Never Let Me Go (24 page)

My eyes watered as the realization dawned on me that this story was about he and Samantha. I was a bit thrown, because he hadn't told me yet about his history, with fighting and drinking and smoking, or that he tried to be the perfect guy but he could never quite accomplish that.

“He loved her so much from the first moment that he saw her, and he knew then that his one true love wasn't Sandy.
It was Rose.
Sandy made him want to be a good person, but Rose actually made him a good person. He didn't smoke, or drink, or fight, or do anything that would hurt him, because he finally had someone to live for. Someone who was more important to him than life himself. And he knew he would love her forever.”

My eyes were locked with Hayden's, and I knew someday I would have to ask him to tell me the
real
story of why he was the way he was before he and Samantha had Skylar.

I dropped my gaze and my eyes traveled down to Skylar. Her lips formed a circle and her breathing was shallow. Within seconds, her hands fell away from my ears.

“She's asleep,” I whispered to Hayden, giving him a faint smile.

He nodded, closing his eyes. I felt something trickling up my leg, and then, Hayden's hand closed around mine and squeezed. I closed my eyes and adjusted myself so that I was comfortable.

“That was a beautiful story, baby.” My voice was taking on a groggy edge as the exhaustion hit me.

“Yeah, I thought so too.” His tone was distant and longing. He sighed. “Someday—someday soon—I'll tell you all of it. I love you.”

Then, I drifted into unconsciousness, hoping that he would keep that vow to me.

Chapter Sixteen

“So sweet little HJ was a bad boy, huh?” I asked, my knees pulled up to my chest as Hayden and I sat on the swing on his front porch. I nudged him a little as he encircled me, planting a kiss on my collarbone from behind. “I don’t believe it.”

We were outside on the porch while Summer, Bailey, and Lizzie worked hard at making lunch. Summer and Hayden’s other best friend Bailey had shown up at around ten a.m., just as I was putting a pot of coffee on. Earlier in the day, Hayden and I had made breakfast—enough damn breakfast for a small army, because apparently that was how Bailey’s husband Viktor ate—and the others had offered to make lunch. Livie was still at work finishing up some last minute details for a high profile client with an extremely demanding six year old, and she’d offered to bring some sweets by when she finally showed up.

Skylar was in the backyard with Bailey’s two daughters, Grace and Peyton, and her cousins Josslyn and Travis, and Hayden and I were stealing a few quiet moments to ourselves.

A low chuckle emerged from his lips. “I told you not to call me that, Mich.” He gave me a kiss on my jawline. “But yeah, I was a bad boy, I guess. I had a motorcycle that I’d saved for three years to buy. I smoked, but only pot—like that makes it better,” he muttered that last part before saying, “ I used to blackmail Livie and Ash into buying me alcohol. I picked fights, and I skipped class, and I treated my parents like shit. In fact, I got into a fist fight with my dad once too.”

Holy shit. I couldn’t believe anything that he was saying. He seemed so sweet, subdued, and put together. I couldn’t imagine him as a pothead with a violent streak. And as well as he got along with his siblings and his mother, I couldn’t believe that he’d ever treated them badly.

“That’s a story I’d like to hear,” I said softly.

I watched as his jaw ticked, and his eyebrows furrowed. “Funny. The first story you ask to hear is the one story that’s the hardest for me to tell.”

Immediately, guilt fogged my brain. I didn’t want to make him talk about something that was difficult for him. I knew that I hated when other people did that to me, so why would I think that it was okay to do it to Hayden?

“You don’t have to tell me now.” He wasn’t exactly looking at me anymore. He was looking through me, in fact. His eyes had completely glossed over, and he’d sucked his lower lip in between his teeth, gnawing on it like he hadn’t eaten in months. “Hayden?”

His space-out was scaring the shit out of me. He still hadn’t even
blinked
yet. He was just staring out at his front yard as though a UFO had just landed in front of him, and he wasn’t responding to me.

“Hayden.” I shook his shoulders, and when he still didn’t respond, I got onto my knees in front of him. I gulped, a bit taken aback by this unexpected turn of events. I reached up and took his face in both of my hands and waited. I waited and waited, and finally, Hayden gulped in a large breath and blinked. His eyes moved at rapid speed, looking everywhere but at me. When his eyes met mine after God knows how long, his gaze softened and he turned his cheek into my hand, reveling in my touch. “Are you okay?”

He nodded, but he didn’t speak.

I felt a little hurt by the fact that he wasn’t talking to me. Throughout my entire relationship with Brody, that’s all our conversations were. I wanted to talk about the deep shit, and Brody would completely shut down. I’d promised myself I would stop comparing Hayden to Brody, but it was a little difficult to do when he was exhibiting behavior akin to my ex-boyfriend.

I made to stand up, honestly in no mood to deal with childish behavior anymore, but Hayden grabbed my wrist from behind.

I whipped around and gave him my best death stare, and he blanched, a small smile on his lips. His eyes glanced between me and the seat I’d just been occupying.

I groaned, turning away from him. “If you don’t want to talk about what happened with your dad, that’s fine. But if you’re just not going to talk to me
at all
, I’m not going to stay here.”

He gulped, seemingly taken aback by my outburst, then took another deep breath. “Please. Sit.”

He speaks! Well thank fuck for that.

I willingly obliged, even though I was still a little pissed off at him. I crossed my legs and I seated myself so that I was facing him head-on. I didn’t know how exactly to prepare myself, because I didn’t know what to expect. That was the only good thing about Brody. With him, I
always
knew what to expect. I always knew what he was going to do or say, except when it came down to him breaking up with me.

Stop thinking about Brody!
I chided myself.

“It was my nineteenth birthday, and we were just gathered in my parents’ backyard: my sisters, Summer, Bailey and Vik, Ash, Jourdan, and the kids, my parents, and me and Sam. My dad’s kind of a mean drunk. Sam had just come back from when she left me, and she was six months pregnant. She mentioned something about the baby shower, and how she wanted Livie to plan it for her. The girls started talking excitedly, and planning this and that. All of a sudden, my dad shoves away from the table and throws his bottle of Corona on the floor, making a big ruckus and breaking glass. All the girls jumped up, rushing away from the table while my mom tried to clean it up. My dad raced forward and got in Sam’s face, and just screamed at her.”

Hayden raked his hand down his face. “I’ll never forget what he said to her. ‘What right do you have getting excited about this baby when you don’t even love it? What right do you have sitting at this table when you don’t even love my son?’ Sam just turned white as snow, and she just stuttered that whatever happened was between the two of us. And then shit got ugly. He got in her face and just spat the worst kind of venom imaginable—I’ll spare you all the gory details, but every word he said was like a knife to my heart because everything he was saying to her was true—and it was all about me. About how I was too weak to admit that she was playing me, how I was too blind to see that she was going to fuck me over the first chance I get. He kept inching closer to her, and he raised his fist like he was going to hit her.”

I was stunned silent.

“Hayden,” I said, because I didn’t know what else I could possibly say.

His eyes went blank and he shrugged me off, shaking his head.

I was vaguely aware of the fact that this was the first time in forever that I’d had a significant other confide in me about something without having to be coaxed into it.

It was a sobering thought, albeit refreshing. It was part of the reason I liked Hayden so much already. He was an open book, and at every turn, he was eager to let me read he pages of the book that was his life.

“I’ve never, ever experienced that much rage. Before anyone knew what was happening, I was out of my seat and grabbing my father by the collar of his shirt. I threw him on the ground and I just started hitting every inch of him I could see. Asher tried to pull me off of him, but I wasn’t having it. I jerked my elbow back and it connected with his face, breaking his nose. Spencer tried to pull me away, but he was just shrugged off completely. I must have continued just wailing on him for about twenty minutes before all the guys there bum rushed me and knocked me to the ground. But once I was off of him, I just grabbed Sam by the hand and dragged her out of the house before she could say anything. We didn’t see or speak to my parents again until after Skylar was born, and even then, my dad knew to stay the Hell away from me.” Hayden’s hands went up to run through his hair.

“Honestly, I don’t know who I was madder at that day: myself for being too stupid to believe everything that my family had been telling me for far too long, or my dad, for being just enough of an asshole to tell me what I needed to hear right to my face.”

No matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite picture Hayden beating on his dad for almost half an hour—Hell, I couldn’t picture him beating on
anyone
for
any
length of time. But I could see it in his eyes that it was a difficult subject for him to approach, yet he was sharing it with me. He was opening up to me, even though we’d known each other all of two seconds. He was giving me a piece of himself, and I vowed to cherish that forever.

“Have you ever talked to him about it—tried to reconcile?” I asked slowly.

He shook his head. “Of course not. Have you ever talked to
your
dad about what
he
did to you, or tried to reconcile?” I didn’t even have to speak for him to register my answer. “I just feel like I’m the child, he’s the parent. If he wanted things to get better between us, he’d approach me. He was the wrong one, and he should know it. Unless he makes the first step, I’m not going to bother.”

“Yeah, but my dad’s different. You grew up loving your dad and having a relationship with him. I didn’t get that chance with mine because he was a coward. He gave up a long time ago. Yeah, I’m an adult now and I could take the initiative if I wanted to, but I don’t.”

Hayden sighed. “I rest my case.”

Even though I knew Hayden had a valid reason for not speaking with his dad, I couldn’t let that go. I didn’t know where our relationship was going to go, and maybe I was naïve, but I wanted to believe that we were going to last longer than Brody and I ever had the opportunity to. And the fact that my boyfriend didn’t speak to his dad because of things spoken in anger didn’t sit well with me.

Truth be told, I didn’t think I could ever reconcile with my dad, but if by doing so, I could convince Hayden to reconcile with his, I was all for it.

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” I said finally. “If you make things right with your dad, I’ll make things right with mine.”

Hayden’s eyes snapped up, and he cracked a smile. I’d never seen him so low before, but I was proud to be the one to bring a smile back to his face.

“That’s an interesting wager, actually.” He brought his hand up to his chin and rubbed his thumb back and forth across his lower lip. “I may take you up on that.”

I wasn’t expecting him to cave that quickly. I knew that he fought for what he loved hard, and he fought against what he hated even harder. So the fact that he was even considering what I’d proposed so quickly was a shock.

As a matter of fact, it was
too
quickly. Either he was the kind of person who went to extreme lengths to please the girl he was with, or he
really
missed his dad. I had a sneaking suspicion that it was the latter.

“You miss him.”

“Wha…? I do not.” His eyes narrowed before he looked away.

I raised an eyebrow. “Yes, you do.” I crossed my arms. “As a matter of fact, I’m not going to kiss you again until you admit it.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you,” he replied, “but I’ll definitely take that deal into consideration.”

I grinned, leaning forward as my lips found his earlobe and sucked. “Does that mean you’re going to do it, or you’re just
thinking
about doing it?”

He sucked in a deep breath and chuckled. One hand grazed his chest while the other played with the inside seam of his jeans. I moved my fingers up toward his groin one at a time, and Hayden tensed beneath my touch.

“It means I’m thinking about it.” His voice was strained as he attempted to fight off my teasing advances. “It means I’m willing to try--for you.”

I grinned, swinging my leg over both of his and straddling his lap as I placed a series of kisses along his neck. I ground my hips, and a groan escaped through Hayden’s clenched teeth. I brought a hand to my chest and feigned surprise. “Little ol’ me?” I giggled. “Don’t do me any favors.”