CHAPTER 91
maverick
He remembered.
He remembered.
Harley remembered. He remembered the stupid brownies in a mug and made them a staple in his life. He made them a thing with his daughter.
Hell, I couldn’t remember the last time I had one—besides the dinner with Harley and Aria.
That single fact screwed with my head. Even days later, I was still stuck on it. Because once upon a time, it’d been something I used to take care of him. To make him feel good. At the time, it’d been such a silly little thing—drunken brownies in a mug. A little aftercare to soothe his anxiety.
And yet… apparently, it hadn’t been so silly.
Somewhere along the way, Harley had decided it was worth keeping. Not just as a memory but as an active practice. Had he clung to it all these years without me knowing? Or was it something he brought back into his life for a specific reason? Did he think of me every time?
That whole realization had brought things to the surface that I hadn’t been prepared for.
I’d spent years putting myself back together from the messy chapters of our lives.
But now I was stuck on whether our story was actually over, like I’d thought it was.
Were there unfinished chapters? Or was our friendship the conclusion to everything?
The longer I sat with everything, the harder it became to pretend like the ending didn’t matter to me. Because the truth was… I still loved Harley. They weren’t words I could say out loud—not yet. And maybe never.
And then there was Aria. She was bright and loud and fearless. I liked being around her, which was a weird thing probably to say about someone else’s kid, but I did. She was such a cool little kid, and it was an honor to be a little part of her life.
My heart was a mess of emotions that I struggled to untangle them from one another. What I had was good. I liked my life. I’d been happy for a long time. I worried that if I entertained this thing with Harley… if I reopened our history like that… would I jeopardize that?
“Can I show you something?”
I glanced up at the sound of Carson’s voice and instantly smiled at the sight of him. He stood in the doorway, hugging his tablet to his chest as he waited for me to reply.
“Always,” I said enthusiastically and scooted my chair back in an invitation for him to join me. He hurried over while I pushed my keyboard up a bit on my desk. “Show me what you’ve got, kid.”
“Do you know how cool this is?” he demanded as he set his tablet down. I scooted closer to better look over his shoulder while he flipped open the case. He went straight to his collection of drawings that he had saved.
“Yeah?” I asked. “Are you liking it? I don’t know how hard this is compared to all your sketchbooks.”
What followed was an almost ten-minute monologue about the differences between digital and traditional art.
Truthfully, I didn’t have a clue what he was saying, but I was amazed at the sheer number of words he said.
I’d never heard him talk so much in his life.
He talked about pen pressure and brush types and color profiles.
Where he learned it all was beyond me, but I listened to every word and asked a few questions along the way.
“I haven’t figured out the art part yet,” he told me.
“What do you mean you haven’t figured out the art part yet?” I replied with a frown. “It sounds to me like you have.”
“Digital art is hard,” Carson said. As he flipped through a few pictures, his frustrated expression grew. “It doesn’t look the same.”
“It’s not going to look the same,” I reminded him gently. “That’s like working in sidewalk chalk and expecting it to look like paint. They’re different, kid. It’ll take a while to figure out how to make it work for you.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey.” I ruffled his hair affectionately. “All of that is still wall-worthy because I think it looks damn impressive.”
“Yeah?” He glanced at me, and I nodded. “Mommy needs a better printer. Hers doesn’t have colored ink.”
“Sounds about right,” I replied with a chuckle. “What if I look into art printers?”
“What?”
“There’s got to be a place you can get digital art printed,” I told him. And a way to alleviate the cost of maintaining a printer for Roxy. “I’ll look into somewhere we can send your stuff off to for printing, okay?”
“You really think it’s good enough to print?” Carson made a face as he moved between pictures.
“Yeah, I do,” I reassured him. “Remember, practice makes progress. You’re doing just fine.”
“Can I set you up at my desk to do some art while your uncle and I talk?” Roxy asked as she walked into my office, interrupting our conversation.
“Well, that’s not daunting,” I muttered under my breath.
“What’d you do wrong?” Carson replied quietly.
“Save me,” I said as I grabbed him around the waist and dragged him closer like a shield. He giggled as he tried to get away from me, and I kept dragging him back. “Don’t leave me with her!”
The look she pinned me with wasn’t encouraging at all.
“Go draw something amazing.” Sighing, I released him. “Apparently, I’m in trouble.”
I waited a little impatiently as Roxy made sure he was set up at her desk outside my office. I had a feeling I knew exactly what she wanted to talk about, and I didn’t want to have that conversation.
“All right, Mister,” Roxy began, walking into my office and shutting the door. She grabbed the chair across from my desk and dragged it as close as she could manage. “You’ve been avoiding people for days.”
“I haven’t been avoiding people for days,” I retorted.
Sort of. I’d spent a lot of time alone—that much was true.
I just needed to clear my head. To think straight.
To either pack away all the messed-up emotions I was feeling, or make myself do something about them.
“I was just having a great conversation with my nephew before you interrupted.”
“Maverick.”
“Fine.” I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I’ve been avoiding people a little bit.”
“A lot,” she corrected.
“I just needed to work through some shit.”
“About Harley.”
“About… things…” I told her all too pathetically. From the judgy look on her face, she wasn’t buying my shit. “Yes! About Harley. Jesus fuck, you nosy woman.”
“Well, I’m here now, so talk to me.” She made herself comfortable in the chair as my gaze flicked in her direction. Well, she wasn’t going anywhere. Still, I just stared at her because for the life of me, I didn’t have a clue where to start.
“I don’t know how to explain Harley to you,” I admitted.
“Start from the beginning,” she suggested. “I just know what happened the last time—”
“You know some of what happened last time.” I hadn’t told her everything. She knew enough to know enough, and she knew the emotional fallout.
“Then tell me everything.”
I sat back with a sigh, my lips pressing together tightly as I considered her. How in the world did I explain Harley to someone who didn’t know him? He was so much more than the surface levels of our story.
“I’ve known Harley for… fuck, it’s been eighteen years at this point,” I said. “I knew him growing up because… you know, small town. My senior year, I was in the bathroom, smoking when I wasn’t supposed to be—”
“Such a little rebel,” Roxy teased.
“You have no idea.” I chuckled. To be honest, I hadn’t given her my story.
I just didn’t talk about it with anyone.
So I had no idea what she knew about the type of reputation I had growing up.
“Anyway, I’m hiding in the stall, trying to smoke without getting caught, when I hear it…
some kid is having a panic attack just inside the bathroom door… ”
For the better part of two hours, I told her our story.
I gave her as many details as I could, the memories coming easier the longer I talked.
I told her about my childhood, about the chaos and the abuse.
About the parents I didn’t know anymore and the brother who had used control as power.
But I also told her about Harley’s past. I told her about the mother who manipulated him and the father who didn’t protect him.
I told her about the systematic deconstruction of who he was as they groomed him to be something he never wanted to be.
I told her the stories about when we were young…
just two kids thrown together in the most ridiculous way.
Two kids who had no business fitting together as well as we did.
We were opposites in every way that mattered, but somehow the pieces had still locked in place.
Back then, it was simple. Easy. We had this thing the world hadn’t managed to ruin yet.
And I told her how, eventually, the world did what it always does…
it complicated things until that easy fit wasn’t enough to save us.
I told her the stories about when we were bold…
when we were old enough to believe we could outrun the things that had shaped us.
When we decided we were going to do things differently.
That we would be braver and be something together.
Two young men who wanted more—who deserved more—and how we thought we could pull it off.
And I told her how everything we tried to fight ended up crashing down around us anyway.
I told her the stories about when we were broken…
truly broken. About the man who tried to bury himself in a life that was never truly meant for him and the man who stayed frozen in place, too afraid of the what-ifs to take another step forward.
I told her about the hopes and the lies, the fight that ended us, and the ways I broke afterward. Truly broke in ways she didn’t know.
And in the end… I told her about the inevitable…
the moment the universe pushed Harley and me back together, like it always did.
Only now, we were unrecognizable versions of ourselves.
The ghosts of our pasts were there, but we had both grown.
Healed. We were better for all the shit we’d been through.
“Harley and I… we just don’t work,” I whispered at the end of it all. Maybe I was saying that for her benefit, or maybe I was saying it for my own. Either way, I hated it.
By the end, that was the one takeaway: I hated that we didn’t work.
And maybe that was the reason it never worked with anyone else. Harley was inevitably my person, and I wanted to think that I was his. The universe just… well, the universe had a cruel sense of humor. Or maybe it was karma for all the bad things I’d done in my life.
“Do you know,” Roxy began quietly, “what all those epic star-crossed lover stories get wrong?”
I stared at her. After divulging my heart and soul to her, that was her question?
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Everyone always acts like, oh, I met my soul mate, and now everything is perfect, and our life is just so great.” Her mocking tone made me laugh. “Well, guess what? It doesn’t work like that, buttercup. All relationships take work.”
“I’m aware.”
“And I think that you and Harley just had so much going on back then that there wasn’t any room for a relationship.”
“And we do now?” I demanded.
“I don’t know, do you?” She stared at me hard, already knowing the answer to this.
I hated dating. Sure, I tried it from time to time, but I wasn’t good at it.
I wasn’t good at investing in relationships—not like I had been with Harley.
And maybe it was that Harley had ruined that for me.
Maybe I couldn’t bring myself to trust someone like that again.
And maybe I was full of shit because, even after everything, no one else was Harley. No one else fit the way he did. I didn’t want them to.
“I know how I feel about dating,” I retorted, “but I don’t know about him. He’s got a kid now.”
“And?”
“And… he has a business?” I frowned.
“And?” Why the fuck did she keep asking?
”I don’t know! He seems happy!” I exclaimed, cracking under pressure. “He seems calmer and more put together, and he’s got this smile that he never had before. He was always kind of sad, you know? He actually seems happy now.”
“God, I want a man who knows my smiles,” Roxy muttered.
“What?” I shot back. “It was our thing! He was sad, I was angry, it worked.”
“Clearly not,” she scoffed. “So, he’s not sad anymore.”
“Exactly.”
“But what about you? Are you angry anymore?”
“No.” I’d let go of my anger a long time ago. It was the most grueling thing I ever did, but I was better for it.
“Exactly.” The smug look on her face irritated me. “So, maybe, this time, there’s room for a relationship.”
“You don’t know that,” I replied.
“And neither will you if you don’t do something about it,” Roxy said softly. “You keep worrying about what might go wrong, Mav, but you’re not thinking about what you’re going to lose if you do nothing. Sometimes the best thing in your life needs you to be brave enough to choose it.”
“I’m not good at being brave.” It was a hell of a thing to admit, but it was true. I was good at being safe and predictable. At stability and the known.
“I think you’re braver than you realize. You wouldn’t have gotten this far if you weren’t.” Roxy let the silence stretch on as I fell quiet, knowing better than to push me any harder. I leaned back in my chair and stared pointedly at my desk while her words tumbled through my mind.
For years, I’d built a life around the simple and the predictable. Work, family, community, and Duke. It was a rhythm I understood. Nothing changed, and that was okay. I liked it that way.
And then Harley walked into that barn.
Suddenly, all of that wasn’t enough. I changed my schedule to fill my time with him, with Aria, with their lives. It made sense as it slowly took over areas of my life that it shouldn’t have.
The idea of losing all of that… well, I didn’t want to think about that.
But Roxy was right: doing nothing was still a choice.
I had two versions of my future in front of me. And to be honest… I didn’t like the one that didn’t include Harley.