Storming through the bar and out the door was satisfying, but that feeling of satisfaction quickly faded. Sitting in the car with the heater blasting gave her some time to think. After cursing Dylan a few hundred times in her mind, she reflected about what had just transpired. He was acting like an ass, true, but she didn't expect him to be perfect. She knew he wasn't a knight in shining armor, and to be honest, she didn't want him to be. She was frustrated by his behavior, but it was her own issues that had made her walk away. Ian had played games. Ian had cheated. Ian had used sex as a weapon.
She tried to convince herself that Dylan was just in a dark place right now, like he had been right after Emma had passed. Melody had made love to him that night because she had known he'd needed it, and she had wanted to be close to him.
The problem was, he hadn't wanted to be close to her earlier. He hadn't needed her the way he had at his sister's house; he had just needed someone. Anyone would have done the trick. It had felt too much like something that she had never wanted to experience again, especially not with him. But whereas it had been relatively easy to walk away from Ian, Melody loved Dylan Bennett. So much that it terrified her. He had all the power. He could cut her open, and she might not have the strength to crawl away for good.
Suck it up, Hopkins. Tell him you're sorry for storming out, that you shouldn't have pushed, and go have a drink with him. Maybe he just needed some time, for Christ's sake.
Resolving to do just that, Melody jerked the handle on the car door, right as Dylan stumbled out the bar's door, clutching a bottle of Scotch in one hand. He looked confused for a moment before he spotted her, halfway out of the car.
"There you are. The girl with the long red hair," he slurred. "The long red hair and the bright green eyes. I never could decide what to call you. What should I call you?"
"How about Melody?" she muttered.
"Melody," he mumbled. "That's what you are, isn't it? The melody that was missing. The melody I can never seem to get right."
"What are you talking about?" she asked as he took another deep swig of Scotch. "Did you really need that entire bottle?"
"Yes," he said, his voice surprisingly clear this time. "Yes, I did need the entire bottle. I might even need another one after this."
"I'm not really looking forward to sitting in the emergency room while you have your stomach pumped," she snapped.
"So don't," he snapped back. "Just. Leave. Me. The. Fuck. Alone."
"I will never leave you alone," Melody vowed, and only once the words had left her mouth did she realize exactly how true they were. Enough people had left him. If she were smarter, she would probably be one of them because she could feel the pain on the horizon, the way some people could smell approaching storms. She just didn't know how to love him any less. She didn't know how to leave, not even for her own good. "Just get in the car," she begged.
She needed to get him on the plane and back to the safety of his bandmates. Jesper would knock some sense into him and force him to sleep it off before he did something really stupid.
He stared at her, his expression defeated. Whatever he was trying to wordlessly communicate to her, she wasn't understanding, and it was frustrating both of them. In the end, he took another drink and nodded slowly.
"Fine," he agreed, ripping open the door and throwing himself inside. Rage and agony rolled off him in waves, and Melody worried, just for a moment, about getting into an enclosed space with someone so volatile. But she trusted him on a level she didn't even understand. It defied logic or reason. So, perhaps unwisely, she climbed into the driver's seat and pulled back out onto the road.
Melody waged an internal war as she drove along slowly, way below the speed limit. Dylan was a passionate man, but it made him unpredictable and erratic. She knew why he drank, why he had indulged in casual sex for so long. He had wanted to numb the pain, to forget about his childhood and the scars it had left on him.
"You know, I just want to help you," she said quietly, after a long stretch of silence. "I can see that you're hurting, and I just want to make it better."
"You can't," he said flatly.
"Of course I can't, because you won't even let me try," she argued.
"You can't fix me," he yelled, the sudden heat and volume of his voice startling her. "I'm broken, rotted from the inside out."
"Don't say that," she whispered, furious that he still thought this way about himself, and more scared for him than she could say. She was forced to slow down even further because her hands were starting to shake. She glanced at the clock; even going fifteen miles an hour, they would still reach the airport before their plane left. Just get him back to the guys. Everything will be all right once he's with them. "You're a good man, Dylan."
"A good man," he muttered. "I ruin everything I touch. Even the things I'm good at, like the band. You're the only reason the next album has a shot of getting finished at all."
"That's not true," she denied. "You're the one who wrote-"
"Because of you," he yelled. "Everything good that I have done has been because of you, for you, because I thought if I could make myself better-maybe just even a little bit better-then I might deserve you. Maybe I could keep you. I wanted to keep you, I swear it, but I'm just going to ruin you, too. Rotten apples and barrels and hearts. There's a song in there somewhere."
"You just need to take a little time," she said, her voice soft but firm. "Finishing out the tour after all you've been through was probably a mistake. You need to rest."
"Rest won't heal what's wrong with me," he confessed quietly, almost as if she were his priest. "This sickness inside me, it's contagious. It was selfish of me to … "
"To what?" she asked, afraid to touch him, afraid to not touch him. She had never been an indecisive person, but she was positive that in that moment, if she made even one wrong move it would shatter Dylan.
"To want too much," he said, taking another drink. His hand shook as he brought the bottle to his mouth. The amber liquid within was already halfway gone. She hoped it hadn't been full when he had bought it. "It's all your fault. I knew my place before you came into my world. You made me want things. You made me want more. I forgot … " He shook his head. "I can't believe I forgot."
"I don't understand," Melody whispered, her fear growing with every word that left his mouth. "What on earth did your dad say to you?"
"You think it's just my dad?" he asked, laughing. He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if he couldn't believe he was really having this conversation. "My dad isn't the problem. He just reminded me of what I am. Don't you get it? I'm the disease." He looked her in the eye for a moment. "There's probably a song in that, too, don't you think?"
Then he opened his car door and flung himself onto the road. The brakes screeched as Melody slammed on them, and the car fishtailed on the icy blacktop. Thank God I was going so slowly. We'd both probably be dead right now, otherwise. She managed to regain control of the car, and eased it to a complete stop some fifty feet from where he'd jumped out.
By the time Melody had unbuckled her seatbelt and jumped out of the car, Dylan was nowhere to be seen.
**
Melody's voice was hoarse by the time she finally gave up and accepted the fact that Dylan was gone. A light snow had begun to fall, but there were no footprints to indicate whether he had fled into the woods or cut across the highway. She returned to the rental car, numb with fear and shock.
She wasn't sure what to do. Part of her wanted to call the police, to put out an alert for him, but the negative publicity from that would surely be a death sentence for the band. Then again, what did the band really mean if something terrible happened to Dylan?
It wasn't until she glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror that Melody realized she was crying. The sight of her own tear-stained face caused her to sob even harder. She covered her mouth with the palm of her hand to muffle the desperate, keening sounds. Hysteria would do nothing to help Dylan, nor would it bring him back from the dark place to which he had retreated. She couldn't think straight, not in her current state. She had to do something, but she needed help.
She tried Grace first. His sister had been more like a mother to him growing up; that dynamic had been obvious when Melody had first seen the two siblings together. Surely, if anyone might know where Dylan would have run away to, it was Grace.