13. Dylan

Chapter 13

Dylan

Someone was knocking on my door to the beat of Jingle Bells. In June.

I was exactly zero percent surprised to open the door and see Rosie standing there. She wore cut-off jeans and an oversized Lia Halifax concert T-shirt. I wondered if she still wore the Van Goghs or if she had on some other kind of artistic underwear.

I was still in the sweatpants and t-shirt I’d slept in. What was the point of working out or running or leaving the apartment without hockey?

“Hi, Dylan.” She smiled. A calculating sort of smile. Not the kind women gave me when they tried to give me hotel room keys or their cell numbers.

Nope.

The kind my agent gave me right before he told me that I was going to have to wear boxy black glasses, silk boxer shorts, and striped suspenders while a million puppies licked my face for a children’s hospital fundraiser photo shoot.

Which I refused to do. Everyone else on the team did it, though. Social media accounts proclaimed I hated puppies and children and hospitals and charity. The real reason I didn’t do it was because I’d paid for private skating lessons from an Olympic ice skating expert to improve my speed on the ice. But no one wanted to hear the truth when painting me as the bad guy was so much more clickable.

“Do you have a second to chat?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said warily. I hated entering conversations without context. She could be upset with me for living in her nice apartment. Or annoyed at the crowd who had gathered to watch and mock me last night. Or maybe she just wanted to let me know I was a horrible person.

It wouldn’t be the first time someone had pulled me aside to inform me of that. I steeled my spine and let her into the apartment.

She gingerly sat on the edge of the futon and motioned for me to join her, but I’d already made a personal vow to never sit on a futon again. Besides, if I stood, this conversation would go faster.

She clasped her hands in front of her and peered up at me. “I have a proposition for you.”

“A … what?”

“A proposition. A mutually beneficial deal of sorts.” She waved her hands back and forth between us.

I slowly raised my brows. She wasn’t suggesting …

Her cheeks turned pink. “Not that kind of proposition.” She paused and tilted her head to the side as if considering. “Or, well, not totally that kind. Depends on how you look at it.”

Well, being Rosie’s next-door neighbor had been fun while it lasted—not—but clearly my reputation had taken a deep left turn I wasn’t aware of if this was what my life had come to. Not that Rosie wasn’t beautiful and intriguing. But I wasn’t that kind of guy.

“I’m not interested.” I stepped toward the door, but Rosie jumped up and grabbed my arm. The sizzle of her touch on my skin was surprising but only confirmed that I wasn’t in my right mind.

“Wait. Just listen.”

I tugged my arm away from her and kept walking to the door.

“I can get you back on your team!” she called after me.

I stopped retreating. Rosie had said the one thing that might get me to consider whatever “proposition” she had in mind.

“How?”

“People really like me. For the most part.” She tilted her head to the side. “Well, not Charlie’s fiancé, but I consider that to be a good thing. And your dad has some mixed feelings, I think, but he gives me fines when he can rather than making me go to court, which I think is positive. Lily struggles, understandably. And Max, of course, and that’s where the problem really lies.” She looked at me expectantly.

I blinked.

“The point is, online, people like me. I have a ton of social media followers. They don’t always translate to sales, unfortunately, but people like to stop by the boutique to meet me and get our picture taken. I wish people would buy more than a journal and a pen, or one of my prints—”

I cleared my throat, and she cocked her hip to the side. I could almost see her reeling her thoughts in and trying to wrangle them into submission.

“I can help you improve your image. Bring out your likeable qualities—”

“Which are?” Seeing as how we met all of two days ago, I was more than skeptical.

“We’ll figure them out together.” She held out her hand like she was spotlighting my name on a marquee. “When I’m done with you, you’ll go from being The Beast to being Gaston.”

“Wasn’t Gaston the villain?”

“Yes, but he was universally loved by their small French town.”

“Except by Belle.”

She gave me an assessing stare, as if seeing me in a new light. “You know your fairy tales.”

“Charlie had an obsession with that movie one summer.” We’d watched it nearly every day. I could probably still sing most of the songs.

I leaned against the wall, and Rosie took that as a sign to sink back onto the futon. How did she not flinch in worry every time she put weight on it? It looked identical to the one in the other apartment, only not broken. Yet.

Was I really considering letting her help me? And why in the world would she want to? Perhaps she was a sucker for lost causes. The word “proposition” still hung uneasily in the air.

“Okay, so let’s say you rebrand me as the town’s tool—”

“ Loveable tool,” she said, with a decisive nod.

“And I get back on the team.” I folded my arms. “What’s in it for you? Other than getting your apartment back sooner, of course.”

Her gaze took in the warm and inviting space, and guilt niggled at me again for taking it, despite contracts, broken futons, and mice.

Her smile turned a little too bright and mischievous. Whatever Rosie had in mind, I already regretted it.

“I need you to help me make someone fall in love with me.”

That was unexpected. “How?”

“Teach me how to do whatever it is that gets all those women to stare up at you while you work out.”

“You want to know how to get people to judge you?” I asked, incredulous.

She let out a snort laugh. “They were not judging you. They were all experiencing reverse-menopause out there.”

“I … don’t know what that even means.”

She leaned back with the ease of someone not afraid of futons. “They were attracted to you.”

Ick. That was almost worse. “My old English teacher was out there.”

Rosie shrugged. “You’re a fit, good-looking man.”

I was not going to smile smugly at that. “And you want me to teach you how to be a fit, good-looking man?”

“What I want is for you to pretend you’re in love with me.”

“Oh, that’s all.”

“Well, I’d also love some tips on how to get a guy’s attention. I can’t ask my brothers for obvious reasons, including self-respect.”

“But asking me keeps your self-respect intact?”

She nodded. “To a degree I’m comfortable with.”

This was ridiculous. So ridiculous, it couldn’t be real.

Suspicion narrowed my eyes as I put the puzzle pieces together. It made sense. Look at her pet alien. Look at how she gave me her apartment. Look at how she painted something incredible just to give it away to a local business.

She was one of those nurturing women. I knew the type. The kind who thought they could “save” me. The kind that thought with a little TLC, I’d be a beast in a rink and a teddy bear for them.

Nurturers showed up after games in droves, with their abundant cleavage, baby voices, and pouting, pitying expressions. Like I was a puppy they’d found abandoned in a soggy box on the side of the road in the pouring rain while a Billy Joel song played in the background.

After I cold-shouldered them, they muttered, accused, or straight-up yelled that I was an actual beast before storming away, and since I am who I am with the luck I have, a camera was usually close enough to capture every part of it.

Sure, Rosie promised to turn me into Gaston, which, okay, was weird and had never happened before. But I could spot a nurturer from a mile away, and this one was on my futon in my living room.

“I don’t need—or want—you to take care of me.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me.”

“I know exactly what you’re doing. I run into women like you all the time.”

“Women like me,” she said cooly, her mouth straightening into a warning line.

“Yep.”

“And what exactly is that?”

“Women who want to fix and nurture me.” The words tasted as bitter as they sounded.

Her nostrils flared and she pulled out her phone. I stepped back half a step, prepared to knock the phone from her hand if she tried to take a picture. More than one person had a broken phone, compliments of me.

Instead, it rang, and a moment later, a man’s voice answered on speakerphone. “Hey, Rosie. Lia and I are just heading out the door. Can I—”

“Haydn,” she cut in sounding a whole lot like my coach after we lost a game. “Am I a nurturing woman?” She stared at me in defiance, and I had to reluctantly admit my curiosity was piqued.

“Ummm. Why do you ask?” That was a hedging tone if I’d ever heard it.

“Just answer the question.”

“Well, I mean, your type of nurturing is unconventional—”

She ended the call and pulled up another number. While it rang, she said, “And that was the brother who likes me the best.”

I locked my jaw and refused to break her stare.

The ringing stopped and an irritated voice barked, “What?”

“As if I’m interrupting anything.”

“You are.”

“What? Work?”

“Yes, Rosie. Work.” The more irritated the man sounded, the happier Rosie’s eyes seemed to get.

“This’ll take a second, Jules. Am I a nurturer?”

The man—Jules—snorted. “Do you have any other delusional questions to waste my time with or …”

She hung up on him and stuck her phone in her back pocket. “That’s the brother I’m actively working to marry off. Not because I’m nurturing him”—she put that part in air quotes—“but because my life will be improved with sisters. He’s pretty peeved with me, but I got him to agree to go on the first date he’s gone on in almost a year because I’m persuasive and I know what I’m doing. We can’t call my third brother because he’s out at sea today without reception, but I assure you if he listed my many, many strengths, nurturing would not be one of them.”

I held up both of my hands. “I stand corrected.”

She stood and made for the door. “Post a picture on social media of you reading something from my shelf.” She bowed sarcastically. I didn’t even know someone could bow sarcastically until then. “You’re welcome.”

Lily’s mailbox was sprawled against the dirt. I went to lift it, but Charlie’s voice stopped me.

“Don’t bother,” Charlie called as she backed her car out of the driveway. “It’ll just wind up on the ground again.”

“Where are you headed?”

“Work. I saw your post. I love that romance series.” She waggled her eyebrows.

I’d found a random book on Rosie’s bookshelf with a hockey stick on the cover and took a selfie of me pretending to read it. It was a romance? Of course it was.

I checked my notifications, and saw I had a bunch. Many of them with chili peppers and kissing emojis.

“I’m heading in to work, but Lily’s home.” Good luck , she mouthed as she pulled away. That didn’t bode well. But I had to see my sister at some point. It might as well be on my terms.

I knocked, and Lily opened the door with a sour expression. “The prodigal returns.”

“How’ve you been?”

“Just fine.” She kept me standing outside the door like I was trying to sell her something. “I’m right in the middle of something.”

“Just wanted to say hi.”

“Checklist complete.” She gave me a bitter twist of her lips.

“I didn’t mean—”

“You never do.”

“Is it going to be like this the entire time I’m here?”

“Like what?” Gaslighting. One of Lily’s specialties.

“Nothing,” I muttered. “Have a nice day. I’ll see you aro—” She shut the door in my face. I headed down the drive and hadn’t made it three houses when I got a text from my dad.

Dad: Can you please not provoke Lily?

I went through a million ways I could respond to the text before deciding to ignore it. My family was never going to change. I was always going to be the bad guy. The one who took too much. The one who betrayed them all, then left and never came back.

And I would do anything to get out of here and get back on my team.

Even accept Rosie’s proposition.

I might not be selling my soul to the devil, but I was selling it to Rosie Forrester, and I wasn’t sure if there was all that much difference.