CHAPTER 83
maverick
Inviting Harley to breakfast was impulsive, but nothing in the handbook of being around your ex said you couldn’t invite him to breakfast. Okay, it probably would’ve been if a book like that existed.
But Harley and I… we just weren’t like most exes.
We’d tried a few different times. The connection would always be there. I’d resigned myself to that.
And if I were being honest, I missed having Harley around—though I hadn’t realized that until I was face-to-face with him again.
After loading up my latest driftwood haul and doing my best to dry off Duke, I drove over to The Boathouse.
Harley’s SUV sat in the parking lot, beating me there, and he leaned against the hood, arms crossed.
The flannel from yesterday was gone, replaced by a cream cardigan that felt more like him.
At least, the version of him that I knew.
Who knew? Maybe flannel and work boots were the new attire at his family’s company.
“This is Duke,” I said as I walked toward him. “He’ll be joining us for breakfast.”
“Since when does Millie allow dogs in her diner?” Harley asked.
“She doesn’t.” As I walked toward the front door, he fell in step alongside me.
Unlike most people, he made no move to interact with Duke.
Interesting. Maybe Harley wasn’t a dog person.
It probably didn’t help that Duke had no interest in him either—not when we were about to walk into The Boathouse.
“She loves Duke, though. He has his own spot and everything.”
The only person who loved Duke more than I did was Millie, and Duke loved her more than he loved me. He wasn’t just a dog to her. That was her furry grandbaby. Some days, I wondered whose dog he was.
“Look at my baby!” Millie exclaimed the moment Duke trotted through the door. See? Her baby, not mine. Duke hurried across the diner and behind the lunch counter to greet her, his tail wagging rapidly.
“C’mon now! What am I?” I demanded loudly after a few minutes. “Chopped liver?”
“Oh, don’t you get jealous on me now, Maverick Fox, you hear me?
” she said, laughing. With Duke attached to her hip, she rounded the counter.
I met her halfway and hugged her fiercely.
It didn’t matter that it’d only been a few days since I saw her last; she still held on just as tight.
Short of having the title, she was basically my mom at this point.
She treated me like one of her boys—complete with hugs, nagging, check-ins, and all the food I could ever need, no matter how many times I told her she didn’t need to.
It was weird, realizing that this was what being loved by a mother was supposed to be like. It didn’t make up for the crap my own mother had put me through, but it did soften the blow as I grew older.
“You want your usual this morning?” Millie asked as we separated.
“Always starts with a coffee,” I said. I rounded the corner, helping myself. “I’m going to need a pot and two cups—”
“Harley Lowell.” The tone in her voice shut me up as she realized he had walked in with me.
Yeah, Millie wasn’t happy. I couldn’t quite blame her.
She knew everything. She was the only person who knew everything.
I’d shared every sordid, broken detail with her more than a few times as I tried to work through the anger and hurt I’d been left with.
“Millie—”
“It’s Mrs. Wagner,” she interrupted. I bit back a laugh. Oh, she was going to lay into him if I wasn’t careful. And the worst part was: I was good. I had no issues to address with him. I’d moved on from all that crap. Millie would probably hold a grudge until the day she died.
Poor Harley.
“Of course, Mrs. Wagner,” he said. At least, he was a good sport about the whole thing. I swiped up a pot of coffee and two cups.
“Come on.” I inserted myself into the back-and-forth to keep it from spiraling out of control. “We sit outside. Duke! Outside.”
My dog’s ears perked up at the mention of outside. He bolted for the back door—the one that led to the porch and lake wraparound eating area. Harley followed a few steps behind me. We almost made it to the door before Millie stopped us. Almost.
“You be good to him, you hear?” Millie called after us. Both of us stopped, turning. I watched how Harley straightened slightly, his back going rigid.
“Yes, ma’am,” Harley said.
“Good,” she replied. “I’ve got my eyes on you, Harley Lowell. You understand me?”
The threat was subtle enough to be non-aggressive, but clear enough for him to know what she meant. To be honest, it was one of her nicer threats, all things considered.
“Yes, ma’am,” he repeated softly.
“Damn.” I whistled as I leaned in closer, the heat of his back seeping into my chest. I ignored just how damn good that felt. “She threatened you before you hit the back door. I think that’s a new record.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, she usually waits until food comes out to give her speech while she holds your food hostage,” I told him and gave him a little nudge. “We’d better go before she comes up with a plan.”
He followed me outside as Duke led the way, going straight for the farthest corner overlooking the lake, where a raised dog bed was set up for him alongside my usual table.
A fresh bone was already waiting for him, and he got to work gnawing on it before we ever got a chance to sit down.
I took the seat closest to him while Harley sat across from me.
“You eat here often?” he asked. I poured him a cup of coffee first and then myself.
“Most days, yeah,” I said. “But I’m the go-to person to fix everything, so it evens out.”
“Mrs. Wagner seems to like you,” he replied, making me chuckle at the title. “A lot.”
“That’s an understatement. You remember Roxy?” I asked. When he nodded, I continued, “She had Aidan’s kid. My brother’s not around anymore.”
A restraining order made sure that happened.
“What started as just me trying to be helpful turned into Millie and James all but legally adopting me,” I explained. As he reached for his coffee cup, I glanced at his hand. No wedding ring. It made me wonder why he wouldn’t be wearing it.
And the small and twisted, mistrustful part of me wondered if we were about to repeat history all over again.
“That’s nice,” Harley said.
“It is,” I agreed.
He fell silent, and so did I. Half a dozen thoughts started and fell short as I tried to figure out what to say.
Tried to figure out how to fill the awkward silence with something more than small talk.
From the look on his face, he was trying to do the same.
I searched his expression for that famous anxiety of his, but found none—an impressive feat in and of itself.
“Let me ask you this,” Harley began as he leaned forward on the table. His hands folded around the coffee cup. “What are we doing here, Maverick?”
Straight to the point.
“Catching up,” I said it simply like our last encounter hadn’t been a fucking shit show.
I took a long sip of coffee, postponing answering as I worked out the right wording to say to him.
As I set the mug down, I sighed. “Look, I know we didn’t separate on good terms, but part of growing up and healing is realizing that…
the grass wasn’t greener on the other side just because someone has money.
“The reality is that abuse knows no income bracket. We both used each other in our own ways. I know I used you to feel better—to feel something other than anger and hurt,” I admitted.
It had taken a lot of hard conversations for me to face the way I handled things.
That wasn’t to say that Harley hadn’t done anything wrong, but I wasn’t exactly innocent in it all either.
“It was easier to put my happiness and my future on you rather than deal with everything. I think some part of me believed that just us being together would make all of it go away. That I wouldn’t be angry.
That I wouldn’t be an addict. That I’d suddenly have a life worth living. ”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he whispered.
If there was anyone who would understand that, it was Harley.
We were both products of abuse. It was the cracked and unstable foundation we’d been raised on.
It shaped the way we learned to exist in the world and interact with everyone.
Growing up, every decision we made had been about survival.
About keeping the peace and staying small when we had to.
We had to learn to pick our battles and gauge just how much we could take.
That kind of upbringing… it didn’t mold you. It completely rewired everything in your brain until you couldn’t recognize yourself. It became your entire identity.
And, if Harley was anything like me, surviving it hadn’t been the end of the story.
Even years later, the aftermath still lingered in quieter ways, and our work was never really done.
We had to build something stable outside of the abuse.
We had to learn how to make decisions that weren’t driven by fear or damage control.
We had to learn how to be something more than the worst things that happened to us.
We had to choose thriving over surviving.
And it wasn’t easy. It was brutal and exhausting, and honestly, it was the kind of work that never truly ended. It just changed with the waves of life.
Harley focused hard on his coffee cup, a million miles away in his own thoughts.
I gave him the space he needed because, while it was obvious he was doing better in life, I didn’t have a clue where he was in his journey.
I knew how I was doing. I knew my progress.
I knew my comfort levels with talking about my past.
It was okay if he wasn’t in the same place I was. It wasn’t a race.
“I am sorry,” he said softly.
“I know,” I replied. When his gaze found mine, I smiled.
“I’m not saying what you did was right, but I am saying that you weren’t the only one who did a lot of stupid shit.
It’s water under the bridge. I’m not holding onto any of it anymore.
I don’t want to be that angry kid, and I don’t think you want to be what they turned you into. ”
At least, I was hoping not—for his sake.
“I’m trying my damnedest not to be.”
“I’ll admit, I was surprised that you and your wife moved back here.”
“My what?” He frowned, and despite everything, it settled uncomfortably in the pit of my stomach.
“Holly, your wife—”
“No,” Harley interrupted quickly, shaking his head. “No, no. No. Holly’s not my wife. She’s my daughter’s nanny. She’s like… ten years younger than me.”
I stared at him for a long minute while my mind tried to catch up, all of his words hitting at once. Did he just say daughter?
“Did you just say daughter?” I demanded.
“Yeah.” His smile was instant—the same kind of smile Roxy had anytime someone brought up Carson. “Yeah, she’s six, and she’s… she’s incredible.”
“You’re a dad?” Yeah, my mind wasn’t catching up. I tried to picture him with a kid, but I couldn’t. Maybe it was the prim-and-proper thing I was used to, because I knew how messy and chaotic kids could be. I couldn’t imagine Harley with that kind of life.
Granted, once upon a time, I couldn’t imagine him in flannel, and we’d already proven that one wrong.
“When we were fixing up my mother’s house, my wife—my ex-wife—and I were working with a surrogate to have a baby. Holly was our surrogate,” he explained.
“And now she’s your nanny?”
“She is,” he nodded, “and she helps keep my house running. My daughter loves her, and the extra help is nice.”
“And your ex-wife…”
“I have full custody, not that my ex tried or cared.”
“That’s a dick move,” I commented. That poor girl.
“Yeah. And what about you?” Harley asked, changing the subject.
“I’m single,” I said it before I could stop myself. That wasn’t at all what he was asking.
“Me too,” he replied quietly. Oh. He was single.
“That’s… um, that’s good.” Apparently, awkward was on the menu for our breakfast this morning.
Out of all the things we could’ve discussed, our relationship statuses shouldn’t have been on that list. My mind struggled to recover, pulling at the first things I could think of.
“I don’t have kids. I do have a dog—Duke—but you know that already. ”
At the mention of his name, Duke’s head popped up with a little whine. I reached down and scratched him behind the ears.
“He’s a great dog,” I continued. “After Frank had a stroke, he gave his business to me. I rebranded it to Torque & Timber. We still do cars and house repairs. We have a few holiday community programs that Roxy helped me build.”
“You and Roxy got close?”
“Oh, yeah. I spend a lot of time with her and Carson, my nephew.”
“Carson?” Harley repeated. “And I’m assuming he’s in first grade?”
“Yeah.” I nodded slowly. “Why?”
“My daughter decided Carson is her best friend on their first day of school.”
Small fucking world.
“Well, he does need a friend.”
“And she tried to set me up with Roxy,” he continued. At that, I burst out laughing, making him smile.
“Oh, she’d eat you alive!” I said between laughs. That was a pairing I couldn’t even begin to imagine.
His laughter joined mine, and with it, the seriousness of the conversation faded.
We fell into an easy back-and-forth that only paused long enough for a waitress to take our order and bring our food.
There was a familiar comfort in the conversation with him, accompanied by a new sense of peace—not the old weight of what we had been to each other or the ache of everything that had gone wrong between us.
No, this felt lighter than that.
Sitting across from him, watching him shake his head at something stupid I said with that big smile on his face, I realized the ghosts of our past were gone. They weren’t hanging around, trying to redefine every interaction between us.
What remained was simpler. We were just two people who had moved on and were learning how to exist in a world where the past didn’t have its claws in us.
And somehow, that felt like its own kind of peace.