Page 52 of The Light to My Darkness (The Light to My Darkness 1)

"Oh."

I heard the phone exchanging hands.

"Axel, what are you doing up so late?" Hailey asked. "You should be in bed."

"Mommy!" Axel grabbed the phone out of my hand. "Mommy, can you come home? I need you."

"Axel, Mommy can't come home right now. You need to go back to sleep and I'll see you in the morning."

"But...but I need the song."

There was a pause on the other end and suddenly the music died away. "Hey, Penny, can you hear me?" Hailey asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"Can you turn it off of speaker?"

"Of course." I grabbed the phone and turned it off of speaker mode and then gave it back to Axel.

"Mommy?" He pressed the phone to his ear and moved so that he was sitting on my lap. In a second a huge smile crossed his face.

I watched him as his eyes slowly drooped. He shifted so that his head could rest against the desk. And in one minute flat he was fast asleep.

I removed the phone from Axel's hand, being careful not to wake him, and put it to my ear. I was just about to say hi to Hailey when I heard her singing. Her voice was beautiful. I had never heard her sing before.

"We ain't ever getting older," Hailey sang. "You look as good as the day I met you. I forget just why I left you, I was insane." The lyrics from Closer sounded just as good as when The Chainsmokers sang it.

"Hails," I said, cutting off the song, knowing perfectly well she didn't want me to hear it.

She immediately stopped singing. "Hey." She cleared her throat. "Did he fall asleep?"

"Yeah." I smiled at Axel who was now snoring softly. "Whatever you did was exactly what he needed."

"Good. I should probably get back. Thanks for watching him, Penny."

I looked down at my laptop that was right by Axel's head. "I'm not going to publish the book." I pushed his hair off his forehead again. He really did look just like his father.

There was silence on her end.

"You're one of my best friends, Hails. So is Tyler. And I'm not going to publish it. I'm so sorry that I even wrote it in the first place. Can we please just go back to the way things were?"

"Do you know why we named our son Axel?"

It took me a second to register the weird segue. "No."

"It's because I'm 99 percent sure that he was conceived on the side of the road in Texas. When I crashed Tyler's car and almost killed both of us. I bent the axle of his car."

I smiled. How had I never heard this story?

"Penny, I love my husband," the emotion in her voice made tears come to my eyes. "Of course it bothers me that you've slept with him."

"That's why I'm not going to write it. I'm sorry..."

"You didn't let me finish. It's not about that. I know you two are friends. We're all friends. That part of your relationship with him was so long ago. I've never resented you for that. I'm upset because you're going to write a book that involves him, but it's not going to be the whole truth. It's just...you have to get the story right. He wasn't in a good place when he met you. And I'm just worried that you're going to portray him wrong. What if Axel reads that one day? What if he reads it and doesn't get the whole truth?"

"I would never write something bad about Tyler. I love him. I love you. And I love your son. You're my family. I changed everyone's names and I'm using a pen name myself. No one will ever even know I wrote it."

"They will when it takes off."

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