Chapter 10
Hayes
The rumble of my truck motor breaks through the quietness in the air as we pull into the parking lot. Not even the birds are singing today. It’s like they know the wounds we are about to tear open and are paying reverence to them.
MJ sits beside me, pouting out the window like she did when I was seventeen and pulled her away from kissing Eric under the bleachers. She hasn’t said a word to me the entire way here, and I’m trying not to take it personally.
Who am I kidding?
This is MJ we are talking about, and everything between us is personal.
There’s no escaping our history.
It’s been almost two weeks since she pulled back into town, breaking my nose in the process, and I’d convinced myself that I would let our little game from that day go. It’s not my place to force her to be here, but then I remembered all the things I owe Langston.
So here I am, pulling up to the place I visit every week with a girl who can’t stand to be near me.
She doesn’t know it, but I watched her sit outside the coffee shop last week, waiting for me to leave. I dragged out my talk with Lily just to mess with her. And that right there is the problem—neither one of us can resist poking the bear when we are around each other.
There’s something about how her eyes light up with fire every time I poke that has me losing my mind and pushing further.
Turning the key to cut the ignition, I square my shoulders toward her.
“Are you ready?” I ask.
Her gaze slowly slips towards me, and when her eyes are on mine, I have to bite back a smile. Her hair is tied back in a ponytail, letting me see every emotion flickering across her face. To others, that face is a stone mask of indifference, but I’ve always had the unique ability to read her like a book—and she hates that. That fire, the one that nearly drives me wild, is back in her eyes, and it makes me want to start a fight so that I can watch it flame higher.
Get it together, Hayes. This is not the time—or the woman—to feel this with.
Right now, I need to worry about keeping that temper of hers under control, not egging it on. Once we step out of this truck, things have to be different. Langston deserves our respect, and that’s what we will give him.
“I guess I have no choice,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest.
I see it for what it is, though—a defense mechanism. She’s avoided this moment for six years, and I can’t blame her. But she’s back now, and there’s no avoiding it any longer.
Reaching out, I gently squeeze her arm, keeping my touch brief. But it doesn’t matter if I’m touching her for a second or a hundred seconds—either way, it sends a spark of electricity from my fingertips up to my elbow and a jolt of pain to my chest.
I pull my hand back to my side of the truck and shove open my door, careful not to slam it behind me when I’m out. It’s always been like this. Whenever I’m around MJ, I get so keyed up that I don’t know which way is up. It’s something I have to figure out, though, because in a town this small, there’s no way we will be able to avoid each other—ignore maybe, but not avoid.
Rounding the truck, I start to reach for the door handle on the passenger side, but MJ is slinging it open and ramming it into my knuckles at the same time.
“Would you stop trying to injure me,” I say, shaking my hand. It didn’t actually hurt, but if MJ can focus on fighting with me, maybe she won’t be so scared of what we are about to do.
“Oh, be quiet, you big baby,” she says, shoving at my chest and walking past me.
“Takes one to know one,” I mumble to myself as I follow her.
She takes the path to where we are going like she’s done it a thousand times, leading me as she walks with her head held tall. It confuses me because, as far as I know, she’s only ever been here once, but her steps are confident, even when every other part of her isn’t.
I watch from behind her, only getting glimpses of her side profile as she walks, but it’s telling enough.
Her hands are trembling despite the heat as each step brings us closer to our destination, and when we are finally there, her voice trembles as she whispers, “Hi, L. It’s nice to see you again.”
Then she sinks to her knees in front of Langston’s grave.
______________________
I pride myself on knowing everything that’s happening in this little town—after all, it is my job to know—but as MJ talks to Langston’s headstone with ease, like she’s done it a hundred times before, I realize there are two things that have caught me off guard in the last week—and they both involve the woman in front of me right now.
The first thing was MJ’s arrival back in town. I didn’t think anything would ever top that surprise, seeing as how I ended up with a broken nose because of it, but now I’m realizing that this isn’t the first time she’s returned to town.
Since she moved away six years ago, I was under the impression that she stayed away because surely I would have seen her if she had come back, but apparently that’s not true. I’m either very bad at my job—or she’s sneakier than I remember.
A pinch shoots across the left side of my chest, and I rub it with the heel of my palm as I keep my eyes on MJ. I have to tell myself that the sharp pain in my chest has nothing to do with the fact that she snuck around right under my nose without seeking me out and everything to do with the grave I’m standing in front of.
It’s not a total lie, either. Every time I visit Langston’s grave, pressure builds inside me. It’s a mixture of guilt and anger and sadness. One day, I’m pretty sure I’ll explode from it all. But it’s not the whole truth, either. The full truth is that I’m angry that we thought our secrets could stay secrets, and it cost us. It cost Langston. Then, when he was gone, we crumbled and fell apart.
And the more I think about it, the more anger bubbles up, clutching my lungs until I’m afraid I’ll suffocate from it.
“You’ve been back?” I ask, my voice dipping into a dark whisper meant only for her ears—not that there is anyone else around who will hear me, but this moment is intimate.
The only indication that she heard me is the way her shoulders tighten. Otherwise, she ignores me and continues to talk to Langston. “Ignore, Hayes. He’s grumpy because he got beat up by a girl.”
“MJ,” I growl, not in the mood for her snark right now, “answer the question. You at least owe me that.”
Surging up, she turns so we are facing one another. Our bodies are inches apart, and I try to ignore the heat I can feel radiating off of her. Her whole body trembles, and that fire I wanted to see earlier flames in her irises.
“I owe you? I. OWE. YOU,” she says with a maniacal laugh. “That’s funny, Hayes, because the way I see it, neither of us owe each other anything anymore. Consider this game of yours over, and my debt paid.”
She shoves at my chest, and I step back out of her way. Then she turns her head to Langston’s grave. “I’ll come back without the jerk.”
She shoulder-checks me as she heads back toward my truck.
My pulse ticks up as I follow behind her.
She’s back at the truck when I catch up to her.
“Running away again. Seems to be what you’re good at.”
I don’t know why I’m pushing her when I should let it go, put her in the truck, and drive her home. But the idea that she was here in town and never said one word to me slices deep.
“You seem to be rewriting history, Hayes, because I didn’t run—you pushed me,” she says, spinning so she’s facing me. “And let’s get one thing straight—that history between us is not just your secret to share, so maybe you can keep that in mind next time you go blabbing it to your girlfriend.”
My brows dip in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
She rolls her eyes, but I can see the hurt she hides behind that one movement. “You know—the leggy blond that knows all about me, apparently.”
It hits me then that she’s talking about Lily and that I’m a fool. I didn’t stay in that coffee shop longer to make MJ think Lily and I are dating. I did it because I saw her avoiding me, so I stayed there to mess with her. But now, not only does she think I’m dating Lily, but she also thinks I’d share my secrets with anyone but her.
I take a step towards her, and she steps back—another step forward, another back. We repeat this until her back hits the passenger side door.
The smirk I give her when she realizes she has nowhere else to go is bordering on crazy, but that’s what she does to me. She makes me crazy.
Taking one more step so there’s no room left between us, I place my arms on the top of my truck, bracketing her between them.
Lowering my head so my lips brush against her ear, I whisper, “Let me clear up a few things—first, I’m not dating Lily. We’re friends, nothing else, and second, you’re the only person I tell my secrets to.”
There’s a hitch in her breath, but I will myself to ignore it. I give myself two seconds to breathe in the smell of her vanilla coconut shampoo, and then I push myself off the truck and walk away, pretending that being close to her did not affect me.
By the time she opens the passenger side door, I’m already in my seat and turning the key to start the ignition.
MJ tries to hide her face behind her hair as she grabs her seat belt to buckle in, but as she turns toward me, I see the blush creeping into her cheeks. A sense of satisfaction runs through me to know that she was just as affected by our closeness as I was.
Then I chide myself for having any sense of pride in that when the smart thing for me to do is to stay far away from her.
The only noise in the truck as I pull out of the parking lot is the air conditioning on full blast and the soft hum of the radio.
Wracking my brain, I search for anything to say that will allow us to have a normal conversation so the silence doesn’t suffocate us, but I come up with nothing.
MJ is the one to finally break the silence.
“Do you think God can ever forgive us for the part we played in Langston’s death?” She asks the question into her lap, refusing to look up at me, and an overwhelming sadness overtakes me.
It was never supposed to be this way—her living a life ridden with guilt that droops her shoulders and makes her fold into herself.
She was always meant to have better—to be better. But sometimes your choices, and those of others, become so intertwined that it’s impossible to know where the guilt of those choices should lay.
“It’s been a long time since I talked to God, MJ. I’m not sure he’d want to hear from me much anymore.”
“Yeah,” she says, sighing and looking out the window. “Maybe you’re right. Sometimes, I think he’s punishing me.”
Her lower lip trembles before she sucks it between her teeth, and it sends a dagger straight into my heart. I don’t say anything the rest of the drive because I can’t disagree with her. Life without her has always been a punishment.