“The death of her parents was the reason.”
I’m going to just say it. Get it out of my head. “I heard Skye say she stopped speaking because she thought everything she said made me sad. I never cried in front of her. I always waited until she was in her own bed. I didn’t know she could hear me. I knew she needed me to be strong. I thought I had been, but I failed her.” There.
Spencer stood up and slid into the booth beside her. He put an arm around her and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “You didn’t fail anyone. I hate that you went through that alone.” He looked as if he wanted to say more but was holding himself back.
Hailey closed her eyes briefly, determined not to cry in front of him again. “The worst of it is over. She’s looking more like her old self every day.” She opened her eyes but kept them glued to the table. “All I have to do now is not screw it up. It’s what I pray for every morning and pretty much what I pray for every night. I just want Skye to be a happy little girl again. I want her to have friends, go to school, come home, and argue with me over things that normal people argue over. I can’t afford to lose my job, not just because I need the money, but because I’m afraid of what will happen with Skye if we have to move again.”
“She’d survive. She has you.”
“That’s what I tell myself when I start to panic. I know this job isn’t forever, but for now it’s the best I can do.”
His arm tightened around her. “Hailey . . .”
She shrugged. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her. That wasn’t why she’d come. “Enough about me. What about you? How’s your life?”
The inner beauty of the woman before him robbed him of his ability to answer immediately. The girl he’d known had grown into a strong and loving person. The depth of her loss and her ongoing struggle to reach her niece made the family issues Spencer had been dealing with seem trivial.
Life had battered Hailey, but it hadn’t broken her. She was more cautious, but she wasn’t bitter. Unlike him, she wasn’t angry and lashing out at those around her.
In truth, she deserved to be with a better man than him. The thought of her with anyone else, though, made his stomach clench painfully. He realized then that she was still waiting for him to answer. “It’s good. Busy. I have a virtual reality software company, WorkChat, that’s expanding faster than I dared to dream.”
She smiled, looking genuinely happy for him. “You got your cake.”
“My cake?” At nineteen, he hadn’t known to look for hidden layers in the words women used. He’d learned, though, that women sometimes spoke in code—like computers, but it was one they wrote as they went along. Nothing could be assumed. Something Hailey had said to him years earlier came back with unexpected clarity. “What does pie represent to you?”
She didn’t answer at first, and he half expected her to say she didn’t know what he was talking about. She did, though. He saw it in her eyes.
“Pie is something you could have every week without fanfare. It’s a comfort food. A family food. It’s what people serve when they gather on a Sunday afternoon.”
“And cake?”
“It’s a flashy celebration. Layers of intricate frosting designed to impress people.”
Ouch. “Back in college, you said you wanted pie, and I wanted cake.”
“I needed pie.” She looked relieved that he’d understood easily. “That’s why I moved back to be with my brother. I was falling apart, and I needed the security of being with someone who loved me.”
I loved you, he almost said, but he was beginning to wonder if he had known what love was back then. She had come second to his goals. He could have gotten her back if he had put aside the program he’d been working on and gone after her. Instead, he’d waited, confident that she’d be there when he finished his work. The more he’d heard about Brett running the family company, the more he needed to prove to himself that he didn’t need their father’s money. Proving himself had been an obsession back then. An obsession that had taken priority over making up with her. His love had been entitled and shallow.
They looked into each other’s eyes for a while.
She deserved so much better than I gave her. “I didn’t understand how much you needed me.”
“I know.”
“But that doesn’t mean I didn’t care about you.”
“I know that now. I didn’t at the time.”
He leaned forward and almost kissed her, but pulled back just in time. Would an explanation give her more comfort? Sex alone hadn’t been enough the first time. “I was obsessed with proving myself that year. My brother, Brett, had just taken over our family’s company. It wasn’t so much that I wanted it for myself, but I wanted to be considered. When my parents divorced, Rachelle, Nicolette, and I went with Mom. Brett and Eric stayed with our father—or the man I thought was my father.”
“So Dereck was your stepfather? I thought he was your father.”
There wasn’t another person on the planet he would have felt comfortable telling, but this was Hailey. Despite the time they’d been apart, she knew him better than anyone since. “Turns out, Mark was my biological father. I was the result of my mother cheating on her first husband.”
“So you were raised by your real father.”
“Without either of us knowing. I found out the truth last year.”
The shock Spencer expected to see in Hailey’s eyes never came. She searched his face as if understanding the extent of how much the news had shaken him. “I remember you talking about Mark. He sounded like an amazing person.”
“He was. He never missed one of my games. I don’t remember a time when he was too busy to help us with homework or ask about our day at school. I was still in high school when he died. I don’t deal well with things like that. I boxed my feelings up and put them aside. It wasn’t until I found out who he’d actually been to me that I realized how much I’d lost. It should have made me more understanding about your father . . .”
She smiled gently. “We could probably go around and around about who was the worst, or we could forgive each other and ourselves. I don’t want to carry that baggage around anymore, do you?”
“God, no.”
“Good, because I’m doing enough shit wrong today to feel bad about what I did yesterday.”
He chuckled. “That’s a T-shirt motto I’d wear.”
Her expression turned serious. “Do you still talk to your dad? The one you thought was your father?”
“No. I wrote him and his whole side of the family off.”
“You don’t see them at all? Not even the ones you were close to—like any grandparents?”
“All I had on that side was a grandmother.” He shuddered. “She’s a real pill. I’m okay with never seeing her again.”
“I bet she misses you.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t. She is one coldhearted old lady.”