The Devil Series Books 1-4 (Devil #1-4), page 13
He takes the garment bag and begins walking while I scramble behind him. “No,” I argue. “I don’t need you buying me clothes. I’m not poor.”
“You’re pretty poor,” he says. He’s walking so fast I have to break into a jog to keep up with him. “And consider it my fine for objectifying you a moment ago. I realize I constantly objectify you, but I keep most of it to myself.”
I’m deeply reluctant to accept this, no matter how much I love the dress or love the effect it seems to have on him.
“Hayes, this is really nice of you, but I don’t even want a dress that costs this much. I’ll be too paranoid to wear it.”
“You’re wearing it to the luncheon,” he replies. “Consider it your new uniform. You’ll make every woman there want to up her game, because you already sell my work better than any portfolio or brochure could.”
“But—” I sputter. “Hayes, I told you I don’t want things from you.”
“Does Jonathan give you gifts?” he counters.
I sigh. “Yes.”
“Then I can too,” he says. We’ve reached my car. He holds the door as I climb in. “Just don’t wear it when you’re out with Sam.”
I wish there was someone with whom I could share the dressing room incident and say, “what do you think it means?” I wish I could tell someone about the way Hayes makes me laugh, and the odd way I sometimes hurt more for him than I think he’s ever hurt for himself.
I could tell Drew, who’s been texting, but she’s in Spain right now and it’s the middle of the night. And aside from her, I’ve kept all of my highs and lows to a very small, closed circle—Liddie, Jonathan, Matt—and now for one reason or another, they’re no longer available to me.
That might be for the best, though. Because not one of them would approve of Hayes.
22
Even before I began working for Hayes, I’d heard about Ben—Hayes’s lawyer and workout buddy, the one person alive other than Jonathan (and now me) who can reach Hayes directly. I’ve always been curious about this man Hayes allowed into the inner sanctum, so though I’m a little overwhelmed planning the luncheon, I don’t object when Hayes asks me to drive across town to pick up paperwork at Ben’s office.
The office is large and modern, with gray cement walls, dark floors, and not a single photo anywhere to give me a hint of who Ben is. I wait in the lobby, feeling oddly nervous, as if I’m meeting a boyfriend’s intimidating dad for the first time. I tell myself I’m being ridiculous, but also…I’m not. Hayes respects Ben’s opinion, so I want him to like me.
For no reason whatsoever I’ve always pictured Ben a bit like Batman’s kindly older butler, a grandfatherly sort, but as a man approaches me with his hand extended, I realize I could not have been more wrong. He’s Hayes’s age, or perhaps younger, and radiates that same overwhelming self-confidence my boss does. Maybe they bonded simply because they were always the two best-looking, most assured people in any room they entered.
“Tali, right?” he asks, shaking my hand. He smiles as he’s pleased by something and tips his head for me to follow him to his office. “I’ve been hearing about you for weeks.”
We turn down the hall together. “Knowing Hayes, I’m sure that means he was bitching about me.”
He laughs. “Well, sort of. But it’s the same way he bitches about me half the time. I can’t believe you got him to take a day off. And smoothies, too. I’m impressed.”
“He was eating like a frat boy with a death wish,” I reply. “I figured I’d do my best to prevent scurvy until Jonathan gets back.”
He holds his office door open, observing me as I walk past and take the seat on one side of his desk. “It’s beginning to make sense now,” he says, taking the other. I raise a brow and he continues. “Hayes doesn’t know this, but I ran a background check on you, before you started. I saw all the photos of you with your ex, and really beautiful women are often not all that interesting. But I get it now. I see why you appeal to him.”
I laugh. “Uh, thanks? But I doubt he’d say I appeal to him.”
He flashes me a smile as he spins his chair toward the filing cabinet. “Of course not. But I’ve known him long enough to read between the lines. He’s gonna miss you when you go.”
The idea of leaving Hayes makes something sink in my stomach. And the possibility that he might miss me anchors it there.
“I doubt he’d admit that either.”
He pulls a file from the drawer and turns. “Probably not. But I suspect you’re the first person who’s tried to take care of him in a long time, if ever. His mom was dating some cricket player in Australia for half his childhood and stuck him in boarding school and sent him off to his father’s every summer. I imagine it was a lot rougher than he’d ever let on.”
My heart squeezes tight. I think of those rare moments when Hayes really lets me see his face, the one that rests between the smirks and the innuendo. When he is all bleak eyes and sharp bones, suddenly fragile. I bet that was a face he showed more as a child, until he learned how to hide it. I wish I could travel back in time to fix that for him...and I wish it harder and more fervently than I wish for anything of my own.
“He’s been in relationships though,” I venture quietly.
He slides the file across the desk to me. “Ella? Well, obviously she’s primarily focused on herself. So I don’t think that counts.”
“You know her?”
He frowns. “I’m not sure anyone truly knows Ella, but yes, we’ve met. She’s charming, but given what she did to Hayes, it’s hard to tell if any of it’s real.”
What really happened? I want to ask. Because Hayes seems to blame himself. Did he cheat? Did he shut her out, become cruel and cold? I’m not sure why the answers matter, when they’re about a man who’s never going to be mine either way.
I take the folder and rise to leave. “I’m sure I’ll see you again,” he says.
“Jonathan’s back soon, so probably not.” I’m not sure why that’s so hard to say aloud. It’s not as if I ever thought I was going to be a permanent fixture of Hayes’s life.
“Hey, Tali?” he says, stopping me as I reach the door. “Don’t give up on him, okay? He needs you more than he’ll ever admit.”
I nod, though I don’t entirely understand what he means. I’m not giving up on Hayes, but I only have a few weeks left before Jonathan’s back. What will happen after that? Will I remain part of his inner circle even then? Could I be more?
I’d really like to stick around long enough to find out.
It's nearly eight by the time I get back to my apartment and call my mother.
“Are you just getting home from work?” she asks. How many times have I called, ignoring the tiny slur to her words? Countless, and I want to ignore it tonight too. She’s the adult. It’s never felt like it was my place to judge or even wonder about how much wine she might drink at night, but that has to change.
“It’s been busy,” I reply distractedly, kicking off my shoes. I have no idea how to broach the topic I need to…but I know it won’t go well.
Her laughter sounds a trifle mocking. “Busy hanging out with the rich and famous, more likely. I’ve heard from Liddie about your glamorous little life out there.”
My jaw grinds as I fill a measuring cup with water. I can easily imagine the spin Liddie put on things, and it’s so like my mother to take her side.
“Since we’re judging each other,” I reply, slamming the microwave door, “Dr. Shriner is worried about you. She said you appear to have been drinking when you show up for family therapy.”
“I’m an adult and we’re not paying for Dr. Shriner to take care of me,” she says. “I’m allowed to have a glass of wine in the evening if I want one.”
We aren’t paying for Dr. Shriner at all, I think. I am. And you can’t even bother to be sober for it.
“Mom,” I say, taking a slow breath as I lean against the counter, “it doesn’t look good when you can’t even stay sober for your kid’s therapy appointment. She isn’t sure Charlotte should be coming home to you under the circumstances. If you could—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she says, her voice so shrill I have to pull the phone from my ear. “Shriner’s just looking for someone to blame for the fact that Charlotte isn’t better.”
If she were calmer right now, more rational, more sober, I might consider what she’s saying. She’s the parent. She’s supposed to be the one of us who’s right about things. But the truth is that she hasn’t been right about much in the past year, and she’s been perfectly happy to let me figure it out in her stead.
“Mom, she just wants to make sure Charlotte’s coming home to someone who’s going to be able to take care of her.” I pull my hair out of its ponytail and run my fingers through it, wishing I hadn’t called. “And right now, she’s saying that person will have to be me or Liddie, so I really need you to just...pull it together, okay? Wait to have your glass of wine until after therapy.”
“She can’t hold Charlotte there,” my mother argues.
“Jesus, Mom,” I snap, pinching the bridge of my nose, “you’re missing the point. Charlotte needs to come home to someone capable of staying sober. Can you do it or not?”
“I don’t answer to her,” my mother replies, “and I don’t answer to you either.”
I blink in shock when I hear the dial tone and realize she’s hung up on me. She fucking hung up on me.
Which means Dr. Shriner probably had a point. And unless something changes fast, I really might have to move home.
23
We all have our talents, and mine is avoiding unhappy thoughts. I mostly try to forget the miserable conversation with my mother, and when I remember, I simply assure myself that even if she didn’t sound receptive, I made my point, and things will turn around.
There’s not much time to think about it anyway because I’m so busy getting Hayes’s luncheon planned I can barely breathe, much less dwell. It seems almost every attendee wants to bring extra friends, and I swear to God if I hear about one more woman with a “special dietary need”, I’m going to lose my shit.
Two days before the event, the gift bags arrive completely botched, which leaves me frantically assembling them myself on Hayes’s living room floor. I’m halfway through counting out lip balms when the emergency phone rings, and I’m seriously tempted to let it go to voice mail—it’s not as if there’s ever been a call to that phone that was actually an emergency. They’re usually of the I’m looking especially old today variety.
Reluctantly, my hand slides beneath a mountain of ribbon and cellophane for the phone, trying to banish the weariness from my voice as I answer.
“I need Hayes,” the woman on the other end of the line croaks. “It’s an emergency. My ten-year-old…I think he’s got a broken nose. There’s blood everywhere.”
“Uhhhh…” Hayes does not treat kids, as far as I know, and this sounds a little more pressing than his booked-out-three-weeks schedule will allow. “If he’s bleeding heavily, he needs to go to the emergency room.”
“No,” she insists. “We can’t. My son is Trace Westbrook. If we go to the ER, the paparazzi will be all over us asking how it happened.”
I know little about him aside from the fact that he has a popular YouTube channel, but I find it deeply suspicious that his mom is more concerned about paparazzi than she is her son’s health.
“Hayes understands the situation and has helped us many times before,” she says brusquely. “Just call him.”
She hangs up, and something sours in my stomach. If Hayes has helped many times, that means this kid has gotten injured many times. Why would Hayes be going out of his way to help a parent avoid the paparazzi instead of sending him to the emergency room? Surely he realizes how suspicious it all is?
Hayes wouldn’t help a family hide abuse. I know he wouldn’t.
But you also thought Matt would never cheat, a voice says. You thought he supported your dreams the way you supported his. You’re a terrible judge of character.
I call him, feeling strangely certain the bottom is going to fall out. That he’s going to disappoint me. I pull my legs tight to my chest.
“If this is another party question, you’re fired,” he answers. “Tell Jonathan his adoption is off. He can get a cat instead of a baby—much easier on everyone.”
Please don’t disappoint me, Hayes. Please don’t prove I was wrong about someone else.
“I just got a call from a woman who says she’s Trace Westbrook’s mom.” My voice is quiet, hesitant. “She said he broke his nose…and she doesn’t want to go to the hospital because they’ll ask questions.”
I hug my knees tighter, waiting for him to clarify this, to explain why he’s helping these people instead of letting them hang.
Instead, I hear only a curse and the screech of tires. “I’m turning around. They’re in Laurel Canyon, but I don’t remember the exact address,” he says. “Get it, phone it into my car, and meet me there.”
“Meet you?” I do not want to be a part of this. And if I meet this kid’s parents and it’s as bad as it sounds, Hayes might end up dealing with multiple broken noses. Including his own.
“Yes,” he says. “I need the black bag in the linen closet in my bathroom. Get it and get there as fast as you can.”
He’s so cool and collected under normal circumstances that hearing him sound worried is deeply unsettling. “Tell me why you’re helping these parents cover up a broken nose,” I say, my voice hard. I will quit on the spot if I don’t like his answer.
“I will,” he says, “but first, I need that address. Now.”
I pull up to a sprawling rambler, framed by short, stocky palms and gnarled old fig trees. Hayes’s car is already there, so I grab the bag and head to the door. A woman answers, looking like death warmed over. “He’s upstairs,” she says, clutching her robe around her. A small pale face peers over the couch at me, eyes wide and sad, hair matted to her head.
I put my anger on hold and run up the stairs, two at a time.
The kid in the bed looks even younger than I’d have expected, and Hayes is holding his hand, talking to him about skiing with feigned calm. He glances over his shoulder. “Valium,” he says. I open the bag and begin fumbling through bottles until I find it. “Get me two and a glass of water.” There’s no doubt this is an order. There’s a degree of don’t fuck with me in his voice I’ve never heard before.
I run to the bathroom beside Trace’s room and fill a disposable cup with water before I run back, handing it to Hayes along with the pills.
“I need you to swallow these for me,” he says to the kid, who begins crying. “It won’t hurt, I swear. You aren’t going to feel a single thing.”
Hayes gives the boy the pills and holds the cup to his lips, still discussing ski slopes, his voice so calm even my breathing slows.
When the boy’s eyes droop and then close, Hayes reaches into his bag and withdraws a very, very long needle. Between that and the blood, I feel like I can barely stay upright.
“I need you to hold him down,” he says quietly. “Can you do that?”
My jaw falls open to argue, but I see he means it, and maybe it’s bad judgment, but I trust him. Implicitly. “How?”
“Grab his shoulders,” he says. “Make sure he doesn’t jerk while I’m injecting the lidocaine.”
Swallowing, I do as I’m told, going to the opposite side of the bed and leaning over him. He looks like he’s out cold, but my hands band around his biceps as tight as I can anyway.
Hayes glances at me. “You’re looking a little pale,” he says. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I reply, my voice breathless and threadbare.
He holds Trace’s jaw with one hand and with the other presses the needle into the upper bridge of his nose, right beside his eye.
“Oh, God,” I whisper.
“Hold him, Tali,” he growls. “Just look away. I need you. Don’t pass out on me now.”
I close my eyes, trying to hold it together. I’ve never thought of myself as someone prone to acting like a girl, but I’ve also never seen a needle that fucking big aimed at someone’s eye.
“What was the name of that ride at Universal?” he asks, in that same calm voice he was using on the kid. “The Harry Potter one.”
I breathe through my nose. “I don’t…I don’t remember. There was the Hagrid one. Oh, or the Hippogriff? Why?”
“You can look now,” he says. I open my eyes and his mouth quirks upward. He was distracting me like a child, and it worked.
He starts spraying something up Trace’s nose, with a tube. “More lidocaine,” he explains quietly. “And now we wait for it to kick in.” He begins wiping blood off the boy’s face, as gently as he might his own child’s.
I’ve never seen him like this before—acting like he cares. Acting like something matters. I want to look away and I can’t.
“Is he going to be okay?” his mother asks behind us, her voice tremulous. I hadn’t even realized she was there, and it’s hard not to glare at her, not to assume the worst. Would Hayes cover up abuse? I can’t imagine he would, yet he does all sorts of things for money I would not. He drives out to houses where women proposition him and let dogs jump on his back. Do I really know where he’d hit bottom? Do you ever know, with anyone?
“It’s a basic fracture,” says Hayes. “I had them several times myself as a kid. I’m about to push the bones into place, and he’ll be good as new.”
He gets a tool out of his bag and glances at me. “You probably want to shut your eyes again,” he says.
I do, feeling too confused to be angry. I don’t understand how he can be so gentle and sympathetic, yet not intervene. These people might be claiming the kid is simply clumsy, frequently hurt...but Hayes wouldn’t know if that was the case. That’s why they should be forced to go through the hospital, where it will be documented. Where someone who knows the signs of abuse will catch them. And Hayes must realize this too.
