Finding Hayes: A Small Town, Marriage of Convenience Romance (Magnolia Falls Series Book 5)

I was exhausted from my shift at the firehouse, and I’d climbed into bed after waiting out in the family room to see if Savannah would want to talk after I gave her the letter. I hadn’t heard anything from her, so I’d decided to go to bed. It was going to be a long couple of months living with someone who wouldn’t speak to me. We’d been fine up until our wedding day when I’d brought up her leaving.

I was the one who should be pissed, not her.

But I’d given her the letter in hopes she’d understand that I’d been hurt that she’d left.

And I didn’t let people hurt me often.

But Savannah had always had the power to hurt me because she’d implanted herself in the center of my fucking heart from as early as I could remember.

“Woody?” Her voice was a whisper from my doorway, and I sat up. The room was completely dark, aside from the little bit of light from the moon peeking in through the blinds.

“Hey. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Okay.” I rubbed my eyes and glanced at my phone on the nightstand to see that it was nearly two o’clock in the morning.

I could see her silhouette moving toward the bed, and she came to sit on the side next to me. “I read your letter.”

A groggy chuckle escaped my lips. “It wasn’t a long letter. It shouldn’t have taken that long.”

“I was processing.”

“There’s not a lot to process, Sav. You left. I missed you. I wrote you a few letters.”

“There are more letters?”

I cleared my throat, deciding how real I wanted to be. But we’d gone so long without seeing one another, so I decided to lay it on the line. “There are fifty-two letters.”

“Hayes.”

“Savannah,” I said, mimicking her serious tone.

“Don’t mess with me.”

“I’m not messing with you. I wrote you once a week for a year. I guess I kept hoping that at some point you wouldn’t return one, and you’d actually read it,” I admitted.

“I don’t understand. Why would you try so hard to reach me when you were dying to get rid of me?”

“Why would you think I was dying to get rid of you?”

“I called you that night. The night before I moved,” she whispered. “I told you about my dad.”

I pushed back so I was leaning against the headboard and placed my finger and thumb beneath her chin, turning her to face me. “I never got a call from you. I heard about you moving from your mother when I went over to your house the next day. She told me you’d moved and acted like I was the enemy and slammed the door in my face.”

“That’s because I told her that you wanted nothing to do with me because she’d made a mess of everything.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Sav? None of this is making sense. Why would it affect my friendship with you if your mother had an affair? I didn’t give a shit then, and I don’t give a shit now. That has nothing to do with you. And do you honestly think I wouldn’t have come immediately if you told me that your father had cancer?” I was pissed now. None of this made any fucking sense.

She started shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. “I saw the texts. I saw what you wrote about me.”

“I thought you said I didn’t respond to you?” I was starting to lose my patience with this.

“Kate,” she said, her voice sounding almost frantic now. “I went to your house that morning before I left. You hadn’t responded to my messages about my dad being sick, about my mom being pregnant—about me moving.”

“You saw Kate the day that you left?” My thumb stroked along her jaw.

“Yes. She was at your house, and she came out the door just as I was about to knock. She told me that something had happened with you, but that you called her and not me because you no longer wanted to deal with me.”

My chest was pounding because this was irrational behavior, even for Kate.

“I didn’t call her. She’d called Nash to find out where I was because she couldn’t reach me. He told her some shit had gone down, and I didn’t have my phone. Apparently, she went to get it from my house because she showed up at the hospital where we were all waiting for Saylor to get released, and she brought it to me.”

Savannah shook her head. “So you never told her about my dad having cancer or my mom being pregnant?”

“Of course not. I didn’t know about them either. I found out about your mom later through the grapevine, and I didn’t know about your dad until now. Why would you believe that I’d do that?”

“I don’t know.” She threw her hands in the air. “You’d been a little distant since you’d started dating that heathen.”

“Sav, I wasn’t distant because of Kate. Hell, we weren’t even all that serious back then. Barry was drinking a ton during those days leading up to everything that happened, and I didn’t want to tell you about it because you were dealing with all that shit with your mom. So, I tried to handle it. And then everything went down with River and Romeo right then, too, and it was a lot.”

“I know. So I thought you just didn’t want to deal with me.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “Kate said you two would laugh about me. About the problems going on with my family. I was already dealing with all the name-calling at school, and I think I just felt really alone.”

“But you know me. You fucking know me.” I shook my head in disbelief.

“She showed me the text messages, Hayes. Your name was at the top. She couldn’t have made that up.”

“Made what up? I never texted anything bad about you. What did the messages say?” I asked, rubbing a hand down my face.

She was standing now, pacing in little circles as she tried to recall everything from all those years ago.

“They said that you wondered if your life would be easier without me in it. That you were disappointed in the person I’d become, and you didn’t know how to walk away from me. And then she told me that you knew about my dad’s cancer and my mom being pregnant.”

“I would never have written that. You saw your name on those messages?” I asked, not hiding my frustration. I was wracking my brain.

“Well, I don’t think there was a name on them, but she said they were about me.”

I stopped to think back to that time. “Fuck me.”

“What?”

“I was going through a hard time with my mom back then. Barry was getting drunk every day, and I’d told you that he’d gotten violent a few times, breaking things at the house and shouting at everyone like the asshole lunatic that he was. I wanted to get Saylor out of there. You knew all of that, Sav. Those messages weren’t about you. I’m guessing they were about my mother. Kate had been over when a fight broke out between my mom and Barry, and I’d been angry. So I probably texted her and vented about my mom. You know I struggled with my relationship with her because of what she was exposing Saylor to. My disappointment wasn’t a secret.”

“Oh, my God,” she whispered as the tears started rolling down her cheeks. “I freaking fell for it. She knew exactly how to play me. And I was in such a bad place, and she knew it.”

“She’s the fucking devil.” I scrubbed a hand down my face. “So, we lost over ten years for nothing?”

“It’s sad that she could make me doubt myself—doubt you that easily.” She shook her head and swiped at her cheeks.

“Hey, you were in a really bad place at the time. We both were. Hell, I’ve questioned myself numerous times that I almost married the woman,” I admitted.

Because what the fuck did that say about me?

“I think it all has a lot to do with what was going on in your life at the time, you know?” She reached for my hand, intertwining her fingers with mine. “You were dealing with a lot. Your dad had left and completely abandoned you and Saylor. Your mom remarried a total douchebag. You were doing everything you could to protect your sister. So, I don’t know, maybe you didn’t feel deserving of more than what Kate had to offer, because you were sort of drowning in all that negativity. And she pursued you hard. She wanted to date you, and she made it happen.”

“I was just a dumbass who didn’t know better. She was all over me, and I probably liked the attention. I’m different now. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“I get that. But completely closing yourself off isn’t good either, Woody.” Her gaze softened, and she wrapped her arms around me and rested her cheek on my chest, hugging me tight. “I’m sorry for believing the worst in you. I knew you. I knew better. I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” I said, tipping her chin up so she was looking at me. “You aren’t the one who did this. I’m the asshole who brought the devil into our lives.”

“I always hated Kate,” she said, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip, eyes remorseful, like she’d been feeling bad about it. “For the longest time, I worried I was jealous, you know, just that someone had come in and taken my best friend from me. It’s not rational, but it happens, right? And people loved her—hell, she was the most popular girl in our class, even though she was a complete bitch to a lot of people behind closed doors.”

“Kate is a master manipulator. It took me a long time to see it. She knows how to get what she wants. She knows how to work people, work the system, and that can be dangerous.” I shook my head. “She never told me you came by the house that morning. She obviously listened to the message from you and deleted your voicemail and texts. She knew I was freaking out that I couldn’t find you. Nash and King even went out to talk to Abe that next day to figure out where you were. And she just sat there with me that whole day, not saying a word. Watching me call you and text you over and over. She’s the one who guessed that you must have blocked me after you hadn’t responded to all the messages.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. Most people don’t see her for who she is.”

“You did.”

“Yeah, I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character. That’s why I took it so hard when I thought you weren’t who I thought you were. Who I knew you were.” Her voice started to quake. “And my mom had completely stunned me by falling in love with another man and starting a new life without me and Dad. So, I doubted myself about everything and everyone.”

“It’s going to sound crazy, so take this for what it is,” I said, using the pad of my thumb to swipe away her tears.

“Tell me.”

“Losing you was tougher on me than finding Kate in bed with Lenny. She was my fiancée, so that was a bit alarming. After you left, I think I really changed a lot, in a way I can’t explain.”

“Try,” she whispered. “Because I changed, too, and it helps to know that I wasn’t alone.”

“Well, I wasn’t a stranger to people leaving, people letting me down. My father taking off and starting a new family taught me at a young age that I couldn’t trust people. My mother allowing a lot of bad shit to happen in our home meant that I could never trust her. My ride-or-die crew are my brothers, and I know they have my back. It’s a brotherhood that took me a long time to fully invest in and trust, and I do. I would walk through fire for any one of them. And Saylor, man, she’s just good to her core, and all I ever wanted to do was protect her from the shit going on around us. I would give my life for hers, and she knows it.” I paused and looked away for a few beats before looking back at Savannah. “But you, Shortcake, you were always different. You were a part of me in a way that I can’t even explain. I would do anything for you, but I also trusted that you would do anything for me. It went both ways. I leaned on you, I told you everything, shared my hopes and my fears, which I don’t usually do. So losing you—it hardened me in a lot of ways.”

“I get that. It was the same for me. I just put all my energy and focus into my father. Into the things that I could control. I tried hard to block out how much it hurt. You were my person, and I was really lost without you for a long time, Hayes. I grieved the loss of our friendship in the most painful way,” she said, over a sob.

I wrapped her up in my arms and kissed the top of her head.

“This is the thing about you and me, Sav. We may have spent those years apart, but we never lost this connection. It’s too strong. That’s why when the fake marriage idea came up, I didn’t hesitate. Because it’s you. I have no fucking desire to ever be married. I don’t want that life. I don’t want to care about anyone that way. I’m not looking for a fairy tale. But if there’s something that I could ever do for you—I wouldn’t think twice. P and C, right?”

She traced her thumb over the little green pea inked on my wrist before pressing her wrist against mine, our tattoos meeting as our skin touched. It’s something we used to do all the time. “Peas and carrots forever.”

“And there is no one on the planet I would ever agree to that ridiculous saying for or to getting this lame-ass green pea tattoo with, other than you.” I barked out a laugh. We’d gotten the tattoos on her fifteenth birthday at some back-alley tattoo shop that didn’t question our age, because Savannah thought a tattoo would make her look like a badass. But a tiny carrot on her wrist only got her grounded by her parents, and no one else seemed to notice.

But we always knew they were there.

A constant reminder of what we had in one another.

She chuckled. “I still think they are the coolest tattoos.”

“Well, clearly, I’d do anything for you, but there is nothing cool about these tattoos, Shortcake.”

Her lips turned up in the corners. “I’m glad we talked.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“These are probably the most words you’ve ever used at one time.” Her voice was all tease.

I moved quickly, flipping her onto her back and tickling her. “You like giving me shit, don’t you?”

“It’s my wifely duty.” She laughed, and I held her gaze for a few beats. Damn, she had the most kissable lips I’d ever seen. Her tongue swiped out slowly along her bottom lip, and my dick sprung to life because he had a mind of his own. She quickly pushed me back and scrambled to her feet, readjusting her tank top back in place.

“Don’t get weird. I can’t control it, and you are my wife, right?” I laughed as I moved to sit back against the headboard.

“I finally don’t hate you. Let’s not complicate things.” She raised a brow and smiled at me.

“We’re newlyweds who sleep in separate rooms. I’d say things are already complicated.”

“Goodnight, husband.” She walked toward the door.

“Sweet dreams, wife.”

And I didn’t know why, but I felt the loss of her the minute she stepped out of the room.