Chapter 3
Hayes
Present Day
“Jesus, Hayes. You really just left her there?” Arabella asks, her face pulled into a mixture of uncertainty and probably a little bit of judgment. “No note or anything?”
“Bella,” Ryker scolds, shooting her a glare that clearly hits the intended mark when she softens, but I don’t miss the slight roll of her eyes as she retreats.
“Sorry, Daddy,” she whispers so low I almost don’t catch it.
She rarely calls him that in public, but it’s not like I don’t already know about their dynamic.
I’ve surely given my best friend enough shit about it.
My big, tough, dominant best friend… reduced to a mushy daddy for his girl.
Whatever makes him happy, though. It’s nice to see it.
Ryker’s head turns to face me again. “Wait. I seem to recall you texting me when you were taking that class to tell me you got married.” He pauses. The wheels are turning. “I honestly thought you were fucking with me.”
“Who jokes about getting fucking married, Ryker?” I ask, shaking my head and dragging my hands down my face.
“Come on. You know damn well you’ve joked about far worse.”
He’s not wrong.
“And you really didn’t leave a note? You just left her there?”
Arabella gasps behind him and he smirks at the sound. Whatever is going on between them, I need to get away from it as soon as possible. I love them both, but I’m not in the mood right now.
“No, okay. I didn’t leave a goddamn note. I panicked alright? You know what a shithead my father was and you know the effect he had on me when I was younger. I was working hard to get him out of my head, but at that moment… I couldn’t shake him.”
“I know, Hayes.” His tone turns sympathetic and I hate it. His parents were older and were also… nice. He never really understood what I was going through, although he always did his best to help when I needed it. “Once you graduated high school, I thought things improved for you.”
“They did,” I assure him. “But there’s only so many times someone can call you a piece of shit before you actually believe it.”
“Shit,” Ryker curses under his breath.
“I’m gonna go to the room and leave you two to talk,” Arabella interrupts. She gets up on her tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek, then rushes me with a tight hug. My muscles soften into her friendly embrace and I release a sigh. “Good luck, Hayes. Let me know if there’s anything I can help with.”
I nod as she releases me. She’s a good person and I’m glad my best friend has her.
“I’ll be up in a bit, baby,” Ryker tells her while smacking her ass and causing her to jog away in a hurry.
He looks back to me, brows fully furrowed. “Shit choice aside, how is it that my best friend got fucking married and I had no idea?”
There it is. I was waiting for that one. “Well, you did have an idea. It’s not my fault you chose to ignore it.”
He raises his hands. “Fair point. I suppose I deserve that, but you also never said another word about it when you got home. You can’t just text a person you got married and not provide any follow up information.”
“Honestly, it all happened so fucking fast. I knew my time there was limited, since I was only there for a semester, but I was going to talk to her about moving to Chicago with me and then everything happened…” My voice trails off and I step backward to sit on one of the chaise lounges adorning the hotel lobby.
I run a hand through my hair and sigh. “When I got home, I idiotically tried to have the marriage annulled, but that backfired because I didn’t really have legitimate cause.
So I drafted divorce papers and sent them to her with instructions, a check for the filing fees and a postage paid envelope to send the documents into the Kansas City courthouse to be filed.
It’s not like we had amassed any marital assets yet.
And I didn’t say anything because, well…
I guess I was embarrassed, I fucked it all up. ”
“Jesus Christ, Hayes. I have so many questions. Starting with how the hell did you know how to draft divorce papers?”
I give my shoulders a cursory shrug. “You know they make dummy books for everything right? That includes Divorce for Dummies. Came with the actual paperwork. I just had to fill everything out. All she had to fucking do was sign and send it in.”
“Did you check to make sure the check was cashed? Follow up with the courthouse to make sure the papers were filed? Did you do anything to confirm any of it?”
“Obviously, I didn’t fucking do any of that, Ryker. Get off my fucking case about it. I was a twenty-three-year-old dumbass that figured she’d be so pissed at me, she wouldn’t want to be married to me anymore. How was I supposed to know she wasn’t going to do it after what I did?”
I lean over and bury my face in my hands, willing this gnawing sensation in my gut to go the fuck away.
Do I wish I had done things differently?
Yeah. I sure fucking do. If today’s Hayes had been through that, things would have gone very differently.
I think about that night every goddamn day.
She was the love of my life. Fucking everything up and losing her was the biggest mistake of my life.
Ryker sits next to me and softly lands a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, man. You just caught me off-guard with all of this. I… I thought I knew everything there was to know about you. It’s wild to even comprehend that you have a wife.”
“Fucking tell me about it,” I groan.
“What are you going to do?”
That’s the question of the fucking decade, isn’t it? “I don’t know. The deeds office found out I was married, so they reached out to her and now she’s stalling the purchase for some reason. They won’t tell us anything.”
“Shit.”
“Exactly.” I turn my head slightly to regard my best friend.
I love him, but I think I need to be alone right now.
Wallowing in self-pity with the help of my buddy Jack Daniels sounds like as good of a plan as any right about now.
“I think I need to go to my room and sleep? Maybe I’ll miraculously wake up with a plan that doesn’t suck. ”
He pats my back and stands. “Alright. I’m only a call away if you need anything.”
“I’m a big boy. I can handle it, but thanks. Now go be with your girl.”
He sighs, then stands and heads to the elevator. We all got rooms tonight as part of the wedding party and I’m suddenly grateful we don’t share a wall. I’m the farthest thing from prude, but the last thing I want to hear tonight is him fucking Arabella’s brains out.
I give him ten minutes or so before I follow the same path, stopping the elevator on the fifth floor and turning right until I’m at my room and swiping the key card. The door opens with a click and I make a beeline for the mini-fridge.
Memories of scarlet and emerald flash through my mind as I sip the cheap brown liquor, not even allowing myself to wince as it burns its way down my esophagus. The lingering sting isn’t as painful as missing her all these years.
I sit and then fall back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling like it has all the answers.
“What the fuck am I going to do now?”