by Nicole Helm
“No, you don’t. Just like I know I don’t have to make the same threat to you, because she’s got a lot of family baggage that needs to be handled gently. And not like, say, being a humorless dick.” Sam gave Will a hard look.
Will flipped him off, but there was a grim line to both the Evans brothers’ mouths that put Sam at ease. He knew them too well, knew their father hang-ups, and he knew they would always do as right by Hayley as she would allow.
Now, he just needed to figure out how to make that allow bigger.
* * *
Hayley was patently miserable and she wanted to call her mom. Who was also the last person she wanted to talk to right now. Which was a recipe for making her completely and utterly maudlin.
Mom had called twice a day every day, and she kept threatening to send James or Mack after her in the voicemails she left, but Hayley kept ignoring the calls and the threat. Let Mack and James come.
She closed her eyes when her phone rang, knowing it would be Mom and somehow hoping for it to be Sam. Even though it was evening and he’d be back in his cabin, hanging out with Tori and all his super-great old memories with that woman.
Hayley let it go to voicemail, and sighed when after a few seconds someone left a message. She doubted Sam would be leaving any messages. Or using a phone. She was surprised he hadn’t shown up pounding on her door.
She was glad for that, really. Really. Or so she tried to tell herself. Which was all the clue in the world she wasn’t ready for Sam’s “adult conversation.”
Hayley tapped the buttons until her mother’s voice boomed over the speaker. “If you do not call me back by nine p.m., I am getting in a car and driving there, young lady.”
Hayley stared at her phone, brooding over the ultimatum. Part of her wanted to see her mother, in person, to give her a hug. To receive one. But Mom would never feel good about coming back to Gracely.
Hayley had to suck it up and return the call. Everything was bad enough without causing her mother pain by basically forcing her to appear in the town that had changed her life so completely.
“Well, I figured that’d get your attention,” Mom answered. If her tone had just been sharp and disapproving, Hayley might’ve found some fight, but it was that thread of worry and hurt that had her feeling as miserable as she had for days.
Her life was crumbling, and she supposed it had been so long in coming she thought she’d sidestepped it. But she hadn’t really, she’d been standing up to grumpy, screwed-up people because that was easy. It was easy to stand up to a man who lived in a lonely cabin in the woods. Even falling in love with him was a weird kind of easy.
How could he reject her?
He hadn’t. But he’d reminded her of her place in this life, and she didn’t know how to deal with that. She only knew how to hide from it. Keep herself the same secret she always was.
It wasn’t so easy to stand up to her mother, whether in her wrongness or her rightness, because everything Hayley had done here was a little of both. Her relationship with Sam was both good and bad, supportive and empty.
Maybe that’s all things ever are: both. But how could that be? “Hi, Mama.”
“So, I guess here’s where I ask if you enjoy scaring me and your stepfather half to death.”
“Mom, I just—”
“And James said a man came to your door.”
Yes, because what James said was the be-all and end-all. The dutiful son, the upstanding police officer, certainly not tainted.
“Am I not allowed to have a man come to my door?”
“I don’t think you fully understand how worried we are about you. No one understands what’s going on with you, and you seem content to let that be.”
“That’s because I am content to let it be. If I told you . . .” If she told them, they would see all that insecurity inside her. All the ways she felt like she didn’t belong, even though for years she’d acted the way they wanted her to act.
If she ever had to explain herself, she would have to accept the possibility that her family would find the explanation stupid and wrong and pointless, and she would be the idiot who’d had those stupid, wrong, pointless thoughts.
“Mama . . .” Hayley didn’t have the words. She wished she’d never come here. She wished she could leave. She wished she could find the backbone that had gotten her here. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Well, you lied. You’ve been lying to us for months. Did you really think that was going to work out for you, Hayley? I never expected that to be the news James came home with.”
She could address that, but lying hadn’t been what she intended, and more than she needed a scolding, she needed her mother. The one who had kissed her scrapes and tucked her in, the one who had read her stories and hugged her; not the woman who’d pretended she didn’t exist, or the woman who’d favored James.
“No, not that . . . I . . . Why . . .” Hayley swallowed. There’d been a perpetual lump in her throat for days, and she’d been crying or continuously on the verge of crying.
“I told you this would happen,” Mom said grimly.
“It’s not like I met my father and he shunned me. He’s dead.”
“Yes, I know. I . . . knew.”
“And you didn’t think I should?” Another secret. Another lie. Was that all there’d ever be?
“Hayley, I won’t even call him a bad man because he wasn’t a man. He was a subhuman life form. I never wanted you to have anything to do with him.”
Hayley knew she couldn’t argue with that. She even understood it. She’d always been so torn about confronting the man who’d paid her existence away, and she’d never been anything but glad he was dead.
But . . . it wasn’t all black and white, right and wrong. “I met my half brothers,” she announced with no preamble. The words tumbled out like a desperate prayer for guidance. “They’re good men. I’ve been working for them, and I love it. And I . . . fell in love with someone here, and I don’t know what’s wrong with me because I can’t enjoy it. That we have to keep it a secret. Why do I always have to be the one to hide what I want or who I am or what I have? What’s so wrong with me that no one . . .” She trailed off because she couldn’t . . . didn’t . . .
The tears were winning. Everything that was bad and painful was winning.
“If that man wants to keep you a secret, that isn’t love,” Mom said flatly. It was the same tone she always used when Hayley talked about boys or relationships. Oh, James had a girlfriend and Mom fawned all over her, but Hayley was interested in a guy and Mom shut down.
“Does that mean you don’t love me?”
Mom made a sound that could have been a gasp. “How can you possibly say that?”
“You used to pretend like you didn’t have a daughter. Whenever you’d go on a date. Do you remember? It was our little secret that I existed. Was that love?”
Mom was quiet for long, damning seconds. Hayley felt as though her heart was cracking apart and all the jagged edges were cutting on their way down to the rock-hard pit in her stomach.
“Hayley, you have always been my joy. But . . .”
Tears trickled down Hayley’s face, but she didn’t move to wipe them away.
“I was young, and something of a victim. I know I didn’t always do right by you. I didn’t think you’d remember that.”
“Of course I remember,” Hayley said softly. “Why do you think I was so happy when you married Mack? He was the first one you finally told. It was the first time I felt . . . I don’t know, really yours. But you always gave so much more to James.” And Hayley had never, ever, in the over fifteen years her mother had been married to Mack, said anything about that. She’d been too afraid. Afraid Mom’s love was conditional on her silence.
On her being a secret.
It was the scariest thing she’d ever said. Scarier even than telling Sam she loved him, or that she wanted him to leave.
“James needed a mother. He was such a softhearted, broken li
ttle boy, and you were always so independent and sure and . . .” Mom made a sound, a shaky expelled breath that told Hayley she was crying as hard as Hayley herself was. “Hayley girl, come home. You need to come home and we need to talk about this.”
“I have work tomorrow. That’s the one thing that I’m sure about right now. And I don’t want to be talked out of this life.”
“If I could talk you out of it, it isn’t the life you were meant to have.”
“No. No, that isn’t true.” Hayley sat up and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her free hand. Something like understanding was working its way through her, and with it, her strength. “I spent my life twisting myself into what I thought you might want so that you would give me as much as you gave James or Mack. I tried to twist myself into what they’d want me to be. I did everything asked of me, and everything you wanted, and I never asked for anything in return. The minute I stepped away from doing everything for everyone else, I found out who I am. Or at least parts of me.”
“I . . . I had no idea that you felt this way. I had no idea that’s what you were doing. Hayley . . . Hayley, if I had known, I would’ve stopped you. How could you possibly be trying to be what we wanted when we only wanted you to be happy?”
“I wanted to feel like a part of it. I didn’t know how—”
“And you never once said a damn thing!” Mom interrupted, and Hayley knew this tone too. It reminded Hayley more of her childhood than her teenage years, and as an adult going through something hard and confusing, Hayley could now recognize it.
All those times as a kid she’d thought her mother was mad or disapproving, it had been something else entirely, wrapped up in Mom’s own fear and old hurts, but Hayley had taken it on her shoulders, as if she was the cause and . . .
Wow. Wow.
“You never told me you were unhappy, that you were trying to please us, or what you really wanted. Never once did you express any interest in meeting that . . . him. How was I supposed to know that’s what you wanted?”
Hayley didn’t have anything to say to that. She supposed she’d always figured that mothers could read every last emotion and every last motivation. She thought mothers and even stepfathers and brothers were magic when in reality . . . they were just people.
“Hayley, you were only ever a secret because I wanted to protect you from every awful thing that had happened to me. I had some healing and growing up to do to understand that . . . That was about me, it was never about you, about anything wrong with you. I was never, ever ashamed of you, my Hayley girl. You are my heart and if I hadn’t had you, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me.” Mom paused and Hayley knew she was trying to find composure.
Mom had always hated to cry in front of anyone. She’d muscle through as hard as she could rather than show she’d been hurt. And far too late, Hayley realized she’d taken that too much to heart.
“I wanted you safe, and I wanted to separate from anything that might hurt you, and I’m sorry if you somehow felt that was about you. That was never ever my intention. I love you, Hayley. More than my life. And, yes”—Mom’s voice broke again, and she cleared her throat—“I probably poured a little bit more into James and Mack because I felt like I had to earn their love. Oh, how’d I get this so wrong?”
“It’s not . . . It wasn’t. It wasn’t all that bad. Really. Truly. I’m just in a bad place, and everything feels worse than it is.”
“Come home, baby. Come home and we’ll get you out of that bad place. However you want. I won’t talk you out of anything. Just come home. Where you belong.”
If Mom had left it at come home, Hayley might’ve given in, but it was that word . . . belong. That thing she’d been searching for. She was beginning to think it was a fantasy, a myth and a legend, just like this town was built on.
Which didn’t make it wrong or unreal, just that it wasn’t simple. Belonging wasn’t simply finding a perfect place, and life being perfect.
Yet she’d still been happier here than she’d ever been anywhere else. It wasn’t perfect, not with the complications of a half family, a man she loved, and a million other things, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t be right here.
“Mom, I love you, and I will come visit soon, but . . . I belong here. I think I realized that . . .” Hayley tried to make sense of everything that was running around in her head, but all she could think was that she’d ascribed a sort of all-knowing power to her family. And they hadn’t known or understood, because she’d never told them. She’d never explained any of her feelings or fears to them. She’d bottled them up and hidden them under whatever it was she thought they wanted.
Life didn’t work like that, apparently.
“I think I need to work something out here first.”
“With this man you love that you’ve never told me about and I’ve never met?”
“I didn’t meet Mack until he’d asked you to marry him.”
Mom let out a hefty sigh. “I was only trying to protect you. I don’t know how to live with myself, knowing that you saw it so differently.”
“I was afraid to tell you. I was afraid of what could have been the truth.” She was still afraid, but fear had kept her from talking, from reaching out, from hurt. It had protected her, in a weird way.
But it had also kept her from love and true happiness, and now that she’d had a taste, she couldn’t use it to hide away anymore.
“What on earth could have been the truth?”
“That you would always look at me and see part of him.”
“No,” Mom said on something of a gasp. “No! You are the only bright spot that ever came out of that. How could I look at you and see him? You were always mine. My gift.”
Though Hayley hadn’t always felt that, she knew that her mother was being honest. Mom had had her own huge issues to deal with, and no support system to help her through. She’d been alone and hurt, and she had done the best she could.
It hadn’t been possible to bridge the gap when Mom was young and vulnerable and trying to find her way, and Hayley had been too young to understand, but it was possible now. If they could talk about it, it was possible.
“I love you, Mama. Nothing changes that. Nothing ever.”
“I love you too, my beautiful girl. I wish you’d come home. Bring the man. Don’t you dare start talking about weddings without me meeting him.”
Hayley laughed miserably. “Considering I threw him out for no good reason, I doubt wedding talk will be anywhere in the near future.”
“Good. You take things slow. You make sure. You get your head on right before you dare worry about anyone else’s, including mine.”
Hayley sniffled, wiping her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “But how do you fix something that you may have irrevocably screwed up?”
“Well, first you learn the lesson that took me a very, very long time to learn. There are very few things in love that are irrevocable. Love means forgiving and trying again. Learning. Being better for the other person. And that’s all love, not just romantic love.”
“You’re not sitting there blaming yourself for everything, are you?”
“That’s a mother’s prerogative.”
“Mama. Please. Understand that . . . Like you said, I kept it all inside. Hidden away from you and maybe even away from myself.”
“But I’m your mother, and I was supposed to teach you better than that.”
“You taught me so many other wonderful things. I know so many people who have mothers who don’t care, not the way you did. And if we messed up, we messed up together. And we’ll fix it together.”
“That, Hayley girl, is love.”
Which meant that if she loved Sam, she had to do the same thing with him. She had to explain to him why she was hurt by secrets. She had to explain to him how she felt, and that scared her more than anything she could think of.
But that was love, and Hayley had had enough of it in her life to know that it was worth it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sam woke up the next morning, sore from the impromptu rock climb up the mountain, on top of all his excursions yesterday and the punishing paces he’d been putting himself through.
Added to physical soreness, he’d slept for shit and tossed and turned. There’d been so much on his mind, ways to try to get through to Hayley and understand what it was that set her off. But he couldn’t work it out, and the bottom line was he needed her to tell him. To be willing to tell him.
The problem with isolating himself for so long was that he didn’t know how to get people to do things for him. He was too rusty with his people skills to charm or convince someone to give him information they didn’t want to give.
He tried to think of how Hayley had pried him out of his tight outer shell, but he couldn’t think of anything she’d done except . . . Well, she’d pushed. She’d stood up to him when he’d wanted to run away or he’d told her to go.
Should he have stayed? Should he have pushed?
He hated this indecision, this fear of making a wrong move. Sam pushed out of his bed. Tori had already moved out, which meant the cabin was empty again. While it had originally taken some getting used to having someone in his space, he already missed the feeling that he wasn’t alone.
Not that he wanted Tori in his cabin anymore, but someone. Someone with black springy curls, miles of light brown skin, and golden-hazel eyes that made him think love was possible.
He grumbled through getting dressed. He’d promised himself after the rock climbing last night that he wouldn’t be a grumpy ass today, but it was bubbling up inside of him. Until he knew how to fix things with Hayley, he didn’t know how not to be a grumpy ass.
Not having her, and knowing she was upset and hurt but didn’t want him around was like constantly walking around on sandpaper. Abrasive and painful and just shitty.
He moved from getting dressed to the task of making breakfast. Whether he figured out what to do with Hayley or not, he had things to do. A kayaking trip at one, and Brandon had asked him to possibly take his morning hike.