Page 143 of The Hallows Queen

I wakeup deep into the night, the moon still hanging high in the sky through the windows on the side of the room, and Hayden is sitting up in bed, looking at me.

His bare chest is rising and falling slowly as he watches me sleep, and when he realizes I’m awake, he smiles before he leans down to kiss my forehead. “Hi.”

“Can’t sleep?” I ask, rolling onto my side to curl against his warm body.

“Just thinking,” he answers, wrapping a hand in my hair.

“About what?” My eyes find his through the darkness.

“I want to marry you,” he says, pulling my head back so he can kiss me briefly. When he pulls back again, he’s grinning. “I want you to have my last name. I need to know that you’re mine forever.”

This man is fucking crazy from his head to his toes.

I chuckle, putting a hand on his cheek. “We’ve only been back together for a couple hours.”

“Who cares?” He rolls me onto my back and fits himself between my legs. “When have we ever given a shit about being traditional? This is what I want.”

I shake my head. “You’re nuts.”

He laughs, leaning down to kiss my chest. “You know I always get what I want, P. Give it time.”

Chapter51

Hayden

Penelope goesto work the next morning, and I casually mention she should start looking for her replacement as she’s getting on the elevator. The last thing I see before the doors slide closed is her laughing at me, and it feels like it used to.

I busy myself with work, and around lunchtime, I start to feel restless. I shoot Serena a text to let her know I’m taking the rest of the day off, then I change into a bathing suit and head downstairs. The idea of spending the day in the ocean has me feeling confident enough to venture out to my old house to grab a surfboard.

When the giant black mansion comes into view, a heavy feeling settles in my stomach. Carson has a football game today, which means I can’t FaceTime Logan for support, so I just take a deep breath and park in the driveway. Everything is dark, like my father hadn’t been here for a while, and I hope as I’m walking up the steps that he didn’t change the security code.

I still have a key on my ring, so I slide it in the front door and push it open. Punching in the code into the security panel, I’m pleased when it beeps and turns off. It isn’t until silence washes over me that I take the chance to look around. It still feels the same in here, like a building that was supposed to be a home but ended up just being a factory for bad memories.

The same artwork hangs on the walls as when I was in high school, and the room smells exactly the same – like cleaning products and something manly that I could never figure out. It makes sense that the cleaning company would still be coming out here, so I make a mental note to cancel that when I get home.

I hate the waves of nausea that pass over me as I walk through the house.

It’s like I stepped into a time machine, back to when I spent years in this giant space alone. Sadness is present in my chest, and I clear my throat to get it to dissipate. The last thing I want to do is break down, but I guess I should have expected this place to trigger me. How could it not? This is where I learned all my terrible habits, this is the home I raised myself in, the place I learned what hate truly was. Hate for my father, the world,money.

Except now, it’s my name on the deed and my responsibility to take care of.

I take the stairs to the second floor and go to my old bedroom. The walls are still bare, just like I always had them, and my old furniture is in the same place it always was.

Going to my closet, I push the doors open, coming face to face with everything I left behind when I went to college so long ago – all the clothes I wanted to rid myself of. The designer t-shirts, the expensive shoes I never wore, the suits I purchased just because of the high price tags. There’s easily thirty grand in unused merchandise sitting in here, all the tags still attached, just collecting dust. I never wanted this stuff. I just wanted to spend the money – my father’s money — that felt like it was drenched in blood and lies.

It makes me so nauseous that I run for the bathroom and spill the contents of my stomach in the toilet.

Wiping the back of my hand across my mouth, I sit down on the floor and pull out my phone, typing a text to my group chat with Carson, Logan, and Levi.

Me:

Is it the wrong decision to sell the old house in LUX?

I tap my fingers on the screen while I wait. Levi is the first one to respond.

Levi:

What’s the point in keeping it? We never go there.

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