by Bromberg, K
“I need to go home.” It’s all I say as I stand, turn my back to him, and head down the hall. This is not his fault. I know that. Way deep down in my heart of hearts, I know that and yet right now, I need to go take care of the one thing that has gotten me through everything else. Go to the one place where I feel safe.
Ryder. My baking. My salvation.
“Saylor.” His footsteps are behind me. His voice a plea laced with concern. “Talk to me. Please?”
“I just need to get home.” I start throwing whatever’s left to pack into my bag: the swimsuit I took off that night on the beach, the little magnet with the turtle on it Hayes bought me after snorkeling, the cover-up I bought after he told me how pretty he thought it would look on me, his T-shirt—the one I slipped on when I got out of bed this morning because it still smelled like him.
I fight the urge to throw it in my suitcase. I want him with me. Instead I toss it at him where he stands in the doorway with puppy-dog eyes begging me to say something to him. I don’t want the reminder. But I can’t talk to him because I don’t know what to say. I simply feel violated. He catches the shirt with my name on his lips again.
The tears burn, but the rage burns brighter. The anger I can’t direct at anyone other than him. “So I came here to redeem myself in the eyes of the assholes affiliated with the Laytons—people I don’t give a rat’s ass about but wanted to try and give my business the best damn shot possible—and end up being sacrificed to the masses as a home-wrecking whore. Talk about achieving life goals.”
He sighs. Resigned. Defeated. His eyes truly reflect the pain of watching me suffer at the hands of his fucked-up world. “Yes. No. Yes.” He nods his head. Hating that he has to admit it. “I’m so sorry, Ships.”
And for some reason, hearing that nickname proves to be my breaking point.
“Don’t you Ships me!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “You used me. You knew all along and used me. You dropped the plane ticket off. Offered to take me. And all along, a part of you deep down invited me into your shitstorm without even warning me what was going on.” My voice breaks. The weekend had already been a whirlwind of emotion to begin with. But this? “You are just as guilty for not telling me.”
“You have to believe me when I tell you this was not supposed to happen. I expected an article here or there about me accompanying an old friend to a wedding in paradise. Anywhere I go, pictures are always taken. I never expected this, Say. How was I to know that turning off the phone and ignoring Jenna and her huge ego was going to cause her to lash out and try to hurt you? There’s no way I could have known.”
I swallow over the lump in my throat. Know what he’s saying is true . . . and yet, anger reigns. “She threw me, my reputation, my business, and my name to the sharks. When I talked to DeeDee, I thought the reporters out front of Sweet Cheeks were having a slow news day and wanted some old dirt on you—innocent stuff about how you were as a kid or something. Cute stories. I thought the texts on my phone asking for an interview were to highlight the bakery and in turn get a glimpse of the woman in your life. I should have known how bad it was when I got Ryder’s text saying he wanted to kill you. That should have told me everything I needed to know and yet I’m so damn stupid for looking at it through Hayes-jaded eyes.”
“Don’t do that, Saylor.”
He takes a step forward and I take one back. I don’t want to be touched right now. I don’t want to be coddled. I just want to be left alone to try and figure out how I feel. I know he can sense me shutting him out but it’s not intentional. It’s just what I need to do to process everything when in reality I have absolutely no clue how bad the story is beyond these tropical walls.
“She sounds like a real class act.” My voice is loaded with spite. Hurt. Accusation when it’s not his to wear.
“Say, she prob—”
“Don’t defend her.” My voice is quiet steel issuing a warning.
“She’s the last person I’d defend after this.” His voice is grave. Eyes serious.
“How do you live in that world, Hayes?” My eyes fill with tears. My chest constricts as the realization hits me that this is the world I’d be stepping into if Hayes and I were to work out.
“It comes with the territory . . . but it’s never mattered before like it does right now.”
The sob catches in my throat as I turn back to my suitcase. To my everyday life that seems so very far away right now. How will my normal be affected by this? By the hints DeeDee dropped, I fear it’s not going to be good.
Do I want to live in that life where pictures can be misconstrued and reputations are ruined over nothing but a rumor? A lie? A misconception?
“Will you stop packing for a second and look at me?”
“No. I need to get home.” That’s easier to focus on than the look of defeat in his eyes, and the riot of fear ricocheting through me. This morning I woke up sure about our future, and now I’m unsure if I can live in his world.
“Saylor.” His hands are on my shoulders. I try to shrug out of them and he holds them still. “Don’t pull away from me. We’ve been through too much for you to pull away from me.”
He knows me well enough to assume what I’m thinking. The tinge of fear in his voice—the same one that is echoing in my heart—tells me this. So while he might think I’m strong, I don’t think I’m strong enough for this.
“I’m not pulling away. I just need . . .” I hang my head and fight like hell to keep the frustrated tears from falling. “I just need to get home. I need time to think with a clear head, Hayes. Need to sort out the mess I fear my life now is.”
“Turn around.” And it’s not like I have any choice when he turns my shoulders himself. His fingers are under my chin, forcing me to meet his eyes. “I know you’re upset. Angry. You have every right to be. I am too. I’ll do whatever I can to fix this. Whatever it takes, but I know as well as anyone that I can’t control what people believe or don’t believe. And so it only matters what we know. What we believe.”
I nod subtly to let him know I hear him. The words he’s spoken and the unspoken ones in his eyes that tell me he thinks I’ve been scared away. And a part of me has. I just don’t know by how much.
“The oven died at the bakery. I need to get there to figure out what model will fit and its pricing and payment plans and . . . I just need to get back there.” I let the lie fade off because I know what those answers are. But what I need is space to think. To breathe.
“I’m going home with you. I’ll do an interview and explain our history. How we reconnected. Make it right again. Get the bastards to retract the stories.” I know he means what he’s saying, but I also know he can’t undo what has been done because he’ll be on the defensive. And the defensive is never a good place to be. I traveled all this way here to avoid just that.
“It’s not going to matter. You know that. It’s already in print therefore it’s already believed.”
“But it’s better than doing nothing. I’ll do however many interviews it takes to make them believe. We just need to figure out how to handle right now first.”
I look at him through tear-filled eyes and try to sound certain in my words. “There is no handling to be done. What will happen is I’ll go home to sort out the bakery, and you’ll go to New York because you have a table read tomorrow. I wouldn’t want you to lose the part because you missed it. I don’t need to be coddled, Hayes. I’ve lived my adult life without you, so I don’t need you holding my hand now.” I hate the flash of fury in his eyes from my comment, but it’s the truth. The sound of me closing the zipper on my suitcase in the quiet of the room reinforces my words. “I’m going to head to the airport now. Try and get an earlier flight back so I can get Sweet Cheeks back on track.”
“I’m going with you.”
“No.” I laugh but there is no amusement in the sound. “I want to go by myself. If you rush back with me, they’re going to think we’re upset and trying to cover something up. Someone will
comment that you missed your reading. Assumptions will be made as to why. The last thing we need right now is to give them more fodder for their lies.”
“I don’t give a fuck about their lies.” His voice thunders into the room and echoes back to me. His rage is so raw, his emotion so real.
“I know you don’t, Hayes. But please . . . you may be used to this . . . but I’m not. Not any of this. Just let me go on my own. Let me be a nobody in the shadows a little longer. I need time to process. To sort through it all. To get home and be in my own space and—”
“Why are you making this sound like a goodbye, Saylor?” His hands on my cheeks don’t allow me to avert my gaze from his like I want to.
“It’s not. But I don’t know if I can survive in your world, Hayes.”
He presses a kiss to my lips. It’s tender and simple and yet loaded with so much feeling behind it that a single tear slips down my cheek. My heart aches. My mind is so confused. Every part of me is scared about walking away and never seeing Hayes again. Of never getting the feeling back that we had this weekend.
The love he feels for me is clear in his eyes. He rests his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling, our eyes closed, our hearts understanding they are about to break apart. “Please don’t do this, Say.”
A second tear slides down my cheek. I love you, Ships. My heart needs to hear him say the words. Give me something permanent to hold on to when I do what I need to do.
Walk away.
But he doesn’t say them.
“I need some time to decide if I can. Goodbye, Hayes.”
Saylor
The plane ride home was an exercise in how to cry silently without anyone else on the plane knowing. The pictures and headlines of the tabloids littering the airport newsstands were horrible. The hurtful things they’d said replayed on a loop.
Image after image. Headline after headline. Lie after lie.
It was like the comments from the wedding reception on a loud speaker. On repeat. Each one worse than the last one.
And as much as I’d wanted to buy every single tabloid there—take them all so I could prevent others from seeing them, and read every single line to know what I’m up against, I didn’t. I resorted to sitting in a quiet corner obscured by a trashcan with my face shadowed beneath a baseball cap so I could read them all via the shoddy airport Wi-Fi on my phone.
It was lovely (insert sarcasm here) to see Mrs. Layton weigh in with her opinions about me in one of the articles. The jilted ex-fiancé Mitch as well, because who knew the timing of Hayes’s and my previous relationships and issues had both followed a similar timeline? So when Mitch said he suspected I was screwing around behind his back, he’s not surprised it turned out to be true.
Therefore, I’m not someone who broke up only Hayes and Jenna’s relationship, but my cheating ruined mine as well. And of course there was nothing about Hayes in their articles. The pitchforks previously aimed at him are now directed at me.
Fucking. Me.
And the stories, the headlines, just kept getting more creative, more slanderous from there. Painting me as a horrible person for breaking up the couple who the public had unceremoniously crowned Hollywood’s It Couple.
Sitting in the airport I felt so incredibly alone and vulnerable. I would have given anything to call my mom and hear her soothing voice tell me everything would be all right in the end. To have her order me to throw the tabloids into the trashcan I was sitting beside and reassure me that no one in the airport was staring at me. To wrap her arms around me, murmur that everything happens for a reason, and that sometimes it takes time to know what that reason might be. And then to have Dad take the phone from her and tell me one of his god-awful Dad jokes to cheer me up. Remind me that all men are idiots and that’s why God created women.
God, I missed them.
Instead I called Ryder. I listened to him fume over what they were printing when all I wanted to do was cover my ears and shut the noise out.
But nothing—not the tabloids, not feeling like I disappointed Ryder, not my fear of losing Sweet Cheeks because customers will boycott the store—compared to the look on Hayes’s face when he walked me out to the waiting car to take me to the airport. Naturally, it was in the service bay due to the many photographers at the resort’s entrance.
Not the images they printed of the clandestine lovers or the horrible, vile lies they printed without truth could compare to the wrenching of my heart when we shared the last bittersweet kiss. The kiss where my tears were constant and nothing could abate the empty feeling of saying goodbye.
I can still hear Hayes’s whispered promise that he’d make this right. How he told me I was making a mistake walking away from him instead of weathering through it together. How I should just go to New York with him for a few days, do an interview together to show people what is really between us.
But I chose to walk away even though my chest hurts with every breath I take. I already miss him so much.
But missing him does nothing to ease how completely shaken I am by all of this.
I flew to the island a harmless ex-high school flame and, within a four-day span, fly home an adulterous whore hated by what feels like the whole world.
So I need this distance. Need my own bed. My own space. My own thoughts. Thoughts filled of him no less, but still my own. Without him crowding me and telling me you get used to the lies and the attention over the lies and you learn to not let them affect you. Because I don’t want to live like that. I don’t want to hear and see lies and be so cold to the world that I have to shut them out to live my day-to-day.
I know it’s not Hayes’s fault and yet I still need some distance so I don’t lash out at him. Because knowing it’s not his fault doesn’t fix the humiliation over the horrendous things being printed and posted and tweeted and Snapchatted about me. It doesn’t stop the cruel responses about how ugly I am compared to the flawless Jenna Dixon. It doesn’t shut out the comments about how in the hell can Hayes Whitley ever pick me, a very ordinary baker, over the glamorous starlet. How I must be pregnant because that’s the only justification as to why he’d stay with me when he could have her.
And it definitely doesn’t ease the fear niggling in the back of my mind that keeps creeping in at random intervals. If image is everything in Hollywood, if studios have the pull to make actors appear to be with or not with other actors for precious images’ sake, if the masses never accept me as Hayes’s girlfriend because I’ve been branded as a homewrecker, then how will our relationship last?
Relationships are hard enough as it is. New ones especially. And to have all of this outside pressure on us from the get-go? To constantly worry about anything I do or say and how it will be misconstrued and posted in the press makes me panic. I don’t want to be a liability for Hayes.
I don’t want that added stress in my life.
Pressure can cause even the strongest person to crack, so I know it can break relationships too.
Let him be the judge of that, Saylor.
I know it’s not fair to think all this without talking to Hayes about it, getting his input, and yet I can’t bear to talk to him just yet. Reading his continuous texts is hard enough. I miss him. I love him. I just need to know I can walk into this relationship with open eyes and enough strength that when the shit hits the fan, I’m secure enough to be the person Hayes needs me to be in his crazy world.
I squeeze my eyes shut and pinch my nose as the taxicab exits the freeway. I’m overthinking all of this. In fact, it’s all I’ve thought about between the bouts of tears and the constant doubt when all I want is the strength to believe in us.
When we turn down State Street, the usually quaint road is lined with cars. The parking lot of the strip mall just to the right of Sweet Cheeks is completely full.
There must be another high school event or craft show. Shrugging it off, I sigh with relief when I see the welcomed sight of the pink and white striped awning of Sweet Cheeks in front of us.
Of DeeDee’s red Ford Escape parked in the lot, and knowing my bed is upstairs.
Empty.
Without Hayes in it.
And I hate the thought immediately.
A new No Trespassing sign catches my eye as we pull into the parking lot but I’m so preoccupied swiping my credit card to pay for the ride that I’m completely oblivious to what’s going on outside the cab. But when I open the taxi door I’m startled by the sight of a group of camera wielding men and their tidal wave of sound as they call my name.
I’m momentarily stunned. And I think I stand there blinking for several seconds as my emotionally spent mind tries to catch up with what’s actually happening. But seconds feel like minutes in this alternate reality I’ve stepped into where the click of the shutter is a constant sound.
Click, click, click.
Saylor, this way. Is it true?
How does it feel stealing Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor away from Jenna Dixon?
Click, click, click.
Are you moving the bakery to Hollywood now?
Is it true he’s only with you because you’re pregnant?
Click, click, click.
Why would you do that to Jenna?
Is he as good in the sack as rumors state?
Click, click, click.
Before I can blink, DeeDee is there in front of me grabbing my hand in hers. She takes control, gets my luggage from the driver, and steers me into the bakery—my bakery—and closes the door behind me.
I expect the noise to end. The shouts and clicks and the flashes so bright they feel like they are screaming at me to stop too. But they don’t. They’re muted now. Still a chorus of chaos outside, but not as loud.
When I look up, people are at the tables inside. With cups of coffee and empty cupcake wrappers and notepads. Customers.
“They may be paying for food, but don’t trust them. They’re one of them,” Dee says with a lift of her chin to the photographers outside who are now directing their lenses toward the plate-glass storefront window where I stand. “Ryder says they may be assholes but we sure as hell will take their money.”