Page 91 of Redemption
I close my eyes, swallowing hard and getting lost in him—a place that I absolutely should not let myself be.
A bark vibrates in my ear, piercing the moment.
Hayes pulls back, one corner of his lips turned up. He’s trying to look innocent, but I know him better. He doesn’t feel guilty at all, and he’s far from innocent.
He pulls back so he’s no longer squishing me, and I lie to myself, trying to pretend I don’t miss the heat.
Standing, he grabs my wrists and pulls me up, not allowing me to trick him this time. His hands brush over my hair and clothes, shaking off the grass clippings while Kota stands beside us and watches, and all the grass is gone. Hayes’s hand lingers on my arm, brushing his fingertips over my skin. Kota rubs his head against my leg, and I let my hand fall against it.
“Why?” I clear my throat. “How?”
His hand doesn’t leave my arm, tracing from my shoulder to my elbow and back. He tracks the movement up and down, leaving a trail of fire along my skin.
“I lost you and Langston. I couldn’t lose him, too. I needed a reminder that both of you existed because sometimes, right after you left, I wondered if I imagined you. It was—life was hard after Langston died and you left.” I open my mouth to interrupt, but he stops the path of his fingers on my arm and looks up. “Yourmom reached out to me about a month after you left. She was grieving your brother, and in a way, I think she was grieving you, too. She didn’t have time for a dog. Kota and I—well, we needed each other.”
Kota nestles his head into my head. Looking down, I pat his head before looking back to Hayes.
“I think Langston would have been happy that you two had each other.”
Hayes steps closer, each breath I take filling my lungs with him. It’s intoxicating—addicting in a way that’s becoming hard to escape.
“Maybe so, but I’m sorry you didn’t have someone, too.” The words poke in a place I’m not ready to share with him yet, causing me to tense, but if he notices, he doesn’t say anything. “I don’t know what sent you back here, but when you’re ready to talk about it. I’ll be here. You don’t have to do it alone.”
Maybe he moved, or maybe I did, but there’s hardly any room between us. If I were to lean in just an inch, our lips would touch.
But once again, I’m a coward.
Disappointment flicks through Hayes’s eyes, there for a moment, then gone. He pulls away, letting his hand drop from my arm and putting space between us.
Clearing his throat, he says, “We better get inside before we get yelled at.”
He grabs Kota’s collar, leading him back inside the fence and leaving me to follow with a lifetime of regret.
______________________
“So, Mallorie Jade, I hear you went into nursing.” This comes from Evan, Hayes’s dad.
We are gathered around Hayes’s table in the dining room after Hayes gave me a tour of the rest of the house. Madeline joked that it was the first time it had ever been used, but fromthe embarrassment that heated Hayes’s cheeks, I would say she probably wasn’t wrong.
“Yeah. I did. I never thought it would be the direction I took, but here I am.”
I don’t look up at the people surrounding me when I answer. There are too many opportunities for questions. It’s not that I don’t want to tell them about my life since I’ve been gone, but my decision to become a nurse was complicated—and the decision that sent me running back here even more so. I don’t know how I feel about it anymore, and that isn’t easy to explain.
Under the table, Hayes squeezes my leg. He still doesn’t know why I came back, but he’s here—and that means everything.
Madeline clears her throat, spearing a potato and glaring at her husband.
“What?” he asks, oblivious.
Hayes and Madeline’s laughter fills a crack in my soul, healing it.
I smile, taking in the people around me. These people are the first family who accepted me for me. They never made me feel anything less than that.
Evan is used to the laughter because he smiles with them, taking in his family. When their laughter dies down, he turns to Hayes.
“How’sthefootball, son?”
Evan is more of an education guy than an athletics guy. He has been since the day I met him. Langston used to think it was the best thing to listen to Evan call it“the”football. Secretly, I think he enjoyed it because he knew that Evan was one person he never had to worry about pressuring him when it came to the sport.
