CHAPTER 71
maverick
Igripped the glass with both my hands to try to stop them from shaking.
The condensation soaked into my palms, cold and slick, but it didn’t steady me.
I was so fucking angry that I couldn’t see straight.
I couldn’t think. I could breathe. Harley had infected every part of me.
Every memory. Every plan. Every goddamn hope I’d let myself have.
The anger felt safer than anything else.
It burned hot and loud, drowning out the quieter, more dangerous emotions building underneath.
Because I knew what was coming. I knew, once the anger ebbed away, the hurt would settle in.
It would seep into my bones and chip away at me.
It’d carve into my bones all the ways I wasn’t good enough for him. I didn’t want to deal with the hurt.
I just wanted to drown before that happened.
Which is how I ended up at the bar with a drink in hand.
The place was dim and familiar in the worst way. The smell hit me first—stale beer and greasy food. It shouldn’t have been comforting, and it hadn’t been in years. But it felt like muscle memory as I decided to throw six years out the window to drown. Anything to not feel.
I just couldn’t drink it. My hands shook too hard every time I tried to bring the drink to my lips.
All it would take was one swallow. Just one.
I could practically imagine the burn as it slid down my throat and the warmth in my chest. I just knew it’d dull the edges of the world until the memories of Harley vanished.
“I wish I’d never met you.”
The memory hit so hard that my grip tightened on the glass.
I just had to calm down. I just had to get through this hour. This minute. This breath.
I just had to let go and toss my reservations aside—forget everything I’d worked so hard to accomplish. My jaw clenched so hard it hurt. My chest ached as if something had split open inside me and was bleeding out slowly on the bar in front of me.
I wanted to be done with it all. I wanted to punish myself for being stupid enough to believe him. For loving him again. For letting him back in.
I wanted relief from the horrifically loud and vicious voices in my head.
I just wanted silence.
I lifted the glass again, my hand shaking harder.
Before I could take the sip, the glass was forcibly taken from me.
“Sorry, kid,” the bar owner, Craig Hart, said as he set my drink somewhere out of sight. “Can’t serve you.”
“I fucking paid for that,” I growled, my temper flaring.
“Yeah, well,” he retorted, “your money isn’t any good here.”
As if to prove his point, he dropped a handful of bills back on the bar in front of me. I swiped them up.
“This is bullshit,” I retorted. “My money’s—”
“Come talk with me, Maverick.”
I faltered, immediately recognizing the voice behind me. Millie. Fuck. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to explain this bullshit to her. I just wanted to be left alone.
“Go away, Millie,” I snapped.
“I’ll go away when you come with me,” she said. Her hands landed on my shoulders, and I flinched. I couldn’t help it. She gave me a little squeeze, attempting to be reassuring. “It’s alright, honey. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The softness in her voice cracked something apart in my chest, shaking loose something I didn’t want to feel.
Fuck, I just wanted that drink. Still, I slipped off the barstool and followed her, grumping angrily as I went to a corner booth with her.
I sat across from her with my arms crossed and a scowl on my face.
“I just want to drink, Millie,” I informed her. “I don’t want to talk.”
“I think you need to talk,” she said. “Or at least you need someone to sit with you, so you don’t throw away all the progress you’ve made.”
“Jesus fuck,” I scoffed. “I don’t need you to save me.”
“Oh, I’m not here to save you, baby boy,” she replied. “But everybody needs somebody.”
“I don’t need anybody.” Every time I tried, I just got hurt. I was better off alone.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“No.”
“Okay then.” She smiled at me. “Then we’ll just sit here in silence until you cave a little bit.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“They all say that,” Millie told me. “But I’ve raised a houseful of kids, baby boy. Silence always makes them cave.”
True to her word, she shut up. I sat across from her with my pulse slowing down in my throat. And in the quiet, all the things I was trying to outrun came rushing back in.
The anger drained first, leaving behind something cold and heavy.
I replayed every microscopic detail in my head as I tried to make sense of it.
But I couldn’t. Why hadn’t I pushed him harder about his life?
About staying here? Why hadn’t I seen the lie right there in front of me?
Fuck, even Aidan could see it. What was so wrong with me?
Did everyone else know? Was I just some idiot left in the dark while the rest of the town laughed at my demise?
“Did you know he was married?” I demanded gruffly.
“No,” Millie answered, her voice calm and quiet. “Mrs. Lowell didn’t talk about her son and certainly not to people she deemed inferior to her. When he was gone, he was gone. We were all surprised by his return.”
Lips pressed together tightly, I just nodded.
The anger gave way further, making room for something worse.
Grief. Not just for the loss of him, but also for the loss of what I’d become in his presence.
For a moment, I had actually started to believe in second chances and a better life.
I wanted to see the version of me that could have a future with him.
Instead, I became this version of myself, humiliated and stripped raw for his entertainment. I swallowed hard as my eyes burned with unwanted emotion. I blinked them back to the best of my ability, and if Millie saw the tears, she said nothing.
Fuck, I was so goddamn stupid.
I wasn’t Harley’s first choice, and I’d never be. I was an easy escape—a thing to be used and discarded however he wanted. I wasn’t worth any more than that.
My chest tightened as I bit back a sob. I stared hard out the window, doing whatever I could to keep from falling apart right there in the middle of the bar. I didn’t want anyone to see me break. At least any more than I already was.
“Two broken people can’t make it work,” Millie said softly into the silence between us.
“You think I’m broken?” I whispered. I knew I was, but was that how everyone else saw me? How she saw me?
“Broken’s not a bad thing, honey,” she replied, “not when it comes to people.”
“Right,” I drawled. I was so fucking broken that there was nothing left to put back together. There was nothing left worth saving. “What makes you think that?”
“We’ve all been broken by something in life at some point, baby boy,” she told me. “Being broken by the world is just an agent of change. It means what you’re doing isn’t working. It’s the universe’s way of telling you that it’s time to work on that part of your life. To fix it or to let it go.”
“I don’t know how to fix this.” And for all my anger and hurt, I didn’t know if I could let Harley go. Not really. Not even after everything. Harley was etched into my very bones. More than a decade had proven that.
“You’ve spent your whole life looking for that boy to be the one to love you when he couldn’t even love himself.
And you don’t love you either, Maverick.
” Millie paused as I scowled at her—as if waiting for me to fight her—but I didn’t.
How could I when she was being so damn honest?
I hated every word coming out of her mouth, but she was right.
“Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling you that it’s time to heal the parts of you broken over the years by people who were supposed to love you. ”
I drew in a shaky breath as that last line hit too close to home.
“You deserved better than what you got, Maverick,” she continued. “Both of you did. And that’s not excusing anything he did. That’s just a fact. Both of you need to do a whole lot of healing.”
“I’ve been!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t fuck around on parole, I’m in A.A., I go to meetings, I have a job, and I have a house! What more am I supposed to do?”
“Why’d you buy the house, Maverick?”
“Because it was cheaper than renting a place, and because I couldn’t find a place to rent.”
“And why’d you buy a house here in Wilde Bay?”
“I bought it while I was on parole,” I said. “Where the hell else was I supposed to buy a house?”
Millie folded her hands as she watched me. Something that felt an awful lot like pity crossed over her expression, but I tried to brush it off. I didn’t need her pity.
“Do you want to live in Wilde Bay, Maverick?” she asked.
“I…” I closed my mouth slowly. I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Do you want to work on cars and repair houses?” she continued. “Or is that just the job you could get?”
I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to answer her. I just didn’t know how.
“Survival mode kept you alive, Maverick, but it didn’t give you a life,” Millie said softly. “You can’t build a life if you’re constantly preparing for it to fall apart.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as her words hit home. Survival mode had been my baseline for so long that I didn’t know anything else. It had dug its claws in when I realized no one was coming to save me. No one was choosing me. That was on me.
Keep your head down.
Don’t ask for too much.
Learn the rules.
Don’t give anyone leverage.
Life had become a list of unspoken rules to keep Aidan off my back, to make sure no one poked too hard into our lives, to keep food available, and more. I learned when to fight and when to run away. I learned to predict moods and use that to gauge when it was safe.
All those lessons followed me into adulthood. I learned how to read rooms and build fortresses instead of walls. I learned how to stay detached while calling it independence. I lowered my expectations and called it realism.
And then there was Harley. I didn’t have a clue what to do with someone who wanted me.
It was intoxicating and terrifying. He was the first person to give me an inkling of what life could be beyond surviving.
But even then, I still braced for the fallout as I tried to build something with him.
Plans. Hopes. Dreams. All of it, I poured into him.
But that was the thing: I wasn’t doing it for me. I was doing it to be with Harley.
I didn’t know how to make all those choices for myself. I only knew how to make them to make him happy. To keep him.
I had no idea how to choose something simply because it made me happy.
“You have your whole life ahead of you, baby boy. It’s okay to stop and ask yourself what you really want from your life. And it’s okay to chase that. You did a damn good job surviving, Maverick, but now you deserve to be happy.”
Deserve to be happy…
It sounded so ridiculously simple—it should’ve been simple.
“I don’t know what makes me happy,” I whispered. The words hurt to say outloud.
“I know, baby boy.” Reaching across the table, she took my hand. “It’ll be the hardest thing you ever do—choosing yourself over choosing survival—but that fight’s worth it.”
I squeezed her hand tightly as I caved to the emotions clawing their way through my chest. A quiet sob clogged my throat. Thankfully, Millie didn’t say a word. She just sat there holding my hand as I fell apart.