Sweet Cheeks (27 page)

The lull of the boat rocking is more than enough to put me to sleep. Add to it the sun on my skin, the two hours of snorkeling in the beautiful waters of Smith’s reef, and two glasses of wine, and I should be snoring.
But I’m not
. There’s no way I could close my eyes.

I don’t want to waste a moment of the time we have left here together.

And so I prop my head up on my elbow and watch Hayes from behind the mirrored lenses of my sunglasses. He’s lying on the net, or trampoline as he referred to it, beside me. His eyes are closed, face shaded by the mainsail above us, and his hands are behind his head. I take the opportunity to look at him and memorize the line of his profile even though I already know it by heart.

“Are you staring at me again?” he asks, voice sleepy, smile spreading on his lips.

“Always.”

“You used to do that all the time. We’d sit in that tree house with the fireflies around us and the stars above us and you’d always look at me instead of the sky.”

I warm at the memory and how annoyed he used to get by it. “I was just preparing you for your future career.”

“Funny,” he mutters and turns his head to face me.

“I have my moments.” He reaches out and swats at my leg and I scramble away.

“Be careful, Ships, or else I’ll dangle you over the edge of the boat so your toes are in the water.”

“No!” I giggle, my face a mask of mock horror. “I still can’t believe that!” I shiver remembering that first nibble on my brightly painted toes from the tiny fish while snorkeling. We can only assume they must have thought they were food. It didn’t hurt, but it sure as hell scared the shit out of me. And of course I surfaced with a yelp while Hayes treaded water laughing so hard he sunk below the waterline.

“See? I saved you from getting your fingers nibbled on too. Good thing I kidnapped you today and prevented you from endless hours of torture at the salon.”

“My hero,” I swoon with a roll of my eyes he can’t see but know he knows I’m doing.

“Bet your ass I am. Haven’t you seen me in tights?”

“Oh God. Please. The ego.” I fall back on my elbows laughing and loving the sound of his laughter melding with mine. It’s comforting.
It’s us.

The smile on his lips fades. “I didn’t know, you know.” His voice is suddenly serious.

“Didn’t know what?”
He’s lost me.

“When I left, I didn’t know I wasn’t coming back.”

I’m not sure how he expects me to react from his unexpected confession, but I can’t deny that my breath catches. “It’s in the past,” I murmur, wanting to stick with the promise I made myself when I came here about forgiving him, and not wanting to waste the time we have left on things that can’t be changed.

“I know it’s in the past, Say, but it’s important for you to understand. I left for a weekend trip to Hollywood, a cocky kid with stars in his eyes who sure as shit wasn’t going to land a once-in-a-lifetime-dream role on his first audition.”

“But you did,” I whisper, remembering where I was the first time I noticed the hushed whispers of my friends who were averting their eyes every time I looked their way. How I finally confronted Ryder and found out Hayes had landed a huge role and wasn’t coming home anytime soon. I screamed and yelled and begged to know why Ryder hadn’t told me the truth. He admitted that I’d lost so much weight and was finally starting to smile again that he couldn’t bear to tell me. He was too afraid it would renew the heartache and start the cycle all over again.

“I did.” He nods subtly and even though his eyes are behind tinted lenses, I swear I can feel him searching mine to make sure I’m okay with the memories this conversation is evoking. “I walked in to the casting audition nervous as hell, wanting to say I tried my hardest and the dream wasn’t for me, but walked out shell-shocked when I’d been cast in the part.”

Silence falls between us as I fight the agonizing destitution I’d felt from clawing its way back. The grief. The loneliness. The heartbreak.

The silence.

“You left me a message.”

“I left you a lot of messages.” I can’t help the rejected bite to my tone.

“You did. And I listened to every single one of them, Saylor. So many damn times. I was so homesick. And homesick meant missing you and Ryder and the normal everyday routine we had . . . but it mostly meant you. But there was one . . . fuck, there was one of your messages that broke me, nearly made me pack my bags and come home. I’ll never forget the sound of your voice. How you were trying to seem so strong but there was this slight waver in your voice that fucking killed me.”

I know I left what felt like a million messages running the gamut from sad to angry to begging to crying to furious, but I know which one he’s referring to. My final message. The one where I gave in and told him if he didn’t want me anymore, he could at least have the guts to tell me.

I chew the inside of my cheek, surprised how talking about this is bringing back so much of the pain I swore I’d gotten over. “Why didn’t you call?” I ask quietly, in an attempt to cover the hurt that still remains.

He shifts to a sitting position, his face downcast to watch his hands for a moment before looking back to me. “Because it was my only chance to get out of here. Away from my dad, his drinking, and quick fists and my mom and her acceptance of it. Everyone saw me as Dale Whitley’s son. The kid who had no chance and wouldn’t amount to anything—”

“I didn’t.”

“I know and that was part of it. I don’t expect you to understand any of my reasoning or forgive me for what I did. Shit, looking back, I get what I did was fucked up. But you and Ryder and your parents were all the good I’d ever known. And God I was missing you. I was living in some shithole apartment, stuffing extra food from the craft service table into my pockets because I couldn’t afford groceries, and knew no one . . . but I knew if I talked to you, heard your voice, listened to you cry over the line, I’d drop everything and come back. I missed you like crazy. I felt so horrible for not having the guts to tell you when I left for that weekend that I might not be coming back.”

“I would have gone with you.” God, how many nights did I have thoughts of packing up my shit and driving to Los Angeles to find him? My own naïveté not knowing how big a city it was and how hard it would be to find him.

“I know you would have. But to do what? Skip out on going to college? Stand by and watch me chase my dreams while giving up yours? I couldn’t do that to you. You deserved the goddamn moon and stars, Say.
Still do
. I couldn’t make you sit in that rundown apartment all day and worry about your safety, while I worked eighteen hour days. I would have hated myself for it and you would have resented me for it.”

“So you just washed your hands of me and made it easy.” My voice is quiet, reminiscent of how I felt for almost a year after he left. Then again, now that I think about it, maybe I never became that carefree girl I used to be.

“It was never easy. Not a goddamn single day.” He fists his hands. Shakes his head. “If you only knew how I’d come home, collapse into bed from exhaustion, and miss every fucking thing about you.”

His words cut open old wounds. Make me think of him all alone in a new town and feel sorry for him. But he needs to know what I went through too. “I walked around lost for over a year. We did everything together. You were my first love. My first everything. And you up and left and shut me out.” I look out to the water beyond. To the snorkels sticking up out of the water in the distance. Hear the laughter of someone seeing the turtles, and I’m sure I sounded just as excited about it when I resurfaced. “I waited for you. I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t, but I lied. I spent three years waiting. Three years adamant that every tabloid with pictures of you with some gorgeous actress on your arm was Photoshopped, or an innocent lunch date misconstrued. You tell me you missed me and yet, what I saw of your life? It looked like anything but missing me, Hayes.”

“Saylor.”

“No. It’s okay. I know I told you in that last message that I wouldn’t wait for you, but I did.”

“You also told me you’d always love me.”

I still do.

It’s my immediate thought. One I hate and love. One I shove from my mind so I don’t say it out loud, but regardless still leaves me reeling.

And I can sense the question on his tongue. The one asking me if my confession ten years ago still holds true. There’s so much emotion clogging my throat, so much history thick in the air between us, that it’s better if I just don’t speak.

So the silence holds us hostage as we stare at each other from behind the protective lenses of our sunglasses. A part of me wants to see what his eyes are saying. The other part of me is scared to find out.

So, we hide.

“I came to your house.” His confession shocks me. My lips fall lax and my heart constricts. “My mom finally left my dad. Said my leaving shocked her into reality so she kicked him out. I told myself I was coming home to help her get situated in her new place. And yeah, I did . . . but it was you I wanted to see.”

“Why didn’t you?” My still-hurt eighteen-year-old self knows that if he had, I would have been devastated all over again. Pain renewed. The fallout of seeing him, brutal.

“I did actually, but Ryder answered the door. Threw a punch before I could even say a word.” He chuckles at the thought and rubs his jaw with the memory while my eyes widen in surprise. A part of me cheering for Ryder sticking up for me.

“
What
?”

“Yep. I don’t think I’d ever seen him so pissed. He chewed my ass like I deserved. Told me you were finally starting to eat again. Just starting to be you again,” he murmurs and his tone reflects how hard it was for him to hear how his leaving had affected me. The darkness I had lived in. Surrounded myself with and got lost in. “He told me he didn’t think I loved you because how could I do that to you? But if I did in fact love you, I’d turn around and walk away and leave you be. He knew I’d become fascinated with the bright lights and big city and would just leave again when the weekend was over and then you’d be hurt all over again.”

His confession weighs heavily in the space between us. My gut reaction is to be pissed at Ryder. For stealing a chance that was mine to decide if I wanted or not. But at the same time, he was trying to protect me and, at that time in my life, I needed protection. It’s pretty rare to be a teenager and know the person you’re dating is your soul mate like I did Hayes. And probably just as uncommon to have such an insightful older brother.

I take a sip of my water, while allowing the words to settle more, and the ones I hear more than anything are that he did truly love me. Showed it
when
he walked away the second time.

Something he said to me the other day echoes through my mind.
Never let someone steal your passion
. And I know he’s right. I know that if he hadn’t gone, hadn’t left and walked away without my holding him back, I would have been responsible for stealing his passion. My selfishness would have robbed the world of knowing his incredible talent. It would have robbed him too.

“I’m glad you took the chance, Hayes.” My voice is soft but resolute and I can see the visible startle in his body from my words.

“You don’t have to say that, Saylor.” His lips are tight. Head angled to the side as he looks at me.

“Yes, I do. Staying or me pulling you back . . . it would have stolen your chance to pursue your passion.”

He nods his head a couple times. Contemplating something I’m unsure of. “The funny thing is, Say, the older I get, I’m learning it’s okay to have more than one passion. One doesn’t have to be more important than the other. They can complement each other.”

The question is what does he mean by that?

And I think of Ryder. His ultimatum. How Hayes walked away.

He loved me
. When I was hurting and swore he didn’t care about me anymore, he had loved me.

I can’t help but wonder when we part ways again, will it be under similar circumstances? That he loves me but will continue to pursue his passion, or he
loved
me, time’s changed us, and there’s no longer anything there?

The thought consumes me.

But he’s here. Dropped everything in his crazy life to come here for me.

Doesn’t that say something?