Chapter Two
Maisie
Staring into the same gray eyes that’ve been ingrained into my memory since I was a teenager makes my heart race.
Or rather, it’s pounding .
I’m positive he can hear it.
My chest aches at seeing his face in person again and sweat forms over my palms. It’s painful to see how much he’s changed and how grown he looks.
He’s no longer the boy I fell in love with at fifteen, or even the man I married at twenty-one.
He’s all man—more muscular and a defined jawline, with light scruff over it.
The thicker hair above his lip is… new .
But the hair on his head is shaggier, more unkempt than I remember.
Aging lines crease around his mouth and in between his brows, which means he frowns more than he smiles.
Blinking away the fog being near him puts me in, I straighten my stance and inhale a confident breath.
It’s now or never.
“Hi, Warren,” I greet when he doesn’t say anything. I fold my hands in front of me, my thumb rubbing over my engagement band mindlessly and the papers burning a hole in my purse.
His jaw tenses, eyes narrowing as his gaze burns through me. Darkness surrounds him although the lights are on behind him. This isn’t the Warren I walked down the aisle to. The charming, sweet man who couldn’t wait to get us back home so we could celebrate our nuptials in private is long gone.
He’s stone-cold.
His gaze lowers down my blazer and pencil skirt. The corners of his lips curl as his hand grips the side of the door. “You must be lost. The stuck-up resort is down the road.”
My breath hitches at the cruelness of his words, but I’m not going to sink to his level of bitterness, so I speak with all the confidence I can muster. “I’m not stuck-up and you know it.”
Blinking, his hard eyes find mine again. “Coulda fooled me. You hate skirts.”
He’s not wrong, but some things have changed, and me wearing professional work clothes is one of them. I grew to tolerate them since I was no longer spending my summers on a ranch.
“I used to hate skirts.” I’m not giving him the satisfaction of being right. He doesn’t get to pretend he still knows me after seven years.
But I didn’t come all this way to argue about that, so I blurt the words I should’ve said to his face years ago. Pulling out the manilla folder, I hold it out to him. “I want a divorce.”
The fire behind his gaze could burn me alive. “No.”
Then the asshole yanks the folder out of my hand and slams the door in my face.
I pound on it, screaming his name. “Open up, Warren!”
“No one’s home. ”
“This ain’t funny.” I bang my fist some more. It’s a good thing I have several copies in case he tosses them. “You can’t force me to stay married to you!”
I should’ve taken care of this after the third time he sent them back. It’s a process to do a default divorce, but I kept hoping he’d come to his senses and make it easy on me.
It appears I was wrong.
“C’mon, let’s talk like adults!” I shout louder.
Then he blasts music and turns off the lights.
“Real fuckin’ mature,” I mutter.
There’s gotta be a way into this house.
Although it’s nearly pitch-black out, with no motion lights, which is stupid, I use my phone flashlight to walk around the deck to check for a back door, but it’s locked.
Not wanting to give up after what it took for me to find his house in the first place, I go down the steps and find a patio door that leads to the lower level.
And it’s unlocked.
Bingo .
Slowly, I slide it open and step into darkness. My flashlight leads me toward a staircase and I tiptoe up the stairs as quietly as my heels allow. Once I get to the top, I walk into what looks like a mudroom. Jackets and hats hang on the wall, with dirty work boots on the floor.
I hold my breath, making my way into a hallway and searching for a light switch. The music blasting has me covering one side of my face while I hold my phone with the other hand.
“Whaddya think you’re doin’?”
The deep, rough voice in my other ear causes me to jump out of my skin. “Jesus Christ, Warren!”
Spinning around too fast, I lose my balance when my heel twists and has me reaching out for support. Warren grabs me before I can fall to my knees and holds me up.
“Shit,” he mutters. “You alright?”
“Can you turn that down?” I shout once I’m standing confidently.
He yanks out his phone and presses an app on the screen to shut it off, then the only sound left is the blood rushing to my ears.
With a few more taps, the hall lights come on.
He’s only six inches from my face and it’s the closest we’ve been in years, yet there’s a pang of familiarness that seeps into my heart.
“I think you woke up my chickens,” he finally says once the silence lingers too long.
“Your music did that,” I retort, hearing them make noise from the coop.
He huffs, but I catch his gaze dropping to my mouth before he asks, “What’re you doin’ here, Maze?”
“It’s Maisie . And we need to talk.”
He scoffs at me for correcting him. Maze was a special nickname only he called me and hearing him say it like we’re twenty-one again doesn’t feel right.
“And what?” He stuffs his hands in his pockets, looking smug. “You lost my number?”
“Would you have picked up if I’d called?” I cross my arms over my chest, matching his attitude.
He lifts a shoulder, keeping his gaze on mine. “Depends.”
I blow out an exasperated breath. “Look, I don’t wanna fight with you. But this”—I wave a finger between our bodies that somehow feel closer than a moment ago—“is long over. Why drag it out longer than it already has? ”
“Because we promised forever , and unlike some people, I take my vows seriously.”
My brows pull together as I wonder how seriously he’s been taking them. “Warren…” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “We’ve been separated longer than we were married. We’re two completely different people now. Ain’t it time we move on?”
“Looks like you already have.” He nods toward my left hand with my engagement ring on it.
“Yes,” I murmur, dropping my arm and swallowing hard. “He doesn’t know I’m still married, so that’s why I need you to sign the papers this time and get it finalized quietly.”
“So…” His lips tilt up in a taunting grin. “You need me to sign the divorce papers so you can marry another man, who doesn’t know you’re married to me? Did I get that right?”
His amused tone makes my heart sink because I can tell he’s going to fight against it even harder now. I debated on telling him, but it didn’t sit right with me to lie about it either. He would’ve eventually found out anyway.
I’m already being dishonest to my fiancé, which makes me feel like a horrible person as it is.
He has more traditional values and is sixteen years older than me.
I panicked he’d end things if he knew I was legally married, so I didn’t say anything.
The longer time went by without telling him, the harder it was to figure out how to tell him.
It wasn’t until he unexpectedly proposed last year that it became a bigger concern.
“We haven’t been together in seven years, Warren,” I remind him. “I sent you divorce papers five times!”
Twice since I’ve been engaged.
“And you finally figured out I wasn’t gonna sign ’em. What makes you think I’ll sign ’em now?”
My shoulders slump, sucking in a breath to calm my nerves so I don’t lose my cool.
“Because I’m askin’ you to let me go,” I say above a whisper, hoping he’ll see how much this hurts. “Let me move on.”
His jaw ticks and my gaze lowers to his stretched-out hand before he balls it into a fist.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” I ask sincerely. “Don’t you wanna be happy again?”
“I was happy. You made me happy. We were happy.”
“That was a long time ago, Warren. We aren’t those people anymore.”
“You didn’t—” He blurts before abruptly stopping, inhaling a sharp breath, and turning away from me.
It’s then I look around him and notice our wedding photos hung on the wall. Beaming smiles and heart eyes. We were so in love.
Why would he put those up?
My heart races remembering that day.
The perfect summer wedding.
My parents fought me every step of the way, but I was determined to marry the love of my life. Although they tried to talk me out of it, they paid for everything and made sure it lived up to the Callaway standard—over-the-top flashy and expensive.
“You didn’t gimme a chance. Us a chance.” His pained eyes meet mine. “We were married for just over a year before you left—nine of those months long-distance. Then you left four months later. Hell, we were still in the honeymoon phase when you packed your things!”
“I begged you to come with me!” I throw my arms up, defeated that we’re arguing about something long over.
“To do what?” He raises his voice slightly. “What the hell was a rancher gonna do in a big city?”
“You coulda gotten a different job if you wanted us to stay together. You would’ve tried harder.”
“Oh, now I didn’t try hard enough? Callin’ and textin’ all the time, supportin’ your dream while mine were being crushed, that wasn’t tryin’ hard enough?”
“You know what I mean,” I say between ragged breaths. “You only visited once.”
He flew up a month after I moved there and only stayed for four days.
“And you worked most of the time I was there,” he deadpans. “What would’ve been the point?”
“To be with me when I wasn’t workin’. To let me show you what our lives could be if you gave it a chance. You would’ve grown to like it. If it meant stayin’ together, you would’ve put in the effort, but you didn’t.”
This isn’t the first time we had this fight. But it’s exhausting, nevertheless.
After two months of not seeing each other and rarely speaking, I came home for Christmas and told him if he had no plans of trying to make it work long-distance, then we were over. There was no point in dragging it out seven hundred miles apart.
He admitted he hoped I’d get the job “out of my system” and return home.
That’s when I knew we were over for good.
I wanted to pursue my dream and he refused to leave his family’s ranch.
“We talked about our future for years and none of the possibilities had us movin’ to New York. You threw me a curveball, then made me the villain when I didn’t immediately jump on board.”
My nostrils flare. “That’s not fair and you know it.”
He knew I wanted that apprenticeship and to find a long-term job in publishing, but I had to start at the bottom and you can’t do that in a small mountain town.
I got lucky that they offered me a social media marketing position a year later.
That one turned into finding my career path as a literary agent at an agency, which led me to start my own company last year.
It was all about in-person networking and that couldn’t have happened here.
“Neither is life, darlin’, but here we are.”
I roll my eyes at his harsh tone.
“Now that we’ve rehashed why our marriage failed, why won’t you sign the papers? Besides being engaged to someone else, I’m not movin’ back here, so there’s no chance for us. If you don’t, I’ll end up filin’ for a default divorce anyway.” My voice cracks as I continue, “Either way, it’s over.”
But since I waited too long, I risk it not going through before the wedding date. There’s also a thirty-day period where Warren could appeal the divorce decree, which is why this would go so much smoother if he’d sign them.
Looking back, I should’ve done it years ago.
Although I continued sending him the papers, I wasn’t in a rush since I wasn’t actively dating.
Starting my own business and being with my fiancé didn’t leave me a lot of free time to focus on it.
Warren was being stubborn for no reason, but once I got engaged, I had to get it figured out.
He pops his lips, then gives me a wicked smile. “You do that then.”
“Warren, please .” I grind my molars, resisting the urge to lash out. “I’m not askin’ for anything from you but this one thing. It should be a simple process. Hayes and I are gettin’ married in four months, so can’t we be adults about this?”
Warren’s brow arches at the sound of another man’s name I hadn’t meant to let slip. He bows his head, locks his hands behind his back, and leans in. “There’s the door…” He nods around me. “Let yourself out, would ya? It’s past my bedtime.”
“I’ll come back, ya know. I’m not leavin’ without those papers signed,” I say firmly.
He walks backward, looking smug as shit as he creates more distance between us. “Just to be safe, you might wanna wait on sendin’ out Save the Dates.”
When he winks, I want to scream.
This isn’t over. I’ll make him beg to divorce me once I inconvenience his life the way he’s done to me.
I walk down the hallway and into the darkness of another room that leads to the front door before his voice catches my attention.
“Oh, and, Maze?”
I turn around at the sound of my old nickname and wince that I do it out of habit.
“I’ll be lockin’ my patio door from now on, so don’t try to sneak back in.”