The request hurts.
“If I won’t do it for my brother, why would I do it for you?”
Hayden doesn’t respond, just staring at me with those dark, judging eyes.
“I’ll go find Parker. Go have fun with your girl. Blair, was it? Or Belinda?”
Not waiting for his response, I hurry from the living room and into the crowd of moving bodies.
* * *
“That’s not true.”
“Of course it is,” Jamie scoffs. “How else do you think the water polo team gets all that funding?”
Parker shakes his head. “Because we’re a good team. A great one, even.”
“Great enough to score forty percent of all the school’s funding for high school athletics?”
I roll my eyes at them. Jamie has gotten deep into investigative journalism mode—which I usually adore—and Parker is deep into his umpteenth beer. It’s not a good combination. They’ve been arguing for half an hour.
Turner slings his arm around me casually and leans in to whisper something. “It’s like Ali vs. Frazier all over again.”
“Are we placing bets?”
He chuckles. “We should. Or we could get out of here.”
Nerves flicker in my stomach. I understand the implication well enough—what he’s really asking. There would be kissing involved at the very least, if not more, given his reputation. Do I want that?
He’s nice enough.
He’s not Hayden.
What am I doing here?
I shoot him a smile and pull away. “Let’s dance instead.”
Turner nods good-naturedly. “Lead the way.”
We join the other people on Turner’s makeshift dance floor. Music is pounding from the speakers, the bass heady and strong. We dance opposite each other, smiling, being silly. Turner throws an arm around my waist and I smile at him, trying to decide whether I like the feeling of it or not. This kind of environment... Everything is new to me.
Turner turns me around, and I see Hayden. He’s cutting through the dance floor. He’s using his shoulders to get ahead, pushing people out of the way without so much as a second glance.
I sway closer to Turner and meet Hayden’s eyes head-on. I’m not doing anything wrong. He was the one who said we couldn’t be a we.
He reaches us.
“Hey,” Turner says, a smile on his features. “We were—"
Hayden puts a heavy hand on Turner’s shoulder and leans in to whisper something in his ear. I try to make out what it is, but the music is too loud and the whispers too low. The only thing I hear is the word brother.
Turner shoots me a sheepish smile. “Sorry,” he says, giving me a wink. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
I give him a wan nod and watch as he retreats through the crowd. Hayden is left, looking at me, eyes faintly narrowed.
“What did you just tell him?”
“Nothing he didn’t already know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that he knows your brothers wouldn’t be happy with him if he messed with you.”
I cross my arms. “And you’re what, their enforcer? The attack dog?”
His jaw works. “Something like that, I guess.”
There’s tension in him, but it’s in me, too. I don’t have the energy to be thoughtful or understanding. I’m pissed off and I’m tired and I don’t know who he is at the moment.
“You didn’t do that for Parker. You did that for you, and you’re a damn hypocrite.”
Hayden’s eyes narrow, but he doesn’t respond.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” I’m vaguely aware that I’m talking too loudly, but there’s no stopping me now. “You’ve been nothing but rude to me since I came tonight. For no clear reason, either.”
Hayden glances at the people around us, jaw still working.
“Do you know what I think the real reason is? You’re afraid, Hayden. Afraid that I might go off and—"
He grabs my hand and I’m pulled through the throng of people, toward the back of Turner’s house. Hayden turns a corner and ushers me into a dark hallway.
“Stop it.”
“Stop what? Asking you to explain yourself?”
“Yes, god damn it.” He reaches out and puts a hand on the wall behind me. I catch a whiff of his body spray, of beer and ocean and sweat. His breath is coming faster than normal.
So is mine. The storminess in his eyes feels reflected in my heart, every beat reminding me how close he is but how far away.
“You were the one who said we can’t be a we,” I say, voice low.
“I did.”
“So why would you care if I was with Turner?”
Hayden doesn’t answer. Our bodies sway closer, until our chests very nearly touch. He passed me in height a long time ago, but it isn’t until we’re this close that it’s noticeable. I have to tilt my head back to meet his steely gaze.
Only it’s not steely anymore.
It’s crumbling, and the longing I see there is the same I’ve harbored for months.
I reach up and press my lips against his.
Hayden hesitates—I can feel it in his body—before his lips move against mine. They’re warm and soft.
He opens his mouth to say something, but I don’t let him. I kiss him again, desperate, pressing my body against his.
Respond, I’m begging. I want you so bad.
My hand gets lost in his hair and I’m tugging him closer, his lips gently pressing against mine.
And then the dam breaks for him too.
Strong arms wrap around me. I’m forced closer until there’s no space between our bodies, until his heart and mine beat in tandem through the thin fabric of our clothes.
Hayden’s lips are insistent on mine, soft and warm and tender in a way he so rarely is. I can’t believe he’s kissing me, or that I’m kissing him.
Hayden—my Hayden—is fisting his hands in my shirt as if he wants me close enough that we’ll become one. His shoulders are taut under my hands, the skin of his back warm through his shirt. I want to touch him everywhere, my hands roaming as far as I can.
His hands skim my waist, fingers dancing over the faint display of skin where my shirt’s lifted. The touch is electric.
I’m suddenly aware of everywhere we’re touching. My breasts, pressed flat against his chest. His thighs, strong against mine. The heat of his breath against my mouth.
His lips skim my jaw and trail down toward my neck. He flicks my hair back impatiently and presses kisses to my skin.
Kissing Hayden was better than I could imagine, but the feeling of his hot mouth on my neck undoes me. It spreads down my body, the fire, making my limbs languorous and heavy. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his thick hair. I never want him to stop touching me. I never want him to let me go. I surrender to his imploring tongue, to the heat and the fire and the flames.
I lean back, pressing my forehead to his. He smells like salt and home. Like boy-on-the-cusp-of-man and all I’d ever want.
“Are you ever going to ask me out?”
His breath is coming hard. “You know you can’t date.”
“That’s not an answer, Hay.”
"I can't, Lily." His voice is hoarse. "I can't." He pushes me away and takes a step back. A hand in his hair, his chest heaving and eyes wild.
I put a hand over my own beating heart. “Hayden.”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Let’s get you home.”
“What?” My lips still ache from his, body tingling.
“We can’t do this, not here, not… this shouldn’t be happening. Let me drive you home, Lily.”
Anger courses through me, just as suddenly as the desire. “You’ve had as much to drink as Parker. Why would you be able to drive when he can’t?”
“Damn it. Fine, I’ll walk you home.” He bends to grab my bag from the floor. I must have dropped it, completely absorbed in him.
“No.”
<
br /> “Lily.”
“No.” I snatch my clutch back. “I’ll walk home alone, thank you very much.”
He follows me out through the living room. “It’s not safe.”
“When was the last time anything bad happened in Paradise Shores? Besides, I’d rather be alone than with you right now.”
Hayden steps in front of me, hindering my progress toward the front door. The music is a loud beat in the distance, the hallway deserted. “That’s fine. I can be quiet.”
Such a Hayden answer. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I’m sorry about what happened. I didn’t mean it to.” He rubs his neck. “It was a mistake.”
A mistake?
The pain and the hurt lash through me. As high as he brought me with his touches, he can bring me just as low with his words.
For a second, all I can do is stare at him. When I finally answer him my voice vibrates with angry tears.
“If kissing me was a mistake, what does that make the rest of this?” I gesture toward the living room, the writhing bodies and alcohol and party drugs. “Spending your time with these people, with Belindas and Blairs and… people who couldn’t care less about you. I don’t for a second think that was the first time you’ve made out with a girl half-drunk in a hallway.”
He looks shocked, eyes wide. “That’s not true.”
“So what makes tonight a mistake, exactly? That it was me?”
“Lily, that’s not what I meant.”
“No? Explain it to me then.”
Hayden swallows, amber eyes locked on me. I can see him struggling for words, and for the first time, I don’t have patience with him.
“Never mind. I’m going home. Have fun without me here, bringing you down.” I head down the fancy glass steps from Turner’s porch and try to stop the tears from falling.
“Lily!”
I stop, a hand on the railing, and wait for the apology—the explanation.
It doesn’t come.
“Take Jamie with you, at least.”
A tear rolls down my cheek.
“I’ll text her.”
12
Lily
The present
I’m reeling from Hayden’s words.
Did he really write me a letter? If he did, it never got to me. It’s been ten years, but I’m flung back into the same state of anguish as when I was eighteen, waking up one morning to discover he had left. My heart is pounding with beat after painful beat. I had thought that the old fracture was more or less healed, but it hurts like it had been broken just yesterday.
I grab my jacket and my keys, hurrying out of the house and into my car. I’m filled with urgency—just like a decade ago.
When I’d called everyone to ask where he was.
When the days passed and there were no answers.
When I finally gathered the courage to hobble to the beach house on my crutches, to knock on the door, and to ask Gary where his nephew was. He’s gone, girl. I’m sorry.
The kind pity in his eyes had nearly made my knees buckle, as if he could guess just how hopelessly in love I was with Hayden. Hayden, who’d left, without a care or concern for me.
It’s late when I park at Ocean Drive 12, but I know my mom will be awake. Dad’s away on business, and for once, I’m happy about that.
I have never once spoken to Mom about Hayden. When I was younger, there had been times when I suspected… but she never let on that she knew about us. But she must have known—and known all along, because there’s only one person in this household who empties the mailbox.
I find her sitting on the porch with the light on. She’s reading a magazine, her hair—the same color as mine—braided down her back. It’s hard, sometimes, to realize that we look so similar but are so different. She’s never understood my love of art, for example, or Rhys’s rebellion against status and prestige.
“Sweetheart? I didn’t know you were coming today.”
My hand clenches and unclenches at my side in anger and fear, fear of what I’ll find out tonight. When I speak, I don’t recognize my own voice. “Ten years ago, Hayden left to join the Navy.”
Mom puts down her magazine. Her gaze is curious. “Yes, I suppose.”
“He put a goodbye letter in our mailbox, addressed to me. You took it.”
“Oh, Lily,” she says with a soft sigh, turning to look out across the ocean. “Yes, I did.”
I sink into the chair next to her. “Why?”
“He wasn’t right for you.”
“That was for me to decide. I spent years wondering why he left. Years! And you knew the whole time? How could you keep that from me?”
She’s quiet for a long time—so quiet that I wonder if she’ll even deign to answer me. But when she does, her voice is low and thoughtful.
“I had someone like that once, sweetheart. Someone who wasn’t good for me. Who couldn’t give me the future I wanted, but who I loved more than anything.”
I just blink at her. “In France?”
“Yes. We went to the same high school.”
I’ve never heard this before. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, Mom’s life started when she met Dad on one of his business trips, just the way she wanted it. She rarely mentions her life before.
“He would disappear for months and then return, asking me to take him back… asking me to give him another chance. He was charming, and tortured, and I loved him very much.” Her voice grows hard. “He kept saying that he would change, but he never did. It was always the same story with him. And there was no ambition. He would have ended up a bum, and me right there along with him.”
“That wasn’t Hayden.”
“It looked like it. I escaped that fate, and I’d be damned if my own daughter fell victim to it.”
“But I wasn’t you, and Hayden wasn’t him. History wasn’t repeating itself.”
Her frown deepens. “He had just crashed a car with you in it. You were considering going to community college and breaking your father’s heart over this boy.”
“The truck driver was driving drunk! The police confirmed it!” I can’t believe this conversation. For ten years, she had known, and never said a word. “And what university I chose was my choice. Hayden broke my heart when he left, and you’re saying you’re happy he did?”
“Happy? I’d just listened to a doctor tell me that he was unsure my daughter would ever walk again. Yes, I was happy when he left. I was relieved. I only wanted the best for you.”
“So why take the letter? Why not let me have an explanation?”
Her eyes soften. “A clean break, sweetie. You were healing physically. I wanted you to heal from him, too. And you did.”
It hurts. It hurts like it had when he left, when I cried into my pillow for weeks, when Mom checked in and pretended as if I was only sad because of the accident. She’d known exactly what I’d been upset about—and she’d never let on, never helped me through it.
“Did you read the letter?”
“No.”
“Do you still have it?”
Mom looks at me for a long moment. It’s like she’s evaluating if she can say no—if I’m still eighteen and impressionable.
I’m not.
“Yes,” she says finally. “Are you sure you want it?”
“Yes.”
I follow her into the house, as she walks up the stairs and into the master bedroom, heading straight into the adjoining walk-in closet. I’d played there as a child before I accidentally ruined one of her shoes. It feels like an age ago, a different time.
Mom rummages through the wooden dresser. “I know I put it in the back here somewhere…”
I watch, arms crossed, as she runs her hand along the back of each drawer. Beneath my anger I can feel the hurt, running deep, threatening to consume me whole.
“Ah, here it is.” She fishes out a yellowed envelope from the back of her sock drawer. One word is scribbled on it—my name—in messy handwriting. My eye
s burn suddenly with the threat of tears as I take it from her. For a long moment, both of us are quiet, just staring at the envelope in my hands.
Mom clears her throat. “He’s back now.”
“Yes.”
“And he’s made something of himself.” There’s a faint pause, and then she looks away. “Served in the military.”
“The Navy,” I correct softly, still staring down at the envelope.
“Lily, ma chérie, I’m sorry. Genuinely. I never wanted to hurt you.”
I grip the envelope hard and swallow against the lump in my throat. “But you did.”
“Yes.” Green eyes search my own. “Can you forgive me?”
“Tell me something. Do you still think you made the right call? Would you do it again?”
Mom looks at me, her gaze sad. “Yes,” she says finally. “I didn’t make him leave, but I tried to make sure you moved on. You were too young to throw away college for a boy.”
“All right. Then I can understand why you did it, but I can’t forgive you.”
“Lily, I—"
“No. I’m done for tonight.”
I turn on my heel and walk away from her, down the hall, the stairs, out into the warm evening air. Away from that beautiful house, with its memories, beautiful and painful alike. The envelope feels red-hot, lying on the passenger seat as I drive the short distance home.
When I’ve parked on the driveway, I rest my head against the steering wheel and take a few deep breaths. It’s too much—all of it. Mom’s decision. That she’d known all along.
That Hayden didn’t leave without a trace, after all.
I grab the letter and cross the deserted street out to the beach. The waves are soft in the distance—the sound usually soothing—but nothing can soothe me now.
Sitting down on the beach, I open the envelope with trembling hands and pull out the letter inside.
Lily,
I’ve decided to join the Navy. They have a great program for college, after you’ve served. You know that I never had a real shot at getting into any college around here, not to mention the great ones that you’re headed to, so this is my best option. You have always wanted more for me, and more from me. I promise to do my best to live up to that faith.
Rogue: A Paradise Shores Novel Page 8
