Page 110 of The Very Naughty List

My mom reaches out, brushing her thumb over my cheek, and I realize a tear has slipped through my lashes too.

“Don’t worry about it for tonight, okay?” she says softly, giving me a little smile. “I don’t want it to ruin your holidays. And no matter what, Hailey, we’ll be okay. I promise. We’ll figure something out.”

I can tell she’s trying to reassure me, but although I give her a weak smile and a nod, it does nothing to banish the tight knot in my gut.

There’s literally no way that we can fight against the Montgomerys. They’ve got a tight grip on this town, and with all of their money, they can outspend us for the rest of our lives.

But no matter how powerful they are, that doesn’t mean I’m going to back down and let them destroy my parents’ business.

I’ll just have to find some other way to fix this.

37

HAILEY

A few daysafter my family’s Christmas party, I offer to run some errands for the diner to help take some stress off my parents’ minds. It’s the least I can do, considering that I don’t have the money to just buy a way out of this mess, and I also don’t have any brilliant strategy for how to fix it yet.

But I’m committed to helping them save the diner somehow.

I just need to figure outhow.

As I’m walking out of the hardware store, my phone rings in my purse. When I dig it out, I almost drop it on the sidewalk as I see the name on the screen.

Dylan.

What the fuck does he want?

I stare at the screen as it continues to ring, mentally debating whether to answer it or not. When I do pick up the call, Idon’tsay what I really want to say, which would be something along the lines of calling him a selfish prick who’s unjustly targeting my parents’ business. Instead, I grimace and try to shove all of my anger into a tight little box in my chest. I can’t really afford to piss him off, not when his family has so much power over mine. It would make things worse for my parents if I aggravated an already shitty situation.

“Hi, Dylan,” I say, forcing my voice to sound pleasant.

“Hailey, how are you?”

“Fine.”

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” His voice has that smooth, charming quality that fooled me for a long time when we first started dating. “Listen, I’d love to talk to you about something.”

I frown, stepping aside when I realize I’m blocking the door to the hardware store. “What do you want to talk about?”

“It’s not really a conversation for over the phone. Could we speak in person? You could swing by my house. I’ll be here most of the day.”

I hesitate, because the last place I want to go is Dylan’s house. I used to spend a lot of time there, but like everything else that got tainted when he cheated on me, I don’t have any good memories from that place that I want to hold on to now.

But all I can think about is the tears in my mother’s eyes the other night at the party, and the hopeless look on my dad’s face. Running errands for them might take a tiny bit of pressure off them in the short term, but in the long term, it’s not really fixing anything.

If I have a one-on-one conversation with Dylan, maybe I can convince him to talk to his parents, to get them to ease up on my folks and back off the diner.

It’s worth a shot anyway, even if it means completely swallowing my pride.

“Yeah, okay,” I say, my voice a little stiff. “I’ve got some stuff to do today, so I can come by in the late afternoon, if that works.”

“That’s great.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “I’ll see you soon.”

We hang up, and I spend the rest of the day finishing up the stuff I promised to do for my parents. The guys are all at work, and I don’t text them to let them know I’m going to be meeting up with Dylan. As long as our meetup is quick, I should be ableto make it home before they get back, and I know they’d all want to come with me if I told them where I was going.

But with the three of them glowering at him from over my shoulder, I know there’d be no chance at all of convincing him to spare the diner.

When I get to Dylan’s house, I pause on the front step.

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