Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
While she did a great job of ignoring Dylan, to her annoyance Willow couldn’t deny that everywhere she went, she had an eye out for him.
Sitting in the diner having coffee with Bella, she knew if he came in to grab takeout.
Grocery shopping, her ears seemed to be able to pick out his voice talking to one of the cashiers above all the rest of the noise.
If she was walking along the street and his bike went past, he’d rev it extra loud, and she’d have to look away to hide a smile.
It was all childish stuff, but it gave life a zing of excitement.
It made her start to enjoy her weekly dance classes with Zoey’s friends.
The evenings before, she found herself listening to Taylor Swift songs trying to choreograph routines for them to learn.
Everything seemed suddenly a little bit less serious, she snapped less when her mom asked her about how her knee was and she even offered to work some shifts in The Silver Pantry to help Martha out.
She found herself quite liking it, working alongside Ren who managed the café and constantly made Willow laugh, and she heard all the town gossip as she manned the checkout or served up coffee.
One afternoon, sitting up at the counter, eating a slice of coconut cake, Mrs. Rosely, who owned a ranch on the far side of town, said word was that Dylan Hawkins had worked miracles with a couple of the Sanderson family’s horses that they’d asked him for help with.
Mrs. Rosely said she was thinking of asking him to drop by to take a look at one of hers.
As she told Willow this, Hank Murphy, who was stocking up on homemade elderflower cordial, cut in to say that Mrs. Rosely was taking a big risk trusting a Hawkins.
Willow knew she should stay out of it, but instead found herself saying, “Dylan Hawkins is currently training one of Noah’s horses and doing an amazing job of it. I think you’d have no problem trusting him.”
Hank raised his bushy white brows in silent disagreement, but Mrs. Rosely seemed intrigued.
After her shifts, Willow would go to the studio or the gym. But as the weather got warmer and her knee started to get noticeably better and she could walk more easily, she started doing more exercise outside.
Each morning, as the sun rose over Starlight Mountain, burning away the swathe of milky-white cloud and turning the sky a vibrant blue, she would go for a swim in the town’s outdoor pool or cycle out to the mountains.
Insects buzzed, sweat glistened on her skin, she would lie in her bedroom after her shower with the fan on to chase away the hot, heavy air.
The river was as low as it had ever been and everyone, including the animals, was drowsy from the heat.
It was a couple of nights after Willow had defended Dylan to Mrs. Rosely, that she found the heat too unbearable to sleep.
She was in her bed at Silver Sky, pink rosebud bedcovers, sticky and uncomfortable, her sheet a tangle around her ankles.
She could hear both her dad and Rocky snoring.
Emmett down the hall and Rocky lying on the floor of her bedroom.
The full moon lit the room up through the curtains like streetlamps.
Suddenly, she heard a little thwack at her window.
She sat bolt upright, so did Rocky. “Shh, it’s okay,” she soothed the dog and crept to take a look at what the noise was.
Pulling back the curtain, she glanced down to see Dylan standing outside on the grass, another small stone in his hand, looking up to see if she’d heard the first one hit the glass.
Willow’s body shot through with equal measure thrill and panic.
She stuck her head out the already half-open window and hissed, “What are you doing here? My dad’ll kill you! ”
Dylan took a step forward, boyish smirk on his lips. “Only if he catches me.”
She looked over her shoulder back into her bedroom to check that no one had heard or was coming in. Rocky was next to her, nose pressed up to the windowsill, his tail wagging. She willed him not to bark.
“Why are you here?” She couldn’t help the wild tattoo of her heart that he had come to her.
“I want to show you something,” Dylan replied, voice low, eyes tempting. “Get down here.”
Willow tipped her head up to the ceiling. This was a very bad idea. She closed her eyes for a second. Rocky’s tail bashed excitedly against her legs. When she looked back out the window, Dylan was still there, watching with a sly grin on his face, enjoying her confliction.
“I don’t know why you’re smiling, I’m not coming.”
Dylan rolled his eyes, hands in the pockets of his shorts. “Sure you are.”
She shook her head in defiance. “No, I’m not.”
“Okay, fine.” He shrugged and started to walk away.
“No!” she replied, without even thinking. She saw him smile, his eyes twinkling with delight at her unintended insistence. She sighed. “Wait over there.” She pointed to the trees, “I’ll be five minutes.”
Willow pulled on some shorts and a loose blue T-shirt from the top of a pile of clean washing her mom had put in her room.
Her heart was thumping as she tried to move around as quietly as she could.
Rocky thought it was all a big game, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to sneak out without him whining at the front door and alerting her parents.
She wrote a note to say she couldn’t sleep and had gone for a walk, left it on her bed in case one of her parents should get up and find her room empty, then pulled the door closed and tiptoed along the landing, past her parents’ bedroom, cringing when the floorboard creaked, but the snoring continued.
Then she crept down the stairs. Luckily, the careless padding of Rocky’s feet on the wood disguised any sound she was making.
When she got to the kitchen, she stopped to fill Rocky’s bowl up with food and then searched around for her shoes in the dark, slipping out the side door while the dog was happily munching.
Dylan was waiting, eyes all lazy amusement.
“I don’t know why you look so happy,” she said. “This is tantamount to treason.”
He shrugged, unfazed. “Fun, though?”
She was too jumpy at the idea of being caught to fully register what was going on—that he was here at the ranch in the middle of the night. “We need to get out of here. How did you get in?”
He nodded in the direction of his land. “Through the trees.”
“But that’s all the way up there!” she said, despairing at the distance.
Dylan walked a few paces away and reaching down into the long grass, pulled up an old mountain bike that he’d obviously chucked there having cycled down the path. “Jump on,” he said, “I’ll give you a ride.”
Willow raised a brow disparagingly. “I’ve got my own bike, thanks.” Then it occurred to her that her bike was locked up in the garage and opening that would only take more time and risk waking her dad.
Dylan watched her as she came to the realization that if she was going with him, she would need to ride with him. He gestured toward the handlebars.
She sighed, then went reluctantly around to the front of the bike, and as Dylan started to pedal, she hoisted herself up on the handlebars, her legs dangling either side of the front wheel.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Last time was when she was about ten, riding with Brodie.
She didn’t allow herself to think about the damage it might do to her leg if she fell off.
Instead, she held on tight, Dylan cycling, his face near her shoulder, his bare tanned arms either side of her on the handlebars, and found herself starting to giggle as they got further from the ranch.
Relief that she’d made it out without being caught.
Suddenly awash with freedom. The bike wavering up the path with the weight of the two of them until the road plateaued and Dylan could pick up some speed and they cruised the rest of the way to where the two ranches met through the trees.
When they stopped and she got off the bike, she made herself take a step away, not give in to the nearness of him. As Dylan walked the bike through the trees and onto his land, Willow looked around and said, slightly offhand, “So what is it you want me to see?”
“It’s not here,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Where is it, then?”
“The waterfall.”
She made a face. “And what makes you think I’d go to the waterfall with you, Dylan? Which, incidentally, is back the way we’ve just come.”
Dylan laughed, it made his whole face soften, his eyes sparkle. “You really think I don’t know where the waterfall is? That’s the problem when two neighbors aren’t talking to each other, everything becomes ten times more difficult. We gotta go backward to go forward.”
She raised a brow. “Did the Zen masters teach you that?”
He cocked his head, looking at her with feigned disparagement. “No, it was pretty easy to work that one out for myself.”
“I’m still not going with you.”
He paused. “I think you will,” he said, eyes narrowing with sly self-assurance. “I think you want to.”
She crossed her arms. “And what makes you so certain?”
“Mrs. Rosely,” he replied without hesitation.
Willow swallowed.
“She drove right up here this morning, told me all about how Willow Carter had been singing my praises to her and Hank Murphy—who I imagine was less than complimentary given the fact I think my dad once sold him a couple of real dud horses.”
Willow started walking over toward the house just to avoid the cocky grin spreading on Dylan’s face.
“Apparently, you’d have no hesitation in recommending my services,” he went on, falling into step beside her. “And there I was, thinking you might be avoiding me.”
There was another bike leaning up against the old jacked-up truck in front of the house. Instead of acknowledging anything he’d said, Willow pointed at the bike. “Is that mine?”
Dylan barked a laugh, caught by the change of subject.
She bit down on a coy smile.
“It’s yours if you want it to be,” he replied. “You probably need to adjust the seat. I’ve checked the brakes, pumped up the tires.”
Willow paused on her way over to where the bike was propped and, glancing back over her shoulder, said, “I never knew you could be so considerate.”
He laughed again, but this time seemed a little bit less cocksure, as if it was only by accident that he’d revealed the effort he’d gone to.
She stored that realization away, tucking it close inside with a smile.
When she was happy with the height of her saddle, she asked, “How long have you been planning this?”
“Only since this evening—when I saw how low the river was,” he said; he was clearly trying to make up for the effort he’d put into getting the bike ready, and Willow wasn’t fooled. This had taken forethought and the idea of it made her almost giddy with anticipation.
Dylan got back on his bike, pushed his hair behind his ears, said, “You ready?”
“I guess so,” she replied, feigning indifference, and together they cycled out of the Hawkins ranch.