Page 16 of Reality With You (Arden Beach #1)

L ennon tapped her room card on the digital keypad, unlocking a door on the hotel’s eighteenth floor.

During check-in, the front desk clerk had informed her they were preparing a new room after receiving a last-minute upgrade request. The studio put her up in a mid-range hotel chain, recently renovated with sleek, modern finishes.

Opening the door, she stopped short and gawked at the suite, complete with a kitchen, living room, and separate bedroom.

At the far end, the city peeked through a gap in the sheer, white curtains.

She passed her luggage, which the staff had already deposited beside the low-profile sofa, and pushed the curtains aside.

A blue strip of ocean, a few blocks in the distance, hugged the horizon. Tiny sailboats floated between the white skyscrapers that sliced her view of the Atlantic. The city’s chorus—traffic, seagulls, sea breeze—was dulled by the glass, but it was enough to feel its heartbeat.

Home.

The word was sung in a whisper through her bones. Lennon had never imagined herself leaving. Not until it hurt too much to stay.

Lennon let go of the curtain and the memories, continuing to the bedroom.

A large gift basket sat on the king-size bed.

In it were various self-care items like a silk sleep mask and an organic body scrub, a generous gift card to the hotel’s spa, an expensive bottle of wine, and a few boxes of chocolate.

Lennon flipped open the attached card on thick card stock.

“A little taste of what’s to come for our stars,” the card read, which was signed by Huey and Maeve of High Wave Productions.

All the bribery in the world wouldn’t get her to say yes to their offer to drag Dylan into this, but she would enjoy the fruits of their effort.

The melody belonging to him thrummed somewhere deep in her ribs and rose along her sternum.

As she closed her eyes, his look of surprise when he saw her in the restaurant stole her breath all over again.

One side of her heart beat for him, while the other ached over how things ended.

She didn’t know how to lean into one without the other.

Ignoring them both had been the only answer.

But in the space of two weeks, Lennon had already tripped into two accidental encounters with him. Now that they were living in the same city again, avoidance would be tricky, if not impossible.

It was time to deal with it.

Lennon kicked off her black platform sandals and sank her feet into the plush carpet before climbing onto the bed. Her lunch knotted itself in a lead ball as she reached for her phone lying next to the gift basket. Maeve’s words about getting America back on his side echoed in her mind.

Before she talked to him, she needed the complete picture of what was going on.

After their divorce, Lennon avoided the baseball world as if any acknowledgment of it would sentence her to a horrible death, like watching that video in The Ring.

It was pretty easy in New York, given the city had its own major league teams to focus on.

If you aren’t actively engaging in the baseball world, you’re mostly oblivious to what’s happening within it.

Lennon ripped open one of the boxes of chocolate, shoving a tiny piece in her mouth for moral support before lying on her stomach and kicking up her feet. She opened an internet tab and typed Dylan’s name into the blinking search box.

With a deep breath, she tapped Go.

Dylan’s boyish, soulful eyes stared into hers from his baseball headshot.

The chocolate slowly melted on her tongue as she took him in through the series of photos.

Standing on the pitcher’s mound as he eyed his mark with intense focus.

Celebrating on the field with his teammates after pitching a no-hitter game.

Smiling in a fitted suit with an arm around his father at some event.

Lennon tore her gaze away. Scrolling, she shuffled through the various articles about the “downfall of a baseball legacy.”

An hour later, from the depths of the rancid rabbit hole she’d tumbled down, anger and disgust flowed hot in her veins over the wild speculation, conspiracy theories, and outright lies people spread about him.

And about them .

The so-called journalists speculated that Lennon and Dylan’s “failed teen marriage” was either the cause or the first sign of his “reckless behavior.” Some postulated affairs.

Others theorized that there was a secret pregnancy she terminated or that Lennon had gotten jealous of his success and left him.

Several media outlets had reached out to her for a comment after the accident, but she’d declined to speak to any of them.

Now, she wondered if that had served to fan the flames of conjecture.

The aggressive public scrutiny was brutal.

Dealing with one’s demons in private was bad enough.

Lennon was nervous about having a small part on a reality show, meanwhile Dylan was dragged through the mud in tabloid fodder and media discourse he hadn’t asked for.

If her music career ever did take off, she could potentially find herself in the same position someday.

He’d made a mistake, but he didn’t deserve this . No one did.

Swiping out of the browser, she pulled up her contacts and stared at his name under her Favorites. Pressure mounted in every molecule of her body.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Lennon smashed her thumb on his name.

As it rang, she reached into the box of chocolates from the gift basket for another piece, shoving it in her mouth.

“Hello?” Dylan answered, sounding a little out of breath.

“Hey, it’s me—Lennon.” She pushed herself up and crossed her legs. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“I know who it is.” He chuckled, the raspiness of it making her skin tingle. “No, you’re good. I’m on a run.”

“Oh, we can talk later if you’re—”

“I’m free.”

Lennon’s heart drummed in her chest. “Actually, can we switch to video?” They needed to have this conversation face-to-face. Maybe she should have asked to meet in person, but she didn’t have the patience to wait any longer.

“Yeah. Sure,” Dylan said with a tinge of either excitement or apprehension—she couldn’t tell which.

Lennon tapped the button to request the video call.

Her muscles pulled taut around her organs in the few seconds it took for him to accept it and the video to connect.

A blurry, pixelated outline of him appeared before stabilizing.

The blue sky framed him as the phone bounced with his jog.

He wore his deep blue Tidebreakers hat backward, tufts of dark hair peeking out of the sides that connected to his short beard.

But that was the only article of clothing in the frame.

Sweat glistened across his bare shoulders and broad chest, rising and falling with heavy breaths.

She experienced instant regret for suggesting a video call.

Glancing down at his phone, he smiled. “Hey.”

Lennon realized her lips had parted. She clamped them shut, swallowing around the chocolate melting on her tongue. “Hey. You sure this is a good time?”

“Yeah, I was just blowing off some steam.” The undulating hum of the ocean underpinned his voice.

He lifted the camera higher and angled it toward the sea, giving her a glimpse of the vast stretch of aquamarine that sparkled in the sunlight.

And more of his lean, well-defined torso. “Not a bad view, huh?”

“If you like that sort of thing,” Lennon joked.

His laugh came as a low rumble that made her limbs warm.

Before he lowered the camera, she noticed a faint shimmer on his left shoulder as the muscles shifted with the swing of his arm.

A pale slash with slightly jagged edges traced a line from his collarbone to the tip of his bicep.

The heat simmered to sadness. What happened to him suddenly became strikingly real. Erin had called from the emergency room and kept Lennon in the loop throughout his recovery, but seeing the scar made her stomach flip. The nightmare burst alive with a new kind of intensity.

Dylan slowed to a walk. Looking at her, his smile faded. He glanced at the scar. “It looks worse than it is.”

“Yeah, it only needed half a year of recovery,” Lennon remarked wryly, not surprised he still brushed off his injuries.

“Gave me a chance to catch up on TV,” Dylan retorted casually.

Lennon glared at him. As he sat down on the sand, a dune at his back, she said, “I’m sorry for the awkward run-in, for how they ambushed you and drew all that attention to us.”

“It’s OK, I’m used to it.” Dylan swiped his forearm across his brow. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Despite her answer, something worried his brown eyes. “Why?”

His forehead scrunched, squinting toward the sky. “I’d understand if you wouldn’t want to be seen with me right now.”

“You think I was embarrassed ?” Lennon raised an eyebrow. He shrugged. She had been, but not for the reasons he assumed. “I’m not embarrassed to be seen with you.”

One side of Dylan’s mouth twitched as he watched the horizon. “You may want to reconsider that.”

“I’m not afraid of what the media’s saying. They can go fuck themselves.”

Dylan’s eyes snapped to her. His expression sat somewhere at the crossroads between surprised and amused. “I agree.”

Lennon rolled the hem of her dress between her fingers, resting her hand on her knee. “Obviously, I imagined it going a lot differently when we finally saw each other again.”

He waited a beat. “Does that mean you wanted to see me again?”

Her teeth bothered her bottom lip. How did she even put an answer to that into words?

Yes, I’ve been dying to see you, but also no, I wasn’t sure my heart could take it.

“Well, it was inevitable our paths would cross eventually now that I’m back in Arden Beach,” Lennon reasoned.

“We needed to clear the air at some point. Which is why I called.”