AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Evie: TY but no TY. Xo.
Amelia: Xo.
“I’m ready for the game, Lucky Charm,” Dylan says, our ride share pulling up into the parking lot and he opens the door for me.
“Good,” I take his arm and step inside. “You’ll get it done tonight.”
“I’m feeling it, baby. We might not even need your empathic powers, tonight,” He says. “I predict the McAlister mojo is back.”
But twenty hours later Dylan’s hopes and dreams are ambushed by darkness tearing through him like a hollow point bullet. He loses again and swims in sadness and regret. We collapse into bed, no sex this time. He stares up at the ceiling, and I soothe his bare arm, shoulder to elbow and circle back again. “Sleep. Tomorrow’s another day.”
“You’re young. Your life lies ahead, waiting for you to enjoy it. Time’s running out for me.”
“It’s just a bad turn,” I say. “A crappy detour.”
“What if it’s not? What if this is just the new normal? I’m the king of reinvention but even kings can hit a limit on heartache. Even kings abdicate.” He rolls away from me.
I fall into a fitful sleep dreaming of boys lying broken in the snow, birds circling a country field, cawing as they wing their way toward the horizon.
A large one swoops down, sinks its sharp talons into my shoulders, and lifts me in the air. I pinwheel my arms trying to get out from under its black wings but no matter how much I struggle, the damn bird is taking me with him, winging its way through gaps in the clouds.
The ground lies thousands of feet below. Our car that we ran over the Wolfe brothers with is a speck, and I scream. The bird screeches and releases me. I drop like a stone, the earth coming up below me fast. Too fast, and I slam my eyes shut bracing for the impact.
I wake up in a sweat, the morning sun filtering into the room and Dylan already seated in a chair at the little desk, hunched over his phone. “What are you doing?” I ask.
“I booked a game in Dallas for tonight.”
I run a hand through my hair. “You’re not taking any time off?”
“Dallas is home turf. Friendly. Buy in isn’t bad. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to. I’ve got to be at the airport in three hours. I’ll book a flight for you back to Chicago.” He looks at me, sadness drawing lines in his face. “I’ll miss you but I can’t let you do this with me forever. It’s not right. It’s not fair.”
“What day is it?”
“Friday,” he says, and walks into the bathroom and turns on the shower.
The sun poking through the curtains warms the room but I shiver. It’s a cold August day in Memphis, the kind of mean girl cold that doesn’t care that it’s not supposed to trespass into a warm, luscious southern summer.
Despair and grief are sneaky, malicious thieves, stealing a man’s soul in bits and pieces. I fear they have latched onto Dylan the way that black bird latched onto me.
Maybe I should go home, let Dylan’s darkness win the round. Mom’s voice plays in my head, echoing from the day we ran into the Wolfe brothers: ‘Evie, you can’t heal everybody. You can’t fix everything.’
I’ve learned over the years that she’s right. But I’ve also learned there are some things I can fix. I was scared senseless the day of the accident and yet I crawled out of that damn car and stumbled past one broken boy on my way to the other. I stared down at Wyatt Wolfe lying twisted on the hard snow, not knowing if he was alive or dead. And I wondered—could I save Wyatt if I touched him?
I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet. My breath was trapped in my throat, completely useless, so instead I gathered my courage. I knelt down next to him, placed my hand on the soft white divot of skin that lay between his neck and his chest, and I willed my life back into him.
I willed it so hard the warmth abandoned my body and practically bled into his. Paramedics hustled Wyatt into an ambulance and screeched away. I was pushed onto the sidelines and watched first responders hustle Easton Wolfe past me on a rattling gurney.
Mom went to prison for six months charged with reckless driving. Ruby and I went into foster care. My whole world turned upside down and yet I still wondered about the Wolfe brothers. I heard through whispers and school gossip that both boys survived. Easton suffered a badly broken arm, leg, and busted ribs. But Wyatt nearly died.
His organs ripped, bones smashed, his brain injured, he almost bled to death. A friend told me the Wolfe family moved to California to be close to a children’s hospital. They pieced Wyatt back together surgery by surgery. Fragment by fragment. And he lived.
Perhaps it was coincidence, maybe fortune, even all the praying, but I wonder if I did something, no matter how small, that gave Wyatt just enough healing to stay alive. That boy did not deserve to die on that cold day just for crossing a damn road. And if I did help Wyatt heal -- I sure as hell am not ready to give up on Dylan McAlister.
An idea percolates in my brain. I follow Dylan into the bathroom, strip off my T-shirt and panties. I step in the shower at the same time he is stepping out, dripping wet, muscles tight, abs ripped. “No shower sex?”
“Not today,” he says.
I run soap over my body and rinse off in record time, and step out of the shower. Dylan drags a towel over his hair, across his beautiful body, and wraps it around his waist. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a hot piece of stripper ass, McAlister?” I towel off, throw my clothes back on. I sit on the countertop.
