Single Mom’s Guide to Love (Guide to Love #2)

19. Logan

19

logan

“Dammit!”

I realize it’s not my keyboard’s fault for not being able to come up with any sort of idea, but that doesn’t stop me from heaving it across the room. I hear a crack when it hits the hardwood floors, but I don’t give a shit right now.

I’ve sat here for four days trying to come up with an idea. A concept. The concept of an idea.

And I’ve got nothing. Zero. Diddily fucking squat. It’s like every time I think I’m onto something, I realize this is just a slightly tweaked SpaceCraft, which I don’t even think we could repackage into a spinoff, or an idea that has already been done by a competitor.

“Face the music, Matthews,” I whisper to myself. “You’re a one-hit wonder.”

“Whoa! What the hell?”

I don’t even look over to Kat as she lets herself into my office. She’s walking into a room with a broken keyboard on the floor, takeout containers covering my desk, and my hair more disheveled than usual. I somehow remembered to shower a few times, but that’s as much care as I’ve done for myself.

“I take four days off for Thanksgiving, and this is what happens? We revert back to dorm room Logan?”

I just shrug as I turn my chair to face her. I should feel bad that she immediately goes into cleanup mode, grabbing all of the empty food containers I’ve racked up since Thursday night.

“I lost track of time,” I say, which is partially true.

Kat eyes me, trying to detect how much I’m leaving out of that statement. The answer is a lot. “No. I’ve seen you go on no-sleep benders before, including the week-long marathon before SpaceCraft launched. This is different. Spill.”

I rub my eyes, trying to figure out how I want to put this to her. Luckily, I have time because she’s still cleaning up my mess.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and I truly am. “I meant to have all of this tidied up before you got here this morning.”

And Maeve, but I don’t want to say that one out loud.

“It’s fine. You’re clearly going through something, and I obviously can’t ever take that much time off again.”

“Absolutely not,” I say. “You should take more time off, if anything.”

She eyes the desk, the keyboard, and then me. “Really? That’s the argument you’re going to try and make right now?”

“Touché.”

“Let’s move off the mess. What’s going on with you, and why does it look like you haven’t slept since the last time I saw you?”

I shrug and let out a well-timed yawn. “Because I haven’t.”

“Oh shit,” she says, all humor and sarcasm that’s normally in her voice is now gone. “Okay. What’s going on?”

I look back to my monitor, which has up a bunch of screens with a lot of nothing on them. “I don’t know.”

“Talk to me, Logan,” she says. “Whatever it is, let’s figure this out.”

I tell Kat that I spent all weekend trying to come up with any semblance of a game. Since no one was here, it was the perfect opportunity to buckle down and finally come up with the idea that would put my life back in order.

I leave out the real motivation of doing so.

When Maeve left on Thanksgiving, I suddenly felt inspired. Because when the woman you’re infatuated with says that she’s proud of you, you want nothing more than to earn that sentiment.

And so I sat down. I went back to my roots, from when I really started developing SpaceCraft. When I did that, I was just a kid in my dorm room with a notebook, a sketch book, and my computer. Surely I could use just those things, tap into the idea I’d had for years, and come up with a game that would blow away the board and everyone who works for my company.

That was four days ago, and all I have to show for it is a bunch of crumpled papers, a lot of empty takeout containers, a broken keyboard, and not an idea to be found.

“Damn,” she said. “I hate that you’re going through this. I figured you were just in a bit of a brain block. I never thought it would go on this long.”

“You and me both.” I sit back and stare up at the ceiling. “What’s the matter with me, Kat?”

“Because you’re going through it, and haven’t slept, I’m not going to make a smart-ass remark.”

“Appreciate it.”

“But in all honesty? I don’t know. We’ve tried everything. Hell, we moved you across the country, in hopes that a new environment would spark something. But here we are, just as lost as we were six months ago.”

Silence falls over the room, because neither of us really have anything to say. What is there to say besides the eventual inevitable conclusion: SpaceCraft is my one and only good idea. I’m tapped out at twenty-nine.

“What time is it?” I figure it’s Monday since Kat’s back, though that was my only clue. “I figured Maeve would’ve been here by now and I’d hear hammering from somewhere in the house.”

Kat shrugs. “She’s not here.”

That wakes me up more than any energy drink could ever. “What do you mean she’s not here?”

“Not sure. One of the painters said that she called them and said she wouldn’t be in today. They were just to finish projects they had going and she’d be back tomorrow to give them next steps.”

I jump up from my desk and look around for…I don’t know what. Keys? My glasses? My sanity? “Something’s wrong.”

“You need to settle down. She’s fine. Maybe Jayce is sick? I’m sure it’s nothing to be worried about.”

I find my phone and bring it to life. No texts or emails. Maeve is nothing but professional, maybe overly so because of our history. Every official day she’s worked I’ve had detailed itineraries of what her plans were for that day. If she was sick, she’d have let me know. I know that in my bones.

“No, something’s wrong,” I say. “And don’t ask me how I know, I just do.”

“Well then call her,” Kat says. “Double check before you go all crazy about it.”

I bring up Maeve’s number before the words are even out of Kat’s mouth. I hit send, only for it to go right to voicemail.

“Fuck,” I said. “Where does she live?”

“What?” Kat replies. “Logan, chill out. You don’t have to go?—”

“Where. Does. She. Live?”

Kat and I stare at each other for a few seconds as I silently beg her to understand what I’m feeling now. She’s never seen me like this, so I can understand her confusion. But that also means she should realize if I’m acting like this, it’s for a reason.

“She’s in Brentwood,” Kat says. “Head to the highway. I’ll text you the address.”

I give her a kiss on her cheek before sprinting out of my office.

Twenty minutes later I’m pounding on Maeve’s door, yelling for her to open up. I can’t see if her SUV is in the garage, but there are enough lights on to tell me she’s home.

So why isn’t she answering?

“Maeve!” I yell again, my fist pounding into the wood of her door. “Open up!”

Seconds later and mid pound, I feel the door start to open. I catch my hand and pull it back as Maeve slowly opens it, peeking out around the opening just enough that I can see that she’s crying.

“Logan? What are you doing here?”

I slowly push the door open, needing to get inside. Luckily, Maeve doesn’t fight me, and I quickly shut the door behind me.

“What happened? Who did this to you?”

I don’t see any physical markings on her, but it’s clear she’s has been crying for hours. Her eyes are bloodshot and puffy, her face is pale and tear-streaked, and her hair is a wreck, part of it sticking to her face.

“It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?” I ask as I cup her face in my hands. “I need to know who’s making you cry like this so I know who to end.”

Maeve’s eyes go wide when she realizes I’m bloody serious.

“Who, Maeve? What’s happening? Please, Love. I’m worried…”

She starts to say something—I think she says Jayce’s name—before she breaks down again, collapsing into my body.

“Hey, I got you,” I say, picking her up and walking her over to the sofa. I sit down with her on my lap, and I know Maeve has to be distraught, because instead of fighting me like I half expected, she does the opposite—she clings to me like she needs me to breathe.

“Shh…I’m here. Do what you need to do. Find the calm.”

Maeve’s tears continue for minutes on end. I don’t hear anything else in the house, so that means Jayce isn’t here. But I swear she tried to say his name before this wave of tears came out. Is he okay? I’d have to guess he is or she’d be wherever he is. Is he with his dad? At school?

Fuck, I want to help her. I want to fix this. But I don’t know what to do. So I do the only thing I can think of—I just hold her. I stroke her hair, hold her tight, and let her use my shirt as a handkerchief, anything possible to give her any sort of comfort until she’s able to tell me what’s wrong.

“He wants to take Jayce.”

“What?” I wasn’t expecting words from Maeve yet, let alone those ones. “Who?”

She settles her breathing and slowly sits up from me. “Josh. My ex.”

I don’t push her as she fights like hell to block the tears from starting again. Instead I just take her hand and hold it, so she knows I’m here.

That I’m not going anywhere.

“He told me that he and his new wife think that Jayce would be better if he had a ‘real family.’ They want to be his primary household.”

“Bloody hell!”

“Exactly. He said that I’m traveling too much, even though it’s work. And that it’s not right that I have to take him with me to work sometimes. And that Jayce would be better off with them since they’re now a united family.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. As someone who grew up with shit parents, I can speak firsthand as to how good of a mum Maeve is to Jayce.

“Forgive me if I’m missing something, but didn’t they just get married last week ?”

This makes her laugh just a little. “You didn’t miss anything. They did.”

“And suddenly they’re qualified to be a family?”

Maeve just shrugs. “I don’t know what the end game is. Something isn’t right. I had a weird feeling when Josh told me they got married. And now? Something still isn’t adding up. But I don’t have time to figure that out. I need to figure out how to stop them.”

“No, Love. How we stop them.”

She shakes her head. “I couldn’t ask you to do that, Logan. You have enough on your plate.”

“I know you didn’t ask, Maeve. I offered. I’m helping.”

We stare at each other for a beat before she’s the first to break eye contact. “I don’t know, Logan. I don’t even know what we could do. That’s what I’ve been trying to do all morning. Because no matter how much I think this is a travesty and that I’m missing a piece of the puzzle as to why they want this, Josh is right—in the eyes of the great state of Tennessee, they are a family. They’re married. And I do work a lot. I travel more than I’d like, but that’s what I need to do to take care of my business and Jayce. What if a judge looks at that and says, ‘Sorry, Mom. I know you did the hard stuff. Dad’s going to take it from here.’ I don’t know if they would, but it’s a possibility, and I can’t stop freaking out about that. Just the possibility is driving me insane. I feel out of control. And I can’t stop it.”

I can see the panic in Maeve’s eyes. I don’t blame her. She feels like her world is crumbling, and for a woman who likes to control everything, this has to feel like an avalanche.

I want to help her. I need to help her.

And that’s when it hits me.

“Is that all they have over you? That they’re married?”

Maeve’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead. “As far as I know.”

“Well, then, that settles it.”

“Settles what, Logan?”

I smile and take Maeve’s hand back in mine. “How we’re going to fix this.”

I move her off my lap but just so I can go to the floor in front of her couch. Her eyes are nearly popping out of her head by the time I’m down and on one knee.

“Maeve Banks?”

“Logan, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Marry me.”