I turn my attention to her and quirk an eyebrow. "Is it more likely to guess that I'm a brainiac? I'm the one that Remy loves to swear looks like a Viking."
"Who said you were a brainiac?" She grins with a teasing glint in her eyes.
I poke her side, which makes her giggle and swat my hands away. "Watch it, woman," I growl. She laughs again, and the sound has an even bigger smile spreading over my face. I swear seeing her happy makes me fucking happy.
The waitress arrives with our beers, so I take mine and walk over to the board to retrieve my darts. "But you're good?" I ask again, needing to make sure she's okay for my own peace of mind. I study her out of the corner of my eye.
She sighs, her expression becoming serious. "Yes, Jax, I'm good. I promise. I don't feel heartbroken or anything like that, so you don't have to worry that I'm internalizing anything. I'm just over the whole thing and happy to be past it." She lines up to throw her darts but seems to get lost in her thoughts because it's almost like she's looking beyond the board.
Her eyes still unfocused, she lazily lobs a dart. It hits the edge of the bull's-eye.
I don't even have time to be shocked or call her out for playing me because her next words capture every bit of my attention.
"I think I'm just trying to figure out what the truth was," she says, more to herself than anyone else. "I feel like my memories from the last year are totally different from what the reality was. I have to look at them through a new lens and almost re-remember them." She shakes her head and looks down, appearing suddenly tired. She continues in a quiet voice, "I will never understand how I got sucked into believing I was the problem. I never thought I'd be the girl who would let a boy destroy her self-confidence so thoroughly that some days she would walk around thinking she was the dirtiest whore in the city."
The reminder of that particular fact makes my blood boil the same way it did the first time I heard it. If I didn't know that Hailey would yell at me, I'd gladly find Steve and pound him into the pavement. To makeanygirl feel like that is disgusting, but with Hailey, it's equal parts unforgivable and blatantly false.
Despite the fact that she's lining up for another shot at the board, I step in front of her and cup her face in my hand. I gently tilt her head up, so I have her full attention when I growl, "The fact that he made you feel like anything less than a fucking queen makes me murderous." Her eyes widen at the intensity of my tone.Good. Let her see how serious I am."I hope you know that. I hope you know what you're worth, Hailey. But if you don't, I'm happy to remind you every single day until you wake up with it as inherent knowledge. I have no problem shouting it from the rooftops, or buying you a crown, or bowing at your feet like a fucking servant. Whatever it takes to get it through your head."
She giggles at my imagery and tries to look away, but I gently guide her back to me so she can see my dead-serious expression.
She sobers when she realizes I'm not kidding, the smile sliding from her face. "I don't ever want to hear you talk about yourself like that again, understood?" I ask softly but firmly. This time she nods without hesitation.
I sigh and pull her in for a hug. I automatically relax when she winds her arms around my waist, the scent of her coconut shampoo enveloping me like a hug in and of itself.
She squeezes me once before stepping back. The serious moment broken, I grab my beer again and lean against the high-top in our area. I watch as Hailey lines up for her second throw.
"You know what the funniest part about the whole thing was?" she asks with a laugh. The red dart lands in the bull's-eye. She lines up again for her last shot."He treated me like a whore everywhere except where I wanted him to."
The last dart lands square in the bull's-eye, right next to the other, so Hailey turns around with a smile.
A smile that freezes when she meets my eyes.
He treated me like a whore everywhere except where I wanted him to...
I can only think of one place a girl would want to be treated like a whore, and it's not a place I ever visualized Hailey in.
But despite the space between us, as the air heats and our eyes never break contact, I canfeelthe truth in her words. I can sense the desperation in her statement, can sense how badly she wants exactly that.
And now, she knows that I know.
I'm not sure if she meant to say that out loud, or if she understood what it implied when she said it, but I watch as she looks away and starts fidgeting nervously with the edge of her shirt.
Hailey and I have never really talked about sex. It's not just that she was too young when we were growing up together, but by the time we were both adults and living in the same city, it became an unspoken thing that we didn't talk about sex beyond who we were having it with. Remy was too much of a sister for me to want to hear about her history, and Hailey was a quiet, private person in general. The extent of my knowledge of her dating history was what I heard from Remy while they were living together, plus the drunken confession the night she and Steve broke up.
I never really thought to wonder about Hailey's sexual preferences.
Now, I can'tstopthinking about Hailey's sexual preferences.
I swallow roughly and look away, the vision of Hailey on her knees, with tears running down her cheeks as she looks up at me and chokes on my cock, looking every bit the obedient whore, is suddenly fresh in my mind.
I try to clear my throat, but when that doesn't help the dryness, I chug half the drink in my hand. I force myself to avoid looking at Hailey, willing my erection to settle the fuck down before this gets awkward. She probably didn't mean to tell me that, and is probably embarrassed trying not to look at me.
I attempt to put her out of her misery by changing the subject. "So are you going to tell me when you got good at darts, too?"
The tension in her shoulders disappears, and she gives me a grateful smile. She looks back at where all three darts landed in or very close to the red bull's-eye. "I wasn't lying about not playing since Remy almost took my toes out. But I was good before that too. You guys just never let me play." She aims a smug grin my way, and I'm immediately relieved to feel like we're back to normal. The last thing I want to do is make her feel uncomfortable when my goal has only ever been to get her to smile more.
"Always full of surprises," I sigh.