Brothers of Paradise Series

“The house best.”

“According to the bartender, yes.” Hayden waves a dismissive hand. “He’ll be back soon, if you want something.”

“I don’t.”

He turns to me and I can see that his amber eyes are bloodshot. He hasn’t looked this way in… in a long time. It reminds me of how he’d looked in the weeks after my accident, the weeks before he left.

“Have you had some?” I ask gently. He doesn’t seem drunk, not really, but he doesn’t seem like himself, either.

Hayden frowns, turning back to look at the glass. “No. I’ve thought about it, though.”

“All right.”

He’s quiet for a while. I don’t say anything, knowing that he’ll come to it when he’s ready, even though my mind is going a million miles a minute, thinking about what might have happened.

He finally clears his throat. “Gary called me yesterday.”

“He did?”

“Yes. Apparently, my father passed away.” He spins the scotch glass around again. From the smooth motion, it looks like he’s been doing it for a while. “He lived only a few towns over, actually. Had been living there for a few years.”

My mind goes momentarily blank. His relationship with his father has always been something we’ve tiptoed around. There are too many thorns there. Approach the subject and you’ll inevitably get pricked.

“I’m sorry, Hay,” I say. “I know you had a complicated relationship.”

He snorts. “Yes. Complicated.”

“Do you want to talk about him?”

“No. I never want to think about him again.” Hayden shakes his head in frustration, focusing intently on the glass of alcohol. The tension in him hasn’t abated-far from it. “But I don’t think I can stop, either.”

“That’s all right, too. There’s no manual for how to grieve.” I reach out and put a hand on his forearm. He pauses in his twirling to look down at where it’s resting.

“We never really talked about my life before Paradise Shores,” he says finally.

“No, we rarely did,” I say. I know there had been darkness. Fights. Alcohol.

He takes a deep breath. “I never wanted any of that shit to touch you. Any of you, but you in particular. It doesn’t belong anywhere near you.”

My heart constricts in my chest. “I can listen. I’m not fragile.”

“I know. You’re the strongest person I know,” he says, and I know what he’s thinking about. The accident. “But I’m not sure I’m strong enough.”

My mouth feels dry. “What do you mean?”Property of Nô)(velDr(a)ma.Org.

“I couldn’t handle the pity in your eyes. I can handle it from all the others, Lils, but not from you.”

There’s such despair in his voice-something I’ve never heard from him before. I’d known he’d harbored thoughts like this, but never that they ran this deep.

I grip his forearm tight and lean in closer. “Hayden, it’s me. It’s just me, and it’s just you. I can promise you that I’m not going to pity you. I respect you too much for that. I have sympathy, but that’s something different.”

He shakes his head again and stares at a blank spot on the wall. One after another, the words spill out of him. “Fights. Dealers. It got ugly, Lily. If Gary hadn’t fought for custody for me, I don’t know what I would’ve become.”

I run my hand gently along his arm in encouragement. I don’t even think he notices.

“He was terrible to my mother, when she was alive. The things he did sometimes… She’d send me from the room when he was in a rage, but I still heard.” Hayden swallows. “After she died, there were times when I didn’t eat for days. He’d leave and be gone for a week. Two, once. I started being afraid whenever the doorbell rang, because I knew it would either be his mean friends or the loan sharks.”

It’s not hard for me to imagine it. I can see the child he was, wide-eyed and with a dark mop of hair, hiding behind doors and pulling up the covers in his bed to muffle the sounds.

It’s almost too much to bear.

“Did he ever beat you?”

Hayden’s shrug is far more nonchalant than I feel. “Sometimes. Never too bad, really.”

“Hayden,” I murmur, struggling around the lump in my throat. It’s ridiculous, but I feel like crying. Not in pity-but in empathy for the boy he once was. For the man he is now. That anyone ever treated him wrongly feels like the gravest of injustices.

He doesn’t notice. He just stares at the glass in his hand, a thoughtful expression on his face. “This had such a hold on him,” he says. “I don’t know if he ever kicked the habit or not. I didn’t speak to him for years before he died.”

“Do you regret not having contact?”

“No. I didn’t want him in my life.” There’s a faint furrow in his brow. “Although there were things I wanted to know. Things I… I don’t know.”

“With him gone, so is your last connection to that time?”

“Yes. But it lives in me,” he says, rapping his fingers against his temple. “I wonder if the same weakness is here. If I’ll go down the same path. Make the same mistakes.”

“You won’t.”

“I’ve seen what a good man can be. I’ve seen it in Gary. But I’ve never seen what a good partner looks like, not to mention a-” He breaks off and glances at me, brows knitted. “Well. A father.”

I grip his arm tighter. “Gary has showed you what a good father can look like. Has he not been that to you since he became your guardian?”

He sighs. “Yes.”

“You won’t make the same mistakes. You’ve already proven that, several times over. Besides, do you think we would let you?”

Hayden’s eyes widen. “We?”

“Yes, the people in your life who love you.”

“God, Lily…” He braces his hands against the bar for a moment, some unspeakable emotion coursing through him. “I shouldn’t have stayed away. Forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive.” I grip his forearm tighter, strong under my fingers. His gaze runs to my hand, and then higher, to the bracelet around my wrist.

Hayden reaches out and touches a finger to one of the charms. His voice is quiet when he finally speaks. “You’re wearing this?”

“Yes,” I say, swallowing. “It’s the one you gave me.”