleading.
The doors slammed so hard that glasses rattled on the shelves.
She remembered her mom shouting, “My goodness, Emmett, I hope we do lose the ranch, because I don’t want to spend another minute here with you.
” She remembered sitting on the floor of her bedroom, her back against the door, listening to the last shreds of her family falling apart around her.
“Who do you think told Logan?” she asked, before taking a welcome cool sip. It reminded her of jumping off that rope. The burst of icy water on burning hot skin. Rising to the surface, Dylan right there, hair slicked back, eyes smiling. Why did her thoughts have to come back to Dylan?
Across the table, Noah looked momentarily shocked.
Brodie sat forward with surprise. “I didn’t know that.”
Willow almost scoffed again, who did they think told Logan? That he’d somehow magicked the information from thin air?
Noah frowned. “Does Dad know?”
“Oh, yeah.” Willow laughed mirthlessly, putting her glass down and folding her arms across her chest. “He knew, all right. You think it was bad for me in that house when you lot left. Well, it got worse, believe me.” Strangely when she said it, she found the words choking in her throat.
Rather than the cool and aloof—sardonic, even—that she’d been going for, she felt suddenly like she was maybe about to cry.
She could see the awareness on Ren’s face, but didn’t look at anyone else.
She’d never said anything to her brothers about what it was like when they left.
A house that was once full of light and color suddenly dark.
Her dad once strict but kind, with a twinkly eyed soft spot for Willow, suddenly sullen and vacant.
Her mom recovering from chemo. Everything shadowy.
Never quite the same. To Willow, it was like if she could just find the switch, she could throw it all back into the light. But she never found the switch.
Now, Willow wanted to suck the words back in. She pulled her hair out of the knot on top of her head, she’d left it to curl naturally and now felt stupid and vulnerable for doing so, she ruffled it up with her hand for something to do.
A silence descended around the table. Awkward and uneasy.
She was about to make a joke, say something to lighten the mood, when Zoey suddenly appeared in her strawberry-print pajamas, yawning and saying, “I can’t sleep.”
Maeve said, “Of course you can, you just need to stop reading and shut your eyes.”
Zoey looked guiltily like she’d been found out, but then when she spotted Willow, she seemed to hit upon a new distraction. She came running over saying, “Aunty Willow! I’ve been watching this show on the TV, and I think I want to be a cheerleader. Do you think you can teach me?”
Willow laughed at the exuberance. “I’ve never been a cheerleader, Zoey.”
“Yeah, but you know how to dance. Can you teach me? Just the basics.”
It would be hard to say no to Zoey, ever, because she was just so darn cute, had the same dimples in her cheeks and twinkle in her eye as Brodie. “’Course I can,” she replied, poking Zoey in the tummy and making her giggle. “But only if you go to bed.”
Zoey considered it, then said, “Can my friend Suki come, too?”
“If you go to bed.”
“And Mindy?”
“Zoey!” Maeve warned.
“Yes!” Willow rolled her eyes good naturedly. “They can all come. Now bed!”
Zoey skipped off, grinning.
The subject around the table changed, as if everyone was pleased with the chance to talk about something else.
Brodie, however, nudged her with his foot under the table and said in a low voice, “You all right?”
She made a face like he was being weird. “Of course.”