Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Willow followed Dylan out of the bar, up the steps and into the cooler night air.
It was unsettling to hear him talk about a past that she had laid out completely differently in her head.
All the while she was listening to him, she was rearranging the puzzle pieces, realizing that what she’d thought meant one thing, actually meant another.
Like how Dylan had looked at her that day and the fact he hadn’t met her gaze when he’d stood by his dad on their land.
How his mother would always turn away if they walked past her in the street.
Why Dylan was known for being so fearless on the football field, like he had nothing at all to lose.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“Up at the motel.” She pointed ahead past the racetrack. Outside the bar, everything seemed immediately less intimate, as if what had been said hadn’t, the shock of the cool air putting their shields back in place.
“I’ll walk you,” he said. “Let me just grab Elvis.”
They took a detour past Dylan’s van to pick up the dog who wasn’t pleased about being woken up. Then carried on in the direction of the motel.
Willow pulled her sweater on, retied her hair. The sidewalk was empty, the full moon giving everything a ghostly white glow while the shadow of the mountain loomed on the horizon.
Her arm brushed his as they walked, and she didn’t step away. She felt an urge to let her fingers curl gently into his, hold on to him tightly.
“I wanted to apologize to you after it all happened,” he said. “I wanted to explain, I just didn’t have the words back then.”
Willow’s stomach clenched at the thought of snubbing him in the school hallways.
“You’d asked me to try and stop him but—” he laughed, resigned “—he wasn’t a man to be stopped by anyone.”
Wildwood was a small town, the racetrack dominating one area, the mountains shadowing the other side. There was a church up ahead of them, white with a bell tower, and manicured gardens in front.
Willow wondered what her dad would think if he could hear Dylan talking now; whether it would rearrange his memories, too, or whether he’d remain stubbornly affronted.
“You want to know something funny,” Dylan went on, and as she glanced up to listen, his eyes creased with a smile. “If I’d had to tell someone back then, I think you might have been the only one.”
Willow scoffed. “Dylan, all we did was make out, you never spoke to me!”
He tipped his head in acknowledgment of the fact. “That’s true.” He laughed. “Maybe I wouldn’t have said anything. I think part of me was envious of you ’cause you had everything. You had this big family who all meant something to each other. This family that even my mom wanted to be a part of.”
Willow almost stopped walking. She had never once imagined Dylan envying them.
“I might not have told you, you’re right,” he said, “but I sure as heck missed you when you left. You were the only good thing about the place—except for football.”
“Except for football,” she repeated with a smile, while inside her heart tightened at his words.
They carried on in silence up the main street.
The music from a bar spilling out onto the sidewalk.
The shops all shuttered up. She could hear the sound of their footsteps and Elvis’s paws on the concrete.
Clouds drifted over the moon, the mountain a dark silhouette alongside them.
They went past flags fluttering in the streetlight, flowers in beds lining the path, until the landscape changed to grass and pines and the road widened and they reached The Wildwood Motel, the sign lit in red neon.
“Okay, well…” She gestured up to the row of rooms. “This is me.”
He nodded, hands in his pockets, the moonlight catching his sun-bleached hair, his eyes half smiling like always.
But all she could see when she looked at him was how he used to be—young and angry, the hard, sharp planes of his face, his eyes narrowed in warning.
She remembered the look he gave her in the bar when she’d asked what happened to him, the sparkle of sadness in his eyes when he talked.
Without thinking about it, she reached up, drew his head down to her and pressed her lips urgently against his.
It felt like an instinct, a need, to do just what she had to do in that moment.
She wanted to taste him, to be part of him, to take some of what he’d said away and show him that life didn’t have to be like that.
She wanted him to be young again and for her to have had the courage to talk to him properly.
She wanted to apologize to him for her family and the way they treated him.
But mostly, she just had to kiss him because she couldn’t not.
Dylan got over the moment of surprise pretty quick, he thrust his hands into her hair, cradling the back of her head, while their lips met like firecrackers. Desperate and delirious, her palms pressing against his jaw, mouths crushed together, barely breathing.
When they heard a car drive by, illuminating them in a flash of headlights, they split immediately apart, Dylan’s hands dropping to his sides as he glanced around at the now empty road and the rows of motel rooms, and said with a wry smile, “I think probably this isn’t the way to behave in public.”
Willow sniggered, biting her lip suddenly embarrassed. “I think you might be right.”
He reached up and traced the line of her necklace, his eyes suddenly more serious as he looked into hers. Then, hooking the chain with his finger, he gave it a gentle tug in his direction. Leaning forward a fraction, he kissed her softly, slow like there was no hurry in his world.
It was a different kind of kiss, more like how she remembered being kissed by him. Arrogant and amused, with a teasingly, slow-burning confidence that made her lean in almost drunkenly for more. But as soon as she did, he pulled back and she looked up to see the smile dancing in his gaze.
“Goodnight, Willow,” he said, before her mind could catch up. Then he clicked his fingers for Elvis to follow and strolled back in the direction of his van.