Page 109 of Rosie and the Beast Next Door

(Per my legal team, I’m supposed to remind you that if this is starting to sound familiar, I promise all similarities to copyrighted work are completely coincidental.)

The beast was banished to a small town in the middle of the ocean where he wouldn’t bother anyone anymore. What he didn’t know was this town was magical—he sometimes sensed it in the scent of the flowers or in the crispness of the morning air or in how everyone seemed to watch out for one another a little more than was usual in everyday life.

And in this land, he met a girl.

A girl with rosy-red lips and a swing like a major-league hitter—when she was holding a broom, at least. She knocked some sense, quite literally, into the beast, and his entire world tilted on its axis. Everything suddenly looked different. The magic he’d always suspected existed was now visible to him. And it danced in sparkles around this girl, everywhere she went.

Everyone she touched went away happier or comforted. Everyone she passed left with a smile on their face. Even the ugliest, dirtiest, alien-looking creatures in the land were cared for by her.

She also had terrible taste in furniture and movies and men. But she couldn’t be completely perfect.

And for the beast? Well, there was some small part of his heart that had goodness in it. It was being protected fiercely by his anger and grief, but the small town, with the help of the girl, was able to coax the goodness out again. Most of it, anyway. A little beastiness is good now and then. Metaphorically, of course (per the legal team).

Right when the beast started to hope a happily ever after could be in his future, lies were spread about him and the girl. In order to protect him, the girl fled. But the problem was: she took her magic with her. Without her, the plants began to wilt. Smiles drooped. The sky turned gray. And the beast sent out a call to all the lands, hoping that one girl would hear it.

He must let her know how ardently he admired and loved her.

And so he would be at their small town’s hockey rink at seven pm on Saturday night, hoping for true love’s kiss.

Hoping for their happy ever after.

The rest of the article was full of corrections about my misdemeanors and an announcement that Dylan Savage would indeed be playing with the Peaks for another season. My eyes skimmed over the page, but my brain was still caught on the information in his story.

He was here? And wanted to meet me at the hockey rink at seven? I checked the time on my phone. I only had an hour.

“What should I do?” I asked my brothers, panicked.

“What do you want to do?” Haydn said. “We can hop back on this dingy and go back to the island a few more days until this blows over.”

“But Lia?”

“She’ll understand.”

I stared at him, then Bennett, then Haydn. “I really love him. Is it selfish to want to be with him?”

“No,” Jules said. “I can’t think of a more perfect person for you. Someone who would do this?” He waved his phone back and forth. “Makes the rest of us look bad, honestly.”

I laughed, happiness bubbling up in me. “Oh my gosh. I’m really going to do this. I’m really going to—” I cut myself off and squealed, jumping up and down.

“What?” Jules asked, his eyes wide.

“I just realized! We get to do a movie makeover montage!”

“But I thought he liked you the way you are,” Bennett said, dread in his eyes.

“He does, which makes this even more fun.”

Chapter 43

Dylan

I stood on theice in my skates and tried to pretend that hundreds of people weren’t watching me. Thousands, if you counted the cameras broadcasting it live online.

I tugged at the collar of my dress shirt and swallowed as I stared at the entrance to the rink. What if she’d never read the article? What if she decided I was just too much of a beast for her? I wouldn’t blame her.

I tore my gaze away to look for my team. Every single one of them had flown to Winterhaven for this. There was a chance some of them were hoping for public humiliation, but I deserved that. It was going to take time to earn back all of their friendship.

My parents were there, backlit just enough that it was hard to make them out. Lily had come, too, which had surprised me. Maybe there was a chance of us having a relationship again. I was going to work the slow and steady method with her. I’d lost her trust over a lot of years. It might take that many to earn it back.

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