Now she needed him.
He sucked in a deep breath, blew it out.
Dressed in a T-shirt and the gray sweats he’d loaned to Brody, he got up and took his phone from the charger.
Carrie answered on the first ring.
“Hayden?” She sounded breathless, shaken.
“You okay?”
“Sure.” Her voice was tremulous. She was not sure at all.
“I’m here.” And here was where he needed to stay.
“You’re awake.”
“Thinking about you.” He shouldn’t have said that. “I knew you’d be anxious.”
“I’m fine. Go back to bed.” She was not a convincing actress.
“It’s only rain, Carrie. No tornadoes. No danger.”
“Okay. Go back to sleep.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“Yes. Good night.” She clicked off.
He held the phone against his chest, holding Carrie there, too.
Her bravado was for his benefit. She knew he was tired.
With a sigh, he left the room and padded barefoot down the quiet lighted hall. Thunder rumbled, and lightning flared.
Either that or his heart was on fire. A storm brewed beneath his rib cage.
At her door, he tapped softly. She yanked it open without even asking who knocked, her eyes wide and skin pale.
“Hayden?” she squeaked.
He stepped inside the dimly lit room and drew her to his chest. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay.”
“I wouldn’t have bothered you,” she murmured, trembling against him.
“You couldn’t bother me, Carrie.” He smiled, aching.
He’d known he would end up in her arms, finding solace in his gentle, lovely sparrow even as she drew from him.
She tilted her face and kissed his jaw. “Thank you.”
In return, he kissed her nose, her forehead and finally the lips he’d thought of for hours tonight. “I’m here.”
He always wanted to be here for her, a fantasy he could only manufacture in a book.
He couldn’t write love stories any more than he could live them.
There could be no happy-ever-after for Hayden Winters.
Her small hands stroked his back, and she clung to him as thunder rolled.
“I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else,” she said. “You make me safe.”
His last thread of control splintered and cracked like lightning. He made her safe.
Carrie owned him, tortured him with her exquisite goodness. He closed his eyes and battled against his raging heart.
He swallowed the knot of near painful tenderness. “I never want you to be afraid. You’re too...important to me.”
A beat passed as rain pattered the windows, and Hayden fought to be the man Carrie deserved.
“Truly?” Her words were breathy and hesitant and full of longing.
He cupped her precious face in his hands and drowned in eyes of espresso brown, knowing he was lost.
“Very special,” he murmured.
“I love you,” she whispered, killing him.
This could only end badly.
“I know,” he murmured as he pulled her even closer, hating himself. Loving her. “I know.”
It would take all the strength he had to be the man she needed, the man he wanted to be...because of her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Where mercy, love, and pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
—William Blake
HAYDEN WAS GONE. Again.
Carrie read the note he’d slipped under her door and wanted to cry. Instead of the flowery phrases her heart longed for the note was short and efficient.
My mother is much better this morning. The crisis is past. I’ve settled your hotel bill already. No need to concern yourself. Go home to Honey Ridge, and I’ll be there soon.
And he’d signed it H.
She didn’t even know when he’d left her room last night. But as the night’s events played through her head, she vacillated between happiness and despair.
He hadn’t said he loved her, but she thought he did. Everything in his caring, in his kisses and in the tender way he’d held her through the storm and talked until she’d fallen asleep said he loved her.
But now he was gone, leaving her out of his life, pushing her away after she’d bared her soul to him. She’d told him about Simon, about the stormy evening when Simon’s wife had accosted her in public and shattered her illusions of love.
Love meant Hayden.
Hayden hadn’t seemed the least bit shocked that she’d consorted with a married man, had loved him and been humiliated in return. Hayden had simply held her and whispered assurances and made remarks about the brainless idiot who hadn’t seen her worth. He’d even made her laugh when he promised to dispatch Simon in a future book.
She’d told him she loved him. Not once but twice.
Now he was gone, and last night’s whispered words seemed cold. Had she humiliated herself yet again?
She’d been the bold one, following him to Kentucky. She’d thrown herself into his arms and pledged her love.
“Thanks a lot, Nikki.” Maybe taking a chance wasn’t such a good thing after all.
She battled her insecurities, wishing Hayden had awakened her, wishing he would text or call and reassure her that all was well. That she wasn’t the biggest fool in the world.
Maybe she was. Maybe she should go home, and if Hayden followed her, she’d know he returned her feelings.
Throat tight and heart hurting, she packed her bags and called a cab. As she leaned forward to ask the cabbie to take her to the airport, a fierce energy gripped her.
She was tired of being Carrie, the easily frightened sparrow, the mouse who squeaked, the scaredy-cat who shivered and hid beneath the covers.
She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath and said, “University Hospital, please.”
* * *
DORA LEE WAS not only awake; she was in full screaming, fighting, cursing mode.
Hayden stood at her bedside, trying to break the news. Maybe he should have waited for another time when he was less vulnerable, when his heart and thoughts weren’t torn in two directions.
But the hospital team thought now was the time to make the move and that he should be the one to break the news.
“It will go down easier coming from someone she cares about,” the social worker had said.
Hayden hadn’t known what to say to such a gross misstatement.
Dora Lee was outraged, as he’d known she’d be, but he’d signed the paperwork for her to be committed to a private rehabilitation center for addicts. The move would cost him dearly in more ways than one. She’d hate him for this.
Dora Lee had always hated him anyway.
“You can’t stick me in a nuthouse,” she said, her voice rising. “I’m not crazy. I just need my medicine.”
She looked wild today, her blond hair sticking out in every direction and her eyes hollow from illness, hollow and furious. A heart monitor kept rhythm with her anger while IV fluids dripped into her dehydrated veins.
His own heart beat with anxiety.
“Rosewood isn’t a nuthouse. It’s a recovery center where you can receive treatment for your addictions.”
“I don’t want any treatment. I won’t go, and no one can force me.” She shot a hateful glare at Hayden. “Not even you. It’s illegal.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said tiredly, knowing the explosion of hatred was about to spew all over this room.
Her eyes narrowed in her pale, yellowed face. “What are you talking about? What have you done behind my back?”
&nb
sp; “Because of the overdose, you aren’t considered competent to make your own decisions. You’re a drug addict, Dora Lee. You need help.”
Not that he believed for one second that a rehab program would fix Dora Lee, but the psychiatric care couldn’t hurt. He had to do something.
She pointed a shaky finger. “You’re having me locked away? You?”
“It’s in your best interest.”
She turned on him then, in all the fury she’d used against the boy he’d once been. He fought not to cower as he’d done then.
Hayden tried to tune out the filth and vitriol as she cursed him, demeaned him, hated him with words he wouldn’t even write in his books.
He stuck to the mantra he’d practiced since making the decisions with the medical team. “You need help, Dora Lee.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about. You and your high-living lifestyle, sneering at me because of the pills.”
“And the meth,” he said quietly, wanting all the cards on the table. “You’ve been an addict as long as I can remember. It makes you mean and cruel.”
“Oh, and now that you’re a big shot, this is payback. Is that it? You’re getting back at me.”
He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I only want to help.”
“Then get out of my life. Get out of my business.”
He stepped closer but not close enough for her to hit him. He was done with that.
He didn’t know why he couldn’t let it go. Only a miracle would change Dora Lee, and she didn’t want one.
“I wish I could, but you’re my mother.”
Dora Lee’s laugh was bitter and ugly, rising into delirium. “You stupid, stupid fool. You’re as stupid as her, as stupid as your father was for thinking I’d ever love his bastard child.”
Hayden’s blood chilled. “What did you say?”
“That’s right, Mr. Important. You’re nothing but a filthy bastard. Your daddy thought he was so smart, sneaking around with that Townsend girl, and when she died in childbirth, he brought her squalling brat to me, the wife he should have been faithful to.”
Hayden’s ears buzzed. He stared at the woman with the nasty mouth and drug-ravished body. She wasn’t his mother?
“I’m not your son?” Numbness crept over him. “Then why—”
She laughed again, harsher, more bitter and angry. “Because he had to be punished. Every single day, he paid penance for what he did behind my back. He bought my pills, doted on my headaches, anything as long as I took care of his kid.”
Like a prizefighter staggering from the final blow, Hayden wagged his head back and forth. His mouth had gone dry as sand. “But you didn’t.”
She wasn’t his mother?
“I was always nice when he was home, wasn’t I?” Her eyes were conniving and evil. “He loved me once, you know. Promised to build me a house and take me to wonderful places if I’d marry him.”
He couldn’t believe this. It had to be another crazy, convoluted dream.
“Did you ever...care about him all?”
“He had a good job. That was enough.” Her mouth twisted. “Then he up and died and all I had left was his slut’s kid.”
“You had lovers. You always had lovers even when he was alive.” Her betrayal of his hardworking father had wounded and embarrassed him, but he’d never told a soul. Especially his daddy.
Dora Lee sneered, voice malevolent, her body shaking from weakness and the need for drugs. “A woman gets lonely when a man works all the time. After what he did, I had a right.”
The shock went on and on, reverberating through him in waves that nearly staggered him. In his wildest dreams, he’d never imagined she wasn’t his mother.
“You hated me. Why didn’t you give me up when he died?” Foster care couldn’t have been worse than Dora Lee.
She made a derisive noise. “Are you that much of a fool? You were worth money. If I dumped you, I lost my meal ticket.”
And her drug money.
“Daddy’s Social Security check.” He stepped closer, seeing her for what she was, a heartless, selfish woman. She’d used and abused him as a boy and even as a man. And he’d let her out of some primal need for a mother’s love. Love that didn’t reside inside a woman like Dora Lee.
“You always hated me, didn’t you?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Hated you then. Hate you now.”
She wasn’t his mother.
A strange kind of freedom unfurled deep in his midsection, rising like a flag on a war-torn island. She was not his mother. He was not her son. He was battle scarred and weary, but now he was free.
Free to choose. For himself. For her.
“Hate me all you want, Dora Lee, but you’re still going to rehab.”
She screeched obscenities, lunging to rake at him with her fingernails.
He jerked back but not before she’d drawn blood.
He stared down at the red droplets. The bedside pitcher struck him in the chest. Water sluiced over his shirt, chilling him, though not nearly as much as her vile hatred.
“Get out. You worthless scum. You’re nothing to me. Nothing, you hear! I never want to see your face again.”
With all the dignity he could muster and jaw tight, Hayden quietly said, “I think that can be arranged.”
Blood racing in his head until he thought he might pass out, Hayden moved to the door. Vile words pummeled him as she polluted the air with her screams and curses and threats.
His mind whirled with the revelation and with the relief running through his veins. He was not her son. He didn’t know who he was, but he didn’t carry Dora Lee’s heartless, addictive, demented genetic code.
Perhaps he could put the past behind him now and pretend it had never existed. Dora Lee would be out of his life. He wasn’t her son.
Maybe he could become the man Carrie thought he was after all.
Stunned but relieved and hopeful, he stepped out into the hallway...and bumped into Carrie.
From the horrified expression on her pale face, she’d heard every crude, repulsive word. Could hear them still.
The world tumbled in on him.
She knew the truth about him, about his ugly past, about Dora Lee. There could be no starting over. He saw it in her shocked eyes. She knew he’d lied. She knew and was both stunned and disgusted.
What was left of his battered heart shattered into a million pieces, crushed like pavement glass after a car accident.
He’d lost her. And in her, he’d lost everything good he’d ever wished for.
Whether he was Dora Lee’s blood kin or not, the vile woman in that hospital bed had raised him, and the son of a pillbilly would never be good enough for clean and wholesome Carrie.
She’d trusted him with her heart, with her words of love, and he’d lied to her. She’d believed in him, had faced her terror of flying to be with him in his time of need, and he’d given her this in return.
“You heard.”
“Yes.” Her fingers touched her lips, soft, soft lips he’d kissed many times and longed to kiss again, to promise that all of this was a nightmare. “Oh, Hayden—”
Harshly, he cut her off. “Go home. I never wanted you to know.” Then, as shame coursed through his body, he said more gently, “I don’t expect you to be able to deal with this. God knows I barely can.”
Her eyes searched his, and he read the shock, the hurt, the questions and finally the resolve.
She hated him now. The cold set of jaw, the anger that flared in her eyes.
“Carrie,” he started, aware he could never explain away Dora Lee or the past five minutes.
Carrie wasn’t listening anyway. She turned away from him. His heart cracked.
“Excuse me a moment,??
? she said, back as stiff as her tone.
Then she shoved open the door to Dora Lee’s room and marched inside.
* * *
CARRIE SHOOK ALL over and prayed her knees wouldn’t give way.
She had never been so angry in her life.
“You have no right,” she said, marching up to the scrawny blonde woman lying in the bed.
The woman’s lip curled. “Who are you?”
“I’m the woman who loves your...” Carrie faltered. This washed-out, drug-addicted woman was not Hayden’s mother even though he’d believed she was. “Hayden,” she finished. “You have no business speaking to him in such a tone.”
“Get out of my room.”
“I’m not leaving until I have my say. Hayden is one of the finest men I’ve ever known. When he learned of your illness, he rushed to your side. He’s been distraught with concern. Then you dump something like this on him. And you scream horrible, nasty cruelties.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Maybe not, but I won’t allow you to hurt him. Never again.” She leaned close enough to point a determined, though shaky, finger. “Do you hear me? Never!”
The woman slapped at her, eyes shooting daggers. Satisfied she’d made her point, Carrie whirled and marched out into the hall and right up to Hayden.
“And now you.” She poked her finger into his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought—”
“You thought I’d turn away, that I’d judge you by something you can’t help?”
He blew out a breath. “In a nutshell, yes.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
He was already shaking his head, denying her claim.
“I’m a fake, Carrie. I’m not Hayden Winters, the suave bestseller from a classy upbringing.” He touched his chest, mocking himself. “My college degree? A fabrication like the rest of my history. I was raised in the worst kind of poverty and neglect by an abusive, addicted woman who hated me.” He huffed. “You heard the rest.”
Carrie’s tone gentled. The pointed finger became a tender hand flattened against his heaving chest, stroking, consoling.
“She’s not your mother, and you are no more a fake than I am. You’re a dear and caring man who befriended a hurting boy, a man who is determined to do the right thing for that awful woman in there even though she’s mistreated you so terribly. That’s the man I love.”