Fighting for Love (Second Chances #4)(58)

It is her. It’s the same Hayley.

What made it worse was that the guy who was supposedly me in the picture didn’t have the same body or tattoos, but I sure as hell recognized who they belonged to … Kyle Andrews.

“Holy shit.”

How am I going to tell Shelby this? What I really wanted to know was how someone she’d known for years would want to hurt her. She hated me, that was evident, but it didn’t make sense why she would deliberately cause problems with Shelby. All along it was her when Shelby and I were trying to think of other scenarios, including blaming my own sister.

Back when I met Hayley I had no clue what her name was, just like a lot of the other women I slept with. I had met her about eight months ago at a party when she basically shoved me into a room and stripped all of her clothes off. After that I swore I would never forget her; although, that might have been because the bitch went crazy on me and threw a vase at my head when I wouldn’t sleep with her. Granted, she was drunk because I could smell the liquor on her breath, but I literally had to pry her hands off of me. It also happened to be the last party I ever went to.

Mason and his wife, Claire, were the ones who helped me realize that there was more to life than winning and f*cking. A long time ago, I knew there was more to life, but I lost my way. Hayley was the first girl I deliberately turned down, and it just so happened that the first time I tried to do something right, it bit me in the ass. She was the first of many girls who fell in line hating me as well.

The only thing I worried about was what was going to happen to Lexi and Shelby. Lexi had a loyalty to her sister and also to her best friend, but if she picked sides she would lose one of them. I didn’t want Shelby to lose her best friend, but I also refused to let her get screwed around by someone she thought she could trust.

I was going to tell her, but I didn’t want to wake her up when she looked so beautiful and peaceful asleep on the bed. Because when morning came, there wasn’t going to be anything peaceful about her day.




AFTER WATCHING SHELBY SLEEP FOR a couple of hours, dreading every minute of the sun coming up, I finally nodded off and shut my eyes for the last hour of darkness with her in my arms. Her alarm went off and I swatted it so hard that it flew across the room, making her jolt awake.

“Oh wow,” she mumbled groggily.

Grabbing her by the shoulders, I made her lay back down. “You didn’t hear anything, angel. Come back to sleep.”

“Matt,” she groaned, trying to get out of my hold, “I need to get ready for work.”

“No, you don’t. Just stay with me today,” I begged.

She smacked my arm, which was around her waist, and laughed. “What’s with you this morning? Usually you’re ready to go by now.”

Yeah, that was when I had a full night’s sleep and I wasn’t worried about telling her the bad news. “Come on, Matt, let me go,” she ordered playfully.

Finally releasing her, she got out of bed and went straight for the bathroom. She came back out with her toothbrush in her mouth and entered her closet. “I have something to tell you,” she mumbled from inside her closet.

She came out with a set of clothes and raced back into the bathroom to spit out her toothpaste. “Oh yeah, and what exactly is that?” I asked.

After turning on the shower water, she took off her T-shirt and underwear, tossing them at me before marching back in the bathroom to get into the shower. “Well, after everything that happened last night I didn’t get a chance to talk to you about what Hayley told me,” she called out.

Yeah, I can only imagine what that lying bitch told you.

I got out of bed and stood by the bathroom door so we could talk instead of yelling across her room. “What did she say?” I inquired curiously.

“Believe it or not, I never even thought to ask her how she met Kyle in the first place. When I finally asked her last night, she said that one of her dance students introduced them to each other. She said her name was either Mary or Maria. Do you know anyone by those names?”

She peeked at me from around the shower curtain, raising her brows, and waited on my answer. “Yes,” I replied, “I know a couple of Mary and Maria’s, but no one that would pertain to this situation.”

Pursing her lips, she pushed the curtain back in place and continued on with her shower. “Hmm … I don’t know then. She said she would find her records and give us a name in a couple of days. Maybe that’ll help us figure out what all is going on.”

I scoffed. A couple of days?

She was biding time to think up more lies. Shelby turned off the shower and flung the curtain back, dripping wet and naturally beautiful. Handing her the clean towel that hung on the rack, I stepped out of the way. “Thank you,” she uttered warmly.

“You’re welcome, angel.”

Turning on my heel, I walked over to her laptop that I had sitting on the floor, along with the picture of Hayley, and set them both on the bed. “Is everything okay? You’re not acting right this morning,” she pointed out, furrowing her brows.

Reaching for her hand, I pulled her over to the bed and made her sit beside me. “Last night when I uploaded your pictures with Lexi and Hayley, I found out something really important.”

She lifted her brows and waved me on. “Keep going. What did you find?”