by Stacey Keith
“Jake only told me one story about his family,” Mason said. “It was late, I’d had a lot to drink and maybe he thought I wouldn’t remember in the morning.”
Maggie’s pulses leaped. “What was it?”
Mason seemed to hesitate. She got the impression he was going against some kind of “bro code” by revealing information about his friend. “He told me his brother had been sick. Real sick. Meningitis or something bad. They were kids at the time. Jake was maybe seven.”
Mason sat heavily on a porch rocker. He leaned forward, steepled his fingers and then rested his chin on them. “His mother drank a lot. She didn’t think the brother’s condition was serious. But Jake knew better, so when his brother’s fever kept climbing, Jake called an ambulance. They came and took him to the hospital. Jake saved his life.”
Maggie tried to swallow over the ache in the back of her throat. Her sister April was a social worker, which meant that Maggie had heard all kinds of awful stories. She had a feeling she knew how this one ended, but waited silently. Dreading it.
Mason cleared his throat, clearly not relishing telling her the next part. “Jake’s mother was furious. She probably didn’t want any authorities nosing around, not even to save her own son. She beat the crap out of Jake. He woke up two days later on the couch. And you know what the sick thing is?”
She shook her head and waited for the flood of nausea to subside.
Mason’s tone was more bitter than she’d ever heard it. “Jake said moving him off the floor was his mother’s way of saying she was sorry.”
* * * *
Maggie drove home with a terrible weight on her shoulders. She couldn’t stop thinking about Jake covered in cuts and bruises, waking up on the couch. He would have been Sawyer’s age, a little boy trying to survive in a world where grownups were just bigger, more dangerous children. Nothing about that sat well with her.
She parked in her usual spot behind the bakery and then went upstairs. Gus was already clawing at the other side of the door, snorting and grunting. Without opening the door all the way, she felt around for his leash. Gus strained to get to her, so it was easy to hook the leash to his collar. He bolted down the stairs, yanking her after him, and then stood panting and wagging his tail, waiting for her to catch up.
Not even Gus’s antics could lift her spirits. Maggie continued to teeter between hurt and horror. She kept rubbing her hands against her chest, trying to ease the heaviness there. Earlier today, the world had been spinning too fast. Now it seemed to be crawling, and she couldn’t think of a way to make it move normally again.
Gus finished sniffing and peeing. She took him upstairs, fed him and then took a long shower. Her breasts were still tender. Knowing what she now knew about Jake made her desire for him that much deeper. Stronger. She wanted to drive away his darkness with the power of her hands, her lips, her body.
Tired as she was, sleep wouldn’t come. She fluffed her pillows, threw the covers off, then on, then off. Finally, she gave up, put on denim shorts, a T-shirt and a pair of sandals. Gus was snoring, so she slipped outside alone. Maybe if she walked for a while, her thoughts would stop rat-wheeling and she could breathe again.
Cuervo was so quiet at night. Crickets chirped sleepily from the bushes. Wild bergamot released its minty fragrance into the night air. The big water tower with the word Cuervo on it looked ghostly in the moonlight.
If Gus had been with her, they would have headed for the park. Tonight, she turned in the opposite direction toward the Regal.
As she got closer, she saw the metal accordion gate was open. Inside, lights shone. Her heart gave a painful thump. It had to be Jake. Who else would be working this late?
Instinct told her going in there was a bad idea. Jake was clearly working through something. Or not. Maybe he really was so wounded, he would never recover. Maybe she should be getting as far away from him as possible. But she found herself drawn inside like a sleepwalker, even though she had no idea what to expect.
She found him stripped to the waist and busting up a stack of wood beams with an ax. He’d attached half a dozen high-powered flashlights to a generator, which hummed loudly enough to mask her footsteps. Jake brought the ax in an arc above his head, the blade glittering at the top of the swing. When the ax came down, the wood flew apart. The muscles in his arms and back flexed and rippled.
Jake seemed utterly absorbed in his work. She couldn’t tear her eyes away. How unreal it was to see billionaire Jake Sutton chopping wood like a laborer.
He must have sensed her presence. He looked up, his chest heaving and wet. His eyes darkened. The space between them seemed to thicken with heat.
In that moment, she would have given anything just to feel his hands on her skin. Longing like she had never felt before turned her insides into a mass of quivering raw desire. She walked toward him, unable to stop herself.
Jake didn’t smile. His eyes brooded over her face. “If you came to bitch at me about bailing on your dinner party, I’m not sorry.”
She blinked. Readjusted. Put her guard up. “I see. So when somebody asks about your family, you always just take off?”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about me or my family.”
Oh, so it was her fault for failing to read his mind or for not knowing what the hell had been eating him alive? Words came pushing out of her throat. Hot words that she had no control over. “You’re right. I don’t know. You do a great job of driving everyone away, Jake, including me.”
“What, do I owe you, princess? One romp in the woods and suddenly it’s share-time?”
Maggie heard a guttural roaring in her ears. How could he cheapen what had happened between them? “Who do you think you’re talking to?” she said, low and furious. “How dare you say those things to me!”
She didn’t know this Jake. She didn’t even like this Jake.
A mask dropped over his face. “I’m busy,” he said coldly. “I have work to do.” He rolled his shoulders as though trying to shrug her off. Then he swung the ax and buried it in the rotted beams.
“I’m not going away,” she said. “You think being a rude dick is going to scare me? You have no idea who you’re dealing with. You think you’re the only one who ever felt pain? Who felt rejected? I shot myself up full of fertility hormones three times a day for six months trying to get pregnant. I went through surgeries. And that whole time I was trying to get pregnant, my husband was out screwing my best friend. I loved that man. He was my world. And he got her pregnant instead of me.”
Now that the awful shameful truth was said, she couldn’t take it back. The words came out so fast, they were choking her.
For a second, Jake looked almost feral. “What makes you think I care?”
Maggie’s fingers flew to her lips. His cruelty hit her dead center, radiating out, making her nerves go numb. “I told you that because it was the worst moment of my life. The worst kind of betrayal. I told you that because if you think you’re the only one bad things happened to, you’re not only wrong, you’re blind, stupid and selfish.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. There were pieces of wood stuck to his sweaty chest. She wanted to yell, What the hell is the matter with you? What’s so terrible you can’t tell me? But it wouldn’t have done any good. With Jake, the next move was always his, and the best you could hope for was the strength to stand your ground.
She stared at him, heart booming.
“Go home, Maggie,” he said. “I’m a lost cause.”
“No.”
He tossed the ax on the pile of debris. “What do you want then? Is this the part where you try to tough love the asshole out of me? Where we kiss and make up and ignore the truth?”
She thrust her chin out. “Oh, so we’re telling the truth now? What truth?”
He threw his arms wide. “I’m not relationship material! This is all you get. Just
this. You can’t change me. I’m damaged goods. Hell, maybe we all are. Maybe relationships are bullshit, and there’s nothing to hope for except compatible dysfunction.”
She preferred it when he was shouting. This Jake seemed so bitter. So cynical. She hated him right now—hated him because there was a grain of truth in what he said.
Maybe there was some part of her that believed if she made the world a safer place for him, he might realize how much he needed her.
And if Jake needed her, he would never leave.
Oh, God.
She stared down at her empty hands. Her vision blurred.
Jake seemed to hesitate, as though sensing he had gone too far. He took a step toward her. She quickly stepped back.
Coldness crept into her limbs, causing them to tremble uncontrollably. It felt as though she’d been trapped inside her walk-in freezer at the bakery. There was nothing but this awful cold, so harsh it burned.
Jake raked both hands through his hair with the violence of a man who wanted to pull it all out by the roots. “You shouldn’t have come, Maggie.”
“No, I was right to come.”
“I did you a favor,” he said, the cords in his neck straining against the skin. “Now you know the real me. Now you know what an asshole I am.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Maggie brushed her hands up her arms, trying to get warm. She had to go home. She had to find a way to make the trembling stop. “This isn’t you, Jake. This is some lame attempt at keeping me from actually seeing you.”
Maggie turned to go and then stopped. “Know what else is sad? I was falling in love with you,” she confessed. “You can throw that back in my face if you want to. I don’t care.”
For a fraction of a second, his expression softened. He started to say something and then fell silent.
“You see?” she said. “You’re so crazy about the truth? That’s what the truth looks like.”
She walked up the aisle, feeling the full weight of her unhappiness pressing down on her. Only the rows of shabby red velvet theater seats bore silent witness to her tears.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
When Jake awoke, there was a bird chirping on his windshield.
Then he sat up, embarrassed. Worried that someone might have been watching him. Jesus, had he actually fallen asleep in his car? What time was it? He passed a thumb over his smartphone. 6:08 a.m. All he’d done was close his eyes for a minute.
He remembered Maggie.
Jake scrubbed his face with his hands. No, no, no. This was crazy.
His jeans were covered in dirt. He didn’t know where his shirt was. And his arms ached from swinging that damned ax over and over again, harder and harder.
Jake Sutton didn’t live like this. Jake Sutton had an airplane and a penthouse and more money than God. Right now, he felt like a homeless man after a long night at the bus station.
He started the car. Driving around might clear his head. Cuervo was just beginning to stir. Any other morning all the lights flicking on might have seemed cozy and inviting, but now they just reminded him he was miles away from home and needed a shower and about a gallon of coffee.
Returning to the ranch was out of the question. Mason was probably still there, and Jake wasn’t ready to be around people. He had to get his shit together first. Find a way to get back on top again. Whatever it took.
Ten minutes later, he spotted the only building off the main road, some no-tell motel called the Cattle Rancher. It was likely his best chance for a shower.
He went inside, ignoring the raised eyebrows of the woman behind the reception desk. Then he took the key card she gave him and went upstairs to his room. The door gave a sharp satisfying click when it closed behind him.
The place was pretty much what he expected—a dingy industrial carpet that hid a thousand sins. Glasses with the paper courtesy lids on them. An ancient, rabbit-eared television. He avoided the bed and went straight for the shower.
But flashes of Maggie kept coming at him. He tried thinking of other things, things he needed to do today. His mind wouldn’t obey. He saw her standing in front of him with that haunted look in her eyes. The one he’d put there. The one that proved he had no business dating a woman who didn’t have the words Ask Me About My Rates in big neon letters over her head.
He got out of the shower, tied a towel around his waist and sat on the edge of the bed to check his messages. There were the usual ones from Emma reminding him about upcoming meetings and the packet of papers she’d overnighted. But there was also a text message from a number he didn’t recognize.
Mom in hospice. Uncle Marty and Aunt Pearl really want you to come.
His brother.
Emma must have given Dillon his private number.
Jake crushed his hand around the cell phone and squeezed.
More memories came flooding back. He couldn’t stop them now.
Before the booze and the boyfriends, Loretta used to show him how to roll Silly Putty over the comics section of the newspaper. The whole comic would be printed there, and at age four, he’d thought it was magic. Sometimes she’d make macaroni-and-cheese from scratch instead of the box stuff, all cheesy and delicious with a layer of potato chips baked into the crust. Then they’d watch TV until it was time to put Dillon to bed. As the older brother, Jake loved being the kid who got to stay up late. But he’d felt protective of Dillon even then, even before taking care of his brother had been a necessity and not a choice. Their dad wasn’t around much. When he was, the good-looking son-of-a-bitch had a vicious temper. But Loretta had loved him. After he split, she had nothing left for anyone else.
No matter how hard he’d tried, Jake couldn’t fix it. He wasn’t enough. Not for Loretta. Not for anybody. Every day since then he’d had to remind himself that love just let you down in the end. It didn’t last—not between a man and a woman and not between a parent and a child.
Jake glanced up and saw his reflection in the mirror above the dresser. He looked awful. There were circles under his eyes. Beard growth darkened the lower half of his face.
He rubbed the back of his neck, which was sweating. God, he didn’t want to feel this way. Helpless. Hopeless. Angry.
His phone rang. Warily, he looked at the number. It was Mason. Anything was better than thinking about this shit, even talking to Mason. He swiped the green button. “What?”
“You sound like you’re still in a great mood,” Mason said.
“I’m busy.”
“Busy fucking up your life maybe.”
Jake froze. It sounded eerily similar to something his mom would say. He resisted the urge to hang up.
“Nice going last night,” Mason said, colder than Jake had ever heard him. “And now you’ve got Cassidy worried about her sister. What the hell is going on with you?”
“Nothing. You know how I am. If I don’t like being somewhere, I bail.”
“Yeah, except the one you’re bailing on is my sister-in-law,” Mason said. “And I told you not to fucking do that.”
If Jake hadn’t been so underfed, under-dressed and under-slept, he might have found the conversation amusing. He’d always had the upper hand over Mason—probably because, unlike Mason, he didn’t actually have a heart to get in the way of being top dog. Despite Loretta’s beatings and verbal abuse, Jake had been top dog growing up, too. He’d been the strong one, the one who survived, who refused to live in filth, addiction, squalor.
Now he just felt like a dog, period. How the fuck had he let this happen? Now everyone was furious with him. He wasn’t used to that.
“Are you listening?” Mason asked him.
Jake’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I’m listening.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Mason said, lowering his voice. “You and me, we’ve had some great times. You’re a damn good friend. But Maggie is family. And if you
make it so I have to choose, you’re the one I’m saying good-bye to.”
* * * *
Maggie set little Abigail on the picnic table in front of her, captured her pudgy hands and played patty-cake with them. Abigail watched with the bemused fascination of a baby who wasn’t sure those hands were hers yet. She gave a squeal of delight that would have warmed Maggie’s heart if there’d been anything left to warm.
They were at the municipal park with Todd and Sawyer and Todd’s nephew, Kenny, a little tow-headed kid around Sawyer’s age. Todd and the boys were throwing a football she’d given them. Remnants of the fire engine birthday cake she’d baked sat at the other end of the table along with a few opened presents.
Sawyer was actually smiling. Had she ever seen him smile? Maggie’s own enjoyment had been put on a dimmer switch and turned to low. But she was determined not to spoil Sawyer’s birthday party, even though it felt as though someone had ripped her heart out.
There were no messages from Jake. Her sister would have called if she knew anything. The thought of never seeing Jake again—or worse, seeing him at social functions but pretending they were only casual acquaintances—made her sick to her stomach.
“You two girls look mighty pretty over there,” Todd called to her. “Abby’s taken a real shine to you. All she does is holler when Ma comes around.”
I’d holler, too, if I had to spend time with that witch. Maggie clapped Abigail’s adorable little hands together while Abigail gave a deep belly laugh. She was the prettiest baby, with her thoughtful dark eyes, long lashes and red-gold curls. She looked a lot like Avery, actually. Avery who was missing her son’s birthday. Who made even a lightweight like Todd look like a decent parent. Who didn’t want kids, got pregnant at the drop of a hat and then abandoned them.
Todd lobbed the ball to Kenny, who ran to catch it. “You don’t seem like you’re in the best of spirits today,” he said to her, coming over.
Maggie tacked on a smile. “Life of a baker—up at dawn, and then you spend the rest of the day trying to balance your coffee intake.”