31. Rosie

Chapter 31

Rosie

I sat in Dylan’s seat at the kitchen table, with Lizzy tucked snuggly against me while Mrs. Savage got me some lunch. With the first bite, I felt warmed from the inside out. Ever since I’d woken up this morning, I’d been freezing cold.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true.

I’d been plenty warm in Dylan’s embrace. I needed to stop thinking about it—his smooth skin, his firm grip on my hip, my mouth pressed to his neck. But, the fact was, it hadn’t been a terrible way to wake up.

Nope.

It had been an amazing way to wake up. Perhaps I should send that info to the family group chat. Keep them up to date since they were so curious about my life.

“You know,” Mrs. Savage said, “I didn’t expect this. But I should have.”

“What?” I asked. I nibbled off a piece of biscuit and went straight to heaven.

“For you and Dylan to fall in love.”

That perfect bite of biscuit flew across the table as I sputtered. “Excuse me?”

Mrs. Savage’s eyes twinkled, but she didn’t repeat herself as she used a napkin to clean up my mess. The silence was communication enough.

“We’re not in love,” I insisted.

“Okay,” she said.

The back door opened before I could argue further, and Sheriff Savage stepped into the house, whistling a tune I didn’t recognize.

“Smells good in here. Is that Rosie’s truck parked out front?” he asked as he came around the corner. He paused when he saw me at the table. “Heard about the shop,” he said. “Stopped by earlier, but no one was there.”

“We were probably here,” I said.

“We?” He shrugged off his uniform jacket and set it on the back of his chair, then went to the stove to check out what was cooking. “Have you eaten yet, hon?”

“No,” Mrs. Savage said. “I was waiting for you.”

Sheriff Savage scooped them each a bowl of stew and brought them to the table. It was a small gesture, but one that warmed me in a different way than the hot shower and stew. What would it have been like to have a father like him?

“Dylan’s in the shower,” Mrs. Savage said. “They’re going to stay here for a few days.”

Sheriff Savage responded with a huge bite of stew. Avoiding conversation, maybe? There seemed to be a lot of that going around. The silence slowly morphed into a comfortable clinking of spoons on ceramic bowls.

“Did you get a hold of the town yet?” Sheriff Savage pushed his empty bowl back and clasped his hands in front of him on the table.

“Yeah. They reached out to the restoration company, and they’re supposed to call me at some point today. My phone died this morning, and we didn’t have any electricity to charge it.”

“Where’s your phone?” Mrs. Savage asked. She’d finished her lunch as well and stood.

I pulled it out of my hoodie pocket, and she reached out for it.

“I’ll stick it on the charger.” Another small thing that felt really big. The Savages had a way of making you feel loved in the little moments, something I found myself craving. Especially Mrs. Savage’s motherly brand of showing love. I soaked it up like a dry sponge. Mrs. Savage was one of those dreaded nurturers Dylan talked about—and exactly who he got his own nurturing tendencies from.

Sheriff Savage spoke again. “Do you have insurance on your art?”

“Yes.” I hadn’t called them yet; that was next on the to-do list.

“You’ll need to take a good accounting of everything that was damaged.”

“She knows that,” Dylan said shortly. He walked into the room wearing a T-shirt and gray joggers. His bare feet padded across the carpet, and my memory flashed back to those feet tangled with mine this morning. It was too much to hope Dylan hadn’t noticed me checking him out—especially since he tossed me a smirk.

“I’m trying to help.” Sheriff Savage sat up straighter.

“She doesn’t need your help,” Dylan said, his back set in a firm line as he took the chair beside mine.

“I mean, I kind of do,” I mumbled trough a crumbly biscuit.

Dylan and Sheriff Savage stopped their silent stand-off to look at me, and I shrugged. It was true. Not only did we need to sleep here for a few nights, but I had one more favor. “Can I store my belongings in your garage? Including my art?”

“Yes. You can park the cruiser in the driveway,” Mrs. Savage said to her husband.

He grunted in a way that could almost be in agreement, so I decided it was. This morning, when I’d seen that the damage had gone all the way to the shop, my heart had sunk. But it looked like my artwork had all come out of it mostly unscathed.

Except the mural, which had been dumb and pointless anyway. Not worth getting emotional about.

Dylan’s hand covered mine under the table and he squeezed my fingers.

“They’re going to stay with us for a few nights,” Mrs. Savage said.

“Together?” Sheriff Savage barked out, looking hard at Dylan.

I could tell Dylan was getting ready to say yes, just to get a rise out of his dad, so I stepped in. “No. Well, both of us, yes. But not together, together.” I clasped my fingers together as if I needed to demonstrate what together, together might mean. I regretted it instantly.

I think Sheriff Savage regretted it instantly, too, based on his tight-lipped expression, which I usually only got after I broke some city ordinance.

The air was still tense between Dylan and his dad. Was this how father-son relationships were? If my brothers met up with my dad, I didn’t think it would be this calm kind of tense. Maybe the aggressive kind. Like what happened when Hudson met Dad at the town picnic. That felt like a preview of sorts.

I hated that this was making me wish my dad wasn’t in the houseboat, and that he’d figured out a situation for himself already. Guilt immediately followed, as usual. Dad was doing the best he could, and this financial setback wasn’t going to help matters, for sure.

“Why don’t you go help Rosie get set up in the bedroom,” Mrs. Savage said to Dylan. I jumped up, did the dumb half-wave that needed to be purged from my body language library, and scurried up the stairs behind Dylan.

As we reached the top, I heard Sheriff Savage exclaim, “What in the world?” as his chair legs squeaked on the tile.

“That’s Rosie’s cat,” Mrs. Savage explained.

I met Dylan’s gaze, and he took my hand and pulled me into a bedroom before they could hear us laugh.

“Your dad is going to kick us out,” I said.

“Because of Lizzy?” Dylan closed the door and leaned against it. “Or because of me?”

I sat on the side of the bed and crossed my ankles. If Lily’s room had once had personality, it had all been painted clean with gray walls, white trim, and a silver standing lamp. The only spot of color in the room was the gorgeous sea-colored quilt across the bed. “Want to talk about it?”

He sat beside me, the firm line of his thigh pressed to mine, and his forearms flexed as he leaned back on his hands. He sighed. “My dad and I have never really gotten along, and it became especially difficult when I was a teenager. Looking back, I can see how much they sacrificed for me to play hockey, but at the time…”

He paused, and I remained quiet, hoping he’d keep talking. Dylan was still a mystery to me in some ways—a mystery I was intrigued by more and more.

“My senior year of high school was the worst. I was ready to be gone. I’d already gotten into Michigan State, and my dad and I were fighting nonstop. My dad was up for reelection for Sheriff, which meant our family was under the microscope. I was wrestling with the public display of how happy we all were as a family while Dad and I were in a cold war behind closed doors.” His voice was quiet, and I scooted close enough for our arms to touch. He moved his arm to behind me so I could lean against his shoulder.

“Right before the election, I got all my friends to break into that huge summer mansion on the hill. You know it?”

I nodded. It was owned by the Kellers, one of the richest summer families in Winterhaven. They usually stayed a week or two in the summer, and kept to themselves, but they were the staggering kind of rich.

“We had a wild party. Trashed their house. Broke things. Dad was called, and we were all brought into the station. Dad ended up losing the election, and my family blamed me. If he couldn’t keep his own kid in line, how was he supposed to help the town?”

I sucked in a breath through my teeth at his matter-of-fact tone. “You were a kid.”

“I was almost an adult. I knew better, but thought I was invincible.” The muscles in his arm tightened behind my back.

“Things only got tenser between me and Dad, especially since they had to pay for the bulk of the damages. It all finally exploded the night before I was set to leave for college. We were heated and both went too far, and in the end, I stormed off. That was the last I saw them until that night in Icy Asps.”

“You haven’t talked it through?”

He let out a humorless laugh. “Have you met my dad? He’s not one to sit down and share feelings. Besides, it’s clear they’ve never forgiven me. The entire town hasn’t forgiven me.”

I’d never heard his parents say anything but good things about Dylan. They never missed a game. But I also didn’t want to discount his experiences with his family. There had to be some middle ground.

“Then Shiloh died, and I didn’t come home for the funeral. Confirming to everyone, once again, that I’m a screw-up.”

He’d taken too much of a burden on his shoulders—the pressure to perform, to be the best, to not make any mistakes on the ice, to always improve at the cost of all his relationships, to turn back time and live without feelings—it was weighing him down to a suffocating degree.

“You don’t have to be perfect to have value.” I pressed my shoulder to his. “Or to be loved. Do you believe that?”

“For everyone else,” he said with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

I nudged his shoulder again.

“I’m trying to believe it,” he said. “I am glad to be here. Not here , at my parents’ house, but here in Winterhaven, and that’s an improvement.”

“What changed?”

“Twice-weekly therapy sessions,” he deadpanned, but then continued. “Talking to Hudson about Shiloh. Seeing Winterhaven through your eyes. Rediscovering my love of playing a game. Meeting you.”

I felt him looking at me, but I stared straight ahead. What would happen if I turned toward him? Would we kiss again? Something had changed between us last night, something scary and exciting and way too much for me to think about right now.

“I thought you loved playing hockey,” I said instead.

“I do. But I’ve been so focused on winning, that playing’s become secondary.”

I smiled as I recalled how he’d looked in my too-tight baseball shirt, his face alight with joy as he went up to bat. “We did win the softball game,” I reminded him.

“I know,” he said, leaning a tiny bit closer as if telling me a secret. “I still love to win.”

I laughed.

He lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling with a small smile. After a moment of hesitation, I did as well.

“Look.” He pointed at the glow-in-the-dark stars affixed to the ceiling. “Lily arranged them in actual constellations.”

I spotted Ursa Major and Minor, and a few other familiar constellations I didn’t know the names of. I was begrudgingly impressed. “I didn’t know Lily loved astronomy.”

“Me neither.”

I breathed in the scent of him. Soap that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t my soap from the shower anymore. But there was something underlying it all that was fundamentally Dylan. Something that made me wish I could bury my nose in his chest and breathe him in.

I linked my pinkie with his. “I’m glad you’re here. Here in Winterhaven, and here with me in your parents’ house. I think they’ve changed. And so have you.” I hesitated, not wanting to misstep, but also needing to say this. “I know they love you, Dylan. Maybe you can give them a chance to prove it.”

He turned to look at me. “There’s a lot of water under that bridge.” He brushed some hair from my face. “But I’ll think about it.”

Time seemed to stand still as his hand came to rest on my cheek, and his thumb drew a line on the soft skin under my eye where a tear had fallen. I wanted for him to feel the love I knew his parents and this town had for him. I wanted him to believe he deserved it. I wanted him to stay here, in Winterhaven, to not leave and never come back.

“Rosie, I’m not worth crying over.”

“You are to me.”

He pressed his forehead to mine, and we stayed in that suspended moment in time until we heard the kitchen chairs slide against the tile downstairs.

“How long do you think we can hide out in here before someone comes looking for us?” Dylan whispered. His eyes searched mine. Our faces were inches from each other.

“I don’t know.” I sniffled. “Should we test it?”

Dylan smiled softly. “This is what I love about you.”

“What?” I asked, trying to ignore that he used the word love.

“That you’re a ‘yes, and’ kind of person. You don’t shoot down ideas, you build on them.”

That was one of the nicest things anyone had said to me, but I still shook my head. “I’m the sour lemon, Dylan. I take good ideas and make them bitter.”

He shook his head vigorously. “I don’t know where you got that idea, but it’s completely false. You turn everything to gold.”

I bit my lip and stared at the constellations as I tried to see myself the way he described. Someone who made things better and not worse. I tried, but it seemed like my plans always failed one way or another. The silence between us was comfortable, and I could hear the soft murmur of Sheriff and Mrs. Savage conversing downstairs.

“You know,” Dylan whispered. “I’ve never been allowed to be with a girl in the bedroom with the door closed before in this house.” His eyebrows went up and down teasingly.

I laughed, and his eyes lit up. Had that been his goal—to make me laugh? When had it become a goal of Dylan’s to make me happy?

I groaned suddenly, thinking about how I was failing in my efforts to help him with his goal. “I haven’t taken any pictures or posted them to your social media today.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s so unimportant right now.”

“But your team—”

He squeezed my hand gently. “All I want to do right now is be here with you.”

I searched his gaze and found nothing but truth there. My eyes fluttered shut and my mouth was drawn toward his in the same way I sought his warmth last night. I heard his intake of breath and then my lips were lightly brushing against his. A feather-light touch that left me longing for more.

The door flew open and banged against the wall. And as if we were teenagers caught breaking a rule, we flung apart from each other.

“Just seeing if you need anything,” Mrs. Savage said as if nothing had happened.

Dylan cleared his throat. “Nope. We’re good.”

“Wonderful.” She left but poked her head back inside the room a second later, her eyes twinkling. “Let’s leave this door open, okay?”

I started to giggle, in both nervousness and embarrassment, and Dylan gave me a wry smile after she walked away. “I guess some things never change.”

“I can never face your mom again.”

He dropped a casual peck on my cheek, stealing all coherent thoughts from my brain, before he hopped off the bed and headed for the door. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, that kiss was at least a five.”

He laughed as he easily dodged the pillow I chucked at his retreating form.