Mess with Me by Nicole Helm (19)

Chapter Nineteen

Sam studied the arbor he’d made Lilly and Brandon. He hadn’t shown it to either of them yet because he wanted it to be completely finished before he got their opinion. They were coming up this morning to take a look, and it would give Sam a few days to make any changes to the arbor if necessary.

There was something oddly symbolic about finishing it now, when he felt like his life was opening up. Kind of like a wedding.

No, he wasn’t pledging his love and devotion to anyone anytime soon, no matter how tempted he’d been to take Hayley to bed the other night. But this was the beginning of something, and for the first time in a very long time, he had hope that maybe he could . . .

He hadn’t been lying to Hayley when he’d said he didn’t know what he could offer her. He was still fucked up in the head, and a relationship, where you had to be responsible for the other person, was something he didn’t know if he could handle.

He was slowly, slowly edging his way toward handling the idea of it.

Hayley had tagged along on his kayak trip yesterday, but this morning she had gone on a hike with Will.

He was trying to be careful. Trying to take it slow, because he couldn’t step back into life as the jackass who had been somewhat responsible for the death of his sister. He had to be someone new.

He had to ease into things, especially things with Hayley.

And he really needed to stop thinking about easing into her pants, because that was about one million steps down the road.

He heard the telltale sounds of Brandon’s truck through the rocks and trees. Sam felt unaccountably nervous. He’d agreed to making the arbor because he felt like he owed Brandon and Lilly, but he hadn’t really thought much about dealing with their reactions when he showed it to them.

He’d put a lot of work into it and a lot of thought. Maybe even a lot of heart, though he would not admit that to them. But he really needed them to like it.

It was a symbol for them as well. The L, the B, and the E carved into the wood. Clearly he was getting soft in his old age.

Sam looked over his shoulder to see Brandon and Lilly emerge from the pathway. Lilly waved and walked at breakneck speed across the yard.

“Sam.” She pressed her fingers to her lips and Sam groaned.

“No crying. None. If there’s something you don’t like, I can fix it. If you like it, then you’re set and you don’t have to worry about it. So there is no reason to cry.”

Lilly sniffled. “But it’s just so beautiful. Bran, look at the letters.”

“Wow. Sam, this is really amazing.” Brandon stood next to Lilly, winding his arm around Lilly’s shoulders.

But she popped right out, whirling to face both of them. “This could actually be something we do, guys.”

“What? Get married? Yes, I think that is the plan,” Brandon returned.

She slapped Brandon lightly on the chest “No. Have weddings. Outdoorsy weddings. Maybe with an excursion thrown in, maybe not. It all depends.”

“Why are you turning this into a business plan?”

“Because it’s perfect.”

“She’s not wrong,” Sam added. Having weddings as part of their outdoor excursions wouldn’t just be good for Mile High, but it could possibly bring commerce and business possibilities to Gracely proper.

That wasn’t any of his concern, but . . .

“See! Sam thinks it’s a good idea. If Sam’s agreeing with me, aside from being a possible sign of the apocalypse, it means it must be a really amazing idea.” Lilly grinned at Sam.

“Could we possibly get through our wedding before we start planning anyone else’s?”

“Fine. I guess that’s fair.” Though Lilly’s wheels were obviously already turning.

Sam couldn’t deny that his wheels were turning a little bit too. His first instinct was to ignore his ideas for revitalizing the town, but he was trying to overcome those instincts.

It wouldn’t be crazy to be somewhat involved in a new arm of Mile High. At least offer a few suggestions.

“Let’s focus on the task at hand,” Brandon said, the stress of his wedding clearly weighing on him. “How are we going to get the arbor to the overlook?”

“Your truck could carry the arbor, but I’m not sure it could get to the site for the wedding. The trail might be wide enough that we could walk it there, but that would require all of us lugging it there on the actual day of the wedding.”

He and Brandon chatted about the logistics of getting the arbor where it needed to be, while Lilly walked around the arbor pretending to study it but surreptitiously typing notes into her phone. Sam had no doubt they were notes about ideas for how Mile High could offer weddings.

At the sound of new voices, Sam looked to the little pathway entrance, more than a little surprised to see Hayley and Will approach.

“Hey. What are you two doing?” Brandon asked.

Though Sam had told Tori to stay out of sight while Brandon and Lilly were up here, he hadn’t anticipated Will to be up here too. He hoped his nerves didn’t show.

“The group was fast,” Will replied as they approached the arbor. “We were through the hike a half hour earlier than I expected us to be. So that’s the big wedding thingamajig, huh?”

Will smiled, though Sam could see the uncomfortable edge around it. Maybe it was Tori being here that made Sam a little hyperaware, or maybe it was trying to come out of his own dark period, but he couldn’t help but wonder if Will was really struggling lately.

“This is it,” Lilly said cheerfully.

“Isn’t it great? I’ve been so in awe, seeing it take shape,” Hayley offered, smiling at Sam briefly before turning her gaze to the arbor.

“It’s amazing.” Lilly linked arms with Hayley, that businesswoman gleam in her eye. “Hayley, when you picture getting married, what do you picture?”

“Lilly,” Brandon said in a warning tone.

Hayley flicked an uncomfortable glance at Sam, and he immediately looked away. Because the last thing he was going to do was look at Hayley while she talked about weddings.

Last night she’d sat with him and Tori and talked pleasantly and happily. She’d occasionally touched his hand, and every once in a while they’d brushed arms. He’d sent her home with the briefest and lightest of kisses.

They hadn’t talked much about relationship-ish things. He wasn’t sure they needed to quite yet. They were easing. That was his word and he was sticking to it.

“I’m just asking if she could picture someday whenever she gets married to . . . whoever she gets married to . . .” Lilly slid an even more uncomfortable glance at Sam. “Could she imagine having an outdoor wedding in a setting like this, under a thing like this?”

“Hayley, please do not humor her, as I need to get her down my aisle before she starts worrying about business ventures.”

Hayley stood there looking afraid to say much of anything.

“Hayley, you’re free the morning of the wedding, right? She could help us get the arbor in the right spot,” Sam suggested, anything to focus on this wedding instead of hypothetical ones.

“I’d love to help in any way I can.”

“That’s great, but she can’t do it by herself. And I don’t trust you or Will or Brandon to get ready appropriately and on time for the photographer without my supervision.”

“What’s there for you to supervise?” Will asked.

“That you don’t look like a bunch of hobos with your beards and your big hair. I need to make sure you don’t get your suits all dirty or get hurt lugging this thing around. This may be an outdoor wedding, but it is going to be beautiful, and no one is hobbling down that aisle. I’m going to be busy and Cora is going to be busy. Micah might be able to help, but he might be more hindrance than anything else,” Lilly pondered aloud, mentioning her nephew.

“What about Tori?” Hayley suggested.

Sam hadn’t thought to warn Hayley not to mention Tori to anyone. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would. She’d been so separate from Will and Brandon up until this week and she wasn’t part of that time when Tori had been in Brandon’s, Will’s, and his own pocket.

Hayley stood, clearly confused, as three people stared wide-eyed at her. Finally her gaze met Sam’s as if to ask, What did I say wrong?

Which meant Brandon and Lilly and Will all turned their gazes to him as well.

“What does she mean, what about Tori?” Will asked between clenched teeth.

“Well . . .” Shit. Shit. Shit. What was Sam supposed to do now?

Will took a few steps toward him. There was a blazing fury in his expression Sam wasn’t surprised to see, but it was a little bit more violent than he had expected. “What does she mean?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .” Hayley stopped talking at Brandon’s head shake.

Sam realized he didn’t have a choice. He had to man up to this misstep. Even in the face of Will’s fury. It would be better to be clear and honest than placate or try to explain it away. “I ran into Tori yesterday.”

“Yesterday,” Will echoed dangerously.

“Yes. It wasn’t on purpose. Sarge—”

“Sarge? Sarge? So I’m not fucking insane hearing that dog or seeing that dog, and you didn’t think to mention it to me?”

“I thought to, but I chose not to.” He held Will’s furious gaze and hoped it would imbue some calm into the situation, but it didn’t.

“Where is she now?”

“Will. Maybe you should just—”

“Do not finish that sentence,” he said, each word a deadly blade.

Silence descended over the clearing and Sam knew he’d created this problem. Usually Brandon was the one who stepped in and fixed problems, and though Sam would happily leave it to him, he could see Brandon was just as shell-shocked as Will that Tori was here, that Sam hadn’t told them. And he was worried for his brother, so Sam had to stand up and be the leader for once.

“She’s in a bad place, and she asked me to give her some time before she talked to you both.”

Will whirled around and pointed a finger at Hayley. “We’re that damn scary that you guys can’t fucking—”

Sam stepped between Will and Hayley, Brandon and Lilly at his heels.

“It’s not her fault,” Sam said, the edge of Will’s fury starting to rub off on him. Or maybe it was because Will was taking his anger out on Hayley, when she neither deserved it nor had any part in it.

Will opened his mouth to make more accusations, but something in Brandon’s or Lilly’s expression must have changed his mind. He shook his head and started stomping away.

“Fuck this,” he muttered.

Lilly gave Brandon a little nudge. “Give me your keys and go after him.”

Brandon fished his keys out of his pocket and handed them to Lilly, giving Hayley a gentle pat on the shoulder before taking off after Will.

Lilly turned to Sam, looking pained. “This is going to be . . . It’s a big deal, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” No two ways about it, Tori crashing back into their lives was going to leave a mark. A few months ago, Sam would have been angry too. Or maybe just frustrated. But after this change inside of him? He was kind of glad. “It will be a big thing, but it’s an overdue one.”

“Well, I should get back to the office. Skeet shouldn’t be left alone for too long as the face of the company.” She forced a little smile and then turned to Hayley.

Who looked beside herself. “I’m so sorry I ruined—”

“You didn’t ruin anything,” Lilly said, gripping Hayley’s shoulders. “This is so not your fault. It goes beyond—way beyond us, and unfortunately that means we need to step back a little and give them their space to work it out.” Lilly gave Hayley a quick hug and then she was walking back down the path.

“I screwed up everything,” Hayley said, distraught.

“It was my fault,” Sam assured her. “I should have said something to you about not mentioning Tori. I should . . . I should’ve done a lot of things differently. Don’t blame yourself.”

Hayley sniffled and was still staring at where everyone had disappeared. “Sure,” she said, sounding completely unconvinced.

She stood there with her back to him for a few quiet moments. He could let it go. He could give her the time to find her composure. Instead he stepped forward and placed a hand on the small of her back. When she leaned into it, he wrapped an arm around her front so that her back could rest against his chest. So that she could rest against him.

It was such a shock to realize it felt good to give. He’d been trying so very hard not to all these years. “It’s really okay.”

“He was so mad,” she said, her voice a scratchy thing in the pleasant buzz of a summer afternoon.

“And that’s Will and Tori’s deal. Not ours.”

She turned then, in the circle of his arms, burying her face in his shoulder. It gave him twin feelings. One of surprising tenderness and compassion. He wanted to soothe and hold and murmur encouraging things to her. Half of him wanted nothing else than to be the man right here who got to comfort her.

The other half of him was an ice block of dread and fear, certain he couldn’t handle this kind of thing. Certain he would screw it all up and Hayley would wind up hurt.

But Hayley had faced a lot of her fears in the past few weeks, time and time again, and he could learn to do the same.

From her. And for her.

* * *

No matter how much Sam assured Hayley this was his fault and her relationship with Will and Brandon would be fine, Hayley couldn’t quite get there. Not after the way Will had turned on her.

She couldn’t believe this wasn’t at least partially her fault. Though they’d been talking about Tori, clearly Will had been hurt that she hadn’t been brave enough to confront him and Brandon in the beginning. But Will didn’t realize it was her lack of courage. He seemed to think her fear had something to do with them.

She felt unaccountably guilty that her half brothers had taken it personally. She felt guilty she’d let the whole thing about Tori slip, because, quite honestly, she should have known. Clearly there was some weird stuff between all four of them that no one seemed to want to fill her in on.

Hayley closed her eyes against the onslaught of pain that thought caused. It was hard to fight it though, because there would always be a past that she hadn’t been a part of. Just like Mack and James had a past she hadn’t been a part of. The only person who had always been in her life was the woman who had forbidden Hayley from having anything to do with Gracely or the Evans family.

It was all so confusing and jumbled and Hayley felt like she had months ago, when she hadn’t had the guts to face Will and Brandon. These were the kinds of scenarios she had been afraid of, and it was worse now that she’d gotten to know the Evans brothers, and like them. To suddenly be cast back as an outsider now? It was really hard to be okay with that.

So even though Sam and Lilly both told her she should let it go, that night she decided she needed to confront Will and apologize.

Brandon and Will lived in a cabin that was between Mile High and Sam’s place, but she knew Will sometimes spent the night at the Mile High headquarters. He’d mentioned it earlier today during their hike.

So, after she’d returned home and choked down a few bites of frozen dinner for one, she’d driven over to Mile High. She was gratified to find Will’s Jeep in the parking lot.

Which meant that, hopefully, no one else was there and she could talk to him alone.

Truth be told, out of all of them, she found Will to be the least intimidating. She supposed it was because he was the easiest with a smile.

She knocked on the front door of Mile High. It wasn’t Will who answered the door, but the hunched old man who seemed to work the front desk for them.

Will had introduced Hayley to him yesterday as Skeet. All Skeet had ever done was grunt disapprovingly at her.

In fact, he grunted his greeting now.

“I . . . Hi. Hi, I was looking for Will.”

Skeet moved out of the doorway and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the back. Hayley knew that was as much invitation as she was going to get.

Timidly, she shuffled through the main area that was so cozy and inviting, to the back hallway. Two of the doors were closed and two were open.

She peeked her head into the first one and found Will sprawled out on a twin bed with a bottle of liquor in the crook of his arm, his eyes on a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall.

“Knock, knock.”

Will didn’t make a move to greet her. All he offered was the most deliberate flick of a glance before his attention went back to the TV.

But Hayley stood resolutely in the doorway. “I thought we should talk.”

“Save us both the air and go home, Hayley.”

Home. It was quite the unintended barb. Where the hell was home? She was loath to think about where he might hit if he actually tried.

Hayley felt incredibly unsure of herself. Ever since James’s visit, she’d felt off-kilter and uncertain. She tried to think back to when she’d had the courage to stand up to Sam, to push him. She’d wanted to challenge him and get through to him. The point of doing that had been to learn how to do it. To test it on someone who didn’t matter.

“This is all very brotherly-sisterly. Me invading your space, you telling me to leave. If I had a dollar for every time my stepbrother told me to . . .” She trailed off, feeling like a tool. James had been jealous of the relationship she was trying to build with Brandon and Will. Wouldn’t it make sense if they were jealous of James and a sibling relationship she already had?

“Look, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at just about everybody else. But you have nothing to do with this.”

Ouch. He could not have said anything more hurtful. It was true. She had nothing to do with this. This had nothing to do with her. She was not involved. She did not belong.

Yeah, ouch. “Well, if that’s true, then maybe you could talk to me, if you can’t talk to them,” she offered, probably too hopefully as she took a careful step into the room.

He took a long drink straight from the bottle, staring at her the whole time. When he lowered it, she couldn’t read the expression on his face.

“There’s nothing to talk about. Not with you. Not even with Sam or Tori. It’s all in the bullshit past where it belongs. And, like I said, nothing to do with you, okay? Since we don’t know each other that well, and I really don’t need a friend, or to lose my temper, do yourself a favor and get the hell out of here.”

“Okay. I’ll go,” she said, hating the meek note to her voice. “I just wanted you to know that if something I did caused you pain, I’m sorry. I was afraid to approach you guys for a long time, and I never once thought about how you might feel about that. I only thought about my own fear and what I knew about my—our father.” Hayley was digging herself a hole.

She wrung her hands and tried to find a point to all this. “The thing is, I finally talked to you guys because . . . It was easy to be brave with Sam, so why shouldn’t it be easy to be brave with you guys? It’s not easy. None of this is easy, but I’m sorry. That we all had to get hurt in this thing, and I don’t think any of us deserved it or are to blame for it.” She hoped.

Will sat up and gave her a squinty-eyed stare. He seemed pretty with-it, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he was slightly inebriated. “Why was it easy to be brave with Sam?”

Hayley’s face heated against her will. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

“You know that Sam’s a fucking mess, right?” Will continued.

“Says the man lying in bed cuddling with a bottle of booze,” Hayley responded, wishing she could eat the words the minute they were out of her mouth. Defending Sam, especially that harshly, wasn’t doing her any favors.

Will’s gaze sharpened. “I never said I wasn’t a mess too, but I’m not the one it was easy to be brave with. Is there something going on between you and Sa—”

“It’s none of your business.”

Will sat up and swung his legs off the side of the bed. “So there is?” he demanded incredulously.

“No! I’m not saying that. I’m saying that . . .” Oh crap, what had she gotten herself into? “Nothing that I do is your business in that regard and—”

“What regard?”

“Whatever regard it is that you’re hinting at,” she snapped, feeling her temper and her nerves fray.

“Brandon will kill him. You know that, right?”

Hayley rolled her eyes. “Why? Because I’m so important to you two, and Sam’s not?”

“You can’t get involved with our friend,” Will said, so resolutely that she, for the very first time, had the inclination to slap him, much like she’d slapped James when she was a kid and he was being a dick.

“You can’t tell me what to do. This isn’t . . .” She trailed off because she was so angry she didn’t have words. James’s high-handed bullshit was one thing—he’d been her brother for more than half her life. This man did not get to pull the big brother stuff without putting in the time.

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” Will said, his voice carrying a deadly edge. “And I hear the way you talk about him. And Sam has changed in the weeks you’ve been training with him.”

Hayley scoffed. “Changed how?” Sam had opened up and loosened up, but she questioned that someone could see it if they weren’t looking for it.

She remembered the kiss from last night. Quick and sweet. His soothing hug comforting her this afternoon when she’d screwed up everything. Okay, maybe it was a visible change.

“I’ve seen glimpses of the Sam I used to know. Not just the Sam I’d go to parties with or be a dipshit with, but the real Sam underneath all of that. The genuinely good guy who me and Brandon would have trusted with our lives. Since you came along, I have seen glimpses of the good there used to be in him.”

Hayley tried to fend off the wave of pleasure that swept through her that Sam had changed that much, that she might have had something to do with it and other people recognized it.

“I guess you should thank me then,” she said, trying for sarcasm and failing. Miserably. She was too pleased she might have been an agent of change in Sam. If she could change him, and herself... what couldn’t she do?

“I would thank you, if I thought you had any hope of making that change permanent.”

It shouldn’t hurt. She didn’t think he meant it the way it sounded. As though any lack of permanence was her failing, not Sam’s. But that thought snaked inside of her, a poisonous little stream.

For weeks she’d been climbing into happy. James’s visit had knocked things around a little, and ever since, things had been regressing. She’d felt less like she belonged, like this was where she should be. That these people wanted her in their lives.

Sam was opening up, and there was a chance for them. There was. She was sure of it. Or, she had been.

“Well, I’ll leave you to be a miserable drunk,” she said, more than happy to take her anger out on him rather than admit it had to do with her. Hadn’t that been why she was angry at James? Because she was afraid he was right. She was always afraid someone else was right.

“I’m sorry I ever apologized,” she said, disgust dripping from her words as she turned to exit.

“Now this? This actually feels like an Evans family moment,” Will said at her retreating back.

She should laugh, but she couldn’t find it in her.