Page 73 of When the Walls Come Down
Plus, I didn’t want to brag or anything, but Duke was one hell of a novice stalker.
I’d called Clarke to make sure she’d made it home each night, and I was in contact with Casey too. He’d sent me a text the first morning I was in Chicago that said, “Maggie’s asking if you’re sick. What should I tell her?”
I’d told him to keep it vague, because at that point, I hadn’t even been sure if any of this was going to work out. I especially hadn’t seen things rolling at the clip they had after that first meeting.
Another thing I hadn’t expected was for her to get so bent when I was busy showing my life who was boss.
On the other hand, if she would have darted out of town, I would have felt the same way. Worried. Kind of annoyed to be out of the loop. Nervous that maybe I’d done something wrong. Scared she wouldn’t come back.
So, even though I wanted to save the big stuff for when I got home, I did attempt to reach out to her, but she was pretty pissed. I could read between the lines in her short, nearly passive-aggressive texts.
She was the one who didn’t want distractions at work, after all. And how could I have possibly been distracting halfway across the country? I knew how important her independence was to her, how strongly she felt about experiencing on her own the things her mother never got to after starting a family so young.
Sometimes you get exactly what you ask for, and when it came to her, I’d do whatever I could to make sure she got whatever she wanted. No matter what that meant for me.
So the trip was more than worth whatever hell I was going to catch for practically ghosting her and pissing her off, but if I was being honest with myself, I probably should have pulled the trigger and listened to my family a long, long time ago. Because, after taking the first few steps, I already knew it was the right move.
Yet everything happens for a reason, and had I gotten off my ass before I was ready, then maybe Maggie never would have been brought into my life. Maybe I never would have taken a chance and talked to her that Friday night, so I wasn’t about to wish away how things were turning out. Because for the first time in my life, I knew what I wanted, and I had a plan to get it.
As I sat there on the tarmac Friday afternoon, with all of about three percent left on my phone battery and my charger cord long forgotten at the hotel, all I could think about was getting back to Peach and telling her all about it at Two Ships over steaks and our Friday night drinks.
Then my flight was delayed.
And delayed again.
It wasn’t the end of the world, but as the minutes and then hours started to add up, it was beginning to look like I was going to be late, which wasn’t going to be the best way to deliver my news.
After finally taking off and then sitting on the tarmac again to wait for a gate, I was off the plane and racing down the highway and side streets to get to the bar. I parked and then ran only to find she wasn’t there.
Out of breath and disappointed, I looked around Two Ships in the hopes that maybe she was just sitting somewhere else to punish me for being late. It had been out of my hands, but it was my fault for leaving the cord like a dumbass, therefore putting a huge disconnect between us when that was the last thing I wanted.
“She’s gone, man,” Chris said, coming out from the back with his hands full, already doing his end-of-the-night restocking.
“Was she pissed?”
He nodded.
I couldn’t blame her.
He tossed his towel over his neck, and his brow drew together painfully. “Her night wasn’t all bad after you stood her up.”
“My flight got fucked. I didn’t want to stand her up.”
“Should have called.”
I tossed my phone onto the bar. “It’s dead. No charger.” The thought of her sitting there alone and then thinking I’d stood her up wrecked me. But I wanted to get back to what he was alluding to; something was off. “What do you mean her night wasn’t all bad?”
He shrugged and then gave me a sympathetic frown. “She ended up leaving with some guy. They got a table. Ate together. Had a few drinks. From what I could see over there, she wasn’t having a bad time, Shane.”
I ran my hands through my hair.
Part of my gut was sure she wouldn’t hook up or get with some guy just because I was late, but the other part of me said…it wasn’t like it hadn’t happened to me before. And for what it was worth, Maggie wasn’t even mine. We’d never discussed what we were. Never labeled anything. Never made any commitments.
