Mayci Neeley Reveals the Painful Moment She Learned Her Son’s Father Died — Read and Listen (Exclusive)

Mayci Neeley is sharing one of her life’s most vulnerable moments in her new memoir, Told You So.

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star, 30, is opening up about the death of son Hudson’s father, Arik Mack. Mack was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Mayci at the time of his fatal accident in 2015.

Speaking with PEOPLE about putting together the honest memoir, Mayci admits, “Certain parts of it were hard to share.”

“Because I do talk about the heartbreak of being cheated on and I feel like part of me didn’t want to share it because I was like, ‘I don’t want to taint the story in any way,'” she says of her relationship with Arik, both of whom were 19 at the time.

“It is my son’s dad, at the end of the day, and I always want him to look good and I want my son to have whatever he reads to be positive. And I will say, most of the book is very positive about it. But I think going through that and then him dying literally within an hour of finding that out was so confusing and intense for me to deal with — the emotion of being upset at him, and then all of a sudden he passes away. All you feel is love and sadness.”

In addition to Hudson, Mayci is mom to daughters Harlow, 4½, and Charli, 10 weeks, with husband  Jacob Neeley, who also legally adopted Hudson, per a 2023 family YouTube video.

Writing the book put Mayci back in “the grief process,” though she makes peace with the fact that, “I only have love and I feel like I will always have a piece of him in my heart.”

“When someone passes away, all you think about is the good times and that’s why I’m happy to remember. Overall, our relationship was very happy and positive. We never fought, everything was always amazing. We just had that one situation and it sucks. But at the end of the day, all I have is love and happiness in my heart for him.”

Mayci also speaks about getting into a relationship with Arik after surviving a previous abusive relationship. “It was so much better [with Arik] than my abusive relationship. I tell my parents even to this day, ‘I would do my relationship with Arik over and over and over again than having to do one more day with my abuser.’ ”

In sharing her honest experience, Mayci hopes to paint a fair picture for Hudson, 10, because “Sharing his memory so that it’s alive with Hudson is what’s most important to me.”

Read and listen to an exclusive excerpt from Told You So below.

‘Told You So’ excerpt

The day my boyfriend dies, he texts me to say he’s sorry. He loves me. He’ll never forgive himself for hurting me while I’m pregnant with his baby.

Arik’s text ends with a typo. A single letter J. I don’t understand why he hasn’t finished his thought until my mom takes me out to lunch that afternoon. While scrolling Instagram at our usual table, I see a picture of Arik on my timeline with the caption “R.I.P.” He’s crashed his car while texting me.

The moment was surreal to the pregnant teen, who initially believed the post to be a joke. Then, it was joined by other tributes and links to news stories detailing the crash that took Arik’s life.

That night, 300 people follow me on Instagram. Hunched over my phone on my parents’ couch, I scroll past dozens of posts about Arik: pictures of him playing baseball, grinning at the camera, laughing with his family. There are screenshots of news stories about the crash that killed him, photos of people sobbing, and broken-heart emojis, all mixed in with the usual Instagram content — blurry selfies, food porn, a mediocre sunset. Those happy photos feel like they’ve been posted from another universe. Reminders of a time before I got pregnant and had to move back in with my Mormon parents in Southern California. Before I had to leave my scholarship and Division 1 tennis career at Brigham Young University behind.

I feel like I have to post something. But I have no idea what to write. I don’t want to admit that hours before Arik died, I’d learned he cheated on me. Devastated, I’d said the cruelest things I could think of: that he wouldn’t meet his baby unless it was in court; that he would never see me again; that I would never forgive him.

How could I explain via Instagram what it felt like to learn — at that dingy restaurant with my mom — that Arik died while texting me to ask for forgiveness, to tell me that I deserved better, to say that he loved me? How do you write a post about that?

In the aftermath, Mayci grappled with grief while navigating her pregnancy, knowing her child would never get to meet their dad.

When you’re 14 weeks pregnant and your boyfriend dies, people say a lot of things. “You’ll meet someone else. You’re still young.” “You have plenty of time to find a father for your baby.” “You don’t look that sad in the pictures you post on Instagram.” “God has a plan for you.” I’ve known all along that God has a plan for everyone. I just don’t know why mine is so s—–.

A victim of abuse and sexual violence who was now looking at single parenthood and an uncertain future, Mayci dealt with feeling grateful for the support she did have from her family while also feeling depressed at what her life as a mom might look like. Low points led to thoughts of suicide.

By 20, I’ve already been drugged and raped. I’ve escaped an abusive relationship, only to fall in love with someone amazing and get pregnant unexpectedly. The night Arik dies, my mom is so worried about me that she drags an extra mattress into her bedroom so she can keep an eye on me while I sleeplessly stare at the ceiling.

The next seven months are a gray, depressive blur. The easiest tasks — getting up, eating breakfast, taking the online classes that will allow me to keep my NCAA tennis eligibility — feel impossible. More than once, I think about dying.

You wouldn’t know it from my Instagram feed. I don’t post any shots of me sobbing to sad music in the shower or writing that I want to die in my journal. Instead, I upload pictures of me holding a starfish to obscure my massive belly. And another of me smiling on a cruise ship, pretending I’m not thinking about jumping overboard.

Mayci concludes the account with a clarity that only time can provide, sharing some words of advice to her younger self.

When I look back on that 20-year-old gripping the railing and debating drowning herself in the ocean, I want to tell her that things will get better. That she’ll forgive herself. That even though this pregnancy is unexpected, she’ll love her baby more than anything in the world and fight hard for her next ones.

I want to tell her that she’ll fall in love again, in a big, beautiful, dramatic way, that she’ll learn to live her life without fear of judgment, and that at some point she’ll hear the phrase “soft swinging” and not only know what it means but understand it’s the scandal that brings her to reality TV.

Most of all, I want to tell her that the tragedies and trauma she’s experienced won’t define her. That there’s no reason to feel shame about any of her mistakes — that the only shame is in hiding them.

Excerpted from Told You So by Mayci Neeley. Copyright © 2025 by Mayci Neeley. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, LLC.

Told You So will be published on Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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