8. Dylan

Chapter 8

Dylan

PEAKS BARELY ESCAPE ELIMINATION WITH SAVAGE OUT OF THE LINE-UP

Dylan Savage was missing from what could arguably be described as this season’s most important game on the path to the PHL finals. The Peaks barely pulled off a 2-1 win last night, cementing their place in the top sixteen teams. The team declined to comment on Savage’s absence. Rumors surrounding the disappearance of their star center following the tragic death of teammate, Shiloh Blaire, continue to overshadow the Peaks’ victory.

A warm body snuggled into my chest, and I blinked against the bright shard of sunlight cutting through an opening in the blackout curtains.

Only to find myself eye to eye with a naked alien. With zero fur, wrinkled skin, and a body so skinny, a stick drawing of it would be true to size, the “cat” very much resembled a nightmare straight out of a Stephen King novel.

“Ugh.” As I scrambled to sit up, it tumbled off my chest with an irritated purr, then proceeded to stroll from my bedroom as if it owned the place.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. How in the world had it gotten in the apartment? When I fell asleep, it hadn’t been here.

I yawned and wished I could sleep the day away, but after a lifetime of training myself to get up early, my body didn’t work like that. I’d stayed up half the night working out until my limbs and brain felt like jelly and I stopped dissecting how the game could have gone differently had I been there.

The team won without me. Why did that make me feel worse than before? It wasn’t that I wanted them to lose, but I wanted them to need me.

A glance at the contemporary cuckoo clock on the wall opposite the bed confirmed that I’d only gotten three hours of sleep. Probably in part due to the obnoxious clock.

Hopefully every day didn’t crawl by as slowly. Or as painfully. I trudged to the bathroom and studied my face in the mirror, turning right and left to check out my nose. It was a little red and swollen near the bridge, but nothing an ice pack and some anti-inflammatories wouldn’t take care of.

A quick shower—with rose-scented body wash—helped to clear my head enough to realize that all of Rosie Forrester’s belongings were in this apartment. Including a pink lacy bra hanging from the inside door handle of the bathroom and a matching pair of underwear bunched up in the corner by the door.

She hadn’t anticipated not sleeping in her own apartment, which probably meant she had no clothes to change into last night. Her make-up was scattered on the counter next to an empty bowl of cat food.

Maybe I was as big a tool as the media said.

A low rumbling noise had me jumping out of my skin. I swore as my elbow hit the shower handle. Had the alleged cat been in here with me the entire time? A shudder rolled through me.

I raced through the rest of my shower and dressed in the bedroom, with the door shut against any intruders. It’s only temporary. It’ll all be worth it.

If I thought it enough times, maybe I’d start to actually believe it.

My phone lit up with a text.

Dad: Did you make it into town okay?

I looked back through our message history as I opened the curtains and lifted the window to let in some fresh air. Most of the messages were from Dad telling me Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday. I’d always given those a thumbs up.

Only our last four messages were different.

Dad: I’m sorry, Dylan. Shiloh was like a son to us.

I’d ignored that one. And even now, my fingers itched to delete it.

Dylan: Thought I should give you a heads up that I’m coming home.

Dad: For how long?

Dylan: Until the PHL finals.

He didn’t ask why, but then again, it probably wasn’t hard to guess. If I was as viral as Ms. Lincoln said, then they’d probably seen the memes even here in the middle of the ocean.

He’d sent me the link to this apartment, and I had to wonder if directing me here was Dad’s way of getting back at me for being a terrible son. Could he have known Rosie would hit me in the face? Probably not. But had he known the apartment for rent was like the pit of Hades? That, I could believe.

The bloody nose was just a bonus.

Rosie mentioned I looked like Dad when I scowled. It struck me at the time that not only did she know my dad well enough to say that, but she’d seen his scowl enough times to recognize it.

Somehow, even with only a few minutes of meeting her, that didn’t surprise me.

Rosie Forrester was unexpected, and the great Sheriff Savage didn’t do unexpected. It shouldn’t make me like her, but it did. Or at least lit a spark of curiosity. Except for the fact that she was either a liar or completely delusional about what an actual livable space looked like.

She was charging me the same amount of rent to stay in that rat-infested, mildew hole as Bret charged me for my room in his huge house. Which was actually furnished.

I texted dad back.

Dylan: I made it to Winterhaven.

Dad: Your mom would like for you to come to lunch Sunday.

The careful wording was not lost on me. Mom wanted me to come. She’d attempted to reconcile me and Dad in the beginning, and then her efforts had faded. I knew his painful texts were the product of her prodding, combined with the fact that I’d been ignoring her phone calls.

I could say no. I probably should say no. But I needed to get this over with. Winterhaven wasn’t a big enough island to avoid them forever. We could do one civil meal together.

Dylan: *thumbs up*

I put on my running clothes and headed past the futon—what was it with this girl and futons? I was not going to sit on this one. I jogged down the creaky wooden stairs, eager to get a run in before the rest of the town woke up. Dim light filtered in from the windows downstairs, casting dozens of canvases into shadows. Three canvases were set up on easels and in various stages of completion. The scent of paint permeated the entire building.

I paused at the bottom of the stairs and blinked to adjust my vision when I saw Rosie fast asleep in an upright wooden chair in the middle of the room. She slept in front of a realistic painting of the ocean, with a few playful otters bobbing their heads up from the water near a tiny dinghy in the distance. It was good. Really good.

Rosie’s head was cocked back at an unnatural angle, and she wore a paint-stained T-shirt that showed off most of her tan legs. Paint streaks covered her hands and arms, and even the tops of her thighs looked like a rainbow made of gradations of blue. A dark-tipped paint brush was loosely gripped in her hand.

Had she slept here all night while I was asleep in her bed? Anger at myself warred with frustration at her. I gently touched her arm, and she sat up with a startled jerk and a yelp. The paint brush went flying, narrowly missing my chest.

Way to scare her to death, Dyl. “Hey, it’s just me. Dylan Savage.” I took a huge step back and held up my hands as non-threateningly as possible.

She cleared her throat and swiped at the drool that had run down her cheek. Her vision cleared with recognition, and she smiled sleepily at me. My heart gave an uncomfortable flop.

“You said you had a houseboat,” I accused, the words harsher than I’d intended.

She blinked, still clearly waking up and processing. “And you said your glare doesn’t look like your dad’s.” She shrugged like she didn’t have a care in the world, while I tried to smooth out my expression. She had to stop comparing me to my dad.

“Rosie.” I ground her name out with all the patience I could muster. “Why are you sleeping on a chair?”

“Why are you naked? These are life’s mysteries.”

My teeth ground together. “I’m not naked.” I folded my arms over my bare chest, but that only made it worse. My pecs and biceps pushed outward, and it looked like I was trying to show them off. Dangling my arms at my sides felt unnatural, especially since I couldn’t stop flexing my abs like a teenager at the pool. My abs were on autopilot. “Were you here all night?”

“Inspiration has insomnia. Something we might have in common.”

My apartment was directly above this studio. Had she heard me moving around all night? Maybe that’s why she couldn’t sleep.

She stood and stretched. Her huge neon green shirt rode up her long legs. It fell half-way to her knees when she wasn’t lifting her hands over her head and arching her back like that cat-thing of hers. I quickly looked away from her legs, but not before I caught her stare on my bare stomach. Her cheeks were pink as she tugged on the hem of her shirt. Our gazes flew apart like pool balls being struck. Running without a shirt on was normal, and not something to be suddenly so self-conscious about.

“Are the paintings upstairs yours?” I asked in a blatant attempt to cover the awkwardness between us.

It took a beat for her to respond, her hands still clutching the bottom of the shirt. Unfortunately, that meant she’d tugged the collar down to reveal a slender shoulder. I nearly groaned. Why had I woken her up? I should have just gone on my run and let her wake naturally. “Um, yes. I’ve painted everything in here.”

I walked around the art studio to avoid looking at Rosie, taking everything in with fresh eyes. It was Winterhaven the way I’d experienced it as a kid. Magical and atmospheric, full of possibility and beauty. I paused at a painting she’d done of an overgrown area of the old graveyard. Salmonberries grew from wild bushes bisected by fallen trees and muddy meandering paths. Homesickness struck me again, for a time and a feeling I could never go back to.

“I’ve been painting for as long as I can remember,” she said, and I felt her gaze on my back. “One of my first memories is my brother giving me one of those really cheap watercolor palettes and a notebook full of blank pages—and he told me to please keep my artwork to paper.”

I quirked an eyebrow at her before I could stop myself.

“I’d allegedly painted all over his new white shoes.”

To my shock, a small hint of a laugh broke from my chest. I paused in front of another painting, this one of the docks. It looked complete, and it made me feel like I was actually there, down to the punny names people loved to christen their boats with.

“That’s the one I was up most of the night working on. I’m donating it to the bookstore to hang in the local author section. It’ll be way better than the blank wall that’s there now. It’s kind of a surprise.”

She liked to talk, but I found I didn’t hate it. Her chatter chipped at the lingering awkwardness between us.

“Bookstore?” We hadn’t had one of those when I was a kid. We’d had a library and a bookstore in Ketchikan we’d call in our orders to once a month, and someone would go pick them up for us. I was so used to one-day delivery, I’d completely forgotten about how exciting it was to get that package every month.

“Yeah. It opened up about five years ago.” She paused, then added, “We have a book club meeting tonight. You should come.”

“I’ll pass.”

“I could give you a run-down of the plot. It was depressing and boring, so believe me, I’m saving you from reading it. But Max gets annoyed if people don’t actually read the book—”

“Wait.” Her words caught up to me. “Max Eriksson?”

“Yeah,” she said with a bright smile. “He picks the books every month, since it’s his store. I used to read them all, because they’re absolutely brilliant but also super depressing. So now Charlie—your cousin Charlotte—and I trade off most months and fill each other in on the plot, themes, and other emotional reactions. That way we only have to read six heart-wrenching books a year each. If you want in on the arrangement, that would bring it down to four, which to be completely honest, would improve my quality of life greatly.”

“I’m not going,” I said abruptly.

Her smile dropped, but mingling with the local book club was not on my list to get back in Coach’s good graces. And even if it was, Max Eriksson was a pretentious tool I had no desire to hang out with.

All the ease between us disappeared. I edged away from her, refortifying my mental walls.

Get in, do the list, get out.

“I’m going for a long run,” I said. “The apartment is open. I noticed a lot of your … belongings were left behind.”

“Okay, I’ll sneak in and grab some clothes, then.”

Without my permission, my eyes flickered down to her bare legs. She pressed a hand to her stomach and took a step backward, away from me, and who could blame her? I’d stolen her bed, woke her up half-dressed, turned down her friendly book club invitation, and then checked her out like a creep.

She backed up another step.

“Wait, the stairs—”

But she’d already taken another step backward, and her heel clipped the bottom step. Then, like a slow-motion scene in a movie where you know the inevitable, horrible thing is going to happen and there’s nothing you can do about it, she fell backward and landed sprawled on the stairs with a squeal. The neon shirt flew up around her waist, revealing toned thighs and … Sunflowers by Van Gogh underwear?

For half a beat, we stared at each other.

I held out my hand toward her slowly. “Are you o—?”

“I’m great.” She popped up without my help, and tugged the hem of her shirt down her legs with the dignity of a starlet on the red carpet. As she turned and took the stairs with easy grace, she muttered, “ Perfectly great.”