CHAPTER 31
Zoe
I made my way back to bakery, with every step reminding myself that I didn’t owe Dylan anything, that I totally had my emotions under control.
Or so I hoped.
Pushing open the doorway, I found Kelly fiddling with her phone behind the counter while Samuel and Donovan were hard at work in the kitchen. Man, every time I thought I was fed up and done with Fallow Springs, the kind, honest people who comprised the city reminded me what it meant to be a good neighbor.
And there was Dylan.
He sat on the plump red sofa in the corner, hunched over a notebook with a pen thoughtfully tapping his lips. I watched with amusement as he lifted the pen and absentmindedly plunged it into his coffee, using it as a stirrer. I’d never seen him so engrossed in his work, and I had to admit, I was feeling the mild burn of a sexual turn on.
No, my brain interrupted. You’re not. He used you and accused you.
Aside from the middling rhyming skills, my brain had a point. No good would come out of flirting harder with Dylan. I’d already walked that road, and the destination sucked.
But Dylan’s eyes darted up for a moment and in their haze, locked on mine. Damn. Just when I’d thought I could sneak off to my office and sulk in solitude.
“Hey Zoe,” he said in a low voice. The words traveled directly to my ears, as though they were programmed to receive his vibrations. “Could we talk in the back?”
Obviously, I had heard him. The shop wasn’t much bigger than a matchbox, there was no way to miss the sound. But in my fit of pettiness, I flounced to the counter, pretending I’d totally missed his request.
“Kelly,” I said loudly, to indicate that I was ignoring Dylan. “How’d sales go today?”
“Uh, like, fine,” she replied. “I think the cop is trying to talk to you.”
I frantically waved off her comment. “Ignore him.”
She raised a skeptical brow. “But he’s… the police…”
“Yes, Kelly, I know,” I huffed. How could this girl not take a hint?
She pressed the point. “So, shouldn’t you, I dunno, talk to him?”
While she was busy missing every body language signal I was dropping, Dylan felt the need to call out for me again.
“Zoe, can we please just talk?” he pleaded.
Kelly’s eyes went wide. I think the desperation in his voice had finally clicked in her mind. “Ohh,” she whispered loudly, thus making it hardly a whisper at all. “Are you banging?”
“Kelly!”
“What, I’m not the one fucking a cop.”
Oh my God! Since when did my employees get the idea that they could talk to me like that? We were going to have a serious employee conduct meeting when I’d finished the court case. If there was still a bakery after that through which to employ people.
I realized I was surrounded on all sides, so with the greatest reluctance, I turned away from the counter, and faced Dylan.
“Fine,” I said coolly. “We can go to my office.”
He nodded low, and my heart fluttered. There was something unspeakably sexy about the way that cowboy hat covered his eyes.
We walked to my office, which really was more of a broom closet, situated at the far back of the store, right near the exit to the garbage cans. Not exactly the most scenic location, but it would have to suffice, there was no way I would allow my employees to overhear whatever Dylan had to say.
The office had a miniature loveseat and a coffee table in lieu of a desk and chair. I think we both realized immediately how small the loveseat was, because Dylan said at once, “You should take the chair.”
Always a gentleman.
I sat down apprehensively, nervous about all the ways this conversation could go.
He took a deep breath, and began with, “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
I scoffed. “Hurt? You think you hurt me? Dylan, you destroyed me.”
He rubbed a few fingers over his eyes and shook his head. “I know. I know, and I couldn’t possibly regret it more.”
“But you’re fully aware of how much this bakery means to me. You were there when I heard that it got robbed. You—” I stumbled over the memory, which was sensitive to the touch. “You held me as I cried.”
“Zoe,” he labored to get out, “I understand. I was just trying to do my job.”
I brought my knees up to my chest and put my face between them. “Well, your job sucks.”
He laughed. “Sometimes, yeah.” Pause. “But I haven’t felt like this about any woman since… since my wife died.”
I sucked in air. I wasn’t ready to forgive him, but I also knew how difficult it was for Dylan to bring up his wife. Cutting him off at this juncture in the conversation would ensure he’d never open up to me again. So even though I was fucking pissed, I held my tongue.
“I think,” he continued, “no, I know, I’ve had a hard time trusting anyone since. And I think it’s why a part of me wanted to believe you were guilty, to stonewall you out. Because it meant I wouldn’t have to put my heart on the line again and get destroyed. Loneliness just seemed easier.”
He hesitated, and went on, “But I’d like to tell you about what happened. Maybe you can fully understand where I’m coming from. Would that be okay?”
I met his gaze, and those blue eyes were so open that I thought I might fall into them. My heart made a choice — I had to hear him out.
So, I replied, “Yes. That’d be okay.”
He took another deep breath and began. “Her name was Lila. We were real, honest-to-God, childhood sweethearts. She dropped her pencil in our ninth-grade history class. I picked it up, and that was that. This may sound corny, but it was love at first sight. We stayed together through high school, even won prom queen and king. After graduation, she moved away for nursing school, and I remained here. Both of us agreed before she left that doing a long-distance relationship for years just wouldn’t work. But we kept in touch, and about two years into college, she messaged me and said she hadn’t dated anyone since me — that she didn’t want to, that I was her one true love.”
Dylan’s voice was steady, but he was spinning his wedding ring around his finger.
“So, I agreed to wait for her. It wasn’t easy, but I didn’t care. Nothing worth doing is easy. Eventually, she came back with her bags and her nursing degree, and we picked up where we left off. Nothing had changed, she was the same exuberant, caring Lila that she’d always been. I, meanwhile, had joined the force, and was already a rookie cop. She needed a job, so I gave her an introduction with the fire chief, since we were lacking first responders.”
He paused for a moment and shifted his body around.
“She got hired on the spot. It was all perfect. Every morning, we woke up and went to work together, and every night, we fell asleep wrapped in one another’s arms. I couldn’t believe my dumb luck in finding such a blissful, happy life. We’d only been back together for three months when I proposed. I was ready to pop the question on day one, but wanted to do it properly, buy a ring, think up a romantic proposal. When I did it, she asked what took me so long.”
His voice wobbled for a moment.
“We were married in winter and had Danny within ten months of the wedding. It was as though, just when I thought my life couldn’t get fuller, he appeared and expanded everything. My heart changed at the moment of his birth. Until then, I hadn’t known I could love two people so completely. I remember sitting in the hospital with Lila just after the delivery. She held him in her arms, and I thought, My God, what a blessing. I had everything planned out, the house we’d live in, the corner store we’d shop at. I even opened a college savings account for Danny. It was all just perfect.”
Dylan faltered, and I instinctively laid a hand over his for support. A small part of me didn’t want to touch him as he was going to be interviewing me for a crime. He had hurt me more than I’d been hurt in decades. But he was a person in need, facing a terrible memory that he probably only revisited once in a while. Although I was still angry, he was opening up and needed to know that his sorrow was serious.
Dylan gripped it as though my hand were a life preserver. I was too afraid to move, to speak. I knew roughly how the story ended, but hearing the whole thing, strung together like that… it burned my insides.
He took a moment, gathered himself and continued.
“We lived like that for about six months. Six wonderful months I wouldn’t give back for anything. And then… the accident happened.”
I could see his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, as though it was in danger of caving in.
He went on, “It was a normal day, just like any other. We handed Danny over to my mom, who watched him just while we went to work — she was cheaper than a daycare, and he was so young. The moment we arrived, Lila was called to an accident. She just barely had time to kiss me goodbye before she hopped in the ambulance.”
He rubbed his cheeks, as though feeling the phantom kiss.
“I walked to the police station, which was only minutes away, and when I made it, the chief came up to me, said there had been an accident. I explained that I knew that, because Lila was dispatched to the scene. He shook his head, and replied no, another accident. All cops called to the location.”
He paused again and took a deep breath.
“What happened next was a blur. Some part of me knew that the universe had unmeshed, that things were falling apart. Tom and I got in the squad car and drove like hell. When we got there… when we got there…”
His breath hitched in his throat, and he choked on it. I put an arm around his shoulder and squeezed tightly, knowing how much inner strength it took to tell this story.
He composed himself, and continued, “When we got there, I learned that Lila had been in the ambulance, about to disembark and help the wounded from the crash, when a drunk driver swerved, spun out and T-boned the ambulance. The doors were crumpled in. The fire department was rigging up the jaws of life by the time I arrived, but I knew it would be too late. I pushed aside the crowds of first responders and ran to the ambulance. Tom stopped me with the help of other first responders.”
Dylan looked up and I could see the tears in his eyes.
“A couple of guys on the team grabbed my arms and threw me to the ground, saying how sorry they were that Lila was in there, but that I needed to stand down and let the machine do its work. After a few minutes, the jaws were able to grant the EMTs access to the back of the vehicle.”
Tears started trickling down Dylan’s cheeks, and I knew it was taking everything in him to not cry in pain. I held him tighter, hoping beyond hope that I could hold him together.
He gasped out, “It was too late. She’d died instantaneously. She was already gone by the time I got there. It gives me a little comfort to think that she didn’t pass in pain.”
Dylan inhaled and exhaled, and looked down at his ring. “And I did the exact opposite of what she would’ve wanted me to do. I fell into a depression so deep I was barely able to get out of bed, let alone take care of Danny. Every time I looked in his eyes, I saw how wide and terrified hers must have been at the moment of impact. My mom moved in so that she could help, and Tom started picking me up every day, because I was too scared to drive. My community rallied around me.”
He let out a deep breath. “They couldn’t save Lila, but I think they all decided that meant they needed to save me from myself. And slowly, very slowly, I began to crawl out of the dark hole I’d been thrown into. Now, a little over a year later, I can see a future for myself where before I saw nothing but blackness.”
He fingered the ring, spinning it around his third digit. “I wear the ring to remind myself that life can be beautiful again, and of how lucky I was to have something so good, if only for a short time.”
He broke off and looked at me. I had lost all words, but needed desperately to comfort him.
With what little faculty of speech I had, I uttered, “Dylan, for whatever it’s worth I am so, so sorry. For what happened to Lila, who sounds wonderful, and for what happened to you and Danny. I don’t know what to say. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.”
“Thank you,” he replied softly. “I know it’s uncomfortable to talk about, and I’m sorry for that, but—”
“Never,” I interrupted, “apologize for telling me your truth. I want to know you, Dylan, from the inside out.”
He nodded silently, and said, “Does it explain why I’ve been reticent, and untrusting? Because you have to understand, and this may sound cheesy, but… it’s not you, it’s me. I’m just a bit broken.”
“Hold on, now, you’re not broken,” I countered. “You’re just bruised around the edges. And I get it now. I get the accusations, and the lying, all of it. I don’t think you were trying to hurt me.”
I was shocked at myself for having come around to his point of view so quickly, but it was hard to argue with a story like that, and the deep sadness with which he told it. Dylan was, to his core, a good man who’d been dealt a shitty hand, and if I couldn’t allow forgiveness for that, I was all the lesser for it.
But I’d also been burned before, so the skittish part of me reared its head and asked, “So, just to make sure, for my own sanity… you don’t think I’m guilty.”
He shook his head vigorously. “No. I just got nervous. I believe in you, Zoe, and I believe that you would never harm this bakery.” He ran a hand over the kitsch sofa and the old-timey coffee table. “It’s your life. This place is you. Hurting it would be like cutting off one of your fingers.”
I smiled, and replied, “Okay, kind of a gross comparison, but I’m glad that you get it. That you see this place for what it is, and by extension, that you see me. I feel so free, just being seen.”
I wiped off the last tears that were drying on his face, and added, “No more crying. Only good things from here on out.”
He nodded, and he grabbed the hand that was wiping his tears, and brought it to his lips, where he planted a firm kiss. His lips were soft, in spite of the salt from the tears.
“Now,” he said, removing his lips from my skin, “speaking of good things… I think I might have had a break in your case.”