Chapter Thirty-One
Brody
“Maggie’s in what?” I exclaimed into the phone, blinking in the darkness of the hotel room.
“In jail,” Liam said, an anxiety to his voice that I’d never quite heard. “And not just Maggie. Cassie’s with her. So, can you watch Lily or not?”
“No, I fucking can’t.” I laughed incredulously. “You think I have time to babysit when my girlfriends in fucking jail?”
“She’s not your girlfriend. You just kissed someone else in front of her a few hours ago.” He said, sticking a pin into my heart. “And my wife is there, so I need to go get her, now.”
Liam’s silence on the other end of the line alerted me to the fact that he might set me on fire if I refused, but I couldn’t do anything but.
“Sorry,” I bit out. “But I’m coming with you. You have to pick me up.”
“You think I have time for that?” I could tell Liam wanted to curse me out, but I also knew that his mind was probably already whirring with thoughts of what to do with his daughter.
“I’ll call your mom, have her go there and watch Lily. You know she will.”
“I can’t wait that long,” he said, and I pictured him glaring daggers at me.
“Too bad. You’re going to have to.”
“Where are you, anyway?” he asked, irritated.
“At a hotel.”
“Why?”
“I was catching up with an old friend,” I said, feeling guilty.
Abbey was sleeping in her bed. I had fallen asleep in the armchair across the room. We’d talked about old memories for an hour until we both had fallen asleep, probably mid-sentence. It had been totally innocent, but some part of me felt like it was wrong, even still.
“Catching up with the old friend who kissed you earlier?”
“It’s not like that—” I started to protest, but he cut me off.
“Not my business,” he said. “You do what you want. But I need to get Cassie, so you better be waiting outside in fifteen minutes.”
“I will,” I told him adamantly.
“I mean it. You’re not there, I’m not waiting for you.”
“Yeah, Liam. I got it,” I said, irritated.
But I couldn’t blame him for being panicked, because it was the same for me. I understood his desperate need to get to his lady, because no matter how much he thought Cassie meant to him—
Maggie meant just as much to me.
And I was going to go get her.
Liam burst into the jail like a bull in a china shop, ready to demolish anyone standing in the way of his goal.
I knew we had to be more sensible, unless we wanted to get thrown in there right beside them for unruly behavior or whatever type of crap they tried to pin on us if we made trouble tonight.
Smiling politely, I tried to greet the clerk by telling them who we were there for, but Liam had other plans.
“Cassie Brynn,” he said, leaning forward intently. “I’m here for my wife.”
“And Maggie Brynn.” I shoved him out of the way with a frown.
The officer at the front desk peered at us with interest, eyes widening as realization struck.
“You boys play for the Harbor Wolves, don’t you?” The man was a little older, voice thick with the Boston accent that Maggie denied existed but anyone not raised in the city could hear from a mile away. “You look bigger in person, somehow.”
He paused to laugh, probably chuckling at the irony of the players he’d just watched on the small television screen in the corner of his desk now standing in front of him, here to bail out their partners.
“You wouldn’t mind if I get a picture, would you?” he said, already standing and coming around the desk. “My son will never believe it.”
Oh, great.
We didn’t have time for this. Not when Maggie was probably hungry and cold in the holding cell.
But I knew well enough that people were more likely to help out an agreeable person than one with a stick up their ass, which is why Liam was pissing me off so much.
“No,” he gritted out.
“Shut up,” I mouthed at him, sending him a glare.
He threw his head back, blinking rapidly as he tried to maintain his composure before looking back at the man in charge of Maggie and Cassie’s fates.
“Fine. But we have to make it quick.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, wobbling over to us. “Hey, Steve. Get off your ass and come take a picture of me.”
“What?” a voice called from the back office. “Why the hell do I want to take a picture of you?”
Steve, in all his near elderly glory, appeared with an expression of irritation that instantly transformed into one of awe at the sight of us.
“Holy smokes,” he let out a whistle. “There’s something you don’t expect to see on a Tuesday evening.”
“Right,” the first man said, handing over his cellphone before making his way to stand with us, “so take my phone and snap the picture, would you?”
He was tall himself. Almost as tall as me, and just a few inches shorter than Liam. He stood between us, wrapping his arms around us both as if we were his sons and he was posing for the family Christmas card.
Liam muttered something under his breath, and I wanted to pinch his arm at the way he deadpanned the camera.
His lack of enthusiasm when meeting fans wouldn’t do him any favors if the photo leaked, but then again, neither would the picture of us standing in jail, so I guess it was a wash either way.
“Let me see here,” the elderly man said, hand shaking as he held the camera. With a wobbly finger he pressed the button and smiled. “Got it!”
I was sure it was about to be the blurriest fucking photo anyone had ever seen, but I was hoping they wouldn’t take the time to look it over.
“Great, now bring me to my wife,” Liam said, leaving little room for debate.
“And mine,” I said, not bothering to get into the specifics of our current relationship status at the moment.
“Ah, you two like the troublemakers, huh?” the first officer said with a wink. “If it’s those two pretty ladies I saw earlier, then I don’t blame you. Follow me.”
He led us to a back room where a woman sat at a desk in front of a small holding area with ugly gray bars—the kind you saw on sitcoms where the main characters got into some rambunctious debacle and had to spend a night in the cell.
But there was nothing funny about the way Maggie looked laying down on the bench, eyes fixed blankly at the ceiling.
Something had broken her.
Had it been me?
Surely she must know how I felt about her. That the kiss hadn’t been anything on my end at all.
“Liam!” Cassie, who was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, gasped at the same time Liam’s anguished voice called out, “Cassie!”
“What’s the bail?” I asked, trying to keep my head straight at the sight of Maggie’s look of crumbled dejection.
Her eyes panned to mine, but I couldn’t read them. Or maybe I just didn’t trust myself to anymore, after all the misunderstandings between us lately.
“Who cares? You can take my whole fucking wallet,” Liam interjected, actually dropping it down on the desk. “Just get my wife out of there.”
“Your wife isn’t being held,” the clerk fixed him with a look. “She chose to be in there with the other one.”
Liam’s head snapped toward Cassie and he groaned.
“Why, baby,” he said, eyes closed as he attempted to rub out the crease between his brows. “Why are you trying to kill me?”
The clerk, acutely aware of the dire situation, got to her feet and unlocked the holding cell.
The second the bars slid away, Cassie was out and into Liam’s arms as if they hadn’t seen each other in days.
And I would’ve been judging them if I didn’t take the opportunity to head straight into the cell and crouch in front of Maggie, who for some reason wasn’t jumping at the chance to get the hell out.
“Maggie, babe,” I stared at her painfully expressionless face. “What happened?”
She sat up, flinching away from me when I tried to reach out for her.
Running headfirst into barbed wire would’ve hurt less.
“Yeah, Maggie, what the hell happened?” Liam said, still holding Cassie tucked under his chin.
“It’s complicated,” Cassie squirmed, peering over to Maggie, who sat statue-still on the bench in front of me.
“Margaret here was brought in for charges of assault,” the clerk said.
“What?” Liam and I gasped at the same time.
“Maggie?” I asked, eyes widening as I looked at her, waiting for an explanation.
She didn’t say a single word to defend herself. She was so completely and utterly lifeless, so un-Maggie-like, that I felt fear coiling inside me and didn’t have a single clue how to reach her.
“No!” Cassie said from behind me. “It wasn’t like that! It was just her dad.”
I turned in shock, eyes focused on Cassie, who I hoped was clearheaded enough to tell me every detail.
Maggie had seen her dad? Without me?
No wonder she was such a shell right now. That guy screwed with her head like nobody’s business. My hands balled into fists at my side at the knowledge I hadn’t been there beside her during whatever happened.
“Assaulting a parent is still considered assault, Mrs. Brynn,” the clerk’s voice countered.
“She didn’t assault him,” Cassie emphasized. “She threw a punch at him. Just one. And trust me, it was well deserved.”
“Why didn’t you just come home, Cass?” Liam groaned. “Or call me?”
“You think I’d let Maggie sit in jail alone all night?” Cassie asked, affronted at the insinuation.
Hell yeah, Cass, I thought. Maggie needed someone by her side.
If she wouldn’t let it be me, I was grateful it was Cassie, at least.
“Maggie, what the hell were you thinking? I told you that guy was no good. I told you to stay away from him, but you think everyone in the world is wrong except you—”
“Hey!” Cassie raised her voice, turning her angry eyes onto Liam. “That’s my friend you’re talking to. And she already had a hard night, so leave her alone.”
Then, in predictable Cassie fashion, she still leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “But thank you for coming.”
Liam sighed, draping an arm around Cassie’s shoulder.
“Look,” he said, “we’re all tired. We can all talk about this in the morning. Let’s just go home, okay?”
“Maggie?” My voice nearly cracked, and finally—finally—she rewarded me with her gaze.
It was a look of exhaustion from fighting battles unbeknownst to me, and it hurt me just as much to know I wasn’t able to fix whatever it was haunting her.
“Yeah,” she said, standing. “Let’s go.”