Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Maggie
“Maggie Brynn, you open the door right now!”
Oh, shit.
I sat up with a jolt from my position on the couch, nearly sending my laptop toppling to the floor as I jerked upright. I was in Brody’s hoodie, surrounded by takeout containers and half-drunk wine glasses.
“Just a second,” I shouted, looking around at the disarray that had become my life.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I couldn’t let Cassie walk in and see me like this and still try to convince her I was fine. One look at the place and she’d know just how bad off I really was.
She’d tell Liam. Liam would tell Brody. And Brody would realize how pathetic I was. How better off he was without me.
I brushed crumbs off my lap, folded the blanket, and tried to make it look like I hadn’t been camping out in the living room the last few days because sleeping in our bed suddenly seemed wrong.
“Maggie,” Cassie called again, refusing to be ignored.
I’d done plenty of that the last few days. Her calls had gone unanswered. Texts unresponded to. Hell, I was pretty sure she’d tried showing up here before, but I’d been working weird hours at the office to avoid having to be at home.
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath, knowing that the mission was a lost cause.
Cassie would see that my life was in shambles and in usual Cassie fashion, would try to save me from it. But there was nothing she could do unless she had a time machine—or maybe a miracle up her tiny, colorful sleeve—so really, what was the point in even getting into it?
I sighed, walking over to the door with dread in my step.
“Look, Cassie, I—” I opened the door, ready to over-explain a myriad of reasons why she didn’t have to worry about me when I felt the wind knocked from me.
Cassie barreled toward me, wrapping me in her arms with the strength of someone much bigger than her tiny frame seemed capable of.
“Maggie,” she said, patting my hair down. “I’m here.”
My lip quivered. Tears sprang to my eyes. And suddenly I was holding her back, crying into my best friend’s arms.
For the first time since that night, I let myself feel it all. Every mistake. Every wrong move. Everything I’d done to get me to this point washed over me at once.
“I ruined everything,” I sobbed into Cassie’s hair, holding onto her like a lifeline. “I always ruin everything.”
“You don’t,” I felt her shake her head as she held me tighter. “And you didn’t.”
“Everyone’s gone now,” I said, realization sinking in. “I made everyone leave me.”
“I’m here,” she told me, giving me a reprieve from the flood of pain that I’d been drowning in. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
I guess my plan of insisting I was fine went out the window the second I cried in Cassie’s arms like a newborn baby.
Cassie was a lot of things, but stupid wasn’t one of them, and I doubted that I could convince her everything was fine and dandy while I had mascara stains under my eyes and hair that quite obviously hadn’t come out of its bun for four days.
Cassie, saint that she was, pretended not to notice my dishevelment. Instead, she got right to work.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, watching her move around my apartment like a tornado.
“I’m cleaning up,” she said, holding a broom, a container of paper towels, and disinfectant spray.
“Cassie, you don’t have to—” I started, but she fixed me with a stern look that she had recently perfected during motherhood that silenced me at once.
I watched as she cleared the living room of debris, carrying my dirty dishes to the sink and swatting my hand away each time I tried to intervene.
“Just sit down and relax, okay?” Cassie said. “Let me help you.”
Sit down and relax.
I’d done nothing but sit down lately, and it had done nothing for me. My mind had been a constant buzz since everything imploded on itself.
Or rather, since I set off the bomb.
Still, I listened to her, feeling too numb to do anything else. When she finished tidying up the space, she sat down next to me on the couch, not saying anything at all.
“I really missed you, Cass,” I told her, after a few minutes had passed.
“You didn’t have to,” she said, laughing softly. “I’ve been right here waiting for you the whole time.”
“I know,” I said.
“Liam misses you, too.”
I snorted. “I doubt that.”
“It’s true,” she said. “You’re his baby sister.”
“Did he tell you this?” I shot her a look of doubt.
“No,” she admitted, “but that’s just because he can be as stubborn as you sometimes.”
“Must be a Brynn thing,” I laughed, using the sleeve of my sweatshirt to wipe my nose.
“Oh, for sure,” she agreed with a grin.
Another pause.
“Have you seen Brody?” she asked carefully.
“Not since that night.” I tugged at his hoodie. “I think I saw him outside of work yesterday, but I got scared and bolted.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I mean, what could he have to say? The damage has already been done.”
And I couldn’t stand to face him after what I’d done. I couldn’t stand to talk to him and know he wasn’t mine anymore.
“Okay…” Cassie said, moving onto the next topic. “How’s work been?”
“Fine,” I said through a barely contained grimace.
“Maggie.” She stared me down, strangely intimidating as her blue eyes locked on mine.
I squirmed. I knew she could smell my bullshit from a mile away, so I sighed and gave in. She would figure it out anyway with that emotional radar of hers.
“I let down a client. Someone I had wanted to help more than anything,” I admitted guiltily. “It sort of did a number on me.”
Cassie looked at me thoughtfully, carefully processing what I was saying.
“When was that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “A few days ago.”
“When?”
“Friday.”
“Friday,” she said. “As in, the night Brody proposed to you?”
“I guess,” I said. “Earlier in the day.”
“So, you had a bad day at work and then came home and he proposed?” Cassie asked. “That doesn’t sound like him, to do that when you were in a bad state of mind.”
“Well, I didn’t go home right after that,” I told her, looking away. “I couldn’t.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To my dad’s,” I said guiltily. “And, uh, it didn’t go well.”
Stupid, pathetic tears wet my eyes again, and I hated it. I was so sick of crying over a man who never cared about me. A man who I had tried over and over again to please, just to end up here, having pushed everyone away who actually cared.
“Oh, Maggie,” Cassie said, reading between the lines of everything I wasn’t saying. “What happened?”
“I basically came to the realization that everyone else beat me to a million years ago. He doesn’t care, and he never did.”
Cassie deflated, as if my pain hurt her too. I guess that’s how it worked having a best friend. You felt their heartbreaks with them. But you also felt their triumphs too. It seemed like a fair trade-off, in the end.
She dropped her head in her hands, shaking her head as she muttered, “No, no, no.”
I arched a brow at her.
“Why would Brody propose when you were in such a bad headspace?” She threw her arms up in exclamation. “I just don’t understand what that boy was thinking. I mean, of course you weren’t going to say yes when you felt like your entire world was crumbling around you!”
“Well, I didn’t exactly tell him.”
“About your dad? Or about work?”
“About any of it.”
“What?” she asked, bewildered. “Why?”
I knew it was hard for her to understand, considering she and Liam told each other everything. But I knew to be more guarded, especially when telling someone meant getting feedback I didn’t want to hear.
“Because it wouldn’t have made a difference! What would he have said? ‘I told you so?’ Because believe me, I know that everyone tried to warn me about my dad. I just…” I exhaled, “I thought I could make him care. I guess I’m as much of an idiot as everyone thought.”
“You’re not an idiot for wanting your parent to show you love,” she said, reaching out to grab my hand.
Cassie was the only friend who really knew me, and I guess that was my fault for never letting people all the way in, but I didn’t choose it with Cassie either.
No, that was all her. She came in with that wide-eyed innocence and sunshine-y smile and took her emotional pickaxe to my walls.
I was forever grateful to her for being the first to do it.
“Well, I guess I’m an idiot for thinking he was capable of it,” I huffed out a breath.
“Screw him,” she said, so uncharacteristically it made me giggle.
“What?”
“Yeah! Screw him. You’re brilliant and funny and the most amazing daughter he could ever hope to have and he doesn’t even see it. That’s his loss. Everyone else in the world sees you for who you are, Maggie. You don’t have to prove anything to him.”
Maybe not, but I had something to prove to myself because of him.
Because of how I felt when I was around him. Because of the little girl I’d been who had just needed her dad.
But I wasn’t the only one left burned by Timothy Brynn. And instead of being someone to lean on, I’d struck up the match and held it where it hurt to the one person who’d always been there for me.
I hurt Liam, and even though he acted tough and above it all, I knew him.
He hurt and he felt as deeply as anyone. And when he shut people out? That’s how I knew I’d really done damage. By trying to bandage up my own wounds, I poked at my brother’s that had never even had a chance to heal over.
I hated myself for it.
“How’s Liam?” I dared to ask.
Cassie sighed.
“He has a lot on his mind, I think.” Then she deflated. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do for him to make him feel better. It makes me feel useless.”
“Cassie, I know you absorb everyone else’s emotions like a sponge—”
“Hey—” she opened her mouth to protest.
“You do,” I stopped her. “But you don’t have to feel responsible for other people’s feelings.”
“I can’t help it; I just love you guys so much.”
“And we love you, Cass.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “That’s why we don’t want you taking on all of our problems.”
“That’s your problem, Maggie.” She frowned at me. “You think you have to do everything alone. Well, I won’t let you.”
She smiled smugly, settling back against the couch in contentment.
“At the end of the day, we’re all on our own, aren’t we? Isn’t it easier to just get used to figuring shit out by ourselves? Instead of expecting people to swoop in to fix it and get disappointed when no one does?”
“That’s…” Cassie frowned. “An incredibly sad way to think about life.”
“Well, lucky for you, you don’t have to. Liam thinks he’s your emotional shield whose sole duty is to keep you from harm.”
She blushed. “He does not.”
“He does,” I confirmed. “It’s not a bad thing. He’s head over heels for you, Cass. Honestly, I should be sickened by it on account of him being my brother and you being my best friend, but really I’m glad you have each other.”
“Were you mad at Liam?” she asked suddenly. “For dating me when I was your friend?”
“Oh yeah,” I laughed jokingly. “But I got back at him by getting with his.”
Then I sighed, remembering everything.
“Maggie, can you honestly tell me you don’t want to be with Brody?” She fixed me with a look. “And tell me the truth because I’ll know if you’re lying.”
“Honestly, Cass. My head is so screwed up I don’t know what I want,” I told her honestly. “But I know I don’t want to do this without him.”
“Do what?”
“Life,” I said. “He makes it easier. Better. He makes it all feel bearable. But I don’t want to be selfish. I can’t keep dragging him down into my problems.”
“You’re not dragging him down. He loves you.”
“He has the perfect family. A job he loves. A correctly functioning brain,” I emphasized. “How is it fair to crash into his life and constantly pull him into my own emotional turmoil? I’ve done nothing but make life harder for him.”
“I doubt he sees it that way, Maggie,” she said. “You don’t know how he looks at you. Liam’s always said that since the moment Brody saw you, he had his sights set on you.”
“I know,” I told her. “But he deserves better.”
“No,” Cassie said adamantly. “You deserve each other. You know why? Because you love each other, and people who love each other should be together.”
“Is it that simple?” A corner of my lip quirked up.
“It should be,” she said. “It can be.”
She shifted until she was on her knees facing me, a pleading look on her face as if she were about to ask for the world and was already expecting I wouldn’t give it.
The thing about Cassie, though—you couldn’t help but want to give her whatever she asked for. She was just so sincere.
“Maggie, you just have to go to him and apologize. You have to tell him everything that you’ve been dealing with in that pretty head of yours and let him help you.”
Help me?
But if I showed him how much I needed him, how much I would always need him, that would just send him running.
But I didn’t want to get stuck in this cycle of wreaking havoc and then living in the fallout of my own chaos. I couldn’t bear it. It was unsustainable. I needed to change.
For Brody’s sake. For Liam’s sake. And for my own.
So I heaved a deep breath, readying myself for the challenge of a lifetime, and looked into her eyes.
“Okay.”