CHAPTER 43
harley
Ikept calling him, but his phone just kept going straight to voicemail. When that didn’t work, I drove to his home with hopes of finding him.
Instead, I found police tape over the door.
I parked my car right in front and just stared.
What the hell had happened? My chest constricted painfully tight, making it almost impossible to breathe as panic burrowed through every fiber of my being.
My mind ran rampant with every scenario about what could’ve happened, each one worse than the ones before—from being arrested for something he didn’t do to Aidan seriously hurting him.
The latter made me lightheaded and nauseous.
As I sat there, my phone vibrated in the dashboard dock, an unknown number lighting up the screen. Maverick. Somehow, in my heart, I just knew it was him. I grabbed it and almost fumbled it in my desperation.
“Maverick,” I let out breathlessly when I answered.
“Hey,” he said. The sound of his voice brought on a flood of relief, and I sighed heavily.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Are you safe? I got to your house, and you’re not here, and there’s police tape—”
“We need to talk, Harley,” Maverick interrupted. The sharpness in his voice settled uncomfortably in the pit of my stomach.
“Are you okay?” I repeated.
“No.”
“What can I do?”
“You can go home,” he snapped. The world shifted with his words as my mind tried to catch up.
“I don’t… I don’t understand,” I whispered, struggling to get the words out. “What about last night? What about—where are you, Maverick?”
“Jail.” My heart sped up. He kept talking before I had a chance to ask more. “You weren’t supposed to say yes, Harley. You were supposed to go back home—play the back and forth game while I figured shit out.”
“What—”
“The fact that you haven’t figured it out shows just how goddamn naive you are,” Maverick snapped. “What do you think my brother and I do for money? Why do you think I work at the fucking bar? It’s because tourists are easy marks.”
“Mav…” My breath caught in my throat. “I don’t… what are you saying?”
“Jesus fuck, you really do live in your own little world, don’t you?” he replied.
“Why are you acting like this?”
“You and me, we weren’t real, Harley, and I don’t feel like spending the next five to ten years dealing with your dumbass while I’m in prison,” he said.
I drew in a shaky breath, my eyes burning hot with the tears I tried to hold back.
“You were always just a fucking job. You and your family sit up there in your fancy goddamn mansion while the rest of us fight for scraps. It’s so goddamn unfair that it’s infuriating. ”
“If you needed something, I would’ve given it to you,” I told him. The phone shook violently in my hand as every single thing he said hurt more than the one before. I—”
“I never wanted your fucking charity,” he cut me off. “I just wanted what I was owed.”
“I don’t care.” I tried to rationalize with some part of what he was saying.
The world had never been fair to him. I knew that.
I could forgive whatever he’d done to be arrested.
I could even forgive him for lashing out in anger.
He didn’t mean what he said. He couldn’t.
Not my Maverick. “You don’t actually mean—”
“Jesus fuck, do you hear yourself?” Maverick scoffed. “Do you know how pathetic you sound? You don’t get whatever you want just because you beg for it. The world’s not sunshine and rainbows, princess.”
The pet name hit like a slap. It wasn’t the soft and affectionate princess I’d grown used to—not the way I liked to hear it. The single word dripped with anger, like he couldn’t stand the sound of me anymore.
“You need to get over yourself,” he continued. “I never wanted you, and I never will.”
Tears welled up as I sucked in a painful breath, my chest tightening like a vise while I forgot how to breathe. Those words cut deepest, lodging somewhere behind my ribs. Somewhere I’d never be able to remove them from.
He didn’t mean them. He couldn’t…
“Mav,” I choked out, his name breaking apart in my throat. The phone clicked, ending the call as he hung up on me.
Ending everything.
No goodbye. No hesitation. No anything. He was just… gone.
I stared at the phone until it blurred before dropping it onto the seat next to me with a soft thud.
A sob tore through me as the devastation crashed through me.
I folded over the steering wheel as I broke, unable to hold it in anymore.
I splintered apart from the inside out. Pain resonated through every part of me, and I hurt in ways I hadn’t known possible.
Little pieces of me scattered in the wreckage of him—too small and too ruined to ever be put back together.
There was no coming back from this. I was just left with holes in all the places he’d been, ones so deep that they threatened to consume me.