“Bad dream.”
There was no point in lying. Hayes saw too much. In everyone, but especially in me.
“About the note?”
I wrapped my hands around my mug of tea, staring down into its swirling depths. “Something else.”
“Your brother?”
My head snapped up. “What are you talking about?”
I saw a gentleness in Hayes I’d never seen before. As if he were approaching an injured, wild animal. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out there’s something there.”
I turned my focus back to my drink. I ran my thumb up and down the handle of the cup, unsure of what to say.
“Let me in, Ev.”
Hayes didn’t realize how much he was asking with that single request. And yet, I wanted to tell him. To unburden myself of something I’d carried with me for years. I hadn’t ever spoken of it. Not even to Jacey when I went to live with her. My mom had tended to my wounds, stitching my lip and wrapping my ribs, but only after my bruises had faded and the stitches had been removed did she take me to my sister’s.
“After my father’s sentencing, Ian was angry. He took it out on me.”
Hayes’ eyes hardened. “He hit you? You were only eleven. He was a teenager.”
I remembered how big Ian had seemed at the time, towering over me as his boot made contact with my ribs.
“How bad?”
The two words were rough, grating over my skin. “Split lip. Broken ribs. Probably a concussion.”
Hayes’ fingers dug into the arms of the chair, his knuckles bleaching white. “No one called the goddamned sheriff?”
“That’s not how my family operates. It’s why they were so angry with me. They didn’t think that what my father had done was right, but they thought I should’ve waited until my mom came home so she could’ve talked Dad down or gone to get Allen.”
“If you had waited another couple of days, Shiloh could’ve died.”
“I know,” I whispered. “The only thing I regret is not going sooner. I’d take the beating again if it meant she was okay.”
“Fuck.” Hayes pushed to his feet and began pacing. The back deck wasn’t large, but he used every inch.
I rose slowly, setting my tea on the chair. I moved into his path, stopping Hayes in his tracks. “I’m okay.”
His rough hands came up to frame my face as he bent down and got close. “You’re not okay. How could you be? All I can think about is what you’ve had to endure. And the words I threw at you the first day I came up here. I’m so fucking sorry, Ev.”
I tipped my face forward so our foreheads touched, then just rested there and circled his wrists with my hands. “I am okay. Or I will be. I stuffed a lot of this down. Haven’t dealt with it the way I should have. But I’m facing it now. It’s not easy, but it’s good for me to be back here.”
Hayes was silent for a moment, the only sound that of his ragged breathing. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
“It’s just twenty breaths—”
“It’s not only twenty damn breaths. It’s you. Whatever’s running through those veins that makes you stronger than everyone else.” Hayes tipped up my face so that our lips were only a breath apart. “Ev?”
“Yes?”
“I need to kiss you.”
I wanted it so badly. The feel of his mouth on mine. To know that I wasn’t alone in that moment. I was the one who closed the distance. His lips were softer than expected, the pressure so gentle, it was as if he worried that I might break.
But the moment his tongue slipped into my mouth, everything changed. Hunger and need took over. We were both searching for something, yet not quite sure what that was. My fingers fisted in his t-shirt, and I pulled Hayes closer until I wasn’t sure where he ended, and I began.