Page 116 of Every Now and Then
After that incident, the singer kept a notably low profile.
“We figured his team had him on a tight leash ahead of the release of their latest album,” said Nashville music insider Dominic Falco. “But now that this new relationship has come to light, it’s possible Ruston and Annabelle have been quietly dating for months. Especially if you remember that article from January linking him to a woman named Annabelle. My guess? She’s the real reason Hayes' personal life hasn’t been making headlines lately.”
In the past few months, photos surfaced of the country star picking up Annabelle’s daughters from their private school in Brentwood.
According to a neighbor, Annabelle and her girls have since moved into Ruston’s downtown penthouse condo. Property records back up the claim. Annabelle sold her Brentwood home recently, a move that suggests things between the pair are getting serious.
Representatives for Ruston Hayes declined to comment.
Epilogue
Annabelle
Later
As we cross the threshold of the condo, I take a breath of relief. Hayes and I are each carrying a sleeping child, and Nelson, the building’s doorman, trails behind us with a luggage cart. Nelson unloads our bags in the foyer while Hayes and I creep down the hallway toward the girls’ bedrooms to tuck them into their beds.
We had a great vacation at Disney World to celebrate the start of summer break. Like the steamroller he is, Hayes coordinated everything and didn’t tell me about any of it until the morning we were set to leave. He assumed, rightly so, that I’d put up a fight about him spending that kind of money on us. But by that time, it was either go and have fun or cancel and lose all the money Hayes had already paid.So, of course, we went. As expected, the girls were ecstatic. My ears are still ringing from their high-pitched shouts of glee.
Of course, Grace’s first question was to ask if the swear jar money was being used to fund the trip, and if not, could we use it to buy the new Barbie Dream House she’s been wanting? That kid, I swear.
Because of Hayes’ celebrity status, we had a park guide assigned to us for the entire trip, which meant we could use the underground tunnels to avoid crowds and skip most of the lines. We rode nearly every ride at least twice, except for the big rollercoasters, which scared the girls. We went to the Disney character teatime. The girls got princess makeovers. We had a fancy dinner one night. They ate their weight in sugary treats each day. And we stayed up late to watch the fireworks show each night.
Over the past few months, I’ve fallen more and more in love with Hayes. This vacation was a turning point for me. Sure, he's my boyfriend, but I realized that I also saw him as a father.
He handed out hugs, kisses, compliments, jokes and reprimands when needed. He consoled Claire when she tripped and skinned her knee. He carried Grace on his shoulders while we waited for the fireworks to start. He gently corrected them when they were rude or bratty. He packed snacks without needing to be asked, already knowing the girls could go from happy to hangry in seconds.
Four days at Disney with a mom and her two daughters would terrify most men. But Hayes didn’t flinch. He handled it all with such warmth and patience.
I place Claire on her bed and arrange the covers over her before dropping one last kiss on her forehead. Backtracking, I find Hayes alone in the foyer, grabbing our luggage. Hefting a suitcase in each hand, he swings our bags into the bedroom as I trail him.
Plopping down onto our bed, I toed off my shoes, lamenting, “I thought you were supposed to return home from vacation well-rested and relaxed, not feeling like you got run over by a Mack truck.”
“I feel like I could sleep for a year,” he agrees as he lies down next to me with a sigh. “God, it feels good to be home, doesn’t it?”
“There’s nowhere I’d rather be, Hayes, than here at home with you and the girls.”
Somewhere over the past four months, this condo has become home, and the four of us have become a family.
Hayes spent much of February and the first half of March living at the ranch, only coming back to Nashville when he had work commitments. But the girls and I spent spring break at the ranch with Hayes, and those seven days spent living together under one roof changed things.
After that week, when the girls and I returned to Nashville without him, we were all mopey messes, each missing him in our own ways. That’s when I realized that the girls more than accepted Hayes as the man I was dating. They accepted him as a member of our family. Then, Hayes started spending more and more time in Nashville with us at the condo until the day came when his duffle bag was unpacked and stowed away in the closet, not to be used again until we headed to the ranch to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend together.
It was during that Mother’s Day trip that I finally laid the past to rest. With my therapist's help, I wrote a letter to Kyle, in which I forgave him, acknowledged my own mistakes during our marriage, and wished him peace. Then, late one night after the girls were asleep, Hayes and I burned both letters in the firepit. Watching the pages ignite, curl into embers, and rise with the smoke into the sky was cathartic. It gave me the chance to say goodbye to Kyle in a way I never could at his burial.
I also needed to destroy Kyle's letter, not only as a symbol of moving on from my failed marriage, but to ensure that the truth could never be uncovered. With Grace’s curiosity, I couldn’t risk her stumbling across it one day. She and her sister don’t ever need to carry those burdens.
After Hayes moved back into the condo, there were a few growing pains here and there, but overall, it was a smooth transition. Hayes is a stabilizing force for us, providing us with strength and comfort, and I think the three of us give Hayes an outlet for his love and a sense of belonging and connection that he'd been missing.
Laura once asked me if I could go back in time, would I do things differently? She asked me this well before Kyle died. At the time, she was referring to how young I was when I got married and had children. I said I wouldn’t change anything because if I did, I wouldn’t have Grace and Claire. And even now, armed with the knowledge that my marriage was a fraud, my answer would remain the same.
Claire and Grace are worth every moment of pain I’ve endured.
And now I have another important reason to appreciate the tangled path my life has taken. Hayes.
If I hadn’t gone through what I did, I wouldn’t have visited Tank’s that night. I wouldn’t have sat down next to the alarmingly attractive, grumpy cowboy. I wouldn’t have met the man who is my soulmate. The man who is both my best friend and my lover. The man who lights a fire within my soul and makes me feel more alive than I ever have before.
Sometimes you have to wade through the depths of pain and heartbreak to find the life you’re really meant to live.
