14 year old Hayden got his acceptance letter in the mail, every school he applied for accepted his application. Even the ivy league schools in America accepted his application. He gathered all of the envelopes to bring to his father's study. He knew that this news would finally make his father proud of him.
Just outside of his study he heard his father yelling loudly and the sound of soft weeping, by now he knew the crying was coming from his mother. His father once told him you hurt the ones you love only because you want the best for them and that was the reason he hit him and sometimes hit his mother.
Hayden waited outside of his father's study trying to ignore what was going on inside of that room by humming along to one of his favorite songs, that played in his head every time something bad was happening to him or to someone around him.
The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar, I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the civil war. I'm going to Graceland. Graceland.
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I felt alone.
Even though Mrs. Sutter, Wade, Tanner, and Geoff were around me twenty-four seven, I felt alone. Even though Reign decided to stay in Seattle for some time, and Wesley came to visit I felt alone. Hayden has only been away for the weekend but the days and nights feel longer without him being beside me.
The news of Hayden's arrest was all over the media, everyone wanted the scoop but no one had the facts. I didn't even have the facts. I know just as much as they know. Hayden has been charged with rape and he raped Lina.
I wanted to believe that it wasn't true, but I didn't have any proof to back my assumptions. And in the few phone calls that Hayden and I had, he didn't confirm or deny the rape allegations. He won't tell me anything. The only time he did say he didn't do it was the night he got arrested. I tried to use that as my confirmation that he was innocent but when the police called me down to the station to answer questions I wasn't so sure.
"We are sorry to inconvenience you Miss Greene." The blue eyed officer says to me while in the interrogation room. I later found out his name is Officer Marsh and the man who arrested Hayden is Officer Rowen. Officer Marsh is so much nicer to Hayden than Officer Rowen. "But we do need your full cooperation in this investigation."
"Of course, anything to help Hayden."
"Where were you the night of September fifth?" Officer Rowen asked, taking over the interview. This was the day Hayden went out to help Heather, while I went out with my mother. I do remember Hayden mentioning he spoke with Lina and his saddened behavior when I got back.
"I was at home with Hayden the entire morning and then I went out with my mother."
"Your mother, Eleanor Greene?"
"Yes."
"And where was Mr. Stymest during that time?"
I don't mention the part when Hayden left home to go help Heather. "He was at home, he had work to catch up on so he couldn't join us."
"How long were you out with your mother?"
"I left with her for dinner around six, then we went shopping and I made it back home around nine-thirtyish."
"And did you speak to him at all while you were out?"
"No, and I didn't expect to hear from him either I knew he would be busy."
"So between those three and a half hours you have no idea what he's up to?"
"I know he was working in his study. He doesn't usually go out when he has a lot of work to take care of."
"Has Hayden ever forced you into anything that you said you didn't want to do?"
"During sex or—?" I vaguely recalled that conversation on the beach where Hayden told me he was "controlling and manipulating me to the things that he wanted to do." That could have been true on his part, but I played a part in that too, I wanted to do it. He may have made it sound like a good idea, but I wanted to do everything with him.
"Intercourse." He cuts me off from finishing my question.
"He always asks to make sure first. He never does anything without consent." I tell him, except that time he was drunk and I was asleep. But when I told him to stop he did.
"Has he ever hit you?"
"No never!" I am offended that he even came to this accusation. "Hayden would never hit me, angry or not." I defend my man. "When are you going to release him?"
"Release him?" He almost laughs as he says the words and I frown.
"Yes release him. Hayden didn't do anything, he doesn't belong in this place."
"Miss Greene, we have evidence that your boyfriend raped Lina Burke on the night of September fifth."
"That's not true." I shake my head in disbelief. Police officers always lie during these interrogations to see everyones reactions and to get people to cave in. Who's to say they're not doing that now? "Hayden would never do such a thing."
"How do you explain Mr. Stymest's semen found in Miss Burke? All of her ripped clothes, the bruises and scars all over her body, the witnesses saying they saw Miss Burke leaving your house crying, the wounds on Mr. Stymest's hand, how can you explain all of this?"
I didn't notice any wounds on Hayden's hands. I was with him, I showered with him that same day, I washed him up myself. What are they talking about?
I had nothing else to say. "Can I go home?"
"Sure, just answer this one question. Do you still believe he didn't do it?"
"Yes." I stand from my seat and exit the interrogation room.
I told him that I was sure Hayden didn't do what he's being accused of, but there was evidence. His semen inside of her body. That's enough evidence right there to arrest him and charge him.
"Miss Greene?" Geoff sounds outside of my makeshift study.
"Yes?"
"You have company, Mr. Wesley Stymest is here waiting to see you." Wes is here? His flight was scheduled to leave this morning.
I get up from my seat, my ass hurting from all the sitting I've been doing. I practically live in my study now. I need to distract myself and looking up work for Dr. James new clinical trial temporarily keeps my mind off everything.
If there is anything I learned from Hayden it's sex and work are the perfect distractions from your problems. Since I'm not having sex, I am going to bury myself in work.
Wes was waiting in the lounge room when I went to hug him, "I thought you were leaving?" It came off more of a question than a statement.
"I was supposed to but I couldn't leave now with Hayden in this situation. He helped me when I was in jail so I only want to do the same for him. How are you feeling?"
How are you is the question people have been asking me when they turn on the television and see my boyfriends mugshot. I know this must be hard for you is the comment they make when they see he's been charged with rape. It's going to be okay, stay strong is the advice they give before ending the short phone call. No one sounded as genuinely concerned as Wesley did in this moment. "I'm trying to be okay."
"Have you talked with him?"
"Only a few times." He doesn't sound himself whenever we do talk.
"Hopefully tomorrow Hayden's lawyer can get him a hearing with a judge and talk bail."
"He can get out on bail?"
"Sure he can. That's how I was able to get released, Hayden paid for my bail."
"Is that why he's still upset about it?"
"No, he expected better of me. He was disappointed with me when he found out about that girl. I guess in a way he thought I was somehow going to follow in his footsteps."
I chuckle lightly, "Oh god, I hope not."
"I've always wanted to be like him besides that sexual side of him. The older women he spent his time with taking advantage of him and then him sleeping with Lina all the time. I don't know how he does it—or did it." He corrects himself knowing Hayden has changed a lot since the last time he was here.
"How he did it. Sleeping with someone new everyday and then hating himself and on top of that his nightmares . . . I wanted to stay far away from that lifestyle."
"So you knew everything that was going on with him during that time?"
"No, our father cut off all contact with him when he sent him here. I wasn't allowed to call him, visit him, or even talk about him in our house. After what my father did to him, they tried to pretend he didn't even exist. My hatred for my parents grew everyday while Hayden was away."
I hate hearing the way Hayden's parents were to him. They were horrible to him and they hated him and tried to show it every day. He never deserved any of that.
"How did you guys get in contact again?"
"I found an article of him online. He was a hot new bachelor, twenty-one years old."
"You didn't speak with him for seven years?"
"Yeah." He frowns. "But then he called our house phone and the maid answered and gave me the phone. He was inviting us to see his building, Stymest Enterprise."
"Hayden told me about his dad not liking it so he changed it up for him but he still wasn't satisfied."
"Yeah, he closed the building for renovations. He changed it from the colorful building to the white bland, formal building it is now."
"Colorful? It's hard to imagine Hayden in any type of color." I laugh trying but failing to imagine Hayden in anything besides black or nothing at all.
"This may be hard for you to believe, but Hayden used to wear every color of the rainbow and saved all of his whites for when my dad was around. But then at one point he just changed. He was drinking heavier, only dressed in black clothes—the color our father hates the most—spent his nights fucking his life away. He was losing himself and that was when he called me and just broke down crying and he told me everything he once went through."
It breaks my heart to hear that Hayden was so lost at one point in his life his only escape was drinking and sex. He didn't want that but he didn't have anything else. "And you two have been close ever since?"
"Oh yeah," He nods exaggerating his response. "We spoke on the phone every night, I tried visiting him whenever I didn't have classes, I helped him find some of his therapist. We were trying to make up for all of the lost time. We were the closest we've ever been, the only thing different about him was he never once uttered the words 'I love you'."
"He couldn't do it. It took me leaving him for him to finally say it to me." I tell him. "When I look back on it, I feel bad about what I did to him, leaving him because he wasn't telling me what I wanted to hear. He was dealing with his own struggles and pain and I was being selfish."
"That's exactly what I tried not to do. I never asked him why or said it to him, I tried to come to an understanding myself. The last last time he has ever used the words was when our father tried to kill him but fortunately Hayden walked out of the hospital with only a broken rib."
"Fortunately?" I raise a confused brow.
"It could've been worse." He shrugs. "Does he talk about it? His life in England?"
"Very rarely." I remember I always tried to force him to open up to me so that I could understand him. So that I could understand why he was the way he was, why he did the things he did, what shaped his life to make him the way he once was. "He never wanted to talk about it and the one major conversation we had about it when I first moved in here, I couldn't bear to hear anymore."
"Imagine being there while everything was going on and not being able to do anything about it. The first thing I did when I saw him after the seven years was hug him tight and tell him how sorry I was for not being able to save him and protect him the way someone should've done for him. I knew that he was damaged when I told him I loved him and he just hugged me harder."
"There was nothing you could've done, you know that right?"
"That's what Hayden keeps telling me."
"You were a child Wes, there was nothing Hayden could've expected you to do for him, nor did he want you to do anything for him. You did exactly what you had to do in that house by reminding him daily how much you loved him and being his angel in a house full of devils."
He was quiet for a moment, twisting his semi-blonde hair in his hand. I assume it's a nervous habit. Like the way people bite their nails or crack their knuckles incessantly when they're overwrought with something. Just like Hayden the topic of their past makes them anxious, but unlike Hayden Wesley is more open to sharing his past with me.
"I live in guilt and regret. Maybe if I had spoken up he wouldn't be this person that he is today. Our parents made him this way."
"They didn't make him that way." I begin and I watch his face distort wondering where the hell I was going with this comment. I don't even know where I'm going with this comment.
"They built him into person that he became. Hayden made a choice—a choice that was greatly influenced by what his parents did to him and what he watched other adults around him do. He learned behaviors, habits, and actions from everyone in his life and then he made a choice that lead to his addiction."
"There's a difference?" He questions.
"Between making a person become who they are and building a person into who they become? Yes. No one forced Hayden to pick up that magazine, no one forced him to watch videos online and to touch himself, no one forced him to have sex with Lina, and so on. Hayden made choices that was influenced by things he learned from everyone."
I'm trying to make sense of what I'm saying while I'm saying it. Everything in my head is trying to come out at once and it's confusing me, so I know it's confusing Wesley.
"Take your father for instance," I continue. "I don't know much about the man, but with the little knowledge that I do have, I know he uses people to feel better about himself, he's inflicts pain upon other people to please himself, he's insecure, he has a strong desire for power and control, he's unfaithful, and drinks every day."
"And he's an asshole." Wesley comments and I agree.
"And Hayden he uses people to feel something, when he feels that a situation is out of his control he inflicts pain upon other people to make himself feel better about his situations, he's insecure as fuck, he has a strong desire for power and control, he had sex constantly but never with the same person twice except a very limited few, and at a point he starting drinking heavier."
"And he's an asshole." He repeats with a chuckle.
"He's definitely an asshole." I join in his short laughter.
Hayden's life decisions were greatly influenced by his father. As he once said to me, he's a lot like his father.
"I never thought of it that way Alice."
I'm not trying to say Hayden's parents did no wrong, they fucked up raising him, he has every right to hate them as much as he does. But he also has to take a fine look in the mirror, stop putting the blame on others, and fix himself so he can love himself the way he deserves.
You can never fully love another human being or be able to accept their love for you if you don't love yourself first.
"You know he's changed a lot." Wesley speaks up after a moment of silence. "That night at his charity event, before he left he hugged me and said 'I love you Wes, thank you for coming.'"
"He did?" This was news to me.
"Yeah I was shocked I thought I was imagining it."
Mrs. Sutter joins us in the lounge room, "Excuse me, Miss Greene, Mr. Stymest, are you hungry? I can make lunch now."
"Yes please." I say smiling at the aged woman.
She dismisses herself with a single nod of her head, I stand from the couch and Wes follows, "Thank you for coming Wesley. I needed the company. Mrs. Sutter is great but she's holds her tongue when I talk with her."
"It's nothing Alice. Thank you for coming into Hayden's life. I don't know where he would be without you."
"Fucking multiple girls into submission most likely." I try to joke but there was a certain edge to my voice that made me sound jealous. And quite frankly I was. It's the thought of not having Hayden and Hayden being with others that makes me jealous.
I don't like to imagine how different our worlds would be if Ryder had never forced me to go with him to that bar. I don't want to envision my future without Hayden as a main character in it.
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[a.n.] I'll be updating every Friday again!! Happy Friday!!