She laughed but got serious when they left. She’d changed out of her teacher clothes for a lightweight, loose halter top over cropped jeans that fit her like a glove. She’d added a pair of wedge sandals, giving her a few extra inches on her five two frame, something he knew she did when she felt she needed extra confidence.
That she felt that with him was his own damn fault.
“Give me a tour?” she asked.
“Sure.” He led her around the hangar, showing her their pride and joy, their fleet of two helicopters that both he and Penn would fly as often as they could, a Bell 206 and an AStar 350.
“Wow,” Tilly whispered reverently, running a hand along the body of the Bell. “You really fly these?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s amazing, Dylan.” She turned from the chopper to face him, her eyes searching his. He wondered what she saw when she looked at him like that, and knew at least part of her couldn’t help but see him as that sixteen-year-old kid who climbed in her window bleeding and hurting at night after his dad had beat on him.
He hated that to the very depths of his soul.
“You did it,” she murmured. “You got out and made something of yourself.”
It was a reminder that at one time she’d known him better than anyone else ever had. “It’s not like I became an astronaut.”
Something shuttered in her eyes at that. “Yeah, well, life happens, right? Shit happens.”
He stepped toward her but she shook her head. It wasn’t Leo’s low growl that stopped him but Tilly’s expression. “I just came by to tell you that I’d give your branding a shot,” she said and pulled a card from her purse with her name and contact information. “Send me what you need. Specs. Ideas. Inspirations. Whatever you’ve got. I’ll get back to you within a week.”
“Tilly—”
She shook her head. “Business only,” she said, repeating her earlier words, and then was gone.
Chapter 3
Mondays should be optional.
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
Ten years prior:
When Dylan missed class for the third day in a row, Tilly went to his mom’s house first. When the woman answered the door, she told Tilly that Dylan had just left.
Tilly’s gaze strayed to his mom’s fat lip.
“Not Dylan’s doing,” she told Tilly softly, tears in her voice.
Which meant that Dylan’s dad had been here and there’d been another fight. She froze, remembering what Dylan had promised the last time—that he’d kill the guy if he laid another finger on his mom.
Panic nearly choked her.
Ten minutes later she was on a bus heading toward Dylan’s dad’s house, the address written on a piece of paper clutched in her hand. Half an hour later, she stood in front of a small ranch house. It was run-down, but there was a lot of acreage. She could smell cattle and hear mooing off in the distance.
The house wasn’t close to any others, which didn’t feel like a good thing. Yelling was coming from inside, and then the sounds of something crashing and breaking, and she ran to the front door.
It was locked.
Heart racing, she pounded on it. “Dylan!”
No answer. But she could still hear shouting inside, so she hurried around the side of the house to the back. There was a patio and a slider, which slid right open under her hand. She stepped into a living room, lit only by the spill of lights from a bedroom down the hall, from which the sounds of a fight drew her.
Heart lodged in her throat, she looked around for something to protect herself with. Nothing. She glanced down at her hands and realized she was still clutching the soda bottle she’d bought while waiting for her bus.
The hallway ended all too fast and then she stood in the doorway of a bedroom. Dylan was in the corner, down like he’d just fallen, blood coming from his nose and mouth, one eye swollen nearly shut, shirt ripped, watching a man twice his size come at him.
The following Monday, Tilly watched Dylan walk into her classroom and she couldn’t even say she was surprised. He’d once been the most stubborn person on the planet and apparently not much had changed there.
He sat in the front row again. On one side of him was a surfer stoner. “Dude,” the guy said. “Think she’s going to tell you to bite her again?”
The girl on the other side of Dylan smiled at him. “You can bite me if you’d like.”
Oh for God’s sake, Tilly thought. And yet . . . a small part of her could admit that getting her mouth on him would be . . . extremely satisfying.
Ignoring the thought and Dylan, she concentrated on the class plan, which involved incorporating traditional sketching into graphic art. Because she believed that the two went hand in hand, they were starting with a basic drawing lesson. She had all her students sketching a bowl of fruit that was on display in the center of the room in the lap of a male model who was posed eating an apple.
The model was Mason, a good friend and sort of ex, who was in need of work and doing Tilly a favor. She walked around the class speaking to her students about technique, all of which appeared to be going over the head of the one student she’d really hoped wouldn’t show up.
Dylan. She’d stayed up late last night working on logos and branding for Wildstone Air Tours and had emailed him everything this morning to avoid the face to face. She realized he was watching her watch him and with a sigh, headed over there. “Problem?”
“I can’t draw,” he admitted.
She looked at his paper. The apple was there. That was it. “Maybe it’s because you’re staring at me instead of listening.”
“I’m staring because today you look so much like sixteen-year-old Tilly, it’s making me crazy.”
When he said stuff like that, she had to close her eyes and take a breath. She was wearing a black cotton sundress that was modest and comfortable, but she could admit it might be a throwback to her emo days. Her white beat-up sneakers were speckled with paint, but too perfectly worn in to toss. So yeah, okay, maybe she looked sixteen . . . “I’m not that same Tilly,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m getting that.”
“Are you? Because I told you not to come back and yet here you are.”
“I got your email with the logo and branding,” he said. “You nailed it and I wanted to thank you.”
This gave her a flash of relief and pleasure. “Now see, that’s something where you could have hit reply and emailed instead of telling me in person. Especially since we decided this was going to be business only.”
“Actually,” he said, “that was you. I haven’t decided any such thing.”
The class was filled with whispers now. Some “oohs” and “ahhs” and a teasing “teacher’s gotta pet.” One of the girls muttered, “I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers . . .”
“Me either,” a guy said.
“Come on, Ms. Adams,” someone called out. “Give him a chance. It gives the rest of us hope.”
Tilly made a show of glancing at the clock on the wall and the students settled.