Beyond Now: The Hutton Family Book 3

by Brooks, Abby

  Wyatt caught my eyes, aware of what I was doing and why. “We’re going over estimates and projections for the next couple years.” He beamed, very much the proud papa. “Things are looking good for The Hut. Better than they have in a long time.”

  “That’s great.” I bobbed my head and smiled wide, happy to finally see things looking easy for Wyatt. “Dad kicking the bucket keeps on being a good thing.”

  Silence fell on the room as we all searched for something to say. I was interrupting their workday, and they couldn’t understand why I had appeared out of nowhere. I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt, looking for anything to talk about that might silence the constant buzzing background of worry shaking me apart at the seams. “Have you heard anything from Eli?”

  Both Wyatt and Lucas shook their heads. “Nope,” Wyatt said while Lucas murmured a low, “Un-uh.”

  “Yeah. Me neither. I wonder if we should call him or something. He’s not one to go radio silent for so long.” My attention wandered out the window behind Wyatt while thoughts of Maisie took over. What was she doing? Was she looking at flights? Had she already booked a flight?

  Surely she would call me when she made a decision…

  Surely she wouldn’t disappear on me again…

  Yanked out by the roots, leaving a wound in my life where she belonged…

  “Caleb?” Wyatt leaned into view, snapping my attention back to the present. “Do you think there’s something wrong with Eli?”

  I glanced at my brothers, Wyatt looking concerned and Lucas beginning to look annoyed, and shook my head, slapping my hands on my knees as if I would stand at any moment. “What? Oh. No. I’m sure he’s fine.”

  But I didn’t stand because the thought of being alone was horrendous.

  “Alright,” Lucas snapped, squaring his shoulders and lifting his chin. “There’s obviously something on your mind. Stop beating around the bush and spit it out, Moose.”

  My brother was proof you could take the man out of the Marines, but you couldn’t take the Marine out of the man. “Alright, fine.” I rolled my eyes dramatically and gave a wide grin to Wyatt, who loved getting under Lucas’ skin almost as much as I did. “If you insist. Wow. Pushy much?”

  Lucas glared and Wyatt laughed and I held up both my palms. “Honestly, I’m going a little crazy right now and would appreciate your advice, especially because you two seem to have things all locked up in the female department.” I launched into my story of the last few days with Maisie, how intense the attraction was, how easy it had been to fall into old patterns. How what had once been a perfect friendship now came with intense chemistry. “I love her. I know it’s crazy. I know it’s too soon. I know I barely know the adult her, but…” I shrugged. “I love her.”

  “And she has to be back in LA by tonight.” Wyatt leaned forward, folding his arms on the desk.

  I nodded. “Or she’ll lose her job.”

  “And where is she now?” Lucas asked.

  “Thinking things through.”

  Luc frowned. “Thinking what through?”

  “I asked her to stay,” I said, as if it wasn’t the most selfish thing I had ever done in all of my life. Maybe, if I pretended it was a perfectly normal thing for one adult to ask another, Lucas wouldn’t notice.

  No such luck.

  His jaw dropped. “You asked her to stay?” he asked incredulously.

  I leaned forward, elbows on knees as I stared at my hands. “There’s so much to the story…”

  “She’s dedicated her life to that job.”

  “She has.” I nodded my recognition of how hard Maisie worked to get to where she was. “But she’s not happy.”

  “And you think she’d be happy here?” Lucas’ question was genuine, holding zero judgement or sarcasm.

  “She seems happy here,” I replied. “She says she’s happy here.”

  And, she had also seemed more and more stressed with each passing day. When I ran into her at her friend’s bachelorette party, Maisie had a bright energy to her. She was bold and confident and set on her path. Lately, that brightness had dimmed. I had assumed it was because of the pressures the people she worked with were piling onto her.

  But what if she just wasn’t suited for life in the Keys?

  What if the slow, meandering pace I set was in direct opposition to her nature?

  What if the stress I had seen growing in Maisie had more to do with the pressures I was putting on her? I frowned, then explained what I was thinking to my brothers.

  “Cat told me she worked on Maisie the other day.” Lucas held my gaze. “And that she couldn’t believe how much tension she was holding onto, especially considering how happy she seemed when they first met.”

  What if that tension was because of me? “Why does it have to be so complicated?” I groaned, scrubbing my face with my hands, and looked to Wyatt.

  “Love is not for the faint of heart.” He gave me an empathetic smile and a faint shrug.

  “So what should I do?”

  “Fight for her. Love her. Support her.”

  Lucas nodded his agreement. “And if she chooses her life in Los Angeles, and you truly love her, you have to let her go. Don’t make her split her heart in two.”

  And what about my heart? The thought of Maisie leaving again ripped open old wounds that had scarred over years ago. I had lost her once. Did I really have to go through losing her again?

  The look on her face last night said everything. She had already made her decision, even if she hadn’t accepted it yet. Maisie was leaving and I was going to have to find a way to be okay with that. Because I couldn’t be selfish and keep her with me and I knew I couldn’t go with her.

  There was nothing in Los Angeles for me.

  Except her.

  And there was nothing in the Keys for her.

  Except me.

  The realization thickened my throat and I sank back into my chair, my gaze on my knees as I rubbed a hand along the back of my neck.

  “I’m sorry, Caleb.” Lucas’ voice was full of understanding and that was almost too much for me. My hard-ass Marine brother never showed what he was feeling.

  I stood, avoiding eye contact. “Yeah. It is what it is.” I managed to smile. “Thanks for listening.”

  They both stood, murmuring platitudes I didn’t listen to, and I raced out of The Hut because the walls were closing in and I needed open space and fresh air. I stopped on the porch, arrested by a memory of Maisie racing up the steps, her pigtails streaming behind her as one of those rare bursts of laughter chased her into the house.

  With a deep inhale, I set my jaw, climbed into my car, and headed home.

  Twenty-Six

  Caleb

  Her choice was inevitable. Even as I asked her to stay, I knew that Maisie would have to leave. Selling apartments, quitting jobs, moving across the country on a whim, those weren’t things people did.

  Our lives were like great wheels, perpetually rolling, building up momentum with each passing year. You couldn’t just stop things from moving forward because you realized they weren’t the way you wanted them to be. And even if you decided to try, the risk of getting squashed as it all rolled right over you was a very real thing.

  I had been a fool to ask Maisie to stay. Our paths diverged years ago and no amount of wishing on my part could bring them back together. I should have let her go after her friend’s wedding. And I should have let her go again the moment she got the call from her boss.

  Each day she spent with me was delaying the inevitable. We’d been ignoring the wheel and here we were, about to be squashed.

  When I came home from visiting my brothers at The Hut, Maisie was waiting on the porch, sitting on the top step, elbows on knees, gaze on her feet. Her hair was long and loose, billowing in the breeze off the water. When she looked up, her eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses. She lifted them onto her head, revealing tear-stained cheeks and a red nose. She stood as I approached.

  “Hey.” S
he choked on the word and swallowed hard, wrapping her arms around her chest as if she were afraid to touch me.

  I leaned on the handrail, one foot on the bottom step, and looked up at her. “Hey yourself.”

  “So…I came to say goodbye.” Her gaze touched mine then dropped right back to her feet. Her bottom lip quivered and she wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  “I figured as much.” I wanted to take the last few steps and wrap her in my arms, hold her close and never let her go, but my brother’s advice whispered in my head. And if she chooses her life in Los Angeles, and you truly love her, you have to let her go. Don’t make her split her heart in two.

  I needed to touch her but if she felt the way I did whenever we got close, would that make it harder for her to say what she needed to say?

  “Is there anything I can do?” I stepped closer despite myself. “Some way I can help?”

  Maisie sucked in her lips and shook her head. “The flight is booked. I’m all packed. I’ll land in Los Angeles around nine thirty PST, giving me enough time to be in the office before end of day.” She gave a light shrug of her shoulders and finally met my eyes. “Caleb…I am so sorry…” Emotion swallowed the rest of the sentence and I took another step toward her.

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.” I took the last step and brushed a piece of hair out of her face. “It was silly of me to ask you to stay. Silly, and selfish, and I’m sorry I put that pressure on you. It wasn’t fair of me.”

  She leaned into me and I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “So now what?” she asked, sniffling.

  “Well, you see, there’s this crazy thing called the internet,” I began. “I’m just now learning about it, but some people can hold it in the palm of their hands with this incredible device called a smartphone.”

  Maisie let out a little snort of a laugh and nuzzled in closer. “Very funny, Mr. Two Thousand and Four.”

  I fished in my pocket and pulled out the phone I bought on my way home. “We don’t have to end like we did the last time. I hear you can talk through video with these things. What’s it called? Video phone? Video talk? Something ridiculous like that.” I dropped her a wink. “And text, and email, and something called Facegram? Instabook? I already forgot, but the point is, basically we can stay connected even though our lives want to keep us apart.”

  She took the device from my hand, grinning through her sadness. “I can’t believe you bought a phone. This thing is top of the line.”

  “The things you do for love,” I said as if I had made a soul-crushing concession.

  Maisie made a sound that was trying to be laughter but sounded a lot like tears. “Do you even know how to use this thing?” she asked as she spun it in her hands.

  “No clue. But I’m sure I’ll have plenty of practice figuring it out.”

  “You sure will,” she replied as she programmed her information into my contacts. “Because I’ll be emailing and texting and calling and video-chatting with you at least four times a day.”

  “Only four times?”

  She gave me a watery smile and handed back the phone. “You always were everything I ever needed.”

  “You better remember that while you’re rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.”

  She made a derisive sound. “You mean bending to the will of the pretentious and ridiculous.”

  “Same thing.” I turned, pressing a finger to her chin and lifting her gaze to mine. “I love you, Maisie Brown. Always have. Always will.”

  Fresh tears glimmered in her eyes. “I love you, too.” She bit her bottom lip and I pressed my forehead to hers, wiping away her tears with my thumbs.

  We kissed and that wonderful moment of contact communicated all the things we couldn’t. All the sorrow, all the hurt, all the confusion at having to say goodbye passed between us. Maisie pulled away. Tried to speak and couldn’t. Ran her hand along the side of my convertible as she walked to her car with me trailing a few steps behind like a little lost puppy, then climbed into her rental and drove away.

  And just like that, Maisie was gone.

  Again.

  Twenty-Seven

  Maisie

  My plant died. After walking away from Caleb, crying through the entire flight back to LA, and heading to my office with a throbbing headache and puffy eyes, finding those brown leaves draped over our picture was the final straw.

  I expected more tears, but it seemed I was all cried out, so I just stared at it numbly for a long time until I heard someone behind me.

  “Oh, thank God you’re back.” Brighton’s voice held an undercurrent of something less than happy at my arrival and I let out a long sigh. I’d forgotten how tiring it was to live in a world where no one said what they were actually thinking.

  “I don’t think you mean that.”

  I didn’t turn to face her, surprising myself with that burst of honesty. Maybe my feelings were still too raw. Or maybe I had gotten used to living without a filter around Caleb. Or maybe I was just tired of all the bullshit. Whatever it was, I’d have to learn how to put that filter back in place if I was going to survive the next couple of weeks.

  Brighton gasped. “Whatever would make you say such a thing?”

  I didn’t have a showdown in me, and because I had to remember how to survive in LA-mode sooner rather than later, I faced my friend and lied through my teeth. “I have no idea. Forgive me? It’s been a really long day.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” She wrinkled her nose when she saw my swollen eyes and red nose. “What’s wrong?”

  If she had been paying attention, any attention at all, she would easily understand why I had been crying for the last twenty-four hours. The fact that she had to ask the question spoke volumes.

  I was in love. I had been for all of my life. And instead of choosing him, I chose…this.

  “I’m just worn out.” I smoothed back my hair and blinked away the tears threatening to fall. “Didn’t even stop at home, you know? Came straight here from the airport.”

  Brighton frowned as she took in my natural waves and makeup-less face. “You definitely look like you’ve been traveling. Come on. Let’s find a bathroom. Once you clean up a little, you’ll be feeling like yourself again in no time.”

  * * *

  Turned out, Collin’s threat of suing me for breach of contract had been all for show. At least that was the story he tried to sell me once I was back at his beck and call. If I was to return to fighting in his corner again, we would have to be friends. And friends didn’t sue each other.

  “That crazy woman who took over for you while you were MIA?” He kicked his feet up onto my desk so I had to stare at the bottoms of his shoes. “She did everything but suck my dick to manipulate me into signing with her. Lawyering up was even her idea, though I don’t think it turned out quite the way she hoped.” He leaned forward. “I think she thought you’d end up fired, not back behind that desk,” he clarified. “I’d watch your ass with that one.”

  Obviously, he meant Brighton and while I must have known that was what we were to each other on some level, having it put in my face was still unpleasant.

  I gathered my hair over my shoulder—still wavy, thank you very much. It reminded me of how I felt with Caleb and I wasn’t ready to give that up. As soon as Collin left my office, I snapped a smiling pic of myself with the crazy view through my windows as the backdrop and sent it to Caleb.

  Miss you and that stupid fake accent of yours.

  I sat back behind my desk and tried to focus on my work until my phone buzzed with a response.

  Nice view, but mine’s better.

  A video came through of nothing but water and sky, then the view shifted to take in Caleb’s smiling face. “Miss you, too, May-bell,” he said with a whole lot of extra drawl, then winked.

  I laughed out loud, then sat back in my chair, smiling, as tears formed in my eyes.

  * * *

  My life remembered its rhythm, even if I didn’t. As days tur
ned into weeks, things at Shift gathered momentum, adding more high performing clients to its roster—and none of them were mine. In the past, I’d have fought tooth and nail to represent the kind of talent we were bringing in, choosing to stay at the office until well after the stars blanketed the sky—even though the light pollution of the city hid them from view. That was, after all, the entire point of the couch nestled against the wall and the extra set of clothes and toiletries I kept at work. Sometimes I just didn’t go home.

  Instead, I set clear boundaries around my office hours, ensuring I left work no later than seven pm so I could be home for my evening call with Caleb. On Friday’s I left at five, so he and I could cook dinner together, each of us working from the same recipe as we laughed over Skype, then comparing the outcomes. That had Caleb eating pretty late, but he swore he didn’t mind. The rest of the week, we would watch some Netflix, hitting play at the same time, then sending goofy texts to each other throughout the evening. But a lot of the time, we just talked.

  I told him about my days, not bothering to sugarcoat the challenges the way I used to, and he would tell me about his. We talked about the past and the present, but rarely the future, because neither of us liked what lay ahead. It was glorious to have him as a fulltime feature in my life, but Skype and text and poorly connected phone calls had nothing on leaning into him and hearing the breath in his lungs, his heart in his chest…to feeling the warmth of his skin, to falling into those magnificent eyes as they saw straight through to the core of me…

  It had been a mistake to come home.

  But staying would have been a mistake, too.

  And between that rock and hard place, I was trying to carve out my existence, struggling to breathe as one pinned me against the other.

  Twenty-Eight

  Caleb

  It was a sad day when hours out on the water couldn’t lift my mood. Work had…happened. The excursion had been so uneventful, I couldn’t even remember how things went. My tourists had been quiet and uninspired, because I had been withdrawn and uninspiring. Irritation gnawed at me when I disembarked, so I headed right back out onto the water to fish.