Chapter Fifteen
Heart watched him go. Watched him withdraw again. Watched his back recede, wishing she could take away his distress. When she’d watched his expression drop and that ashen sheen of shock coat his face, she’d ached for him at the sound of those self-damning words. Your momma left because of me.
Thatwas why he didn’t do relationships. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know there was something terribly wrong, something far more serious than a fight with his kid at the root of why he didn’t want a girlfriend, or didn’t want women around his kids.
What specifically, she didn’t know, but the way he’d walked away said he wasn’t letting her in. But why would he? She wasn’t his wife or his kids’ mother. She wasn’t anything to him but a good time. Even if he had asked her to be exclusive. Had she been vying for an attachment by telling him he could talk about his kids? He’d sliced that tendril of goodwill.
But the ache to be something more for him, an ear to listen, nagged at her the entire time she watched him cut between vehicles to get into the concession line, scrolling through his phone with twilight engulfing him, only a thin crevice of soft blue on the horizon, giving way to a starry, cloudless night.
She searched the dashboard under the snacks, felt her backpack pockets, until she located her phone. It was on eighteen percent. She smiled. Tyler’d shake his head at her.
She opened her social media and tapped the search icon. She wanted to know more about him. The time was past for preventing attachments. He’d seeded the beginnings of one when he’d opened up about his scar and maybe…she could water it. What would it hurt to be here for him for the time being? He seemed like he needed someone and didn’t have anyone. He was used to handling things alone but pushed people away without realizing what he was doing, his own double-edged sword. She wouldn’t know anything about that. Cue sarcasm.
She typed in his name. Scrolled through the variations of Tyler and Dixon and zeroed in on “Tyler Jacob Dixon” with Harvard listed as his alma mater. Just like the little paper in the firesafe box. Once more, she smiled to herself. Her connection request was still pending.
She lingered on his profile. He hadn’t shared an update since…July of 2008? That was eight years ago. And it was a photo of a puppy in one of his pastures that looked an awful lot like Frodo, her fur downy soft brown and fluffy, which had been liked by a handful of people. According to his connection list on the side, he only had about a hundred connections. It was as if he’d abandoned the page. Or his privacy settings were such that she couldn’t see anything new—
Her eyes settled on a photo he’d been tagged in in the margin. It hadn’t been there earlier. She tapped to enlarge it. Eight hundred reactions already? She eyed Tyler across the field to see that he was inching toward the front of the concession line still, then gazed back at the photograph…
A magazine cover?It was a younger Tyler but it was still unmistakably his profile and broad, muscle-thickened frame, though he looked lankier. White button-up shirt loose, sleeves rolled up, billowing over his physique, boat shorts, dark hair ruffled on the wind as a cliffside layered in terraces of white stucco homes descended toward the shore of a vast, aquamarine-blue sea. Greece? But the blood-orange sunset over the Mediterranean wasn’t the showstopper. The curvy, thigh-gapped, C-cupped model tucked against his side, sun-kissed skin and bikini pressing her perfect cleavage together, long jet-black hair was. My God…
Her eyes were big, dark, fringed in mascara meant to look like naturally lush eyelashes; her straight, silky hair floating stylishly on the wind was tangled around her laugh. Her wide, kissable mouth worked the lens, and her gaze seduced the viewer as she held out a diamond ring, while Tyler looked at her adoringly like he wanted to lick her. His dimple, not the crease in his cheek that Heart had run her finger upon, popped sweetly, and his arm around her back hugged her, gripped her hip and pulled her into him as if he owned her, totally smitten. Heart’s breath caught. That’s what Tyler looked like in love?
Morbidly curious, she zoomed in to read the cover. Was this one of those faux magazine covers from a theme park or something? No… This was professional camera work.
“Paris fashion week’s hottest debuts.”
“How to keep your man coming back for more.”
“Flaws men don’t tell you about your butt.”
“God, sexist much?” she muttered.
“Top model Isabella Toussaint spills on graduating Harvard, getting hitched, and being her cowboy’s Izzy.”
Isabella Toussaint? The famous French runway model? Isabella Toussaint was as famous as Naomi Campbell or Kate Moss. Monarch had idolized Toussaint, who’d made her debut on the covers of the teen girl rags that always came with poster inserts of cute heartthrobs, the stacks that had filled Monarch’s corner in their hideout under the stairs. Stupidly, Heart’s heart clenched. That sick feeling, a faint, just-noticeable-enough pinch in her stomach, wouldn’t unpinch. This was Tyler’s ex? Was this his sons’ mother?
Was this the woman who’d cheated on him, too? Wrecked a car with their babies in it? No wonder he didn’t want an attachment. The date on the cover said 2006. Odd. Tyler had mentioned his older boy was twelve. That would mean, he would have been two when this photoshoot was done. Had she been pregnant with their second at the time? Impossible to tell. There’d been no news, no mention, no indication ever that Isabella Toussaint had children. Had this detail been kept under wraps? Never leaked to the public?
A notification blipped. Tyler Jacob Dixon has accepted your connection request. Her eyes whipped over to him at the front of the concession line, pocketing his cell as he reached over the counter to take an armload of snacks.
Her mind raced. Out of habit, she refreshed the page to see if he’d updated anything—
The photo was gone.
Had he just deleted it? Untagged himself? Did these blasts from his past crop up from time to time and he quashed them whenever he could? Lost in thought, she scrolled and pondered—
“What’s got you zoned?”
Heart jumped at Tyler’s deep voice at her window, handing her another bag of popcorn she hadn’t asked for. Her phone fumbled from her grip to the floorboard. Her face blanched to have been caught red-handed internet stalking him, but she snatched it up, quickly smiled, and took the snack.
“Just scrolling social media.”
“Movie not interesting?”
She grinned. “Not without you to lament all the flaws to.”
His face, more composed now, creased into a smile.