I settled my bandaged hands on his knees while I considered what to say. Even though I’d lost my own mother, I was finding that I didn’t have the words. Sometimes, there just wasn’t anything to say. No way to express the sorrow running through my veins on his behalf.
So, I eventually decided to go with the only truth I could offer at that moment. “I love you, and I’m here for you.”
He dropped his bag of treats and pulled me up and onto his lap. Burying his face in my hair, he sighed deeply. “I love you so fucking much.”
Tears filled my eyes as I realized that he wasn’t going to reject me. He wasn’t pushing me away and retreating into himself. He wasn’t going it alone.
Hayle Sharpe was letting me in during what may have been the worst day of his life, and he would never know how much that meant to me.
While he held me, and I ran my fingertips through his hair, a new kind of hope blossomed in me. If we could survive this, we could survive anything. This unconventional relationship I’d found myself in with the Sharpe brothers wasn’t a fleeting fancy. It was built on a foundation of pain and betrayal and tragedy. But it was also built on friendship and forgiveness and love.
We could do this.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thea
When Hayle and I made it back downstairs, we found Tristin and Leo in the kitchen, reheating what I assumed was the dinner Susan had made fresh hours ago.
“Hungry?” Tristin asked.
I probably shouldn’t have been, but I could no longer ignore the rumbling in my stomach. “Yes. Do you need help?”
“I think we can handle this much,” Leo said as he handed me a slice of buttered French bread. He offered one to Hayle, who merely shook his head before slumping onto a barstool.
I took the seat next to him and devoured my bread while I watched Tristin dish Caesar salad into individual bowls. Leo removed some kind of pasta dish from the oven, and the heavenly aroma made my mouth water.
They both placed helpings of food in front of Hayle, but he ignored them while the rest of us dug in. No one seemed to know what to say, so we ate in silence, the clinking and scraping of silverware against dishes filling the kitchen.
“Has anything happened?” Hayle finally asked, when I’d all but licked my plate clean. His attention was on the front of the house, where blue and red lights still flashed in the driveway.
Tristin froze, but Leo was the one who spoke, his voice thick with regret. “They found Lily.”
Hayle gripped the island, as though he was hanging on for dear life. Clearing his throat, he said, “Good. I mean, that’s good, right? Now, we don’t have to worry about her body washing up on the beach somewhere.”
I reached over the small space between us and squeezed his thigh. “It’s good.”
He looked at me, his brown eyes growing just a little warmer as he peered at me. “At least we don’t have to worry about her showing up again years from now, like some soap opera villain, back from the dead.”
My heart stuttered at the joke that fell flat. I knew what he was trying to say, though. No matter what, he was relieved that I no longer had to worry about Lily coming after me. At his urging, I’d told him an abbreviated version of what had happened before he arrived at the cliff. He’d tried to apologize for what his mother had done, but I’d stopped him. Her actions weren’t any more his fault than they were mine.
“I don’t want to have a funeral,” Hayle said suddenly. “It’s not right to celebrate her life when she caused so much pain during it.”
“Are you sure?” The one thing I knew about funerals was that they were for the living instead of the dead. He might not want to celebrate his mother right now, but maybe he needed the closure a burial would provide.
“I’m sure.”
“What about something private?” Tristin suggested. “We could spread her ashes over her flowers or something.”
Hayle laughed softly, though there was little humor in the sound. “I don’t know. That seems like something she would like too much.”
I released his thigh and tugged one of his hands into my lap, linking our fingers together. “I know your memories of her probably feel tainted right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t let yourself focus on the good. You