This One Moment (Pushing Limits, #1)(18)

“Did she love him?”

“Well, she wasn’t picking out their china pattern yet, but she did care about him.” Kayla pressed her teeth into her lower lip, once again studying me like I was a piece of artwork to be analyzed. “Hailey’s not the same girl you left behind. Between you leaving and what he did, she’s changed.”

“Changed how?”

“Hailey used to be the kind of girl who believed in long-term relationships. She’s not that girl anymore. She won’t let guys get close to her. I mean, she’ll let them get close, if you know what I mean. But all they are to her is mindless sex with no commitment.”

So, pretty much how things were with me.

“How often was she…?” The words clung at the back of my throat. I didn’t want to know the truth but asked anyway. “How often does she have one-night stands?”

“At least once a week…when we go dancing.”

“And they’re all strangers?”

Kayla nodded, as thrilled with this as I was. This didn’t sound like the Hailey I remembered. But the Hailey I remembered was the one from five years ago. We’d both changed since then. Though, from the sound of it, we’d both changed in the same way.

“Does she go out with any of them after?”

“You mean date them? No. She’s not interested in them after that. Or as she puts it, ‘Once I’ve screwed them, what’s the point of going out with them? I already know they’re only interested in sex. I can get that from someone else without the drama.’?” She nailed Hailey’s voice.

The twinge of jealousy that had appeared at the thought of her ex kneed me in the nuts. Hard. In all the years I’d been living in Northbridge and had been in love with Hailey, I had fantasized about being her first—and about being the only guy she ever slept with. I’d woken up many a morning sporting a hard-on to rival all others because I’d been dreaming about making love to her. Even after I moved away and had been screwing a shitload of other women, some delusional, caveman part of me wanted to believe that Hailey would always remain a virgin. For me.

An alarming thought formed. “Were there any guys who wanted more from her after they f*cked her? Maybe someone who tried to press his luck again?”

Deep creases formed between Kayla’s eyebrows. “You think one of those guys hurt her?”

“It’s possible.” A possibility I wanted to slam my fist into the wall over. If I had stayed in Northbridge, none of this would’ve happened. Hailey would’ve been safe.

In my case, the one-night stands made sense. It was impossible to have a girlfriend when you were on the road all the time. But I wasn’t a monk. I was a full-blooded male who happened to love sex.

Except in the beginning, I had used sex to chase away the loneliness. I pretended I was f*cking Hailey…until I could no longer pretend. Those girls never felt like Hailey. Those girls never smelled like Hailey. Those girls never sounded like Hailey. Eventually I stopped pretending, and the loneliness continued to grow, never fully chased away whenever I f*cked some random girl.

But it was different with Hailey. She wasn’t on the road. She didn’t need to fill the loneliness.

“Did anyone make her feel uncomfortable?” I asked. “Maybe he tried to have sex with her again? Or maybe he kept trying to talk to her and she brushed him off?”

The creases in Kayla’s forehead deepened. “There was one guy. She told him a few times to leave her alone. He finally did when Dylan, my boyfriend, showed up and told him to take a hike.”

“Did he ever bother her again?”

“No, but he watched her a lot whenever we were at the same club as him. We eventually went elsewhere because he was getting beyond creepy.”

“Did you see him again after that?”

She shook her head.

“When was this?” Hailey hadn’t mentioned this to me, but what did I expect? She had just woken from a coma. She was confused at what had happened to her and at a loss about why I was back in town.

“About two months ago,” Kayla said.

“Did you tell the cops?”

“Yes, but since I couldn’t really describe him and I didn’t know his name, they couldn’t do much about it.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. He wasn’t the kind of guy who stood out in a crowd. And he definitely wasn’t Hailey’s usual type.”

“What’s her usual type?”

Kayla cringed, but instead of answering me, she picked up a brown moving box.

I put my hand on the box, halting her progress to the door. “What’s her usual type?”

The air in her lungs came out as a huff, and she placed the box on the floor. “It’s more like two types. She tends to go for either the jock or the moody musician. Even better if the moody musician is tattooed.”

Her gaze dropped to the tribal tiger tattoo on my arm, partly obscured by my T-shirt sleeve. My heart stilled momentarily, reading too much into her words. It didn’t mean those guys had been a replacement for me. It just meant she had a thing for musicians. The jock type made more sense, though, since she was an athlete herself.

Kayla and I spent the next two hours moving her stuff into her boyfriend’s apartment. We didn’t mention Hailey for the rest of the time. But that didn’t stop my thoughts from dwelling on her and on the possibility the guy from the nightclub was the attacker.