“Bye, Rosie.” He walks toward the door but doesn’t let go of my hand until he’s so far away, they naturally drift apart from distance.
“Bye, Dylan,” I say as the door closes.
He’s gone, and the knot in my stomach changes, turning to an emptiness I don’t quite understand.
12
DYLAN
“Wait!” Rosie yells.
I peer over my shoulder, finding her running after me.
“Stop!”
I turn around as she gets closer and grab her by the shoulders before she slams into me. “What’s wrong?”
“Don’t go,” she begs, curling her fingers into my T-shirt. “It doesn’t matter what my father says. You were kind when you didn’t need to be. You rescued me when you didn’t have to. I’ve seen a glimpse of the man underneath this hard exterior, and I want to know more. I want to take you to dinner this weekend…as a thank-you.”
I raise my eyebrows, taken aback by her offer, and move my hand to her beautiful face. “You don’t need to do that, wildcat. You’ve been sweet to me, something not many people around here are. That’s enough for me.”
She smiles, her blue eyes sparkling in the morning sun. “You were the sweet one. Please, let me do this. I want to do this.”
“You want to take me on a date?” I repeat her earlier statement, still in shock and confused as fuck.
She nods, her smiling growing wider. “Yes. Saturday night. I’ll pick you up.”
“Ro, I’ll pick you up. We’ll take the bike.”
She peers around me to my bike, and her lips twist before she returns her eyes to mine. “I’m more of a car girl.”
“You need to let go a little. Let your hair blow in the wind and feel the freedom of the road. You pick the place and time, and I’ll be here, wildcat.”
“Saturday at five.”
“Five?” Who the hell goes on a date at five unless they’re old as fuck?
“Yes, five. It’s a bit of a drive to the place, and I don’t want to show up too late.”
I shrug a shoulder, still holding her face. “Whatever you want. You want five, I’ll be here at five.”
Her hands flatten against my shirt, sliding up my chest, and wrap around the back of my neck. “Thank you,” she says softly, inching up on her tiptoes and bringing her face close to mine. “You won’t regret it.”
I slide my hands down her body, gripping her hips. “I have no doubt.”
I fully expect her to pull away and leave, but she doesn’t. She comes closer, moving her lips toward mine, her eyes searching mine for approval.
I don’t wait for her to make the final move. I take control, bending my neck, placing my lips over hers, and tasting her sweetness, letting myself get lost in her softness.
She kisses me back with more hunger than she did last night. Our bodies are pressed right and perfectly together as the sounds of our breaths become one and fill with need. I wrap my arms around her, leaving no space between us, and grip the back of her neck with one hand, holding her captive in this moment.
She breaks away, breathing heavy, and stares at me like more than a kiss passed between us. “Saturday,” she whispers.
“Saturday,” I repeat, trying to catch my breath and get my body under control before I climb on my bike and leave. “If you change your mind, you know how to reach me.”
“I won’t,” she says, watching me as I walk backward toward the parking lot of her apartment complex.
Part of me knows I should’ve said no, but I can’t. Not to her. There’s such a sweetness underneath all her strength which I’ve never experienced or seen in another woman. The way she looks at me is different too. I’m not a piece of garbage in her eyes, even though she knows all about my family and their less-than-lackluster reputation around our small town.
Even if we only get Saturday night, I’ll do everything in my power to make it the best night ever, and hopefully dessert will include her.
“You’re doing what now?” Ian asks, sitting next to me on the front porch as an afternoon thunderstorm starts to roll our way.
“You heard me.”
“Rosie Gallo, though, bro? For real? I mean, the girl is hot, but she’s closer to a nun than your normal type.”
“You don’t know my normal type,” I remind him, not having spent time around each other in seventeen years.
Besides not seeing each other, he rarely called, typically only to drop bad news in my lap. My brothers know nothing about me. They wrote me off the day I left, and I guess, in a way, I wrote them off too.
I knew I had to go. I couldn’t stay here with my father, or I would’ve ended up a drunk or, even worse, in jail. I needed to get away from the toxicity in the house, and I set out on the open road to make my own way in the world. No matter how bad shit got after I left, it was never worse than it was when I lived at home.
“That was your choice. You made the decision to leave.”
“I had to leave, Ian. You know how the old man was. What other choice did I have?”
He rocks back and forth, taking a sip of the beer he’s been nursing for an hour. “I remember. I lived it. You leavin’ didn’t make anything better either. Gave him fewer people to spread his anger out on. Shit only got worse.”
“Staying was never an option.”
“We always have choices. You made yours. We paid for it, too.”
“Well, at least the bastard is dead now,” I tell him.
“Wish it would’ve happened sooner,” he mutters. “You stickin’ around?”
I shrug. “Don’t know. Didn’t think I had much reason to stay and figured no one wanted me around anyway. Do you really care if I do once you get what you need?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Ian stares out across the front yard at the sky, stewing in silence. “I think you’ve been gone long enough.”
“No one wants me here, Ian. You’ve made it perfectly clear you’re still pissed at me for a decision I made seventeen years ago to save myself.”
“It’ll take some time for that wound to heal. I’m grateful you’re here now when I need you most, and if this doesn’t work… Well, then I’ll need you here more than I ever have before.”
I turn my head, studying his profile. “It’ll work.”
Ian leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and sighs. “Never know what’s around the corner. I’m sorry I’m such a dick to you. I’m trying to get over the anger I had as a kid for you leaving me here with him…with them, but I want you here. Have you ever done something and never knew how to make the first move to correct it?”
I stretch out my legs, kicking back in my chair and thinking about his question. I live my life on my own terms, but I have a lot of regrets too. I don’t know how many times I picked up the phone, wanting to talk to my brothers, but something always stopped me. Finding the right words wasn’t easy, and they never came to me. Skipping the conversation and phone call entirely was easier. The longer time stretched, the more difficult it became to take the first step.