42. Rosie

Chapter 42

Rosie

After watching a DVD of the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice with my brothers at the cabin , I realized two things. First, my brothers were going to revoke all of my movie-choosing privileges if I made them watch any version of Pride and Prejudice again. I had abused my power.

And second? Dylan Savage was totally a Mr. Darcy.

He was never a Wickham, or a Gaston for that matter (except in looks, maybe).

He was wholly, one hundred percent the romantic lead in my personal story. And I’d just successfully imploded his life. Go me!

The next three days were filled with games, hikes, movies, and drinking our weight in hot chocolate. But mostly, it was filled with thinking. Thinking about my dad, and how I’d wanted him to heal the Dad-shaped crack in my heart, but he just wasn’t capable of doing so—which wasn’t my fault.

I also thought about how Dylan deserved to have his dream life playing hockey for the Peaks—especially after losing Shiloh the way he did. Which meant I needed to do one of the most unselfish things in my life and walk away from Dylan.

It may not even be that hard, logistically, especially if he stayed in Montana.

But emotionally? It was tearing me apart.

“If you play the ‘Make Me Sob’ playlist one more time, I’m throwing your phone in the ocean,” Jules grumbled. I snatched my phone from off the counter and stuffed it in my shirt, where Lia singing about heartbreak was muffled against my chest.

“My headphones were left at the Savages,” I reminded him, then sang along with the lyrics on the top of my lungs. Bennett joined in, sounding a little too heartfelt. I gave him some hard side eye. If he was thinking about Lily right now, I was going to throw my phone in the ocean myself.

Not willing to risk it, I fished my phone out and scrolled through my other downloaded playlists. Falling For You. My Dream Man. Desperate Love Songs.

Finally I found one called: Charlie’s List. It was filled with happy, positive songs full of snapping and clapping, telling you to get up and dance.

“This is worse,” Jules said with a groan as he left the kitchen and headed outside. He was the only one of us committed enough to the outside world to find cell service. To be fair, Haydn had used the satellite phone every night to check in with his wife, Lia.

Bennett’s eyes lit up and he sang along with the happier song. He held out his hand and pulled me out of the chair. “Dance with me,” he said.

We danced around the kitchen in our socked feet, singing at the top of our lungs, and more of the sadness from the last few days melted away. Bennett took my hand and turned me around and around until the room spun, and I fell onto the couch breathless and laughing.

I stared at the spinning ceiling and inhaled deeply. I might not have everything I wanted. But I was going to be okay. Eventually.

I wasn’t ready to leave the cabin, but it was time to get back to real life.

Or so my brothers said. I wasn’t completely convinced.

“We could grow our own garden,” I told them as we trudged toward the dinghies. Well, I trudged. They used their huge legs to take one step for every four of mine. “Be self-sustaining. Off the grid. Mountain men—and woman. Doesn’t that sound amazing?”

“Nope,” Haydn said, marching forward with purpose.

“I’ll promise to never make you watch Jane Austen again.”

“Who?” Haydn asked and was pummeled by Jules’s and Bennett’s fists.

“She’ll make us watch the rest of them, dummy.”

“Use Google next time you have a question.”

“As a good faith gesture,” I yelled over them, “if we stay on this island forever, I’ll let you all pick the movies from here on out.”

They stopped wrestling. “ Every movie?” Jules asked. He looked out at his Wi-Fi hill, as if debating if he could really do it.

“Even the really bad car chasey ones,” I said generously.

“We may never get an offer like this again, boys,” Jules said.

Haydn turned and walked toward me. Then he bent, picked me up, and threw me over his shoulder. “I will watch every rom com and Jenny Austen movie ever made if it means I get to go home to my wife.”

“Jane, not Jenny,” I grumbled with my face pressed to his spine. But I let him carry me without a fight because sand was getting in my shoes, so this was better. Take that, Haydn, and your disgusting love.

Fine, it wasn’t disgusting. It was freaking adorable. Where was my “Make Me Sob” playlist when I needed it?

I rode back with Haydn this time. He kept one hand near enough to me to catch me if I tried to jump overboard and swim back to the island. I thought about it but ultimately decided that I’d miss Charlie. And my book club. And the Icy Asps softball team. And Lizzy most of all. Hopefully she wasn’t missing me too much. But also—hopefully she’d missed me at least a little.

As for the other person I wasn’t thinking about …

I watched the white bubbles foam behind us as we approached Winterhaven’s docks. I hopped out of the dingy to tie us off, and took the bags that Haydn handed to me. My phone started to buzz nonstop in my pocket. Ah, beautiful cell service.

“Did we miss a natural disaster or something?” Haydn asked as he pulled his lit-up phone from his pocket too. Jules and Bennett had beaten us to the dock and were waiting for us at the parking lot, both of them on their phones as well.

“Um, Rosie?”

“Yeah,” I said absently. It looked like everyone in town had messaged me this morning, a variation of the same message—I had texts from Mr. and Mrs. Savage, Mrs. Mabel, Gene, Mr. Willingham, my boss at the Icy Asps, Hudson, and even Max. And then every single one of them had the same link attached.

I went to click on it when my phone rang with Charlie’s number. I answered it.

“Oh my gosh!” she said, sounding breathless.

“Are you running?” I asked her.

“Yes! I’ve got three dogs with me. Where are you?”

“At the docks with my brothers. We just got back from the island. What’s going on?”

“Read the link I sent you right now. Then call me back.”

My brothers were all looking at me expectantly.

“From a freaking movie,” Jules said, his tone full of respect, even as he shook his head.

I pulled up the link, my heart racing as I clicked on it. What could be worse than the article that had come out a few days ago? Had Dad sold more information? More lies?

SHRUBS OF FOG AUTHOR TO VISIT WINTERHAVEN

Critically acclaimed Shrubs of Fog author, V. R. Grimes, is set to visit Winterhaven on November 23 for a book signing and exclusive book discussion at our local bookstore.

“Why …?” I blinked a few times, and Bennett looked over my shoulder.

“Seriously? What did you click on?”

“The link Max sent me.”

Bennett rolled his eyes and exited the article. He pulled up Charlie’s text and clicked on it. An entirely different article opened up—this one a picture I’d never seen before of me and Dylan. The article was from a national celebrity magazine, one of the bigger ones. I caught my breath as I studied the picture. It was clearly a Dylan-specialty (all bad angles and shadowed lighting) but he caught us in the moment we were smiling at each other, right after our first kiss in the graveyard.

If he at any point had any questions about how I felt about him, my complete adoration was clear as day in that photo.

My Own Fairytale

By Dylan Savage

Once upon a time, there was a beast. He was pretty handsome, so people occasionally mistook him for Gaston or other classically good-looking villains. But he was a beast in his heart where it mattered. He didn’t care, though. All he cared about was winning.

Then, his best friend died. And all the beast saw was an endless pit of darkness—except for one pinprick image in his vision: how he had failed to save his friend. Nothing mattered. No one mattered.

(Per my legal team, I’m supposed to remind you that if this is starting to sound familiar, I promise all similarities to copyrighted work are completely coincidental.)

The beast was banished to a small town in the middle of the ocean where he wouldn’t bother anyone anymore. What he didn’t know was this town was magical—he sometimes sensed it in the scent of the flowers or in the crispness of the morning air or in how everyone seemed to watch out for one another a little more than was usual in everyday life.

And in this land, he met a girl.

A girl with rosy-red lips and a swing like a major-league hitter—when she was holding a broom, at least. She knocked some sense, quite literally, into the beast, and his entire world tilted on its axis. Everything suddenly looked different. The magic he’d always suspected existed was now visible to him. And it danced in sparkles around this girl, everywhere she went.

Everyone she touched went away happier or comforted. Everyone she passed left with a smile on their face. Even the ugliest, dirtiest, alien-looking creatures in the land were cared for by her.

She also had terrible taste in furniture and movies and men. But she couldn’t be completely perfect.

And for the beast? Well, there was some small part of his heart that had goodness in it. It was being protected fiercely by his anger and grief, but the small town, with the help of the girl, was able to coax the goodness out again. Most of it, anyway. A little beastiness is good now and then. Metaphorically, of course (per the legal team).

Right when the beast started to hope a happily ever after could be in his future, lies were spread about him and the girl. In order to protect him, the girl fled. But the problem was: she took her magic with her. Without her, the plants began to wilt. Smiles drooped. The sky turned gray. And the beast sent out a call to all the lands, hoping that one girl would hear it.

He must let her know how ardently he admired and loved her.

And so he would be at their small town’s hockey rink at seven pm on Saturday night, hoping for true love’s kiss.

Hoping for their happy ever after.

The rest of the article was full of corrections about my misdemeanors and an announcement that Dylan Savage would indeed be playing with the Peaks for another season. My eyes skimmed over the page, but my brain was still caught on the information in his story.

He was here? And wanted to meet me at the hockey rink at seven? I checked the time on my phone. I only had an hour.

“What should I do?” I asked my brothers, panicked.

“What do you want to do?” Haydn said. “We can hop back on this dingy and go back to the island a few more days until this blows over.”

“But Lia?”

“She’ll understand.”

I stared at him, then Bennett, then Haydn. “I really love him. Is it selfish to want to be with him?”

“No,” Jules said. “I can’t think of a more perfect person for you. Someone who would do this?” He waved his phone back and forth. “Makes the rest of us look bad, honestly.”

I laughed, happiness bubbling up in me. “Oh my gosh. I’m really going to do this. I’m really going to—” I cut myself off and squealed, jumping up and down.

“What?” Jules asked, his eyes wide.

“I just realized! We get to do a movie makeover montage!”

“But I thought he liked you the way you are,” Bennett said, dread in his eyes.

“He does, which makes this even more fun.”