Harlow pulls away from Dante’s grasp. “Not now.”
Dante kisses her neck. “What do you mean not now? What’s wrong with a little PDA? Huh?” His hands go to her ass. “Are you telling me to go somewhere else to find what I need?”
“Yes. Because I’m pretty sure you did just that last night.” Harlow’s eyes meet mine, and for the first time I see the shame.
“Huh? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Jasalie, can you talk to my girl? Get her to chill out?”
“Dante.” Dylan’s voice is lethally quiet. “Quit while you’re ahead.”
Apparently Dante doesn’t take his eyes off of me fast enough because Dylan suddenly has him by the shirt. He backs Dante up against the shelving as cans topple off and onto the ground around them.
“I told you to leave Jasalie alone.” Dylan’s expression is so fierce, and under normal conditions, I would find it hot, but now?
Now I hate that he’s fighting with a teammate because of me.
“Dylan!” I unsuccessfully try to force myself in between him and Dante and end up standing next to them and waving my hands in the air. “Please. It’s okay. I’m okay. Let him go.”
Dylan ignores me as he and Dante shoot death stares at each other. Dylan’s hand is around Dante’s neck, but Dante’s still being stupid and licking his lips like he’s ready to pick a fight.
“You won’t hurt me,” he challenges Dylan. “You don’t have it in you.”
“I’ll kill you if you so much as talk to her sideways ever again.” Dylan’s voice has dropped another octave. “That’s a fucking promise.”
Harlow and I make eye contact, and I read her stunned expression clear as day—she envies me for the way Dylan’s defending me.
But I’m ultra aware that we’re in public and that two teammates fighting is not a good look, especially not for a star quarterback. And I may be decent at self-defense, but I know better than to continue to try to insert myself between two professional athletes. So I come up with a different plan. I have no clue if what I’m about to do will work, but I’m out of ideas for how to get Dylan out of here before some shopper’s camera finds him first and he ends up on the front page of a tabloid.
“Dylan.” I tug at his belt. “I’m leaving.”
He jerks his head over to face me. His eyes fill with confusion and…fear?
“What did you say?”
“I’m leaving.” I try to keep my voice even. “Are you coming, or are you staying here?”
His gaze hooks with mine, and I lift my chin in what I hope is enough of a challenge to sway him.
I’m not sure what does the trick, but Dylan, with a last growl at Dante, releases him. Leaving our cart where it is, we turn and leave the store.
As soon as we’re safely inside Dylan’s car, I turn to him. “You don’t need to defend me like that,” I say.
“Jasalie.” Dylan curses under his breath and then grips the steering wheel with both hands. “I hate that I’m the reason you just had to go through that.”
“You’re not the reason!” I say. “Dante’s the one who said those things. And while I love that you want to protect me, I’m really okay. I don’t ever want to come between you and a teammate. What happened after the Super Bowl was one thing…”
“Green deserved a lot more than getting cut from a football team,” Dylan mutters.
“He crossed a line, obviously, but in this case…and I’m not saying Dante wasn’t being a jerk. He’s…” I refrain from saying everything I really think about Dante, starting with that he’s a jealous asshole. “He clearly likes to push people’s buttons.”
“He always has. He doesn’t usually get to me like that, though. It’s just that when he turned it on you…”
“And Harlow,” I add.
“Of course I think that’s shitty.”
“What about the way he treats you?” I say in a tone so soft I can barely hear myself. “Does that bother you?”
Dylan’s eyes flash with a rare show of temper. “I can’t talk about Dante and me right now. I’m sorry. He…” He punches the steering wheel. “He pisses me off.”
He starts the car, and we drive back to the hotel in silence.
As we step into our hotel room, I touch Dylan’s back. “Hey. I get why you’re extra protective with me. But…”
Dylan’s blank expression gives me nothing as he lets out a deep breath. “I think I need to go to the gym. Get this whole thing with him out of my system.”
He’s shutting me out. I know because I do this, too. I learned the hard way that it’s easier to take my own way out the door before I’m kicked out. Dylan may not shut down the way I do, but he’s making it clear he’s not up for company at the moment.
“Why are you pushing me away?” I ask him.
“What do you mean?” He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
I’ve never once seen him avoid addressing me directly. Until now.
“You’re avoiding my question.”
“I’m not,” he says firmly. “I just hate the idea of seeing you hurt, especially because of me and my job.”
I nod and step back as he packs his gym bag. “I don’t want a superhero, Dylan.” I swallow. “I just want you.”
His eyes soften. “Jasalie, I get it. But I had to defend you back there. I’ll always defend you.”
He kisses me quickly, picks up his bag, and he’s gone.
I shut the door behind him, feeling frustrated and lonely. But there’s something else. Something I haven’t felt since I lost my mother. It’s grief.
I get out my clay and sculpt Dante and Harlow—two snake-like figures intertwined with one another in a death spiral. When I’m finished I pick up my cell phone.
Before I visit my mother, I want to remember the years I was without her. Maybe that way it won’t hurt as much if she rejects me again.
Lionel answers the phone.
“Hello, Lionel. It’s Jasalie. How are you?”
“Hi, Jasalie,” he says. “Long time, huh?”
Lionel was the father in my second foster family. They had a lot of money and traveled and helped give me the belief that I could reach for more.
“Yes, it has been. How’re things?”
“Good, real good. Just got back from a business trip to Brussels. Got to stop in Paris as well. Lovely weather, too.”
“Great.” I work hard to sound enthusiastic. “I’m glad you had a nice time.”
“How are things with you?” he says.
I can hardly hear him because another phone starts ringing in the background. “I’m good.” The ringing keeps going. “Do you need to get that?”
“Yeah, hold on a second.” I hear him answer the other line, and then he’s back. “I have to take this call, okay? But don’t be a stranger. Take care of yourself, and make sure to let us know how…”
“Is Zoe home?” I interrupt him.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Zo! It’s Jasalie!”
I hear footsteps, and then she’s there.
“Sweetheart,” Zoe breathes into the phone.
“Hi, Zoe.” I wonder if she’s already started her cocktail. I glance at the clock. Not even two o’clock. She can’t be drinking yet. But it’s never too early for those pills.
“Where are you?” she says.
“Arizona. Business trip.”
“Wonderful. We just got back from a trip ourselves.” Zoe’s voice sounds muffled now. She must be holding the phone between her shoulder and ear while she paints her nails. That’s something she did quite often when I lived there.
I lasted with the Hughes from eleven to fifteen when they needed to use my bedroom for two younger foster kids. So I went back into the system and bounced around until I turned eighteen. And at that point, I was on my own and still a senior in high school.
The first apartment I tried fell through, and that’s how I ended up on the streets for six months. I dropped out of high school, ate at the soup kitchen, and was lu
cky to never be abused. But I learned how to defend myself really quickly—a woman who’d been homeless for ten years taught me a short course in self-defense, and I used it whenever I had to. Then I lucked into an apartment with a few other girls. One of them took pity on me and helped with my share of the rent so I could get my GED. Then it was up to me—between working as a sales clerk and other odd jobs, I made it work until I got my college degree. Then Bill hired me, and the rest is history.
“Yes,” I say to Zoe. “Lionel mentioned it. Paris must have been nice.”
“Oh, it was,” she says. “Although it’s a dirty city, especially in late winter. All that rain ruins the streets you know.”
I don’t. But I remember how Zoe and Lionel were kind to me, and so I answer her politely. “Yes.”
“We must do lunch sometime soon,” Zoe says.
I know she doesn’t really mean it. We were never that close, but I know she thinks she does. The Hughes had a number of foster children in and out through the years—they had the money and the room, and they were generous that way. They weren’t able to conceive children of their own. Lionel has an affair a year; that’s what we all used to joke. And Zoe numbs her heart to the pain. But they were never mean to any of us.
“We must,” I agree.
When we hang up, my mind won’t stop racing. Between my past and my future, I feel so mixed up. The only way I can hope to make this work with Dylan is if I clear all my skeletons out of the closet. So I reach for the phone again, and before I can think too hard about it, I dial his number.
As soon as he says hello, I feel like I’ve made a mistake. But I plunge onward. “Hi, Joel. It’s Jasalie.”
Your ex-fiancée, I almost add in case he’s forgotten about me, but I think that may be going too far.
“Jasalie.” Joel sounds surprised. “Hi. How are you?”
“Good,” I say. “I’m good. You?”
“I’m good, too. Um, why are you calling?”
I laugh. God, I feel like an idiot. “I’m not sure. I haven’t talked to you since we broke up, and I just wanted to…” I choke up. “I just wanted to thank you. For trying. I know I’m not easy to be with.”
“You weren’t that bad.” But I can tell he’s smiling. “We weren’t close to being in love, were we?”
“No.” I exhale. “We wanted to be, though. We gave it a shot.”
“That we did.” Joel says. There’s a small silence, and then he gives me the permission I’m looking for. Either that, or he lets me forgive myself for what I thought was my fault. “I hope you have a happy life, Jase.”
“I hope you do, too, Joel.” I put the receiver back onto the phone softly.
I make one more sculpture, and when Dylan still hasn’t returned, I flop down on the bed, hug one of the pillows to my chest, and fall asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bang, bang, bang.
I shake my head in an attempt to clear out the fuzziness. When I stand, I fall back onto the bed momentarily with a massive head rush.
If this is maid service, I’m going to be really pissed.
Bang, bang, bang, again on the door. Not loud, exactly, but not soft, either.
As I open the door, Dylan’s dark eyes look back at me. His expression is serious but gentle as he hands me a beautiful framed photograph of the desert.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I forgot my key.”
I finger the red clay and brilliant blue sky in the picture he brought me. “This is gorgeous, Dylan. Thank you.”
He steps inside the room, and we stand and look at each other in silence. Finally, Dylan breaks it in a rush of words filled with emotion.
“I haven’t brought a woman into my life since Annabella. Not in any meaningful way. I swore I never would, that I’d wait until I retired to get serious about someone. But you…you make me break all my vows. Only in the best ways.”
I catch my lower lip in my teeth, and Dylan’s eyes go straight to my mouth.
“My family—let’s just say I don’t do conflict real well. I prefer to get out my aggressions on the football field. You know?”
I want to ask him more about his family. But I’m too scared of getting into a reciprocal confessional.
Instead, I show him the second sculpture I made while he was gone.
He studies it before he speaks. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
I’m so happy I can’t help from smiling. “How’d you know?”
“I saw you in there. And I knew.”
This is the first self-sculpture I’ve ever done. I’ve always wanted to try, but I never had the courage.
“What do you see?” I ask Dylan.
The head of the sculpture is covered in a mess of hair. The woman’s eyes are alive, and so is her smile. But one of her hands covers most of her mouth, and she has an arm crossed over her heart.
“I see a woman afraid to admit that she has what it takes to live in this world,” he says as he looks at it with me. “Someone who’s far braver than she realizes, someone I wish I was as strong as.”
“Dylan.” I wrap my arms around his waist. “That’s…you’re the bravest person I know.”
I want to ask him to never walk away from me, and as long as he promises me that, I’ll never walk away, either. But something stops me. Almost like the hand that covers the mouth on my self-sculpture. I’ve always censored my feelings in order to protect myself, and I haven’t figured out yet how to do it any other way. So instead, I focus on him.
“It’s no different from what you do on the football field.”
“I guess so,” he says uncertainly.
“What you do is artistic, too. You know—the way you threw the ball in the final game—you spotted Colton running the perfect route. He was open for just a split second, and you timed it perfectly and delivered the ball to him so he didn’t even have to break stride as he caught it, broke a tackle, and ran it in for a touchdown.”
I sit, almost in a reverie as I remember the one time I watched Dylan play.
“So you saw the game.” Dylan’s eyes brighten. “I had no idea.”
“I’d never seen an entire game before. Lilla and I were getting everything ready for the party, and the television was on. You caught my attention as you always do.”
He lies down on his back on the bed. “Jasalie, I have to be honest with you about something. What do you want to happen between us when this week is over?”
I lie down next to him. “I’m not sure.”
“Me neither,” he says. “But here’s the thing—I’ve been falling for you since we met. I wouldn’t have necessarily called what I felt the first moment I saw you love—I would have called it something more like ‘I have to see this woman and be with her as soon and as much as possible.’ And I didn’t want anything to stand in the way of finding out more about you. I want to believe you felt it, too. That even on that first day you wanted me.”
I remember when I first laid eyes on Dylan and when he first spoke to me. I don’t think I’d have known love if it had slapped me in the face. But I can’t disagree with him.
“I definitely wanted you,” I confess with his face now inches from mine. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we promised this would end in Tucson.”
“No, it doesn’t.” His voice is low but filled with raw emotion. “But it can change the end result. If we want it to that is.”
I pull back from him. “This is getting heavy for the first day of our week off.”
“It is.” He shakes his head as if at himself. “I didn’t mean to say all of that right now, especially after the way I handled things earlier.”
When I don’t say anything, he says, “What’s going on in your head?”
Everything. Craziness. I stare up at the ceiling, half-wishing it would swallow me up. When I finally turn back to face him, I’m choked up. “I don’t know if I can take things past what we’ve agreed to.”
“Even if that decision is binding you to unhappi
ness?”
“It’s binding me to safety,” I argue. “Our affair is supposed to be for a finite amount of time in a certain geographical location. It was never meant to signify more than that, like some sort of permanent commitment.”
A promise of permanency is not only risky; it sounds downright dangerous.
“But…” he starts to argue, but I cut him off.
“Dylan,” I say without taking the time to rehearse anything first. “This was supposed to be a fake romance for the press. And even though it’s turned into so much more…”
I pull away from him and carefully cover up my sculpture, keeping my back to him. “The truth is I want to let you in, Dylan. But I need to fill you in on why I’m the way I am. Can we go for a walk, somewhere outside of the hotel but still private, and talk?”
Dylan says he knows the perfect place, but on our way to the lobby, we really do get stuck in the elevator. It jerks to a stop somewhere between the tenth and eleventh floor. Dylan buzzes the alarm on the panel and calls for assistance. The woman who answers tells us not to worry and promises help is on the way.
Dylan takes a seat on the floor. “Might as well relax right?”
I sit down next to him.
“I’m sorry about earlier.” He puts his hand on my leg. “I don’t ever want to hurt you.”
“I know you don’t. But Dante isn’t our problem. He’s like the big, bad wolf. He’ll keep coming until you stop giving him a reason.”
“I agree,” he says.
“Look,” I say. “I love your identity, Dylan. I know you’re worried it’s dangerous to bring someone from the outside into your unusual—and amazing—life, but football is your passion. It’s such a part of who you are. And I’m no different from you; I want to protect you the same way. I want everyone to treat you the way you deserve. Whether that’s a teammate, a reporter, or your agent, you deserve to be treated like the kind, amazing person that you are. But,” I pause and then say out loud the idea that’s been running through my mind since the grocery store, “I agree with your concerns as well, and continuing this affair for another week has already complicated things.”
Dylan (Wild Men) Page 18