I pull out her list and the pen I had with it and scribble it down. “Done. My mum can show you. She makes all of her bread.”
Hayleigh shakes her head. “Oh, no, it’s okay. Your mum has so much to do already, she doesn’t want me mithering.”
I put my hand on her knee to still it. “She would love to, it isn’t mithering.”
I hand her the plate of food, and she takes a bite out of her cheese and smoked ham sandwich. “But, I don’t have anything to do for her in return.”
I could throttle her mother. “Shortcake, not everyone wants something in return. There are people out there who only want to help you.”
“Sorry.” Her eyes fall into her lap, and I hate that she’s so conditioned to say sorry or make herself smaller. It’s something she’s done more and more this past year.
“Hey, look at me.” When she doesn’t, I put my plate down and kneel in front of her. “Hayleigh.” Her eyes meet mine. “Don’t ever apologise for being you, okay?”
I think she’s going to push me away, to tell me that she’s fine, like she has this past year, but nothing surprises me more when she asks. “Do people hate me, Nate, for what happened?”
My blood boils because that fucker Pete is still firmly digging his claws into Hayleigh. She’s doubting herself because of him, and for some reason, she thinks everyone hates her when that’s so far from the truth.
It’s time I start showing Shortcake here exactly how much she's loved.
Chapter 7
Hayleigh
Fuck, fuck and more fucks.
I overshared. Why did I do that? Why did I say what I was thinking at that precise moment in time? Why? Because Nate Peterson is a magician of some sort. He must have waved some magic around me to make me spill the beans, because deep down, that’s what I feel. That somehow everything Pete Winters did was ultimately my fault, and by the look on Nate’s face. I’m right.
He slowly sets his plate of food down, takes the list out of the bag, and takes out a pen. He writes something right at thebottom of the paper, folds it once he’s done and puts it back in the bag. Curious, I ask. “What did you write?”
“That was for me to know and you to find out, but not yet. It’s something I need to do.” He takes a bite of his sandwich, and the silence around us is deafening. “You ask if people hate you because of what he did?”
I nod.
“They don’t. Not one single person that matters to you hates you or thinks you did anything wrong.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to try to stem the flow of tears threatening to spill onto my face. I want to open up to Nate. I don’t know why, because I haven’t even been able to open up fully to Emmy or Lacey, but Nate, he’s safe. “You-uh-you never asked, that day, when my mother called. You never asked what was wrong or pushed me to tell you what happened. Why?” It’s as if my brain can’t comprehend someone not wanting something from me. No matter how small.
He shrugs. “It wasn’t my place to push you for an explanation. That’s your business, and if you want to tell me, great, I’ll gladly hear everything there is about you, but you should only be sharing things that you want to share, not because you think you owe that other person anything.”
I take a deep breath and decide that sharing is something I can do with him. “My mother has always been very good at criticising everything that I do. She had a say in everything I ever did. Dating, jobs, clothes, you name it, and Morgana Wallcroft had the final say.” I wait for him to jump in and say something, like everyone else always does with pearls of wisdom or sympathy, but Nate stays quiet, and so I carry on.
“She was over the moon when I introduced her to Pete. I should have known then that something wasn’t quite right.” I laugh, but it lacks any humour. “You see, Morgana and Frank Wallcroft are old money. They’re all about image and havingpowerful friends in the right places; it just so happened that one of her close friends was Pete’s mother. I didn’t know it at the time, and I assumed his interest in me wasbecauseof me, but it wasn’t. It was all a very well-crafted lie on our parents' behalf.”
Nate’s suddenly sitting beside me, he doesn’t speak, instead he takes hold of my hand and rubs small, slow circles on the back of it.
I give him a grateful smile. “He was nice at first, polite and attentive, but then over time, little things happened that made me doubt what kind of person he was. When I challenged him, he would say things like, ‘Is that what you really think of me?’ and ‘Don’t I love you, aren’t I good to you?’ One of his favourite things to do was to compare himself to Chad. He’d point out how much of a horrible person he was and how he wasn’t a gentleman, and because I had fucking blinkers on, I believed every word he said because there was no way Pete was like Chad.” I roughly swipe at the tears that fall freely. “And he wasn’t the same, not in the same way. Chad was outwardly an arsehole to Emmy; he showed his true colours time and time again, but Pete…he was stealthy with it.”
“You weren’t to know Shortcake. Some people are so good at hiding their true selves that they start to believe their own lies. That’s not on you.”
“My mother called that day demanding I come home, because my sister is getting engaged. She told me that maybe she will make it down the aisle. Something I couldn’t do.”
Nate nudges my arm, and when I turn my head, he has the paper again. He unfolds it, keeps the part where he wrote before hidden, and writes.
Piss off, Morgana Wallcroft
I burst out laughing. “Okay, hotshot, how do you plan on doing that?”
He throws me a wink. “I have my ways. For now, though, you need to eat up because a furious lady is standing by the hidden door where we came through.”
