CHAPTER 70
harley
Whoever thought of making brownies in a mug wasn’t the brightest. The process wasn’t easy at all.
Getting the ratios right was problematic.
It didn’t help that there was no solid recipe online to help me make them.
I’d remade the batter twice while making a mess of the counter.
I told myself it was because I wasn’t used to baking.
It wasn’t.
I just sucked at this.
“I don’t think I made these right,” I said loudly when I heard Maverick’s footsteps in the hall. I hissed as I tried to pick up the mugs, promptly dropping them back down. “I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be—”
“Are you married?” Maverick cut me off.
My stomach dropped out.
Oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
It wasn’t a gradual realization. It was a violent, disorienting drop, like missing the last stop in the dark.
My body grew numb while I turned to face him.
My mind struggled to come up with something to say.
Words failed me. He stood there, his expression painfully composed, as he set my wedding ring down on the kitchen island.
The sight of it was almost worse than the question. It looked so small—a thick gold band that carried the weight of the prison I’d built.
“Maverick,” I began slowly, hoping to hell my mind would catch up, “it’s not that simple—”
“It is that simple, Harley,” he said over me, his volume growing exponentially. “Are you married?”
Air scraped against my lungs as I tried to control my breathing. Guilt and shame wrapped tightly around my chest, constricting painfully. This was it. This was the moment I’d known was coming and had stupidly convinced myself that I could outrun.
“Yes,” I replied, the word tasted bitter in my mouth.
A heartbeat passed between us.
And another.
Time stretched thin and fragile between us. I watched the horrified expression grow on his face. Disbelief. Betrayal. Hurt. So much hurt. It unfolded slowly as I watched his heart break in real time. I couldn’t look away, even as it gutted me.
I’d done that to him.
That was my fault.
I’d put that look on his face.
I opened and closed my mouth, trying to find the right words to say. Trying to figure out how to make this right. But there was no version of this where I’m sorry covered the damage I’d done. No explanation I could give him wouldn’t sound like an excuse.
“Oh, I think I’m going to be sick,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his mouth as he slowly turned away from me.
The room swayed as my pulse thundered violently in my ears. I hadn’t planned for this. I should’ve planned for this. I’d built entire fantasies around making this work, but I hadn’t prepared for the moment the fantasy shattered.
“Maverick—”
“No!” he said over me. He stormed down the hall, heading for the front door. I chased after him as panic clawed its way through my chest.
“Please—”
“Not a fucking word, Harley!” Maverick shouted. He stumbled and hit the wall as he struggled to pull on his boots. His movements were erratic and rage-filled, his body shaking as if he was trying not to snap.
“Please, let me explain!”
“There’s nothing to explain.”
There was. There had to be. There had to be something I could say to salvage this. All the messy, complicated parts of me didn’t fit into a single yes-or-no answer. It was so much more than that.
“Yes, there—” The door slammed off the wall as he threw it open. He rushed out into the rain without hesitation. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I ripped off my socks instead of finding shoes and ran after him, barely feeling the sting of the cold rain as I hurried down the steps. Rain soaked my clothes instantly, plastering the fabric to my skin.
“Mav, stop!” I yelled. “Please let me explain!”
He didn’t slow.
The panic hit instantly, hot and suffocating. It flooded my bloodstream so fast that I felt lightheaded.
As he reached for the door of his truck, I grabbed his arm to stop him. His reaction was visceral. He whirled fast, and I stumbled backward, slipping in the mud, nearly taking myself out on his truck. My pulse spiked as I grabbed the side mirror to keep myself upright.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Maverick shouted. “You don’t get to explain! You’re married! You’re fucking married, Harley!”
“You don’t understand!” I cut in, desperate and trembling. Whether it was from the cold or the panic was beyond me. I just knew I couldn’t stop. My teeth were chattering, and my breath came out in shallow, quick pants. I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.
“There’s nothing to understand!” he screamed. “You’re fucking married! That’s it! There’s nothing else I need to know!”
Rain streamed down his face, but it didn’t hide the devastation in his expression. His hands shook visibly as he raked them through his hair roughly. Seeing him unravel did something unbearable to my heart. I broke right alongside him.
“I don’t love her!” I tried to get a word in edgewise—tried to make him understand. The words sounded pathetic, even to me.
“I don’t care! I don’t care if you’re married to the worst person on the fucking planet! You don’t fucking cheat!” His voice broke with the last word, catching in his throat. “You made me the other guy, Harley! That’s not me!”
The disgust on his face gutted me.
Other guy.
I’d never meant to reduce him to something like that. I’d never meant to diminish this thing between us into something dirty and secretive like that. How did I make him understand that it meant something to me? That he meant something to me.
“I’m sorry—”
“You’re not!” he snapped. Stepping into me, he jabbed a finger at my chest. “If you actually fucking cared about me, you never would’ve put me in this position! You wouldn’t have done this to me!”
Each word cut into me, tearing me apart little-by-little. My heart was racing so hard it hurt. There was a high, thin ringing in my ears that made everything feel distant and distorted. The world swam around me, thick and heavy.
“I was going to tell you—”
“When?” Maverick barked. “When the fuck were you going to tell me? After you moved back to the city? After a month? Two? A fucking year? When?”
“I don’t…” I faltered. I didn’t have a good answer for him.
The absence of one terrified me. Because in that absence, I heard what he heard: that I never intended to tell him. That I was covering my ass and hoping he bought it. That I’d been willing to let this thing between us continue as long as I could get away with it.
“I let you back in!” he screamed, his voice rising with his desperation. “I told myself it was a bad idea—you were a bad idea!”
“Please,” I begged pathetically. My stomach twisted violently, and bile surged into my throat. “Mav…”
“No! I trusted you, and you used me!”
The rain blurred everything as my eyes stung with the onslaught of water, but I still caught how his face twisted painfully at the word trusted.
“I’m done with you! I’m done with us! I’m done with this whole damn place!” he hollered. “You and your family are the worst fucking thing to happen to me!”
The words knocked the air out of me.
Worst thing…
My chest constricted so tightly I thought I might actually pass out. The idea that I’d become that for him—that I’d replaced every good memory with this moment—was unbearable. It broke me.
He yanked his truck door open and climbed inside. I lunged forward, catching the edge of the door before he could slam it shut.
“Please, Maverick,” I choked out, my pride and dignity gone. I would’ve fallen to my knees and begged if that was what it took to get him to stay. “Please, don’t do this. Don’t leave like this.”
He looked at me—really looked at me—and whatever he saw there, it didn’t soften him. If anything, his expression grew colder.
“I wish I’d never met you,” he said, his voice low and lethal. “All you and your family do is ruin everything. I wish I’d never fucking met you.”
The words detonated in my chest. For a split second, I couldn’t hear the rain. I couldn’t feel the cold. I couldn’t breathe as the world stopped around me.
The door slammed in my face, and the engine roared to life. I took a wide step backward as the tires spun, spraying water across my legs. The headlights cut through the rain as he backed up fast out of the drive.
“Maverick!” I screamed, running after the truck. My feet slipped on the mud and rain, but I kept going. My lungs burned as I struggled to breathe. “Mav, please!”
The truck didn’t slow. It hit the road and fishtailed slightly on the slick pavement. And then he was gone. Red taillights faded into the storm until they were nothing, swallowed up by the dark.
I stood there in the middle of the road, drenched and shaking and just staring at the empty stretch of pavement. If I stared long enough, maybe he’d come back. Maybe he’d turn around. Maybe we could find a way to fix this.
My mind scrambled for solutions. I would’ve burned my entire life to the ground if it meant that his truck would reappear.
But he didn’t.
It was all too little too late.