Page 86 of Until Then

There we stay until a bit of warmth replaces the frenzy in my chest. I unravel one arm from Winter’s neck and rub the top of Hayley’s hands still clasped over my stomach.

She hooks her fingertips with mine and whispers, “I love you, Noah Hayden. Every piece of you.”

I close my eyes. How is this woman mine?

In the next breath, I pull her against my chest and kiss her. It’s wet and gentle, it’s wild and greedy.

Her fingers tangle in my messy hair. My palms clasp her wet cheeks like she might disappear if I let go.

How long we kiss, I don’t know. When we pull back, Hayley’s lips are swollen and her face is pink from my stubble. I let my forehead drop to hers. “I don’t deserve you, Wildfire. But before you figure that out, you need to know, I’m crazy in love with you. Since that first blueberry scone.”

Popcorn and sodas are perched on the sides of the truck bed. Hayley brought her endless piles of blankets, and drove us to a hill near the back edges of the ranch where only velvet sky with silver stars could be seen.

“This is where I’d come when Shane broke my heart again,” she whispers and nuzzles closer against my chest.

“Before all this, Greer mentioned your dad was a loser. Now I get why your mom and Nan are so leery of guys like me.”

“You won them over on day one.” Her palm rubs the place over my heart. “He texted my mom a little while ago after the video of Colt went live. She told me I needed to give you a heads up, and I . . . never dared. I should’ve. This is on me, really.”

“It’s on me.” I use my finger to tilt her face toward mine. “It’s on me, all right?”

She doesn’t answer, but kisses the edge of my jaw.

“Why were you afraid to tell me?”

There’s a pause, followed by a deep sigh. “I didn’t want the mortification of his legal team coming to my doorstep again. It nearly destroyed me last time, and opened about a thousand wounds with daddy issues written all over them. I didn’t want to face the risk that you might be another Jasper. Obviously, I learned quickly how far you are from that idiot.”

“Legal team?” I tug her closer to my side. “What happened?”

“Looking back, I can safely assume Jasper found out the truth somehow. I suspect Nan or Mom let it slip early in our relationship. Our naivety overlooked Jasper’s motives for being with me might’ve been more to get to my biological father.”

I take note of the distance Hayley uses when she talks about Shane.

“I guess a reporter told Shane an anonymous source was talking about his estranged daughter. They kept pressing, wanting to run a story about how the renowned CEO of Holston Films was really a deadbeat who abandoned his kid.”

“All facts.”

Hayley kisses my shoulder, then looks back up at the sky. “Lawyers showed up to serve me and Mom with papers threatening to sue us for defamation if we continued badgering the press. He even sent my mom a note telling her to get over him. As if she’d been waiting around for twenty-five years.”

“What a tool.”

“I’m guessing—if it was Jasper who told the press—he got scared off by Shane’s threats and never reached out. It wasn’t long after that he started cheating.” Hayley props up on one elbow and removes a letter from her pocket. “This is what Shane sent on my eighteenth birthday, to give you an idea of our relationship. I don’t know why I keep it. Maybe it’s a reminder not to waste my heartache on him.”

She hands me a tattered birthday card. Only white, hot anger burns in my chest when I read the cruel words.

Lee Hayden isn’t what I’d call a cozy dad, but he’d never,never, treat me or Rees this way.

Hayley confesses she withheld the truth because she struggles to keep the self-doubt away whenever Shane Holston steps into her thoughts. There was always a touch of worry, since I’m in the same business, it would be a repeat of her past experiences. A fear, I’d throw her away to get to her dad.

Hard not to believe it when she’s been rejected time and again.

“Mom never wanted a handout, never asked,” she explains. “They met because she was studying filmography and was an intern on one of his early movies. I was born a year later. But the second he got his big break, he took off. Mom had to quither schooling to take care of me. She brought us here and has worked to support us every day since.”

The degrading way Shane spoke about Val only stacks another layer to my anger.

“The only reason he paid child support was because of my grandma—his mom. She was actually sweet.” Hayley gives me a small smile. “She always bought me a new backpack before school every year and wrote me really cute birthday cards with a hundred-dollar bill inside, but she always told me to tell my mom I got a ten.”

I chuckle. “Did you see her a lot?”

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