Until Then

25. Noah

TWENTY-FIVE

Noah

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” My body aches. I’m exhausted and all I’ve done is lounge around, falling into my own head for twenty-four hours.

Hayley pulls down the lane to the ranch. “We’re not going to talk to anyone. It’s just us. Promise.”

I sit back in the passenger seat. Hayley parks my car in front of the stables.

“Go on in. I hear horses can be soothing.” With a wink she gets out, but bends down to finish her thought. “I’m going to grab us some blankets; I want to take you somewhere.”

Then, she’s gone, jogging toward her house.

I don’t want to move. Truth be told, I want to slip into the cracks of the earth and pretend I’m not such a leech on happiness. I want to pretend Hayley doesn’t know exactly what happened yesterday.

We haven’t mentioned it.

Maybe she thinks I’ll have some sort of psychotic break and hurt her too.

I scrub my palms down my face and force my body to move. I force my shoulder to nudge the car door open.

I’m still dressed in sweats. At least they’re clean. A Perfectly Broken T-Shirt is a bit baggy on my chest, but I managed to brush my teeth and put on shoes. Can’t say the same for my hair and my face. I’m unkempt, and I don’t even care.

Hands in my pockets, I amble into the stables.

A dreary weight still presses on my shoulders until I slouch. The sound of my shuffling feet draws the attention of more than one horse. Each stall I pass, I take a second to pat a snout or neck.

Until I get to Winter.

The pale gelding has his head over the gate of his stall. His deep brown eyes hold mine, unblinking. He snorts and nudges the soft end of his nose against my arm.

My throat tightens. One palm runs along his nose, next it rubs across his neck, into his golden mane. Winter’s head hooks over my shoulder, almost as though the creature is pulling me in for a hug.

Unbidden, I go for it.

Arms around the horse’s neck, palms stroking his soft coat. Winter holds steady. Occasionally he’ll nicker or blow his lips. I lean the side of my head to his steady breathing on his warm neck.

He’s calm, grounded, peaceful. It’s the first lull I’ve had since the dark storm collided and knocked me down.

Emotion, swift and potent, breaks from my chest.

I’m not a crier, but the weight of everything—the final season, Shane Holston, constant scrutiny, a chaotic relationship with a career people would kill to have—all fall out. Thoughts I’ve shouted at myself since I was a kid spew vitriol on my head. Mistakes I’ve made reel through my mind like an old movie. Every failure, every potential failure.

Cruel words tempt me to find a way to make it stop. For good.

Rees wouldn’t need to worry anymore.

Dad and Justine wouldn’t be hounded by paparazzi in the middle of the grocery store.

Jude wouldn’t have to wonder why his uncle looks so sad when he has everything.

Hayley wouldn’t have been tossed back into the sights of a man she clearly wanted to cut out.

I hold onto Winter, breathing when he breathes.

The storm builds and battles until, all at once, I feel the lifeline approach.

A gentle hand slides between my shoulder blades. I lift my head. Sticky tears soak my skin, but through the chaos, Hayley’s face—as promised—is like a dawn after a terrible night.

The hazel of her eyes shines in a sharp green through her own tears. Slowly, she eases behind me, never forcing me to let go of the horse’s neck. My wildfire doesn’t say anything, merely hugs me from behind, resting her cheek on my back.

There we stay until a bit of warmth replaces the frenzy in my chest. I unravel one arm from Winter’s neck and rub the top of Hayley’s hands still clasped over my stomach.

She hooks her fingertips with mine and whispers, “I love you, Noah Hayden. Every piece of you.”

I close my eyes. How is this woman mine?

In the next breath, I pull her against my chest and kiss her. It’s wet and gentle, it’s wild and greedy.

Her fingers tangle in my messy hair. My palms clasp her wet cheeks like she might disappear if I let go.

How long we kiss, I don’t know. When we pull back, Hayley’s lips are swollen and her face is pink from my stubble. I let my forehead drop to hers. “I don’t deserve you, Wildfire. But before you figure that out, you need to know, I’m crazy in love with you. Since that first blueberry scone.”

Popcorn and sodas are perched on the sides of the truck bed. Hayley brought her endless piles of blankets, and drove us to a hill near the back edges of the ranch where only velvet sky with silver stars could be seen.

“This is where I’d come when Shane broke my heart again,” she whispers and nuzzles closer against my chest.

“Before all this, Greer mentioned your dad was a loser. Now I get why your mom and Nan are so leery of guys like me.”

“You won them over on day one.” Her palm rubs the place over my heart. “He texted my mom a little while ago after the video of Colt went live. She told me I needed to give you a heads up, and I . . . never dared. I should’ve. This is on me, really.”

“It’s on me.” I use my finger to tilt her face toward mine. “It’s on me, all right?”

She doesn’t answer, but kisses the edge of my jaw.

“Why were you afraid to tell me?”

There’s a pause, followed by a deep sigh. “I didn’t want the mortification of his legal team coming to my doorstep again. It nearly destroyed me last time, and opened about a thousand wounds with daddy issues written all over them. I didn’t want to face the risk that you might be another Jasper. Obviously, I learned quickly how far you are from that idiot.”

“Legal team?” I tug her closer to my side. “What happened?”

“Looking back, I can safely assume Jasper found out the truth somehow. I suspect Nan or Mom let it slip early in our relationship. Our naivety overlooked Jasper’s motives for being with me might’ve been more to get to my biological father.”

I take note of the distance Hayley uses when she talks about Shane.

“I guess a reporter told Shane an anonymous source was talking about his estranged daughter. They kept pressing, wanting to run a story about how the renowned CEO of Holston Films was really a deadbeat who abandoned his kid.”

“All facts.”

Hayley kisses my shoulder, then looks back up at the sky. “Lawyers showed up to serve me and Mom with papers threatening to sue us for defamation if we continued badgering the press. He even sent my mom a note telling her to get over him. As if she’d been waiting around for twenty-five years.”

“What a tool.”

“I’m guessing—if it was Jasper who told the press—he got scared off by Shane’s threats and never reached out. It wasn’t long after that he started cheating.” Hayley props up on one elbow and removes a letter from her pocket. “This is what Shane sent on my eighteenth birthday, to give you an idea of our relationship. I don’t know why I keep it. Maybe it’s a reminder not to waste my heartache on him.”

She hands me a tattered birthday card. Only white, hot anger burns in my chest when I read the cruel words.

Lee Hayden isn’t what I’d call a cozy dad, but he’d never, never , treat me or Rees this way.

Hayley confesses she withheld the truth because she struggles to keep the self-doubt away whenever Shane Holston steps into her thoughts. There was always a touch of worry, since I’m in the same business, it would be a repeat of her past experiences. A fear, I’d throw her away to get to her dad.

Hard not to believe it when she’s been rejected time and again.

“Mom never wanted a handout, never asked,” she explains. “They met because she was studying filmography and was an intern on one of his early movies. I was born a year later. But the second he got his big break, he took off. Mom had to quit her schooling to take care of me. She brought us here and has worked to support us every day since.”

The degrading way Shane spoke about Val only stacks another layer to my anger.

“The only reason he paid child support was because of my grandma—his mom. She was actually sweet.” Hayley gives me a small smile. “She always bought me a new backpack before school every year and wrote me really cute birthday cards with a hundred-dollar bill inside, but she always told me to tell my mom I got a ten.”

I chuckle. “Did you see her a lot?”

“Well, she lived in Virginia, but she came out a couple times. The last time I saw her, I was thirteen. Before she flew home, she told me my dad made a poor choice by not wanting to be in my life, and she was disappointed in her son. It was the first time someone who should’ve been on his side stood on mine. It changed things. I started looking at him as a disappointment more, instead of myself. Grandma died before Christmas that year. Shane kept paying, but his attempts at visits were much less.”

“What would you even do when he’d visit? I bet conversation was awkward.”

Hayley scoffed with bitterness. “I don’t know if I’d call them visits. Basically they consisted of Shane taking me to fun centers or movies so he could sit on his phone in the corner, or he’d send an assistant to take me.”

I use more than one vulgar word to describe the man. “He thought I was with you to get to him.”

“Because I’m so unappealing, what would a sexy man like you want with me, right?” I can feel her eye roll against my chest.

I grin. “You think I’m sexy?”

Hayley pinches my side. “You know you’re practically edible.” After a moment she looks up at me. “Will you tell me what he said that made you so angry? I heard what you shouted at him. I know it was about me.”

“I don’t want to tell you,” I say in a rough whisper. The last thing I want to do is hurt her with more dismissive remarks from a man who should’ve loved her.

She kisses me sweetly. “It’s all right, Noah. He doesn’t have power over me anymore.”

I leave out the three ways Shane implied Hayley was a mistake, but I tell her the rest. “When he insinuated you were just a warm body to me, I don’t know, I snapped.” I sit up and rest my forearms on the tops of my knees. “I’d already been battling the . . . fog, you know? It sent me over the edge when anxiety hit that backlash might fall back on you.”

Hayley sits next to me, a hand running along my shoulder. “Can you tell me about the depression?”

“Um, I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder when I was nineteen. Back then, I was getting more auditions, more roles. Life was good, but I could barely find the motivation to get out of bed. Rees was the one who forced me to go talk to a doctor when I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t want anyone else to know.”

I weave our fingers together and rub my thumb over her knuckles for a few breaths. “Once I started some counseling it got easier. I got into meditation, a lot of specific exercises, and eventually, I landed the role of Kage. Everything seemed to be going right. Until, like before, I started getting lethargic; I lost interest in most things. The pressure and fame that came from the show didn’t help. The more people held me under the microscope of public opinion, the more I retreated to old, dark thoughts.”

“Did something happen?” she asks gently. “Rees seemed worried about you being alone.”

I swallow and dip my chin. “Yeah. He’s the only one who knows. Well, I’m sure he’s told Vi, but I’ve never told anyone else. After the second season wrapped, I felt like I was drowning. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes I get so trapped up here”—I tap the side of my head— “It feels like I can’t move, can’t escape. Like I’m suffocating.”

Hayley traces the tops of my knuckles. “The mind is so powerful.”

“Yeah.” I blow out a long breath. “I felt weak, ungrateful, and pathetic. Look at me, riding the train to fame and fortune, and I couldn’t leave my stupid apartment. I wanted to escape the . . . agony no one could even see.”

“What happened?” She tightens her hold on my hand.

“I popped pills,” I admit. “Too many. I planned to go to a wrap party with the intention of drinking too much. I wanted to have a bad mix, you know? Something that wouldn’t be obvious what I was doing, but it was wholly intentional.”

Hayley sniffles and leans her head on my shoulder, but she doesn’t speak.

“Call it twin instincts, but Rees surprised me that weekend. He wasn’t in the band yet, and kept working jobs trying to catch his break. He told me he needed to crash with his rich brother. Honestly, if he hadn’t shoved his way into my apartment, he wouldn’t have seen the empty pill bottle.” I pause and clear the scratch from my throat. “He basically forced me to the ER to pump my stomach.”

The truth is, Rees always saved me. From childhood to now, he was the quieter twin who’d give it all to keep me afloat.

I owed that broody asthmatic everything.

“After that, I promised I’d go back to counseling, get some medication on board, and I did. This is another reason I’ve been thinking so much about the future, and a slower lifestyle. Part of me still wants it all like I did in high school, but I’m starting to want different things that bring more fulfillment for me.”

“You deserve to be happy, Noah. You know I don’t care if you’re this huge A-lister who does two movies a year, right?”

“Good,” I say, chuckling. “Because I’m not sure I’ve got it in me anymore.” I look up at the stars for a breath. “The last few weeks, I’ve been trying to wean off my higher dose, and it was okay. The hardest days were when you left, then this whole thing with Shane . . . I didn’t cope well.”

Hayley chokes on a sob. She turns my face to meet her gaze. Tears line her lashes. “You didn’t plan to do anything again, right? Because I need you to stay with me, Noah. You’re not a want, you’re a need. Got it?”

I cup one side of her face. “I won’t lie to you and say the thought didn’t come, but it’s more like an automatic response for my thoughts to try to go to rock bottom. I’ve worked hard to recognize it. Even if all I can do is just sleep to get away from it. Bottom line is, no I didn’t have any intention to hurt myself. Not only because I promised my mother hen of a brother I’d never do anything again, but I realized something.”

“What?”

I tilt my mouth, so our lips are aligned. “I want to live, Hayley. I want to live for you, for me, for us. Thoughts of you kept me above water last night. Every day, I wake up with you on my mind. I wake up not dreading a new day.

“I know it wasn’t a good look when you came over tonight, but I promise you, I’ve learned a lot of ways to work through thoughts. I’ll keep a low dose of medication, I’ll focus on my positive routines. When I say I’m happy, I am. Some days I get stuck, but I’m at least able to ease my way out of it better than before.”

Hayley kisses me, slow and deep.

“I believe you,” she says once we break apart. “I understand there can be harder days than others. I also understand why It’s a Wonderful Life is your favorite movie now.”

Her voice is soft, but not hesitant. She’s not tiptoeing around the issue. She’s crashing through, bold and bright, accepting all the pointed layers of me. Exactly as she promised.

I kiss her forehead and nod. “Sometimes when I feel the wave pulling me under, I’ll watch it. I love it. I love the reminder that one life makes all the difference, and it would change countless others if we weren’t here.”

Hayley goes quiet for a moment, then looks up at me. “I need you to make me a promise. If we’re doing this, Pretty Boy, I hope you never feel the need to hide from me. I want to brace you through them. Promise?”

I leave a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I promise, as long as you do the same. Rees started hiding his problems from me until I yelled at him to stop. Don’t feel like I’m going to break if you need to toss some of your stress onto me.”

“Good to know because I’m basically a hot mess.”

I laugh and pull her against my chest, resting her head under my chin. “And I thought you couldn’t get any more perfect, Wildfire.”