Page 136 of When the Stars Rise

I feel the sweat beading on my forehead, but I take a few breaths through my nose and try to stay calm.

Keep your shit together.“No.” I shake my head vigorously. I’m not letting her take the blame for anything that happened that night. “No, you didn’t. I don’t know what you remembered but it was an accident. That’s all it was. No one was to blame—”

“I screamed and yanked my dad’s arm. He’d been drinking so his reflexes weren’t as quick as they should have been. And my mom…” She stops and swallows hard. “My mom was so mad at me. I disappointed her.” Hayley’s eyes fill with tears, but she blinks furiously, holding them back. “Noah, please…”

I don’t know what she’s asking or what she expects of me but whatever it is, I’m not going down this road. I wish like hell she hadn’t remembered any of that.

“You don’t have to do this.”Please don’t do this. “We’re not doing this.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

Noah

“Please,Noah. I need to remember things the way they were,” Hayley pleads. “Not the way I wish they’d been. You were right about me. I’ve been running away. I blocked everything out because I couldn’t deal with it. But if you try to shove things out of your head and lock them away… those things will haunt you. It’s why I need Ambien to sleep and why I worry about everything that could go wrong. I have spent six years pretending things didn’t happen the way they did.”

I wipe the sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm. “I don’t see what good it would do to dredge this up again. You just said you don’t want to live in the past anymore,” I point out.

“We have to deal with the past before we can even think about a future. We need to get it all out there, Noah. And then we can find a way to deal with it and move on. Really move on.” She lowers her eyes. “So my dad drank too much and my mom was furious with me. I embarrassed my parents in front of their friends and she told me she was disappointed in me. Remember?”

How could I forget? That entire night is so deeply embedded in my memory that I can’t get it out no matter what I do.

Her mom was pissed and told Hayley she was grounded for the rest of the summer. Hayley was drunk on the champagne thatIgrabbed from the table. I’d also just been caught with my hand up her skirt. My fault. All of it.

“I told her I hated her. Screamed it.” Silent tears run down Hayley’s cheeks, and I wish like hell that this entire night could have stayed locked up tight in a vault so she wouldn’t remember any of this. I’m hoping she’ll stop but she just keeps on talking.

“I told her she was always ruining my fun…” Hayley draws in a shaky breath and puts her hand over her knee to stop it from jumping. “And that I wish I had a cool mom like Shiloh Leroux.”

I lower my head and rub the back of my neck. “You were drunk and you were sixteen—”

“You don’t have to do that anymore, Noah. Look at me.”

With a heavy sigh, I lift my eyes to hers. It hurts to look at her. It hurts to see anyone suffering but when it’s Hales… I fucking hate it.

“You don’t have to try and make it better for me. I’d actually forgotten that I even said it, but my subconscious must have known. It’s one of the reasons why I pushed Shiloh away. The guilt. God, so much guilt. But it’s too heavy to carry through life alone, you know?”

She’s wringing her hands and her leg starts jumping again. I don’t know what to do or what to say to make this better. I would happily carry it alone if it meant she didn’t have to.

“I should never have stolen that champagne.”

“That wasn’t all you. I was your partner in crime,” she says with a smile. “We were in it together. And at the time it was fun. We had no way of knowing we’d end up in a car crash, Noah.”

She needs me to help her deal with this, so I guess that’s what I’ll have to do. “I know. And your mom knew you didn’t mean it. She knew how much you loved her.”

Hayley lets out a ragged breath but forges on, intent on reliving every moment before the crash. “So then we all walked to the car, and it was so tense. My parents were arguing over who should drive. They were angry with each other and angry with me. And then we got into the car, and nobody said a word. You tried to make a joke,” she says with a little laugh.

It was an epic fail. “You asked your dad to turn on the radio.” I don’t know why I’m playing along. This game won’t lead anywhere good. My only hope is that she doesn’t remember anything that happened after the crash.

“Request denied. They took away my phone and said they’d be taking my laptop when we got home. But you know what I was thinking about? How I could sneak out of the house to see you because I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of the summer without seeing your face.”

“Same. I was busy coming up with cunning ways to climb through your bedroom window without getting caught.”

“I was nodding off when I saw the deer and her fawn, and I didn’t even stop to think.” She’s looking off into the distance and I want to stop her from saying more. I want to take back all her memories of that night and keep them safe but it’s too late for any of that because she remembers the deer and the fawn.

“I screamed and I lunged across the seat and grabbed my dad’s arm. That’s why he lost control of the wheel. It was my fault,” she whispers. “I caused the accident.”

“No, you didn’t,” I say, my tone harsher than I’d intended. “It was an accident. That’s all it was. You can’t blame yourself for anything that happened that night—”

“Noah. It’s okay.”