But then, it’s exactly like him, a voice in my head whispers. This is what he did ten years ago. Left without a word or a note. Maybe he’s done it again, and I’ve been a fool for trusting him.
I wrap my arms around myself. I can’t go down that path, not yet. There might still be a logical explanation—I just need to find him.
So I start at his house, ringing the doorbell. But it’s dark inside and there’s no response. I even call his name once or twice, like an idiot, but nobody answers.
Then I head to the marina. I know Parker goes there sometimes when he needs to think, and maybe Hayden does, too. He did spend a lot of time there growing up as well.
But hope soon dies in my chest. The docks are abandoned, and there’s no lone figure sitting out by the pier.
There aren’t many options left. I could call Gary and ask, but… that feels like giving up. And it’s too likely to give me the answer I can’t stand. I can almost hear Gary’s kind, gravelly voice. Sorry, girl, but he’s gone.
No. I can’t bear it—him telling me that again.
So I text Hayden one last time. It’s long, but at least it’s heartfelt.
Hey. Is something wrong? I’m here for you if you need me, regardless of what’s happened, or what’s going through your mind. Please let me know where your head is at. It’s like you said: we’re us, Hayden. Always will be.
I send it and sit staring at the phone’s screen with my heart in my throat. The minutes tick by, ever so slowly. There’s no response.
In the distance, the sailing boats bob softly in the water, and I have to swallow to keep my tears at bay. Maybe I’d pushed too far. Or it had gotten too serious too fast. I thought we’d been good… but I’d been wrong.
My phone beeps.
Sorry. I’m at 47 Oakdale. Join me?
Relief pounds through me. I don’t even respond, just put the car in drive and head to the address. It’s not until I turn onto the street that I realize where he must be. There’s really only a couple of bars in Paradise Shores, and The Seahorse is one of them. It’s supposed to be a play on an old English pub.
He’s at a bar?
The place is nearly empty, low music pounding through it. There’s only one person sitting at the bar. There’s tension in his shoulders and his hair is messy, the kind of disheveled it gets when he’s run his hands through it too many times to count.
There’s a glass in front of him. He’s staring at it with an intensity that sends shivers down my arms. The air coming off him…
Something’s happened, and I’m suddenly very sure that it has nothing to do with me. Not directly, anyway.
I approach Hayden slowly and slide into the seat next to him. I can tell that he knows I’m here, but he says nothing, just slowly spins the amber liquid in the glass around and around. It looks untouched.
The air around him feels impenetrable.
“Whiskey?”
“Scotch.” His voice sounds low and unused. “Twenty-five years old. Matured in an oak cask.”
“The house best.”
“According to the bartender, yes.” Hayden waves a dismissive hand. “He’ll be back soon, if you want something.”
“I don’t.”
He turns to me and I can see that his amber eyes are bloodshot. He hasn’t looked this way in… in a long time. It reminds me of how he’d looked in the weeks after my accident, the weeks before he left.
“Have you had some?” I ask gently. He doesn’t seem drunk, not really, but he doesn’t seem like himself, either.
Hayden frowns, turning back to look at the glass. “No. I’ve thought about it, though.”
“All right.”
He’s quiet for a while. I don’t say anything, knowing that he’ll come to it when he’s ready, even though my mind is going a million miles a minute, thinking about what might have happened.
He finally clears his throat. “Gary called me yesterday.”
“He did?”
“Yes. Apparently, my father passed away.” He spins the scotch glass around again. From the smooth motion, it looks like he’s been doing it for a while. “He lived only a few towns over, actually. Had been living there for a few years.”
My mind goes momentarily blank. His relationship with his father has always been something we’ve tiptoed around. There are too many thorns there. Approach the subject and you’ll inevitably get pricked.
“I’m sorry, Hay,” I say. “I know you had a complicated relationship.”
He snorts. “Yes. Complicated.”
“Do you want to talk about him?”
“No. I never want to think about him again.” Hayden shakes his head in frustration, focusing intently on the glass of alcohol. The tension in him hasn’t abated—far from it. “But I don’t think I can stop, either.”
“That’s all right, too. There’s no manual for how to grieve.” I reach out and put a hand on his forearm. He pauses in his twirling to look down at where it’s resting.
“We never really talked about my life before Paradise Shores,” he says finally.
“No, we rarely did,” I say. I know there had been darkness. Fights. Alcohol.
He takes a deep breath. “I never wanted any of that shit to touch you. Any of you, but you in particular. It doesn’t belong anywhere near you.”
My heart constricts in my chest. “I can listen. I’m not fragile.”
“I know. You’re the strongest person I know,” he says, and I know what he’s thinking about. The accident. “But I’m not sure I’m strong enough.”
My mouth feels dry. “What do you mean?”
“I couldn’t handle the pity in your eyes. I can handle it from all the others, Lils, but not from you.”
There’s such despair in his voice—something I’ve never heard from him before. I’d known he’d harbored thoughts like this, but never that they ran this deep.
I grip his forearm tight and lean in closer. “Hayden, it’s me. It’s just me, and it’s just you. I can promise you that I’m not going to pity you. I respect you too much for that. I have sympathy, but that’s something different.”
He shakes his head again and stares at a blank spot on the wall. One after another, the words spill out of him. “Fights. Dealers. It got ugly, Lily. If Gary hadn’t fought for custody for me, I don’t know what I would’ve become.”
I run my hand gently along his arm in encouragement. I don’t even think he notices.
“He was terrible to my mother, when she was alive. The things he did sometimes… She’d send me from the room when he was in a rage, but I still heard.” Hayden swallows. “After she died, there were times when I didn’t eat for days. He’d leave and be gone for a week. Two, once. I started being afraid whenever the doorbell rang, because I knew it would either be his mean friends or the loan sharks.”
It’s not hard for me to imagine it. I can see the child he was, wide-eyed and with a dark mop of hair, hiding behind doors and pulling up the covers in his bed to muffle the sounds.
It’s almost too much to bear.
“Did he ever beat you?”
Hayden’s shrug is far more nonchalant than I feel. “Sometimes. Never too bad, really.”
“Hayden,” I murmur, struggling around the lump in my throat. It’s ridiculous, but I feel like crying. Not in pity—but in empathy for the boy he once was. For the man he is now. That anyone ever treated him wrongly feels like the gravest of injustices.
He doesn’t notice. He just stares at the glass in his hand, a thoughtful expression on his face. “This had such a hold on him,” he says. “I don’t know if he ever kicked the habit or not. I didn’t speak to him for years before he died.”
“Do you regret not having contact?”
“No. I didn’t want him in my life.” There’s a faint furrow in his brow. “Although there were things I wanted to know. Things I… I don’t know.”
“With him gone, so is your last connection to that time?”
“Yes. But it li
ves in me,” he says, rapping his fingers against his temple. “I wonder if the same weakness is here. If I’ll go down the same path. Make the same mistakes.”
“You won’t.”
“I’ve seen what a good man can be. I’ve seen it in Gary. But I’ve never seen what a good partner looks like, not to mention a—” He breaks off and glances at me, brows knitted. “Well. A father.”
I grip his arm tighter. “Gary has showed you what a good father can look like. Has he not been that to you since he became your guardian?”
He sighs. “Yes.”
“You won’t make the same mistakes. You’ve already proven that, several times over. Besides, do you think we would let you?”
Hayden’s eyes widen. “We?”
“Yes, the people in your life who love you.”
“God, Lily…” He braces his hands against the bar for a moment, some unspeakable emotion coursing through him. “I shouldn’t have stayed away. Forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” I grip his forearm tighter, strong under my fingers. His gaze runs to my hand, and then higher, to the bracelet around my wrist.
Hayden reaches out and touches a finger to one of the charms. His voice is quiet when he finally speaks. “You’re wearing this?”
“Yes,” I say, swallowing. “It’s the one you gave me.”
“I remember. I didn’t… wow.” He laughs, suddenly, and it’s entirely unexpected. “Seeing it now, I realize how off the mark I was.”
I lean back, offended for his former self. “Why? It’s lovely.”
“You should be in diamonds, Lils.”
“I should be in things that have sentimental value. Plus, I happen to really like it.”
He returns to his study of the charms. The brief amusement has faded, and his eyes look lost in thought. “Did you wear it sometimes? When we were apart?”
“Sometimes,” I admit. “Though the first couple of years I buried it in my jewelry box. I couldn’t look at it.”
“I deserved that.”
“And then, when I got older, it felt like something from my childhood. Something that connected me with you.”
He nods, his finger still playing with one of the charms. “The cone shell you gave me? I brought that with me on each of my postings.”
“Really?”
“Yes. It was from the ocean, from this place… from you.”
I stand up and gently push the glass away from him. “You weren’t planning on drinking that, were you?”
He’s quiet for a beat. I can tell there’s a decision being made, and I don’t want to rush him.
“No,” he says finally. “I wasn’t.”
“It’s late. Come home with me?”
Hayden nods and stands, too. He leaves enough bills on the bar to settle his tab and then we walk out, side by side. He holds the door open for me and stops on the sidewalk, looking sheepish.
“I don’t have my car,” he says. “I walked here.”
“Really? Your house isn’t that close.”
“I didn’t want to have to drive later in case I decided to have that drink.”
I can’t stop myself from smiling. “You’re so far from your father, Hay. Light years.”
He gives me an uncertain smile back. “I suppose I am.”
We drive back to mine in comfortable silence. He’s deep in thought, but the tension that radiated off him is gone. I don’t know if there’s an easy solution to his emotions—losing a parent, even if it’s an estranged one, isn’t something you can work through with a manual. Everyone’s experience is different.
Hayden pulls me close as soon as we shut my front door behind us. He puts his lips against my temple, his arm strong around my waist. For the first time in days I let myself fully relax.
He’s here. He didn’t leave.
“Thanks, Lils.”
“Anytime.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer when you texted. I was…” He shakes his head, the silkiness of his hair soft against my forehead. “I can’t explain it.”
“Because it would become real the minute you told me?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to burden you with all that stuff. But it doesn’t make it right.”
“It’s all right,” I say, breathing in the salty, masculine scent of him. He’s here, he’s here, he’s here.
“If you thought I’d left again, I’m sorry. I never would. Not again.”
“I know.” I take his hand and pull him toward my bedroom. “It’s late, Hay.”
We get undressed in soft, smooth caresses, both watching each other as we get into bed. He holds me tucked close to his body, silent and still. When he whispers in my ear that he needs me, I almost don’t know what he means until I feel his hot arousal against my thigh.
I slide my hands around his neck and pull his face down to mine. We kiss in the dark for what feels like an eternity, heat slowly unfurling in my stomach.
“Lily…” he murmurs against my lips, my jaw, my neck. He leans down on his elbows, his body covering me entirely. His chest hair tickles against my breasts and I press myself closer still, wanting to fuse us into one.
The fiery, ecstatic passion we’ve shared for the past week is replaced by something much softer. But there’s salvation in this too—in loving and being loved. I stretch out beneath him and keep my hands on his shoulders as he enters me. He starts to move, slowly, a shudder passing through his body.
Release finds me sooner than I expect. Hayden follows soon after, groaning my name as his body shakes in my arms.
He moves to my side and holds me close, cradling me against the strong lines of his body. I close my eyes and rest against his chest. There’s a faint tickle of hair against my cheek.
Hayden runs a calloused hand over my hair and down the soft skin of my back.
“I haven’t decided if I’ll go the funeral yet,” he whispers. “But if I do, will you come with me?”
I put my hand over his heart. “Always.”
28
Hayden
I look down at Lily, lying in my arms. Sunlight streams in through her bedroom window. It sets her auburn hair on fire, draped across my chest. She’s always gorgeous, so beautiful it hurts, but when she’s sleeping… she looks like an angel.
My head hurts, despite the hours of sleep. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why. The conversation we had last night was a long time coming.
She knows everything now. Just how bad it had gotten, before I came to Paradise Shores. And she hadn’t turned away in disgust or looked at me like a charity case. There had been none of her parents’ kind patronization in her gaze.
My arms tighten automatically around her at the thought. I’m a lucky bastard, gaining a second chance with her.
Lily blinks her eyes open. Clear, green eyes meet mine. They warm when she sees my expression. “Good morning,” she whispers.
“Morning.”
“It’s late, I think.”
I nod, glancing over at her alarm clock. “It’s past ten.”
“Wow. That’s late.”
“Yes, but it’s a Sunday.” I tip her head back, wanting to touch her lips with my own. “We have the whole day. Let me take you to the beach…”
She smiles. “It’s just across the street.”
“So much the better. We can swim…,” another kiss, “and you can lie in the sun…,” another kiss, longer this time, “and I can lie beside you and admire you.”
She laughs, properly this time. “You’re silly.”
“Only sometimes,” I murmur, “and only with you.”
There’s a loud knock at the front door. Her cottage is small enough that the sound is sharp and clear.
Lily struggles to sit up. “Damn.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“No. I’m not expecting anyone.” She gets out of bed, her lithe body naked and illuminated by the faint light from her window. It disrupts my train of thought completely.
I shake my head. “Don’t open it. It’s probably just a door-to-door salesman.”
“In Paradise Shores? They’re never here.” She finds her underwear and reaches for her robe. Another sharp knock rings out.
I sigh and swing my legs out of bed. “Let me open it. Who knows who it might be.”
She tosses me my underwear. “I doubt it’s someone dangerous, Hay.”
“You can never be too careful.” I pull on my boxers.
We both freeze as we hear the unmistakable sound of a key being inserted in a lock. Whoever it is is coming in, invited or not.
“Fuck.” I push her behind me and head to the bedroom door. Adrenaline courses through me. If they’re here to do harm, they’re about to get another thing coming.
“Hayden, the only people who have a key—”
“Good morning!” Rhys announces, standing in the middle of Lily’s living room. His grin falters and disappears entirely as his gaze lands on me in the doorway of his little sister’s bedroom.
“Rhys.” He looks exactly like I remember. The auburn hair is disheveled, true to form. The artful leather jacket, the jeans, the old boat shoes that make it clear he belongs in Paradise… For all his attempts, he’s never been able to shake the look.
“Hayden,” he murmurs. His face looks set in stone, all color slowly draining away. “I heard you were back. But I wasn’t expecting to find you… here.”
Lily pushes past me, tugging her robe tighter around herself. Her voice is ringing with happiness. “You’re here? I can’t believe it!”
Rhys breaks his glare at me to shoot her a wry smile. “Hey, little one. It’s been a while.”
“Too long.” She wraps her arms around his neck and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Don’t be angry, Rhy.”
He pushes her aside with a gentleness that doesn’t match the cold expression on his face. Oh, Rhys isn’t angry. He’s fucking furious with me.
“How long have you been back?” he asks, each word spoken through clenched teeth.
Rogue: A Paradise Shores Novel Page 21
