None of them had been surprised at her decision to stay.
She’d called Chef Wade, who had reluctantly confirmed that yes, he’d hired someone. It was a temp but she was working out so well he’d like to make it permanent. Quinn told him she didn’t blame him one bit, she completely understood, and she was sorry that she hadn’t come clean about not wanting to come back sooner. He told her the door was always open for further discussion.
She sat there for a few moments after the call, wondering how, if Beth’s ghost was just a figment of her imagination, she’d known Wade had hired someone . . .
But since that hurt her brain, she moved forward and called Skye, who had squealed in excitement.
“You do realize I just told you I’m moving away,” Quinn said.
“Yes, but you’re following your heart!” Skye sounded like she was grinning. “I’m so proud of you. And so happy. You’ve got the right temperament to live in that crazy-ass, old wild west ghost town.”
Quinn laughed. “Thanks. I think.” Smiling, she disconnected and texted Mick with a simple: I’m staying.
When she didn’t get an immediate response, she slid into bed, not sure if she was confused or hurt. She was asleep when her phone finally buzzed with an incoming call.
Mick.
“Hey,” she said. “Thought maybe I scared you into a coma or something.”
“I’m on my way home.” His voice was low and gruff, and just the sound of it brought her an aching smile, so it took her a moment to absorb his words.
“I thought you were already in the Bay Area,” she said, confused.
“I meant home to Wildstone. To you.”
She sat straight up in bed, her heart starting to drum. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not doing this over the phone. I’ll be there in a few hours. Try to get some sleep.”
Was he kidding? “Mick—”
“I love you, Quinn.” And with that shocking statement, he disconnected.
Quinn stared at her phone, emotions she hadn’t felt in too long welling up and out of her chest, spilling into every corner of her being.
Hope.
Excitement.
Completely unable to sleep, she got up. Now that she’d made the hard decisions—which hadn’t been hard at all—she felt an inner peace fill her. A calm. She was 100 percent certain she was doing the right thing, just as Carolyn had somehow known she would.
She couldn’t wait for Mick to get here. Couldn’t wait to wake Tilly up in the morning and tell her it was official. In the meantime, she prowled to the kitchen. She and Mick were going to be a team and she was hoping like hell she and Tilly were going to be a team too. Trying to keep as quiet as possible, she went through the cabinets. She needed to cook something. No, this was a celebration, which meant she needed to bake something, even though that was out of her comfort zone. But hell, her entire life was out of her comfort zone, so it felt oddly symbolic.
She found the ingredients she needed for a cake and was in the middle of it when her phone buzzed again. Thinking it was Mick, she pulled it from her pocket with a smile, but it was an unknown number. “Hello?” she asked, wondering who the hell was calling her at midnight.
“Is this Quinn Weller?”
“Yes,” she said. “Who’s this?”
“California Highway Patrol, ma’am. There’s been a car accident with a minor who says she lives with you.”
Quinn gasped. “Tilly?”
“Yes, we want to let you know that she’s at County Hospital—”
“What? Is she hurt?”
“Minor injuries. We need you to come down here.”
“I’m already out the door,” Quinn said even though she had no idea how Tilly had gotten in an accident when she’d been supposedly asleep in her room. She ran down the hallway and flung Tilly’s door open, flipping on the light.
The room was empty of one sullen teenager.
Oh, God. Still holding the phone to her ear, Quinn ran back into the living room and grabbed her purse, yanking open the door, only half-listening to the CHP officer.
“—was in a Lexus that’s registered to you—”
“But that’s impossible.” Quinn moved to the living room to peer out the window. “My car’s right here—” But it wasn’t.
Tilly had stolen her car.
Chapter 35
Why is it that it’s only after an argument when I think of the awesome things I should have said?
—from “The Mixed-Up Files of Tilly Adams’s Journal”
Tilly closed her eyes. “She’s going to kill me.”
“She’s not going to kill you,” Dylan said calmly.
He was always calm.
She wished she had half his calm. “Yes, she is going to kill me. And if for some reason she doesn’t, she’s going to run to L.A. even faster now, without looking back.”
“You stole her car, Tee. You crashed it into a tree and demolished both. I’m not sure what the hell you were thinking, but you must’ve known you were pretty much saying fuck you when you took her car without permission, not to mention without a driver’s license.”
Is that what she’d been doing? Trying to push Quinn away before Quinn did it first? Yes. Yes, okay, fine, that’s exactly what she’d been doing, which made her . . . a child.
Her head was killing her from the cut above her eyebrow, but they said she didn’t have a concussion, just a broken arm.
The ER nurse had called her lucky. Tilly laughed bleakly at the thought of being lucky. She hadn’t been lucky a single day of her godforsaken life.
Except maybe the day Quinn had come into it . . .
The thought made her want to cry. Luckily she never cried. At least not that she’d admit to. “How did you get so smart?” she asked Dylan.
“The smartest girl I know taught me.”
She snorted. “Maybe she’s not really all that.”
“She is.”
She blew out a sigh. “I don’t know why I did it. I wanted to stop hurting. I wanted to be somewhere I’m wanted—”
“Tee,” Dylan whispered, voice pained.
She shook her head, unable to say anything else.
“From what you’ve told me, you’re like her, you know,” Dylan said. “Quinn. You’re both stubborn. Single-minded.” He paused and smiled. “And always sure you’re right . . .”
“I don’t know why I called you.”
“. . . beautiful.”
She met his warm gaze.
“Courageous,” he whispered.
Her throat got tighter.
“Cares about other people like no one else I know,” he went on and paused. “I think you got scared because you’re afraid to believe in love.”
“Well, look who’s talking,” she managed.
Holding eye contact, he set a hand on either side of her hips and leaned in. “You’ve been sweet and kind and patient with me, Tilly.”
She couldn’t tear her eyes from his, so deep and dark and full of the haunting, hollow experiences he’d had in his life, none of which had anything to do with sweet and kind and patient. “It’s easy to be those things with you,” she said. “I love you, Dylan.”
He closed his eyes briefly, as though both pained and moved, and then he looked at her again. “I know you do. And I’m even starting to believe it. I love you too, Tilly.”