Chapter 5
FIVE
Do You Love Me Now – The Breeders
Four days had passed since that day at the mill.
Not that she was counting.
Gabi had seen Dallas twice, both times from a safe distance—once as he crossed Main Street on his crutches, his head bent against the wind, and once through the front window of the Grill, where he sat alone in the lonesome booth, his notebook open before him.
Both sightings had been brief. Accidental.
Nothing she couldn’t handle while she worked up the nerve to make a move.
Until now.
Sam was spending the night at a friend’s, and Gabi had come to the high school production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown because Wilder Grounds had donated coffee and pastries for the lobby reception.
Community involvement, she’d told herself.
Good for business. And also, apparently, the place to discover her crush in the shadows at the back of the auditorium.
Dallas sat half-hidden beneath the balcony, a notebook balanced on one knee, a pen in his hand, his mouth set in the resigned line of a man who had survived war zones only to be assigned the theater beat.
Taking a seat near the back, Gabi tried to watch the play instead of him, but failed from the start.
During the first act, Dallas did his duty with impressive commitment, jotting notes as Charlie Brown considered the various tragedies of being Charlie Brown, the silver ring on his finger glinting in the light from the sconce beside him.
Then one of the stage lights popped, sharp and sudden, cracking like a starter pistol, and he went still.
His pen froze above the page, his shoulders locked. A moment later, he reached for his crutches, rose with careful precision, and slipped through the side doors.
Gabi waited one breath before she followed him.
The hallway he’d disappeared down led to the humanities wing, an endless stretch of scuffed tile, dented lockers, and bulletin boards layered with construction-paper announcements for pep rallies and the spring blood drive.
The air smelled faintly of floor wax, tempera paint, and whatever institutional cleaner Promise High had been using since approximately 1974.
The sounds of the play dimmed until only the faint echo of their footsteps remained.
Gabi knew this hallway. She’d had sophomore art two doors down, cheerleading meetings in the classroom just beyond it, and one spectacularly humiliating breakup with Howie Barker beside the trophy case that she still refused to acknowledge on principle.
At the far end, one door stood slightly ajar, spilling a wedge of yellow light across the floor.
Dallas had turned into the choral room, of all places.
She slowed near that stupid trophy case, catching her reflection in the glass between a row of tarnished track medals and a faded photo of the 1985 state football team, probably taken by Campbell.
Her new highlights looked stark under the fluorescent lights.
A woman with superb self-control didn’t make follicular decisions based on theoretical encounters. Clearly, hers was shot.
Smoothing a hand down her blouse, Gabi adjusted the collar of her jean jacket and shook out her skirt. She’d once been the golden girl in this place, but that girl was long gone. Now all she could do was be herself—divorced, dented, determined—and not feel ashamed of any of it.
Dallas’s voice carried from the choral room. “Are you coming in or what?”
Gabi smothered a gasp behind her hand. Oh. My. God.
She peeked around the door. Dallas sat at the piano, his crutches resting against the wall, his fingers moving over the keys with reluctant competence. He played a few chords, enough for her to recognize “Don’t Speak.”
He glanced over his shoulder, lips twitching.
Not his usual dry half-smile, either, but something boyish and delighted.
Real enough to make Gabi jealous of anyone who’d ever earned it.
“My mom worked in a bar, mostly the day shift, and I spent more afternoons than I should have hanging around while she cleaned up. There was an out-of-tune piano in the back. A kindhearted alcoholic named Gus, who told me he used to be a jazz musician before the booze took over, gave me a few lessons, and I went from there.” He paused, his amusement dimming slightly.
“These keys aren’t nearly as sticky. Go figure. ”
Gabi pressed a palm to the nervous thump in her belly and crept inside.
Up close, Dallas was even cuter.
Annoyingly, inconveniently, make-a-woman-forget-her-good-sense hot.
His Levi’s were worn through high on one thigh, enough for her to imagine sliding a finger into the tear to see if his skin was as warm as it looked.
His long-sleeved T-shirt had faded from black to charcoal and frayed at the hem, I Hate the Oxford Comma cracked across his chest in peeling white letters.
Freckles she didn’t remember dusted his nose, maybe from those hours outside with his notebook.
His hair had grown out since the brutal hospital shearing, softening around his ears, and the scar at his temple had faded to a pale slash.
Then there were his eyelashes. Long. Dark. Ridiculous.
His lashes swept down when he looked at the keys, shadowing the sharp planes of his face, then lifted when he sliced a glance her way.
Green eyes, ringed in hazel, like gemstones catching light.
And because the universe had decided she deserved no mercy, his sleeves were pushed up, exposing forearms corded with tendons and ink. She had a thing for forearms.
She decided then and there to go for it.
Stopping beside the piano, she trailed one finger along the inky curve of his tattoo.
He paused beneath the touch, his sigh blending with the last note. A-flat. She knew because she’d had piano lessons of her own. When his gaze met hers, heat glowed beneath the surface, banked but unmistakable.
He was giving her time to take it back, and she wasn’t going to.
“I loved The Outsiders when we read it in school, but I was more of a Ponyboy girl myself,” she said, keeping it light, keeping the promise she’d made to herself.
Dallas laughed softly and skimmed his index finger along the keys. “Fair enough. Nothing gold can stay, right?”
Gabi eased around the curve of the piano, letting the black lacquer put a little distance between them. His gaze followed without effort, as if she were something he had no intention of chasing because he knew she’d come close again.
He was right.
“So, piano skills,” she said, tracing her fingertip over the back of the fallboard. “Should I file that under mysterious history?”
His mouth tipped at one corner. “Mysterious?”
“You show up in Promise with a cast, a nickname, and a working knowledge of No Doubt. A woman starts to wonder, Hotshot.”
His gaze stayed on her, a sexy shimmer behind smudged lenses. “I’m simply gathering information for a piece on a small-town theater production, another random assignment from an editor I haven’t officially worked for in ten years. Sounds like the opposite of mysterious to me.”
“I read your article about the mill this morning.” She rounded the far side of the piano, knowing he was tracking her and foolish enough to enjoy it. “It was good, Dallas.” Better than good. His writing had created a brief portrait of a town being rebuilt. Reborn, even.
In response, a blush stole across his cheeks, and he lowered his head to hide it, but not in time. “Uh, I don’t really like to talk about my work. Not face to face, if that makes sense. Print journalism provides a lot of anonymity.”
Beside him, she propped her elbow on the piano and her chin on her fist. “You always seemed so grounded, like you knew who you were and didn’t care what anyone thought. Confident. Sure of your path. I would love to have those qualities, even now.”
He blew out a stunned breath, his brows rising above the frames of his glasses. “You thought that?” He shook his head and played a D-major chord. “I was a good actor then.”
Gabi fiddled with a button on her jacket and asked the question she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. “Why did you leave the auditorium? Was it when the light popped? Like at the festival, when you dropped the beer bottle during the fireworks?”
She was letting him know she’d been watching him that night, just as he’d been watching her. She hoped he understood how rarely she let anyone in these days.
His expression tightened, and he waited a beat, weighing what to do with her, if she had to guess.
Then he sighed and swiveled around on the bench, straddling it, thighs flexing.
“For years, I’ve been cycling through time zones, jet lag, insomnia, adrenaline rushes.
Writing, editing, reporting—then doing it all over again.
My system is, quite frankly, fried. After this last skirmish, I was asked, politely but firmly, to take a two-month sabbatical.
A fact I haven’t told my family yet, if you don’t mind keeping it between us. Though Justin knows something is up.”
She shook her head. “Why are you telling me?”
Dallas shrugged a broad shoulder, looking as bewildered as she felt.
“Before I moved here, I lived in a home where emotional outbursts were common, so I learned that sharing things wasn’t advisable.
Honesty only added to the drama, that sort of thing.
Then I finally opened up when I got here, and one of my brothers shut me down for it—the one I needed most. Just so you understand why it’s hard for me—” He scrubbed the back of his neck with his fist, another tell.
She’d seen him do it before. “I hate to say this because it sounds so California, but my therapist said I read safety as danger, and that’s why getting close to people unnerves me.
It’s also why I chose a hazardous career, which makes sense. A bit Sisyphean, though, isn’t it?”
Gabi let the silence settle, giving his confession the space it deserved. She wanted to say something that wouldn’t sound silly, but nothing came. So she offered him something safer. “I wanted to thank you for the book you left in the mailbox for Sam. We started reading it last night.”
“Every boy needs a copy of The Hobbit.” He pressed down on one ivory key. “I’m pretty sure that’s a rule.”
He was truly the most fascinating man she’d ever met. Theo had been one sad puzzle piece; this man was a thousand. “Will it unnerve you if I admit I want to sleep with you?”
Dallas covered his shock well, except for the sudden tension in his hand as he struck a hard C-sharp. “I suddenly feel like I’m trapped in a John Hughes plot. Lonely teen infatuated with the prom queen comes home to find she wants him back.”
“Were you infatuated with me?” Gabi whispered, her pulse beating hard in her ears.
Pushing the bench aside, Dallas rose to his feet. “Sparkle, you know I was.”