Page 57 of Finding Hayes
fifteen
. . .
Hayes
I was exhaustedfrom my shift at the firehouse, and I’d climbed into bed after waiting out in the family room to see if Savannah would want to talk after I gave her the letter. I hadn’t heard anything from her, so I’d decided to go to bed. It was going to be a long couple of months living with someone who wouldn’t speak to me. We’d been fine up until our wedding day when I’d brought up her leaving.
I was the one who should be pissed, not her.
But I’d given her the letter in hopes she’d understand that I’d been hurt that she’d left.
And I didn’t let people hurt me often.
But Savannah had always had the power to hurt me because she’d implanted herself in the center of my fucking heart from as early as I could remember.
“Woody?” Her voice was a whisper from my doorway, and I sat up. The room was completely dark, aside from the little bit of light from the moon peeking in through the blinds.
“Hey. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my eyes and glanced at my phone on the nightstand to see that it was nearly two o’clock in the morning.
I could see her silhouette moving toward the bed, and she came to sit on the side next to me. “I read your letter.”
A groggy chuckle escaped my lips. “It wasn’t a long letter. It shouldn’t have taken that long.”
“I was processing.”
“There’s not a lot to process, Sav. You left. I missed you. I wrote you a few letters.”
“There are more letters?”
I cleared my throat, deciding how real I wanted to be. But we’d gone so long without seeing one another, so I decided to lay it on the line. “There are fifty-two letters.”
“Hayes.”
“Savannah,” I said, mimicking her serious tone.
“Don’t mess with me.”
“I’m not messing with you. I wrote you once a week for a year. I guess I kept hoping that at some point you wouldn’t return one, and you’d actually read it,” I admitted.
“I don’t understand. Why would you try so hard to reach me when you were dying to get rid of me?”
“Why would you think I was dying to get rid of you?”
“I called you that night. The night before I moved,” she whispered. “I told you about my dad.”
I pushed back so I was leaning against the headboard and placed my finger and thumb beneath her chin, turning her to face me. “I never got a call from you. I heard about you moving from your mother when I went over to your house the next day. She told me you’d moved and acted like I was the enemy and slammed the door in my face.”
“That’s because I told her that you wanted nothing to do withme because she’d made a mess of everything.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Sav? None of this is making sense. Why would it affect my friendship with you if your mother had an affair? I didn’t give a shit then, and I don’t give a shit now. That has nothing to do with you. And do you honestly think I wouldn’t have come immediately if you told me that your father had cancer?” I was pissed now. None of this made any fucking sense.
She started shaking her head, tears streaming down her face. “I saw the texts. I saw what you wrote about me.”
“I thought you said I didn’t respond to you?” I was starting to lose my patience with this.
