Chapter 23
Kelsi
Dylan raised his hand in a wave to Kelsi.
He was already waiting for her in his kayak off the end of her dock, his paddle resting across his lap as he floated on the calm water.
She quickly put her kayak in the water and climbed in, letting it bob a little as she found her balance in the water before she paddled to meet him.
Her stomach protested the rocking as her hangover threatened to make her breakfast reappear. After Dylan had left the bar, she and Cat drank a whole pitcher of beer. And by “she and Cat,” she meant that Cat forced Kelsi to drink the entire thing by herself.
She wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to Dylan, but they’d been having a good time before he left.
Too good a time. It had felt like no time had passed, and she was off-kilter.
Sheridan stayed with them for a while too—asking her if she’d liked the roses and how everything was going at work and with the case—before he got a phone call and headed off.
Not all the nausea could be blamed on her hangover, though.
When she’d gotten home from the bar, driven by sober Cat, she found another bouquet of lilies.
It had been left on her doorstep with a note and Savannah’s collar.
This time, the note simply stated, You know what to do.
She’d immediately texted her mom to make sure the dogs were both okay and then spent the night lying awake in bed.
Horrifying scenarios ran through her brain about what could have happened to the dogs or her mom.
Kelsi hadn’t relaxed until her mom finally texted her back at five in the morning saying they were all okay but that Savannah must have slipped her collar off somewhere outside.
When her mom asked why Kelsi was asking about them in the middle of the night, she played it off as having a bad dream.
Now she was lost in thought, wondering who was threatening her.
It wasn’t McGuinness. Or, at least, it wasn’t him personally, since he wasn’t stupid enough to send the threats himself.
He wouldn’t be able to get so close to her in town unseen, what with everyone in town knowing about him and the case.
Gossip would’ve followed him around every corner if he returned now, especially with the trial so near.
Which begged the question: If it wasn’t McGuinness, who could it be?
The pictures of herself concerned her, but there was something about threatening the safety of her loved ones that worried her more. She would do anything to keep them safe, but she also believed in justice and didn’t want to derail the case against McGuinness now.
Kelsi considered what would happen if she told Banksy she couldn’t keep the case.
She would think it was because of Dylan and likely wouldn’t let Kelsi drop it unless she told her everything that had happened, about all the notes and threats.
If she did that, the police would be involved, and she didn’t know what the anonymous stalker would do to her in retaliation.
She didn’t know what the stalker would do if she continued on the case, either, and she felt torn in two directions at once—neither of them good.
Even if she did try to drop the case, Banksy would reassign it or Dylan would be left by himself to handle it. Would he be targeted too?
“Good morning,” he said to her with a soft smile.
“Morning,” she replied. “I thought we’d meet closer to McGuinness’s house, not at mine.”
“Yeah, I live not too far from you, so it was on my way anyway.” He avoided her gaze, keeping his eyes firmly on the water in front of him.
Kelsi bit her lip, not sure whether she wanted to know where he lived—maybe she was better off not knowing.
“Let’s cross the creek now, while there’s no boat traffic!” Dylan called over his shoulder as he pointed his kayak toward a spot on the opposite coast. She nodded and angled her paddle to turn hers in the same direction.
They paddled in silence, enjoying the warm summer-morning air, and it allowed Kelsi space to think about everything else plaguing her mind these days, not only her stalker.
She’d let herself thaw toward Dylan, dropping some of the wall she kept erected around her heart.
She didn’t even know when she’d started to do it.
Maybe it had been the very moment she saw him in Banksy’s office.
He was her kryptonite. A drug she couldn’t quit, even though she’d never experienced a real hit before.
And she was terrified of what would happen if she did.
Cool water splashed her face, shaking her out of her daydreams. She looked to her right to find Dylan grinning at her. She used her paddle to splash him back, although it was a lot more water than the tiny drops that had sprinkled her.
“Oh, it’s on now!” Dylan taunted, and soon enough, they were splashing each other back and forth, the two of them both giggling like children.
He was back to the playful, lighthearted man she’d been friends with. It was all too easy to get sucked back into his orbit and forget the incident. To forget why they’d stopped being friends in the first place.
After a while, they finally settled down, both of them reclining in their kayaks to let their now-drenched clothes and hair dry out in the warm sun.
“As much as I wish we could stay here and float forever”—Dylan’s voice cut through her zen, making her crack an eye at him—“I do think we should probably get to the house soon, before we lose too much of the day.”
Kelsi sat up in her kayak again, knowing he was right.
She half regretted letting him splash her so much, because her seat was uncomfortably wet and her clothes scratched her skin thanks to the drying salt water.
But they’d needed that moment of levity to put more of their past behind them.
Every time they were around each other, he wormed his way back into her heart, little by little.
She was still trying to figure out the picture of the two of them in his desk.
Why had he hidden it from her? And what did it mean that he kept it with him?
Her heart warmed as she looked over at him, his powerful arms shining with the salt water and his eyes closed as he tilted his face up to the sun.
She needed to put some space between them before she fell without a safety net.
“Race ya!” she shouted, pumping her arms furiously, aiming for the opposite end of the creek and the bend where they would head into the current toward the McGuinness house.
She laughed wildly when she heard Dylan curse behind her, followed by a series of splashes as he tried to get his kayak up to top speed to catch up.
She reached the dock first, giving a loud victory whoop and raising her paddle high overhead before letting her arms drop in exhaustion.
She dug the right side of her paddle in the dark water, spinning her kayak to the right enough to see Dylan behind her.
His cheeks were pink, from the sun and the exertion, and his hair had dried blown back off his forehead in dark locks.
His biceps bulged from the exercise, and she couldn’t help how her eyes trailed down them and to his forearms, which flexed when he adjusted his grip on the paddle.
She dragged her eyes off his body and saw his focus fixed on the house looming over them.
Kelsi knew it was ridiculous, but for a split second she was jealous of the house for getting his attention, when hers was solely on him.
She guessed she looked a mess, hair wild and half dried, knotted around her shoulders, and the leftover mascara from the day before that she never could figure out how to remove entirely at night running down her face.
Still, she would have liked for him to appreciate her. Stupid. She sighed.
“Kelsi.”
She blinked at her name, and from the way he was looking at her, it hadn’t been the first time he’d called it.
“Sorry, what were you saying?”
He smiled at her teasingly. “Not to interrupt your daydreams, but I think you were right. See there?” He pointed up at the windows over the back porch.
“That’s supposed to be the guest bedroom that, at least from the sketches the police made, Scarlett was staying in.
And, since we can see the windows from down here at water level at the dock, she could definitely see everything on the dock if her curtains were open. ”
Kelsi followed his finger and his eyes up to the window. “You’re right.” She grabbed her digital camera from the waterproof bag she had in the bottom of the kayak and took a few pictures of the view. “All right, let’s head back now and feed you before your hanger starts kicking in.”
“Hey!” he shouted indignantly. “I brought snacks!”
She laughed and kept paddling, glad that the way back at least had the wind at their backs, helping them along.
In the silence, she remembered how he’d left the previous night after—well, really, during—their dance. It looked as though he’d been in pain. She bit her lip before looking at him from the corner of her eye. “Dylan?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you doing okay? When you left last night, you seemed upset.” Upset was definitely one word for it.
“I’m fine. I wasn’t feeling that great is all. Nothing else.”
His tone brokered no arguments, and she let it drop. For now. She looked at the side of his kayak where the view of his leg was blocked, and more than anything wanted to know what had happened to him overseas.
They paddled slowly next to each other before Dylan spoke again. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but what happened? To you and Tom, I mean. Last I heard, you two were picking a date.”
Kelsi paused, caught off guard by the question, her paddle suspended over the water on her left side.
She fell behind him for a second before she continued rowing.
For a moment, she debated evading his answer like he had hers, but she recognized that one of them had to take the first step.
If she wanted him to be vulnerable with her, she would have to give him the same vulnerability in return.
When she caught back up to his side, she answered honestly.
“We weren’t a good fit for each other, and he realized it before I did.
But I think I knew the whole time. I mean, every time he asked to settle on a date for the wedding, I told him we weren’t in any rush.
If he was the one, though, wouldn’t I have wanted to marry him as soon as possible?
Tom—he found someone else he fit with more than me.
They ended up getting together one night at a conference in Richmond.
” She snorted, but it was a self-deprecating laugh.
“It was unfortunate that when the conference was over, they both went home—back to my office.”
Dylan’s harsh inhale came before he growled, “I’m going to kill him.” His voice was low, dangerous.
Despite the heat, she felt a shiver crawl up her spine. This protectiveness was a side to Dylan she’d never seen before, and she wasn’t exactly put off by it.
“No, don’t. Honestly, it’s fine. I mean, obviously it’s not fine. I wish he hadn’t cheated on me, but we weren’t it for each other. I’d rather know before we got married than after.”
He stayed silent, laying his paddle across his lap. She did the same, twisting her head to look at him beside her. His eyes were serious, trained on hers.
“Are you okay, Kelsi? Truly?”
She answered “yes” before she even thought about it.
With a shock, she realized it was true. Somewhere in the past week, she’d almost forgotten about Tom.
The heartbreak she’d felt when he left her had faded to a dull ache.
Now it was more like she’d lost a friend than a love, and a lot of her pain had come from embarrassment.
She’d spent so much time worrying about how other people would perceive him cheating on her and ending their engagement.
Maybe in the beginning of their relationship she’d cared more for him, but toward the end? They’d been on their way to ending even before he’d cheated on her. The spark was gone, if they’d ever had one in the first place, and they’d both been clinging to something that was already over.
If she told Abby this, she knew she would never hear the end of it, but Abby had been right when she told Kelsi she wasn’t nearly as heartbroken over Tom as she had been over Dylan.
Although she’d been upset over Tom, that heartbreak was minor compared to the one the dark-haired soldier staring at her had dealt.
“Yeah, I really am fine,” she repeated, feeling light even in the face of all the problems in her life.
Maybe being friends with Dylan again had a large hand in that.
There was something about him that pushed her to drop her guard and let him in, which was dangerous to say the least. Her battered heart couldn’t take much more without shattering completely.
Dylan gave a slow grin at her answer. “Good.” He began paddling forward once more and turned around in his seat to yell over his shoulder, “But I’m still going to kill him!”
She let out a startled laugh and chased after him.