Page 33 of Falling for Hailey

“You’ve boxed yourself in now. So it’s decision time.”

“Meaning?”

“Do you want to be with her? If you think this has serious potential, if you think she could be the one, then you have to figure out a way to be with her without damaging her career and yours. No half-assing it and going back and forth with staying away from each other, giving in and sleeping together again and then swearing it was the last time.”

“Do you speak from experience?” I asked. He shrugged and poured us another drink.

“Trust me, you have to make a decision and stick to it. It’s very difficult, especially if your decision is to break things off, because once you’ve been with her, you remember how good it was, and the forbidden quality makes it harder to ignore—I’m not saying what you and Hailey have is anywhere near as intense as the way it was with Mindy and me, only that if you’re going to be consumed by it, by the struggle to stay away from her and how much you’ve hurt her and yourself, then figure that out now. Don’t suffer for a few weeks and then try and change your mind. If it’s her, if she’s the one, then put that brilliant mind to work and create a solution.”

“I can market a solution, but I can’t create one,” I quipped.

“Cute, very cute. Now be serious. Do you think this was anything more than a hot fling?”

“I don’t know. I can’t be sure.”

“Then let’s add the extra complication of how this could affect your relationship with your sister. You have the added bonus of family complications to go along with conflict of interest at work.”

I dropped my head into my hands. “I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt Maria. I’m not sure how my sister would feel about it.”

“How would you have felt if one of us hooked up with Maria?” he challenged.

“I’d leave your teeth on the sidewalk for you to pick up,” I said, “but that’s not the same thing.”

“No, this is her brother and her best friend, as opposed to your sister and your best friend. It’s the same. Does it feel like a betrayal to think about it? That they snuck around and it creeps you out?”

“Yes. A lot. It’s a hypothetical situation and I want to throw you out my front door into the street. Damn.”

“So there’s your answer. You have to think about your sister’s feelings in this situation as well. Do you know how to preserve Hailey’s status at the university and her internship without casting doubt on her character and abilities? Do you know how to keep your job at Berkley and keep REM out of a sex scandal? While making sure Maria doesn’t get hurt? And does Hailey even want you long term?”

“You shouldnotwork for a suicide hotline. Ever,” I grumbled, “because all of those things feel impossible to me.”

“Then you have to let her go. If that’s not the answer you want, then you have a lot of thinking to do, my brother.” He stood up, picked up the bottle. “I’m taking this for safekeeping. You’re shotgunning it way too fast to appreciate it as it deserves.”

I shrugged. “Thanks for coming over. “

“I wish I had better advice for you, but there you go. It’s a complex situation and you have to decide what’s best for you.”

When he left, I tried to sleep, but he was right about all the thinking I had to do. And despite the advice I’d given Hailey, I was overanalyzing everything. It wasn’t a good look on me, and it was miserable. Every possible strategy here resulted in an outcome I hated. If I could create a successful marketing company from the ground up when I was still in college, surely, I could find a way out of this problem, I told myself. But no matter what angle I considered, the ending wasn’t a happy one.

CHAPTER23

HAILEY

Three days after the night I spent with Rick, I went to the diner for lunch. One of my classes was canceled so I had a couple of hours free for a change. It was ten thirty, so the place was slow. The lunch crowd wouldn’t pile in for another forty-five minutes or so. I’d have a chance to catch up with Maria. We had texted every day, but it had been over a week since I’d seen her.

When I walked in, she was pouring a coffee refill for an elderly customer. She looked up and smiled when she saw me. I went to the counter and ordered a patty melt, my secret obsession. I hollered at the cook to give me extra cheese.

“You want a small salad and a Diet Coke with that?” Maria teased. “You’re stress eating, what’s up?”

“Oh, nothing new. Just a full course load and an internship that’s great but if I screw it up it’s bye-bye marketing career. Nobody would hire the woman who lucked into a paid internship at REM and then didn’t impress anyone. That would be one stellar letter of reference, let me tell you,” I said, overselling it because I was nervous.

I missed Maria, but I didn’t think she’d be very happy if she knew what was going on with her brother and me. It was the first thing I’d ever kept from her in as long as we’d known each other. It felt wrong not to let her know, but I was too much of a coward to face her judgment for sneaking around with her big brother when I damn well should’ve told her I was attracted to him. Now I’d painted myself into a corner and had to suffer without venting to my bestie. It was what I deserved for withholding info from her.

“It’s more than that. I know you,” she said.

“Okay, psychic, the dude in my marketing group project may be the one that slashed my tires when I was at work. I hope it was just some stupid kid tearing shit up, but I have this feeling that it could be personal so I’m freaking out that he could be violent as well as obnoxious and lazy,” I said, which was less than half the story.

“Shit. Want me to see if I can call in some backup?”

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