We've also established that we're going to need to talk to Robert Crane soon about Lyone Enterprises. Our time is running out, and we all know it.
Dylan hasn't tried talking to me, and I haven't tried talking to him. He's kept his distance, and I've kept mine. At night, though, he always makes his way into my dreams.
There is only one conversation we have, and it's when I find Dylan's mail in my box on Tuesday night.
I knock on his door softly.
When he opens it, he's finishing a phone call, bringing his phone from his ear. He wears a plaid flannel, his feet only covered with socks.
He pockets his phone, and his eyes trail over my face slowly. I feel like he's truly looking into me, straight into my soul.
'Your mail got put in my box,' I say finally, handing him the stack of envelopes.
He takes the mail without a word. 'Oh.'
I swallow.
'Thanks,' he says.
I nod. 'No problem.'
I turn and begin to walk away when I hear his rough voice speak my name.
I look back.
'I think we've got to talk to that mailman.'
The corners of my lips turn up. 'I think so too.'
He nods to me again, a small smile on his lips, before closing the door.
I spend Thanksgiving with a few of my coworkers'Oliver, Sarah, Lana, Phil, and Rachel. Sarah cooks dinner at her place, and the food is spectacular. Through the whole dinner, though, I keep wondering if Dylan is alone on Thanksgiving.
I stay at Sarah's place until around nine before bidding everyone goodnight, despite their slightly drunken requests that I stay. I tell them I'll see them on Monday and am on my way.
It's when I'm driving down the highway that I get the call.
'Hello?'
'Katie, meet me somewhere?'
I furrow my brow. 'Dylan?'
'Yeah, it's Dylan. Will you just meet me somewhere?''Why?'
'Please.' His voice cracks slightly at the end and my heart is instantly pounding as I pull onto the shoulder of the road.
'Where?'
He gives me directions and hangs up shortly after.
Worry pulses through me as I follow Dylan's directions, pulling into the lot of a restaurant on the Willamette River.
I get out of my car and see Dylan pacing by his a few cars down.
'Dylan?' I ask as I approach him.
He stops walking when I near him, his green irises wild. His cheeks are flushed pink from the cold, and he wears his dark jacket and boots. He swallows hard, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his throat.
'I got a call,' he says shakily.
'From who?'
'My' He takes a breath. 'My sister.'
Chapter Fifty Eight
I furrow my brow. Dylan has barely spoken of his sister in the time I’ve known him, but I can see that there’s something inside him connected to her—a secret.
His breathing is fast and irregular as he tugs at the roots of his hair. I’ve never seen him like this before, and it scares me.
“Dylan, calm down,” I say, stepping forward and putting a hand on his arm. “Talk to me, Dylan.”He stares at me, his eyes filled with worry.
“I need to show you something,” he says.
I nod. “Okay.”
He takes my hand and tugs me through the parking lot. At first I think he’s going to take me inside the restaurant, but he walks right past it.
We step onto a small sandy area that barely passes for a beach at the bank of the river. It’s freezing closer to the water, and I shiver.
Dylan continues to pull me farther and farther away from where we came. He suddenly stops, bringing me to a halt.
“Sit,” he says and I do so as he does the same.
The ground is slightly wet from the melted snow by the banks of the river, but I don’t mind.
Dylan’s jaw is clenched tight as he stares at the water.
“Why are we so close to the river?” I ask him.
“The water calms me down,” he answers.
He still holds my hand tightly in his, his palm warm.
“She called me, maybe an hour ago,” he says. “I don’t know how, or...or—”“Dylan, if I’m going to understand any of this at all, I think you have to tell me some things.”He nods, looking over at me. “I know.” He reaches into his pocket, pulling something out and handing it to me.
It’s a photograph.
In it is a family of four, all smiling widely. A tall man stands proudly, with dark hair and green eyes. He smiles, a single dimple carving into his cheek, his hand on the woman’s shoulder. She leans into him, her hair so dark it’s almost black. She has blue-grey eyes that shine.
Her hand rests on a little girl’s shoulder. The girl smiles widely, her two front teeth missing. Her brown hair spills over her shoulders, her green eyes squinting with her smile.
My eyes move to the little boy, and my heart melts.
His brown curls are unruly, his grin the widest of them all. He stands in front of the man, leaning slightly on the little girl, prominent dimples in his plump cheeks.
“This is your family,” I breathe.
“It was my family.”
I look up at Dylan.
I watch him as he takes a long, deep breath.
“My father is in rehabilitation,” he says slowly. I can tell how hard this is for him, to talk about his past. “He was an alcoholic when he was a teenager, but after he met my mother he dropped it. He was clean for a long time, until I was nineteen.”Small, white snowflakes begin to fall from the sky.
“He got addicted to drugs, then. He was fighting with my mother a lot, too, I remember. I was at Oxford, getting my college degree. It wasn’t too far from Holmes Chapel, so I was home a lot. I was...very close to my mother.” He sniffs. “I found out my father was addicted when I went home one weekend, and my mother greeted me at the door, crying.”He chews on his lip. “She was destroyed by it. She loved my father, so much. There wasn’t a second that she didn’t. And he loved her, too. Maybe too much.” He pauses. “He hated being addicted to drugs, and he tried to stop...for her. He knew it was killing her to see him spend all their savings to get more, but he did it anyway.”Dylan clenches his jaw. “The last time I saw my mother was...Thanksgiving dinner, five years ago.”My breath hitches in my throat.
“People in England don’t usually celebrate Thanksgiving, but my mother was infatuated with the idea of a big, hearty meal that families gathered for annually, so she made us celebrate it every year. I got teased for it, sometimes, but I quite liked the idea of it too.”“I knew something was off that year, by the way everyone was acting. Leah, my sister, didn’t make fun of me for working towards a degree in maths, which she did every time I came home from uni. My mother didn’t make as much food as she usually did, and my father wasn’t even there.”“When I asked where he was, my mother told me he admitted himself to the rehabilitation institute outside of town. He was tired of bringing his family down by being addicted, and he wanted to stop it.”Dylan takes a shaky breath. “That was the worst dinner of my life, that Thanksgiving.”His fingers are still laced between mine, and I feel him tighten his grip.
“Six days later, I found out she was driving to visit my father at the institution, and was hit by a drunk driver.” Dylan’s tone turns disdainful. “Leah, my lovely sister, didn’t fucking tell me when it happened. No, she packed her goddamn bags and left the fucking country.” He shakes his head. “She called me from a hotel in Madrid a week after Thanksgiving, and told me.”When I look at him, his eyes are glossy, and my heart cracks all over again.
“I didn’t leave my dormitory for a week. I couldn’t believe it. I just couldn’t, for the life of me, believe that my mother was dead.”I squeeze his hand.
“And my father...I visited him at the rehab center a few weeks after. He was as crushed as I was, and he blamed her death on himself. He had a panic attack when I was there, and the workers there had to sedate him. As far as I know, h
e’s still in rehab. I haven’t seen, or talked to him since.”Dylan puts his head in his hands, removing his fingers from mine.
I bite my bottom lip, watching him compose himself. I place a hand on his shoulder, comforting like he’s done for me so many times before.
He finally looks up, sniffing. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly and I shake my head.
“No, don’t be,” I say.
Dylan laughs dryly. “So, there you go,” he says. “That’s why I moved to Edinburgh as soon as I graduated, I wanted to go somewhere far away. I chose Edinburgh because it’s the last place my sister would expect me to go. And I know she’s been trying to find me.”“How did she get your phone number?”
He shrugs. “Hell if I knew.”
“What did she say, when she called you?”
“She barely said two words. I heard her voice, and knew who it was, so I just panicked and hung up.”He looks so sad, looking down into his lap, his eyes still shiny from moisture. I lean into him, pressing my lips to the soft skin on his cheek.
I want to be here for him, I want to be his shoulder to cry on if he needs to. He deserves it, he deserves it so much, to be loved and cared for. He’s lost so much, and he’s so strong to be able to tell me. I admire him for telling me, I can tell it’s something he’s kept hidden for a long time.
“I lose everyone and everything that I love,” he says in a monotone.
I look out at the river, tears spilling from my eyes at his statement.
You won’t lose me, I want to say to him. I love you, I love you and I won’t leave you.
But I say nothing.
It must seem true to him, that he loses everything he loves. He lost his mother, he practically lost his sister and father, too, and he lost Abigail.
It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t love me, or if he never will, but I won’t let him lose me.
“Dylan,” I say.
He looks into my eyes again.
“Kiss me,” I whisper.
His eyes fly to my lips, and back up to my eyes.
I lean forward so our foreheads touch, his eyes fluttering shut.
Snow is falling harder around us, and I can’t help but think what a beautifully tragic moment is.
Dylan is beautifully tragic.
He leans in closer and connects our lips.
I want him, I want all of him, for as long as we both live. I want him to love me back, I want him to feel about me the way I feel about him. I want him to look past the pain he’s endured in his life and let himself fall.
My arms wrap around his neck, and his tighten around my waist. I’ve missed his smell, his touch, his presence.
He pulls away from me too soon, looking into my eyes.
“I’m sorry about what I said to you, that night,” he whispers against my lips. “I’d rather have you than Abigail any day.”I shut my eyes. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I’m not.”
“You don’t believe in—”
“I know I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I can’t want you.”
His arms are still around me, warm and safe.
I take a shaky breath.
Dylan rises to his feet, tugging me up with him. He tucks the photograph of his family back into his pocket.
“Do you want to get drinks?” He asks me.
“I’d love to.”
He smiles slightly.
I really could use a drink right about now, and I follow Dylan back to the restaurant we parked by.
“They have a good bar across the street,” he tells me and I suddenly recognize the restaurant as the one James left me at when one of the other medical interns got “sick” in the middle of our date and Dylan had to take me home.
We cross the street and enter the dark bar, loud music filling my ears.
Dylan leads me to the bar and we take our seats, the bartender lazily making his way over to us.
“What can I get you?” He asks, smiling widely at me. His eyes trail up and down my body, his tongue running over his lips. He’s probably barely older than twenty one.
Dylan snaps his fingers in front of the bartender’s face. “Eyes over here, mate.”I stifle a laugh.
The bartender looks at Dylan. “What can I get you?” He repeats, less enthusiastically.
“That’s better,” Dylan says, smirking.
I laugh again, turning back to the bartender, whose nametag says ‘Jeremy.’ “I’ll have an apple martini, please.”Dylan raises an eyebrow. “Sophisticated,” he says, smirking.
I smirk back.
“I’ll have a gin tonic,” he tells Jeremy, who, at this point, is probably at his wit’s end with Dylan.
The bartender nods, sighing and turning around.
“When I was fifteen, some of my friends dared me to sneak into a bar and order a slippery nipple,” Dylan says, toying with a napkin on the table.
I snort. “Did you?”
“Yeah.” Dylan smirks. “The bartender was a girl, and she got all offended, so she banned me from the bar.”I laugh. “You troublemaker.”
“I bet you’ve never been banned from anywhere, have you, Katie?”
“Yes, I have, actually,” I snap. “I was banned from a Wal Mart.”
Dylan raises his eyebrows. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I’m serious. I knocked over a Christmas display, and the manager flipped shit.”He laughs. “You—”
“Here are your drinks,” Jeremy interrupts, sliding them across the bar to us.
“Thanks, mate,” Dylan says sarcastically and Jeremy grimaces at him.
When he turns around, we giggle like teenagers.
I sip my drink, the alcohol instantly finding its way to my bloodstream. My heart rate accelerates, and Dylan’s eyes become a little brighter.
Dylan and I begin trying to find numerous ways to annoy the bartender.
“Jeremy!” Dylan shouts loudly to him.
When he turns around, a grimace already on his face, Dylan immediately leans back on the bar, pretending to have been talking to me the whole time.
“Is there something I can get for you?” Jeremy asks through gritted teeth.
“What?” Dylan asks, turning to look at him.
“You called my name.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Uh, yes you did.”
“Look, I think you’re either hallucinating, or drunk, and you really shouldn’t drink on the job,” Dylan says and I try to contain my laughter.
The bartender huffs and turns away.
He Looked Back Page 31
