“I love Hayes. More than I’ve ever loved another man. Ever. But, we’re in a really weird place. He hurt me, and I’m trying to forgive him. Forgiveness doesn’t come easily to me. But I’m trying,” I tell her.
And I am. I know he said what he did before he knew me. But honestly, I’m bothered by the fact that he would say it at all. My parents didn’t do a lot right by me. But, they raised me in a place where I was surrounded by a lot of other people who did do right by me. I wouldn’t be who I am today without those people. They are my family. Even though I’m not there, that town, its people, and its future is the wind beneath my wings. I love them. I take my role as their daughter, sister, friend seriously.”
“What happened?” she asks.
“He insulted me,” I say.
“So?” she asks.
“So, when someone insults me, I feel like they’re insulting the people I love, too. And I won’t let anyone do that. Not even the man I want to spend the rest of my life with,” I say to her.
“The rest of your life?” She gasps. “Are you …?” Her throat bobs.
“No, not yet,” I say. “But he loves me. I will forgive him because I can’t live without him,” I confess and my heart flutters as I say it out loud for the first time. I am certain of those things and they are the reason I’m here.
She grabs my hand across the table and her eyes shine with tears.
“Oh, my dear,” she says. I snatch my hand back.
“No,” I shake my head. “I’m not your dear,” I say plainly.
She pales a little.
“I know you were just trying to protect him. But have some faith in his judgment. And be honest with me. I hope this is just the beginning of our relationship. We should begin as we mean to go on. If you play games with me, we can be relatives, but never friends. I would much rather be friends, so please just say what you mean. And mean what you say,” I ask.
I watch her face and wait for her to respond. I hold my breath, very aware that I may have just made an enemy out of the one relative Hayes seems to hold in high regard. Besides his brothers.
She stares at me in complete disbelief for a full minute. I start preparing to explain to Hayes why I made his aunt cry or storm off or throw water in my face. Then, she lets out a hoot of laughter that sends several heads turning in our direction.
“Well, will you look at that,” she says, tears in her eyes and a huge grin on her face.
“Look at what?” I ask.
“He found you,” she says and digs into her food with gusto.
LAID BARE
HAYES
“Tell me about your aunt,” Confidence asks as soon as we’ve parted ways with Gigi. The question stumps me for a second. Not because I don’t want to talk about her, but because I’d already moved on to what I wanted to show her.
“I want to hear more about her,” Confidence says, and my heart warms because she sounds like she really means it.
“She’s everything. The reason I don’t have issues. The reason I can accept and give love. She took me in when no one else wanted me. And she put up with my shit and hasn’t held it against me,” I say and smile as I think about the way Gigi and I knocked heads when we first met.
“You love her,” she says it like it’s a question.
“Of course, I do,” I say and pull her down one alley off Rivers Wilde’s main street.
“Come on, I want to show you something.”
“What are we doing here?” she asks as we step out on the other side and onto a footpath that leads to The Oaks.
“I’m picking up my gate passes and my car. I want to show you my house.”
“You bought this house?” Confidence gasps when we step inside the two-story foyer of the red brick house nestled in between a row of other two-story red brick houses that make up this picturesque cul-de-sac on Wildetree Lake.
“Yes, I bought this house,” I respond and take her hand and start for the stairs. “When you see the view from the master bedroom upstairs, you’ll see why,” I tell her, and my excitement builds with each step up the staircase.
“This is beautiful, Hayes,” she says and glances around the house. I follow her gaze, and I have to agree. About a tenth of the size of Rivers House, this is a house that already feels like home.
“I like it,” I say, intentionally noncommittal.
“Like? How can you just like it?” she screeches and pulls her hand out of mine. She runs it up the Cherrywood stair rails and sighs. “It’s like the dream house on my Pinterest board,” she says.
“Is it?” I ask.
But I know it is. She showed me the first time I went to visit her. When I saw the pictures of this place on my realtor’s site, I knew I was going to buy it. When I came to visit for the first time, I knew right away that this would be my home. Now, I hope she’s going to feel the same way.
“I want to show you something and then I want to tell you something and then I want you to be as mad as you want about it. But when you’re done, I’m fucking you. And when we leave this house later, we’re going to be back together.”
Her eyes widen and her jaw drops before she composes herself. “Hayes …” she starts, her voice full of fight. I yank her to me and kiss her quiet. Her lips soften and her arms slip around my neck and she kisses me back like she’s been missing it as much as I have.
It feels so good, but I force myself to stop kissing her.
Her eyes are glazed with desire; her plump lips pout when I pull back. “I’ve told you about that caveman shit,” she grumbles, but nestles into me.
“Yeah, you told me.” I press a kiss to the top of her head and wrap my arms around her.
“But, that’s what I become when I think about you. You’re mine and I’m not going to act like you’re not. Not for one more day.” I breathe in a good whiff of her hair that’s tickling my nose. She smells like sunflowers and rain. So clean and bright and strong.
“Come on.” I put an arm around her waist and lead her to the bedroom.
It, along with the rest of the house, is fully furnished and decorated.
“This room is kind of …” Confidence looks around and searches for the right word to describe the explosion of white, yellow, and peach that is my bedroom. “I would say feminine, but that feels like a massive understatement.” She laughs and looks around.
“Do you really sleep in that bed?” She points at the white, four-poster bed with yellow drapes flowing from the top of it.
“Gigi took my ‘do whatever you want’ too literally,” I explain. “But don’t worry, baby, I plan on getting rid of it before you move in,” I say.
“Hayes, give you an inch …” she says.
“Oh, Tesoro, by the time we leave this house tonight …” I look at my watch and note that it says eleven a.m., “I would have taken ten miles and put in a request for another hundred. You can say no, but I want you to look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me. Because that is the only way I’ll let you go,” I tell her.
She dips her head and hides her face, but I know my girl. She always puts a lock of hair between her lips and presses them together when she’s happy but doesn’t want to show it. She’s holding the end of her ponytail between her fingers and is holding it to her mouth for a moment before she looks up.
“And you need to stop telling me what’s going to happen and how I’m going to feel and what you’re going to do with me,” she says irritably.
I’ve pushed enough for now, and in a few minutes, I’m going to have a real battle on my hands, so I change the subject and steer us to the big bay window at the back of the bedroom.
“Look.” I point over her shoulder into the distance.
“Oh wow, we can see all the way to the Habitat for Humanity project site.” She puts her hand on her throat.
“Have you been out there yet?” I ask.
“Yeah, once. Just this week. I think it’s awesome that Wilde World is giving up that parcel of land for its develo
pment,” she says, and I smile.
“That’s not Wilde World’s land,” I say as nonchalantly as I can.
“Yes, it is. It shares the wall with Rivers Wilde,” she argues.
“I know. You know that the land Rivers Wilde is built on all used to belong to my family, right?” I ask.
“All of it?” she asks.
“Yes, all of it. That land beyond the wall,” I say and point to the short stone wall that was built to divide the land. “All of that still belongs to us,” I inform her.
“What?” she turns around to face me. “You own all of that? Habitat for Humanity is building on your land?” she asks.
“No, they’re building on their land. I donated it to them. Nearly fifty percent of what’s left. One thousand acres for their project,” I say.
“You … gave it to them?” she squeaks. Her head swings wildly back and forth between the expanse of green pastureland that’s one of the most unique things about Houston. Urban and rural blend within feet of each other. And it’s self-contained, but with easy ingress and egress to streets that are the major traffic arteries of the city make the location ideal for commuters going to all of the major commercial centers in Houston. The Galleria, downtown, Greenway, Katy, Sugar Land, The Medical Center. She stares at me for a few minutes, her face tight with concentration as if she’s looking at a puzzle that makes no sense.
“What?” I ask.
She frowns. “It’s just that there’s a dissonance between your actions and words, Hayes. Last time we talked about this, you were shocked that we wouldn’t accept a settlement. Now, you’ve committed your family’s resources to doing exactly what you refused to do last week.”
“Well, it was actually almost two weeks ago, and then, I hadn’t been to see any of the properties. I hadn’t met Matt and Jasmine and their ten-month-old who couldn’t go anywhere without the machine they use to treat his asthma,” I say.
“I heard about your visits,” she says. “Your little notetaker was very proud of himself.”
* * *
“He’s a good kid. And after those visits, I decided to make that donation. Some of those units should have been condemned before the flood.” I shake my head as I remember the rubble and debris that still lay strewn in the parking lots of these units. It’s a disgrace and I couldn’t sit by while they suffered.
“Does Remi know that? Why wouldn’t he tell me that?” I ask.
“Because I asked him not to. I wanted to tell you myself, and I didn’t want you to know until I thought you were ready to hear it,” I tell her.
Her eyes narrow slightly. “Why do you get to decide what I’m ready for?” she asks.
“Because I’m the decider,” I say, mimicking George W. Bush’s infamous words.
“Oh, really?” she asks and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Yes. That’s what I do. I make decisions that I think are best for myself and my family. Sometimes they mean I will have to hurt the people I love. Not be candid with them. Move them around like pawns,” I say.
“How do you feel about that?” she asks, surprising me with how soft her voice is.
“I feel fine about it. I’m not impulsive, Confidence. When I act, it’s after long deliberation. There have been moments in my life where I didn’t think, where I just acted, and I hurt people without any really good reason. The ends didn’t justify the means.”
“You should hear yourself, Hayes. You’re a stage five control freak,” she says, but her voice is completely devoid of recrimination. In fact, I hear shades of pity, and I don’t fucking like it.
“I have to be,” I say tightly.
She holds her hand out to me and I step forward and take it.
She brings it to her lips and brushes the back of them in a sweeping motion. She looks up at me through her lashes, and I’m struck by how every time she looks at me, her eyes nearly lay me flat.
“You can’t control people, Hayes,” she whispers, and a knot tightens in my chest at the distress in her voice.
“I’m not trying to control anyone. I just take opportunities when I see them,” I say and before she can cut me off, I tell her what I’ve been dreading. “Like when I realized that Kingdom wasn’t going to do anything they weren’t forced to when it came to the tenants, I knew Remi would need the best lawyer on his team.”
“What do you mean?” she asks and then her eyes widen and her mouth falls open.
She drops my hand. “You didn’t,” she says quietly.
I’m shocked she hasn’t guessed already. She jumps to her feet. “If you say that you asked Remi to hire me, I am going to walk out of this room, and if you try to stop me I will scream at the top of lungs until someone calls the police,” she yells.
Fuck.
“I didn’t ask Remi to hire you,” I hedge.
“But?” she bites out between her clenched jaw.
“But, I did bring you to his attention,” I say.
She growls and balls her fists.
“Why, Hayes? Because you wanted me here so badly that you’d convince your friend to give me a job I wouldn’t be considered for otherwise? How do you think that makes me feel? After everything I shared with you, you know that is the very last thing I would want,” she says and starts for the door.
My arm whips out like a lasso and I draw her to me.
“No, you aren’t leaving,” I say. “And scream because the closest house is three empty lots away. And you’ll be screaming for nothing because you know I will not hurt a hair on your head to keep you from leaving,” I say.
She looks pointedly at her arm, where my hand is cuffed around it.
I let go.
“I’m not holding you, but you’re not walking out of here over that. You needed a job. This one was perfect for you, and Remington already had your resume. He just needed someone to vouch for you. And I did,” I say. “But you know him now. Do you think he would have hired you because his friend asked him to? His twin sister works somewhere else because he won’t hire her,” I remind her.
Some of the fight flows out of her.
“Why didn’t you tell me, then?” she questions. Her voice is raised to a near shout, her eyes are pools of conflict. She’s angry, hurt, but she also … understands.
“Because you are so fucking stubborn, Tesoro,” I say in exasperation. “You would have cut off your nose to spite your face and spit in Remi’s the minute you knew I was involved,” I say.
“I would not have,” she says.
“Liar,” I taunt her.
“I would not have. Not everything is about you,” she says.
“Liar,” I say again.
“Stop saying that,” she says angrily.
“Stop lying,” I say.
“You are not a mind reader!” she yells now. She’s practically vibrating, but with something much more potent, vibrant, and transformative than anger. It is relief and acquiescence. She’s relenting.
I press my advantage.
“You and I are cut from the same cloth, molded from the same earth, sky, water, and fire. I can read you.” I trace a line down her forearm.
“Did you do this because you wanted me to take you back?” she asks and points out at the development.
“Partly, yes. But not just because I want you on my arm and in my bed, but because I need you by my side,” I say.
“You do?” she asks, and I laugh at the surprise in her voice.
I nod over at the window, at the land. “I could have sold it. It’s some of the most valuable land in Texas. But, what’s the point of enriching my family and living in a walled off castle when the rest of the world is burning or in Houston’s case, drowning. But I wouldn’t have considered if I hadn’t met you. At least, not as quickly,” I admit.
“So, you did it because—"
“Because I knew it was the right thing to do. The only thing I could do. You said this should be a personal problem. And you’re right. When I think about what I want the legacy of my t
imes as head of this family to be, I find that preserving it isn’t enough. Not just for the sake of it, anyway. That land has sat empty for two hundred years. It doesn’t flood, the only real expense of it are the property taxes, and because it was a donation and they’re a 501(c) (3), it’s a nice tax holiday for all of us. So, win-win,” I say with a shrug.
“My brother is on death row. He killed my father during one of their drunken rages,” she blurts out suddenly and I freeze.
“What?” I say because I don’t know how else to respond.
“Yeah, the one named Fortune,” she says.
“What happened?” I ask her.
“There was a terrible storm that night. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been home,” she says, her tone a little wistful. “When they were both drunk, I couldn’t bear to be under the same roof. But the river was already swollen from rain a few days before, so it was flooding. I was trapped in the house, and they were fighting. Over the last beer. Fortune had opened it and Daddy snatched it from him. The bottle broke, and Fortune stuck the edge of it into Daddy’s neck and he bled to death right there while my mother and I hid under the dinner table,” she says dimly.
I convulse in horror. That’s unimaginable.
“I love where I come from, but I could never live there again. I was trapped between two terrors and it was only when one was gone that I was able to escape the other,” she says, her eyes distant and dull.
She’s drawn her knees up to her chest, her heels rest on the edge of the window seat cushion and her feet are dangling off the edge. Just then, I can see her as a young girl, sitting on the edge of a river bank, her long hair hanging off one shoulder as she looks over it at the danger behind her. Her toes being tickled by the water while she listened for the danger at her front.
“Did he hurt you?” I ask, even though I absolutely do not want to know if he did. I know that if she says yes, I will never rest well. Knowing someone hurt this woman, and I will never be able to make them pay.
“Of course, but he also made me stronger. I always fought back. I never took my beating lying down,” she says, and I want to go and find her brother and spare him the comfort of that needle.
The Rivals Page 26