Page 25 of Memories with Fire

This causes her to stop abruptly, but I don’t realize it for a few steps so I’m well ahead of her when I turn around. I can see a glassiness starting in her eyes as they narrow at me. “How do you know where I live?”

“You just told me,” I point out dryly. I’m not about to inform her that I’ve seen her a couple of times up there. “It was a good guess since you’re from there.”

She crosses her arms over her chest, obviously cold in the late February weather. I have the urge to take my shirt off and wrap it around her, but I don’t want to know what she’d do if I got that close to her again.

“I can make it to Liam’s house. I’ll be fine,” she says, passing me as she starts walking again.

“Fine, but I’m going to follow you all the way there. Or you can get in my Jeep and I can take you home. Your choice,” I tell her, following after her. She turns to look at me and in doing so, she’s so close I can see the goosebumps popping up on her flesh everywhere. “Where is your jacket?”

“In my car.”

I give the parking lot a glance, looking for her car. “Where? I can go get it.”

“You ask too many questions,” she snaps. Her tone isn’t any less harsh when she asks, “Why would you take me all the way up to Bear Creek?”

I shrug at her, fighting off another wave of wanting to give her my shirt. “I’m a nice guy.”

Her eyes narrow at me before she tosses her red hair over her shoulder, only for it to fall back over because it’s too short to stay behind it. “Fine. If you want to waste your gas taking me all the way up there, you can drop me off at my mom’s house.”

“Perfect.”

I don’t mention to her that I’m not wasting my gas because I live five minutes away from there. One day she’ll figure that out herself.

“Hailey?”I say gently, a hand on her upper arm, giving it a light squeeze.

Once I confirmed her mom lived in the same house I remember, the trip was silent. It helped that she passed out beside me five minutes in, the alcohol taking hold of her. While I know Liam would have gone after her if I hadn’t, I’m glad she didn’t slip out of the bar unnoticed.

When she does little more than sigh, I frown and glance up at the house. A split-level nestled in one of the few neighborhoods within Bear Creek. A short distance from my own home that I bought further up the mountain. My cousin was right. I did come here thinking of her.

Hailey’s childhood home looks almost the same as I remember it, though it’s got a fresh coat of paint on the shutters and trim. A light blue house with white accents all around, plants in the flowerbeds, and back then, at the end of summer there would have been flowers all over.

Man, the memories.

Hailey soaking me with the hose after watering those flowers. Her squeal of delight as I grabbed her and swung her around the front lawn. The passionate kiss we shared when I shoved her against the side of the house because she made me so dang desperate for her I couldn’t stand it.

Inside this house is where Hailey gave herself to me, a few weeks into our summer when her mom was on an overnight trip to San Francisco. I still think of that night, and how she looked at me, scared but willing, full of trust and innocence.

What the hell happened after I went home to Texas? It’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times. When I left, things were fine. We were sad and the goodbye at the airport was excruciating, but we were solid. We had a plan. She was going to go to Stanford, and I was going to do a year at Houston University since I was already committed there. I was going to apply everywhere I could near Hailey with the hopes of getting in at Stanford myself with a contingency of San José State University. But anywhere in California would be better than being halfway across the country in Texas.

I’ve never understood how things went so awry when we hadn’t even spoken. Hailey wouldn’t take my calls. She didn’t answer my texts. Emails never got a reply. All traces of her vanished from social media. I couldn’t even get Cindi, her best friend back then, to talk to me. When I sent Carter to her mom’s place, no one was here. For weeks.

One day her mom finally picked up the phone. I think to put me out of my misery more than anything. Debra told me to stop. Leave Hailey alone. To move on with my life so Hailey could too. A few days after that, Cindi finally answered one of my calls, and she told me the same thing. Give up. Hailey didn’t want me.

I still didn’t understand, and I didn’t come away from either conversation with any more answers than I had before I’d gotten through to someone. If anything, I had more questions.

Bringing my eyes back to the woman who has caused all those questions, I sigh. I could have pushed her for answers at the bar. Maybe she wouldn’t have given them to me, but I have a feeling that when we were lost in that moment together, and she was confessing she wanted to kiss me, she would have also told me anything I wanted to know.

Which is exactly why I didn’t push. It would have been taking advantage of her liquor induced state, and that’s one thing I’ll never do. To her or any woman, for that matter.

“Hailey,” I squeeze her arm again, but she does little more than give a small moan that shouldn’t sound as sexy as it does. “Dang it, Freckles. If I carry you, you better not kick me in the nuts.”

Getting out of the Jeep, I walk around and open her door, stepping into the space of the passenger side, close enough I can feel the heat coming from her body. A body cloaked in a hoodie I had in the back seat because she refused to go get her jacket from her car, even though we weren’t far from it.

Something tugs hard inside my chest seeing her in my Waco Fire hoodie. At how right she looks with it on. Many women have tried to steal my fire hoodies over the years, but none have ever succeeded. With Hailey, I have zero problems giving it away.

This is the woman I wanted to marry. It’s ridiculous, I know, because I was just a kid, but I was so sure of it the second I met her. My feisty little redhead who had no problem putting me in my place or battling every fear that lived in her heart. The former still seems true. The latter… I’m still deciding on how much fear rules her life.

Reaching to her face, I pause just before I touch her because I know dang well I wouldn’t have this permission if she weren’t passed out in my Jeep, and that kills a part of me I’ve kept buried for so long.

---