Page 124 of The Way I Hate Him
And then Ryland and Abel walk out of the apartment and down the stairs.
Silence fills the room as regret, guilt, and sorrow consume me in a chokehold, making it impossible to fully fill my lungs with air.
“Are you okay?” Hayes finally says.
“Does it look like I’m okay?” I ask as I swipe at my tears.
“I don’t want to hear your apologies because they’ll fall on deaf ears. Nothing you say will make this right. You’re dead to me, Hattie.”He’s done with me. His own sister. What the hell was all this for? I look at Hayes, and once again, I see his contrite expression.I am so fucking over this. My heart has just been torn apart.“You took a brutal beating from him...all for what?” I toss my hands up in the air. “You said it all along, to stay away from you, not to get involved, yet there was no point. There was no reason for it all, for all of this.” Snot drips from my nose. “This . . . this feud was pointless. The agony I’ve been going through, it was pointless. The trashing of this room was all pointless.” I gesture to the floor, taking in the blood splatter, the mangled rug, the . . .
My eyes narrow in on an envelope on the floor. A familiar envelope.
“What is that?” I ask as I stand from the bed and pick up the envelope, the handwriting shocking me to my very core. I hold it up to Hayes. “Where the hell did this come from?”
He swallows. “That’s what I came to give you last night, but you were drunk.”
Hand shaking, I run my fingers over the return address: Cassidy Rowley.
The envelope is addressed to Hayes Farrow.
“How long have you had this?” When he doesn’t answer, I yell, “How long, Hayes?”
“A few months.” His hands fall in his pockets.
“You’ve had a letter from my sister for a few months, and you’re just now mentioning it?”
“I forgot about it. Matt gave it to me on tour. I stuffed it away somewhere, and I found it yesterday when I was shuffling through some of my shit.”
“Why didn’t you mention it? I would have helped you look for it.”
“I didn’t want to make any promises in case I couldn’t find it.”
I flip it over and see that it isn’t open. “You didn’t read it.”
He shakes his head. “Anything Cassidy wanted to say to me, I didn’t think I needed to hear.”
I check the postmark date and notice it’s from a week before she passed. My throat closes in on me. “This . . . this was important. You should have opened it. You should have told me.”
“Hattie, I’m sorry. The moment I found it, I brought it over to you.”
“No, you didn’t.” I shake my head. “You watched me get drunk at the bar.” He takes a step toward me, but I back away. “You shouldn’t even have sung a song. You should have texted me the moment you found it and told me it was important.” I clutch the envelope to my chest. “But you didn’t. Instead, you tried to what . . . get on my good side? I’d say seduce me, but we both know how last night went. I just...I don’t get it, Hayes. If you cared about me—”
“I do care about you.”
“No, you don’t,” I shout at him. “If you cared about me, you wouldn’t have ever fucked around with my feelings. You wouldn’t have strung me along. You would have found a way to make things right with Ryland rather than let him believe you were a horrible man, which affected me.”
“I didn’t think I was going to . . . going to—”
“Going to what? Fall for me?” I ask. “God, you can’t even say it.”
He pulls on the back of his neck, staring down at me. “Hattie, I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
“Just leave, Hayes.” I shake my head.
“Hattie, please,” he says, his crushing tone drawing my attention. His shirt is ripped across the chest, giving me a glimpse of his bare skin. There are blood smears across his face, and his eyes are full of sorrow. “Please, don’t shut me out.”
“Don’t shut you out? Coming from the man who has done nothing but that to me this entire time.” I press my hand to my chest.I’m so fucking sick of crying over this man. I am so, so done. “I don’t want to even look at you right now.”
His lips seal together as he slowly nods. Quietly, he picks up his hat from my nightstand and heads toward the door, his shoulders slumped, and when he makes one more attempt to get my attention, I feel my body turn to stone, unwilling to give him a second look.
