Color of Forgiveness (8 page)

Myra turns her head towards Wesley who is
seated next to her. “Yes?”

“Thanks for making us chicken nuggets. I
hate broccoli,” he says, wrinkling his freckled nose up. “I’m glad
you didn’t make us eat it like mom does.”

“You’re welcome,” Myra says with a grin.
“But make sure to always eat your broccoli because it’s good for
you.”

Susie butts in. “No complaining about mom or
I’ll steal your chicken nuggets right this minute and replace them
with a plate of broccoli
and
cauliflower,” Susie says to
Wesley. “Oh, and I might throw in some bean sprouts on the side
just to be evil.”

Wesley and Tucker both make ugly faces and
yell out several
ewwws
and
yucks
. “Gross,” Tucker
says with a shiver. “Cauliflower is
nasty.”

Wesley shakes his head. “Bean sprouts are
nastier,” he says.

The boys begin a heated argument over which
food is the nastiest. Myra smiles as she listens to the boys debate
the topic.

“What food do you think is the nastiest?”
Tucker asks Myra.

“I don’t know. I like just about
everything,” Myra says as someone knocks on the door. She stops
talking and looks up at Jeff and Susie. Jeff starts to get up to
answer it, but Susie puts her hand on his arm to stop him. “I’ll
get it.”

Myra turns her attention back to Tucker.
“What’s your favorite food?” she asks him as Susie disappears from
the room.

“Pizza and hamburgers and French fries
and…”

“Wait,” Myra says with a giggle. “You only
get one choice.”

“Well, if I only get to pick one, it’d have
to be pizza,” Tucker says.

“I know what my favorite food is,” Wesley
announces.

“What?” Myra asks.

“Gummy worms,” he says with a toothy
grin.

Myra laughs. “Yuck.”

“They’re good. Have you ever ate them
before?” Wesley asks.

“No. I don’t ever want to eat worms,” she
says, giving him her best grossed-out look while shivering a
little.

“They feel like real worms on your tongue,”
Wesley says with bright eyes. “It’s cool.”

“You don’t know what a real worm tastes
like,” Tucker says to Wesley. “I know this kid at school that eats
real worms all the time. He says they’re kind of gritty.”

“What’s ‘gritty’?” Wesley asks.

Myra can’t help but giggle. And lose her
appetite.

“
Boys
,” Jeff says, giving Myra an
apologetic look. “We will not talk about things like that around
the table.”

Both boys hang their head their heads and
pout. Myra has to hide a smile at how cute they look.

Susie steps back into the dining room with a
gigantic smile on her face. “Holy shmoly macaroni,” she mutters,
holding her fists up and shaking them excitedly before letting out
a little squeal, all the while staring directly at Myra.

Myra frowns at her. “What?”

“Guess what?” Susie asks, grinning from ear
to ear.

Myra smiles at her enthusiasm, but has no
idea what’s going on. “I have no clue.”

“There just so happens to be a certain
scruffy Greek god…” Her eyes dart to the boys then back to Myra, “…
butthole
that just arrived on my doorstep who obviously
couldn’t bear to be away from you. Can you believe he flew all the
way here to see you? That’s
so
romantic.”

With a huff, Susie plants her hands on her
hips, shooting Jeff an evil glare. “You need to take some lessons
from him, you unromantic toad,” she says.

Before Myra can utter a word, Dylan steps
into the door frame, looking incredibly nervous, his left hand
tucked into his jeans and his right hand hanging at his side,
holding a single red rose.

CHAPTER 3

Dylan swallows hard, his eyes glued to
Myra’s stunned face as he stands in the doorway of Susie’s dining
room, his heart banging so roughly against his ribcage that he’s
surprised it doesn’t jump out of his chest.

Myra has always been beautiful to him, but
staring at her now, his breath catches in his throat at just how
truly stunning she is. Maybe that ‘absence makes the heart grow
fonder’ shit people spew has some truth to it. It’s only been a
little over a week since he last saw her, but to him, it feels like
a goddamn lifetime.

Myra slowly stands her eyes wide and face
pale. Nervously, he clears his dry throat and wipes his sweaty palm
on his jeans, terrified that she might be getting ready to tell him
to get the fuck out.

He startles slightly when Susie starts
talking. “Come in, come in,” she says, motioning towards him. “We
just sat down to eat. Make yourself at home…
mi casa su casa
and all that other flim flam shazam.”

Nodding, he takes a couple of awkward steps
forward.

“Dylan, I’d like to introduce you to my
hubby, Jeff,” Susie says. “Jeff, this is Dylan, Myra’s
boyfriend.”

Dylan’s eyes widen and dart to Myra’s when
he hears the word ‘boyfriend’. Thankfully, that
frozen-slash-stunned look is gone. But now her expression looks
hard and a bit pissed off. Maybe a lot pissed off as he watches her
eyes narrow and her lips thin into a grim line.

He snaps his attention back to Jeff who has
risen from the table. Quickly shifting the rose from his right hand
to his left, he wipes his palm on his jeans before shaking Jeff’s
outstretched hand.

“Great to meet you,” Jeff says with a
grin.

“Likewise,” Dylan mutters quietly with a
nod.

Susie moves to stand behind one of the boys
sitting at the table and ruffles his hair. “This is Tucker, my
oldest. And that fine-looking little man sitting next to Myra is my
baby, Wesley.”

“I’m not a baby!” Wesley shouts.

While Susie and her son begin arguing, Dylan
looks at Myra again. Her eyes stay on his for an instant before
dropping to the rose in his hand. She walks around the table,
stopping a couple of feet in front of him. “What are you doing
here?” she whispers to him in an angry voice.

“Uh… well, I…” he mumbles before being
interrupted.

“Dylan, I hope you’re hungry. Myra fixed us
a feast fit for a king,” Susie announces in a loud voice. “Or a
scruffy Greek god
you know what,
” she mutters before
snorting.

“You said ‘butthole’ earlier,” Tucker
says.

“What?” Susie asks. “No, I didn’t. You were
hearing things.” Susie and her boys start arguing again, but once
Dylan looks back down at Myra, he doesn’t hear a word they say.
Their eyes stay locked for a moment before she quickly looks down
at the floor.

He wishes he could get closer to her, put
his nose in her hair, smell the skin on her neck or touch that
sweet, soft spot right underneath her ear with his lips. His hands
itch to touch her. He wants to hold her in his arms and tell her
how badly he missed her.

She glances back up at him and this time she
doesn’t look away. And he gets completely lost; he totally loses
himself in those eyes and his mind turns to mush. He had this
moment rehearsed over and over on the plane. He knew exactly what
he’d say and how he’d say it. But right now, he’s got nothing. He
swallows and with the faintest smile, he finally just whispers,
“Hi.”

Immediately, her brows pull together
sharply. “I asked you a question,” she whisper-hisses.

He frowns. “Huh?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh. Yeah, I…” he says before looking up at
the shouting match escalating at the table.

“No fair!” Wesley shouts. “I wanna sit by
Myra. I was here first!”

“Wesley, move your plate next to Tucker like
I told you,” Susie says harshly, giving him a stern ‘mom’ look.

Wesley scowls and scoots his chair back
roughly, causing it to make a loud, scraping noise against the wood
floor as he angrily picks up his plate.

Dylan clears his throat, his eyes darting
between Myra and Susie. “I can come back. I don’t want to interrupt
your dinner or anything,” he says.

“Nonsense,” Susie says, putting a clean
plate in Wesley’s now vacant spot next to Myra. “You traveled all
the way from Nyssa. Have a seat.”

Dylan frowns and scratches at his neck. He
doesn’t feel comfortable eating dinner with them, and he’s about a
hundred percent certain that Myra feels the same way. But before he
can say a word, Myra speaks up. “Dylan and I need to talk,” she
says, meeting his eyes for a moment before promptly marching out of
the dining room. Dylan stands there frozen just staring after her
before he finally snaps out of it.

“Excuse us,” he mumbles to Susie and her
family before taking off after her.

With a few quick strides, he catches up to
her and follows her up a staircase. She quickly opens a door and
disappears inside. Stepping in behind her, he glances around at
what appears to be a spare bedroom. Observing a suitcase sitting
open on a chair, he concludes this must be the room she’s staying
in. He shuts the door gently behind him and looks at Myra.

She keeps her back to him, facing the bed.
He stares at her long, dark hair flowing down her back and wishes
his fingers were twisted and tangled in its softness. He puts up
little protest when his eyes roam south. He almost salivates over
her curvaceous ass when he remembers how goddamn soft those small
curves felt under his hands.

Closing his eyes, he rubs a hand over the
back of his neck, feeling like a complete dickhead for having dirty
thoughts about her at such a fucking inappropriate time.

Taking in a deep breath, he opens his eyes
just as she turns around. “How did you…?” she starts to say before
her eyebrows furrow in frustration. “Did Porter tell you I was
here? I can’t believe he did that. He promised me he wouldn’t say
anything…” Her gaze drops to the floor, her face twisting in
pain.

“
No,
” Dylan says immediately, taking
a small step towards her. He stops when she flinches slightly.
“Porter didn’t tell me anything. He wouldn’t tell me shit. I tried,
but he wouldn’t budge.”

“But… how did you find me?” she asks before
realization crosses her face. “It was Jackie, wasn’t it?”

“No. She wouldn’t tell me anything
either.”

“Well, then who...?”

“No one really,” he says with a shrug. “I
just figured since Susie was your best friend, you’d probably be
here. At least I was hoping…”

“You were
hoping?
You flew two
thousand miles
hoping
I was here?”

“Yeah…”

Myra’s frown deepens. “But how did you get
Susie’s address? Porter’s the only one that knows it.”

“Well, uh…” he stammers, rubbing his hand
nervously over the back of his neck. He doesn’t want to tell her
about replacing her sidewalk yet because he wants it to be a
surprise. “I…”

“Dylan, don’t do this again,” she says,
glaring at him. “You have to talk. No more hiding.”

Nodding, he runs a hand through his hair.
“Right. I, well, I was at your house, sitting on your front porch
when the mailman came up. We got to talking and he handed me your
mail.”

“You went through my
mail?
” she
shouts.

“Jesus,
no
, I didn’t look through
it,” he says, shaking his head. “There was a card…on top. I saw
Susie’s address. I couldn’t help it because it was right in front
of my damn face. I figured it must have been fate or some shit
because what are the goddamn odds, right?”

A puzzled look crosses Myra’s face. “A
card…? Why would Susie send me a card?” she mumbles.

“I don’t know. But she did.”

She stares at him for a moment before her
eyes begin to narrow. “You were sitting on my front porch? What
were you doing at my house?”

“I just… I was missing you. I didn’t know
where you were and I was going a little fucking crazy. I was hoping
you’d show up so we could talk.”

“Didn’t you understand that I didn’t want to
talk to you when I didn’t return your phone calls?”

“Yeah, but—”

“And I still don’t. I’m really not
interested in hearing anything you have to say.”

Dylan sighs and rubs his hand over his jaw.
“Look, I don’t blame you for feeling that way. You have every right
in the damn world to be fucking pissed at me. I should’ve talked to
you about everything; I should’ve told you about Sabrina. There’s a
fuckload of shit I should’ve done, but I didn’t. I know you
probably don’t believe this, but I was planning on telling you
everything… that morning after we… you know, but I… instead, I just
fucked it all up.”

He runs a hand through his hair again. “I
didn’t intentionally hide anything from you. I’ve got shit in my
past that just fucking hurts for me to even think about, let alone
talk about. Shit that I’ve never talked about to anyone, ever. But
I…” He clears his throat and moves just a little bit closer to her.
“I want to tell
you
everything. You’re the only person that
I’ve ever wanted to talk to. I want you to know me. Know who I am.
I know you probably hate me right now – I don’t blame you if you do
– but will you please just give me a chance to explain? Please?
That’s all I’m asking.”

“I already gave you a chance to explain
everything, and you didn’t. You refused to tell me anything.”

“You’re not being fair here, Myra. You knew
Sabrina was listening and I was standing there in my fucking
boxers. You said I could come over later, that we could talk. But
you never gave me that chance. Instead you just ran out of town and
didn’t even bother to take my damn calls.”

Myra’s eyes flash with anger. “I
never
told you that you could come over later. That’s just
something you assumed. I told you that I needed answers right then.
Don’t you dare try to turn all of this around on me. Do you have
any idea how it felt to have you run out on me after our night
together? You… you just left me standing there, with no
explanation… with nothing.”