Never Let Me Go (17 page)

I was torn. I was torn between my love for Brody and my new feelings for Hayden. I was torn between my love for Brody and my disdain for him. I was just a mess of emotions and I couldn’t tell which way I was being pulled. Or how I was going to get out of this.

“I’m sorry, Hayden,” I whispered, strangled. “I’m so sorry. I never would have brought you here if I knew that Brody was here.”

I lifted my head, and he was regarding me with caution. “Why not? He’s not your boyfriend. He has no claim to you. Hell, I may not have claim to you either, but I’ve sure as shit got more than he does.”

I cracked a small smile at that.

“You told Mel I was your girl yesterday,” I pointed out. “So I think you already
did
lay claim to me.”

He flushed, the reddish tint on his cheeks making him look boyish and innocent. “I didn’t think that you heard that, but yeah, you’re right. I guess I did lay claim to you.” He paused. “So what’s going to happen with us now that Brody’s here?”

I shook my head. I knew exactly where I stood with Brody—he’d made that perfectly clear before I came to Big Springs, and that was exactly how things were going to stay. I wasn’t going to go running back to him like I always did. I’d made myself that promise when I got here, and I wasn’t going to go back on it, not when I had so much to lose if I did.

“Nothing,” I answered, shaky. “I’m still your girl, Hayden. And I guess…I guess you’re my guy. Brody being here doesn’t change anything that’s happened between us over the past month and a half.” I cupped the nape of his neck, letting my fingers run through the curls at the back of his head. “You told me not to compare you to him, and you told me you wouldn’t compete with him. Well, now I’m telling
you
that you don’t have to. There’s no competition, I promise.”

Hayden leaned forward and I closed my eyes, hoping that he was going to kiss me. Instead, he placed a kiss on the corner of my lips, leaving my breathing labored, and my heart aching for more than that simple touch.

“I’m sorry that he came here and upset you. I’m sorry that what you’ve spent all this time trying to forget, he brought back to the surface.”

I nodded, tears springing to my eyes once again. I couldn’t help it. My entire body tensed up at his words. He was so sweet, and I felt so bad for the situation that I’d put him in. “I’m a mess. I’m sorry.” I closed my eyes and tried to blink away the tears. “God, I hate that I let him do this to me.”

Hayden immediately pulled me into his arms, his fingers massaging my scalp as he held my face against his chest. His chin rested atop my head as he shushed me, telling me that everything would be okay.

“I just want to be okay, you know?” I said, pulling my head away from his chest and meeting his gaze. “This was supposed to be my vacation! This was supposed to be my fresh start and my Goddamn Ghost of Boyfriend Past has to show up and ruin it!” I ran my fingers frantically under my eyes. “This was
not
how I envisioned today. I wanted to spend the morning with your family, and then have a good time here with my friends, and never have to mention Brody at all. And he has to show up—unannounced, mind you—and fuck up everything!”

I stood up to walk away, but Hayden pulled me gently, and I went toppling into his lap. I almost laughed, but I couldn’t. So I let out a noise, not quite pained, but close.

“Listen to me, Mich, that guy up there hasn’t ruined anything.” His voice was soft and soothing. It was like a caress, like through his voice, he was reaching inside and touching my soul. “He hasn’t ruined anything because guess what? Skylar and I are still here.”

I nodded, knowing that he was right. “You’re right. I’m sorry I’m reacting this way.” I sighed. “Nothing has to change between us. Brody won’t get in the way of anything that we have.”

Hayden grinned, kissing the top of my head. “Good, because I don’t want to share you, Michele,” he said calmly. “Except with Skylar, I guess. She’s under the impression that you’re
hers
instead of
mine
, and that’s after spending only a day with you.” He ran his fingers through my hair, his lip curling up on one side as he gazed off into space. “I just need you to promise me one thing.”

I sat up, stretching my legs out in his lap. “Anything.”

“Promise me, that if ever comes a time that you want to give Brody a chance—even if it’s just on a lunch date or something—I want you to tell me. I’ll respect whatever you want to do—I can’t promise to understand—but I’ll respect it, and I’ll do whatever you need. I just ask that you’re always honest with me, no matter what.”

At those words, I had to take a moment and just breathe. I was almost positive that I was done with Brody—the key word being
almost
—and I was sure that I wanted to be with Hayden. But I hadn’t expected anything like that to come out of his mouth.

It hit me yet again how much Hayden had been through that he had such a strong distrust of me. I could understand why, but that didn’t mean that I liked it. He’d lost the love of his life to another man, so it made sense that he wanted me to be honest with him no matter what.

“I can’t promise that that will never happen, because Brody and I have a history, just like you and Samantha do.” I took his hand with my own, gentle and sweet. “But I promise that if that
does
happen, I’ll be completely honest with you no matter what. I would never lie to you, and I would never intentionally hurt you.”

…

“Daddy, can my Michele come over tomorrow?” Skylar asked from her car seat. “I want to show her all the Barbie toys you got me!”

Hayden grinned at me from over the top of his car. He lifted his hands in the air and shrugged. “From the mouths of babes. Can my Michele come over tomorrow?” He winked at me and gave me a crooked smile.

Once I finished speaking with Hayden, we’d gone outside and hung out with everyone else. We hung out at the pool with the kids and had ice cream, talking and chatting and laughing.

Brody didn’t make another appearance while Hayden was over.

“Sure. Maybe we can go out or something. I’ve actually got the perfect idea but I’ll text it to you. I want it to be a s-u-r-p-r-i-s-e.”

“Sounds good; she hates those. I’ll call you after I put my tiny tot to bed.” He blew me a kiss from over the top of the car before he got in.

I watched as he drove away, wrapping my arms around my middle and turning back toward the house. I walked back inside and made my way to the kitchen, but I didn’t sit down. Instead, I looked to Nickayla, tears filling my eyes again.

God, I was crying so much today! I just wanted to stop!

“Upstairs, second room on the left.” Nic’s expression was warm.

I nodded, then padded up the stairs slowly. I was nervous, but I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t leave things with Brody as they were. I owed him an apology, and I owed it to myself to keep the promise that I’d made: I would hear him out.

I knocked on the door, taking a deep breath and waiting for a response. When I didn’t hear anything, I knocked again. There still wasn’t an answer, so I sighed, turned the doorknob, and pushed the door open.

Brody was sitting on the bed, his legs outstretched and his head tipped back against the wall, his phone in his hand. I walked over to the bed and sat down, touching his knee.

He jumped at my touch, and then he pulled out his earphones as he stared at me. He was different from the guy that I’d seen before we broke up, but he was also the same. He looked sadder, somehow, and I couldn’t quite place why that was. Where he was normally so put together, he looked tired and disheveled. Where normally his face would light up at the sight of me, he looked like he didn’t quite know what to say—like he was afraid of me.

There were so many words that were unspoken between the two of us, and I needed to get them all out before I imploded.

“Where are Cason and Dalis?” was the question that I started with.

He moved over, patting the bed next to him. I sighed, kicking off my shoes and sitting down next to him. I crossed my legs, smoothing out my skirt.

“They’re staying with Nic’s mom. I’ll be cleaning her house for six months to repay her for caring for them while I’m out here,” he said quietly. He looked at me cautiously, and then he sighed. “Did you come up here to yell at me some more?”

I winced, but I knew that I deserved that. I was mean to him for no good reason at all. There was a way for me to tell him all that I was feeling without being malicious or jealous, and I knew that. I’d tried to tell myself that every time I thought about him, but all of that went out the window when he was standing right in front of me and pulling me in for a kiss.

“No, I didn’t.” I looked over at him but his eyes wouldn’t meet mine. His head was leaning against the wall again, his eyes shut tight; I noticed for the first time that his hair was a lot longer than it was the last time I’d seen him—it was in his eyes. “I came up here to apologize.”

At that, his eyes snapped open and he sat up straight, staring at me. “What in the Hell do you think you’ve got to apologize for? You haven’t done anything wrong!”

I groaned, rolling my eyes. “God, Brody don’t say that! How can you even say that I’ve done nothing wrong? I
slapped
you!”

He opened his arms for me, then he stopped, his eyes darting to mine frantically. I leaned in to his embrace, my head resting against his chest. “Mich, it’s fine, really. It’s not like I didn’t deserve it.”

I shook my head again, tears welling up in my eyes.

I knew his history, I knew everything that was wrong with putting your hands on someone, and yet I hit him, this guy that I claimed to love.

“Brody, that’s not the point! No matter how mad or upset I am at you, I always prided myself in the fact that I’ve
never
put my hands on you. I’ve promised for as long as I’ve known about your dad that I would never lift my hand to you, because that’s the one way I know how to hurt you beyond repair, and I did it anyway!” I started crying again uncontrollably, and when he tried to soothe me by rubbing my back, I shook my head frantically. “No! Don’t tell me that I didn’t do anything wrong or that I’ve got nothing to apologize for, because I don’t want to hear that! I don’t want you to let me off the hook for this, Brody.”

He let go of me, and he moved so that he was on his knees, sitting on his heels. He placed his hands on either side of my face, forcing me to look at him.

“Look, Mich, I need you to let go of that okay? You are
not
my dad. You didn’t hit me to hurt me
intentionally
. You were upset and your emotions got the best of you, and I can understand that. I fucked up.” He groaned, his breath catching. “I fucked up, and I know it. I came here thinking that you would just take me back without a second thought. I came here thinking that I
deserved
that. I came here thinking that we could just pick up where we left off, but I was wrong. I was an idiot, Mich, a huge idiot. I shouldn’t have come here expecting what I did. I should have at the very least called first. I know you…once you’re hurt, you need time, you need to warm up, you need patience, and I basically said, ‘fuck that’. You said that my coming here was just another ploy for me to get what I want, and you were right, and I’m sorry. I don’t have the right to ask anything of you, Michele, but all I
do
ask is that you forgive yourself, because I can’t live with you beating yourself up for losing control in a moment of anger.”

There was only one other person in the entire world that understood why it was such a big deal for me to put my hands on Brody, and that was Nickayla. We were the two people who knew him best, and we were the only two people outside of his brother and sister that knew all that he’d been through.

When his mother passed away when he was twelve, his father couldn’t deal. His coping mechanisms were drinking and beating on his youngest son, Cason. Brody, who’d always been overprotective of the people he loves, offered himself up so that his brother would never get hit again. I lost track of how many times over the past six years that I’d seen Brody limp into school, ask to borrow my foundation to cover a bruise, and wince when Nickayla hugged him. Even worse, there were at least three times that Nic and I almost filed a missing persons report and found out he was in the hospital after a particularly brutal attack.

It was about a week into our relationship when we were fifteen that he’d finally broken down and told me of the terror that he’d had to live with at home, taking punches and kicks and even stab wounds just for the sake of protecting his siblings. It was in that moment, when I held him and tried to comfort him that I’d promised to never lay a hand on him. I knew that that was the only way that I could break him, and I never wanted to be the cause of pain like that for him.

“Brody, I can’t,” I choked out. “I can’t let go, and I can’t forgive myself for that.”

Brody cracked a smile, his entire demeanor changing as he used his hands to move my face side to side in a playful manner. “Come on, Mich, do it for me?” He grinned, the smile actually reaching his eyes. “Besides, I’m sure that up until I showed up today, you’ve imagined doing much worse than slapping me.”