Chapter 21 Maggie
Maggie
The morning was a disaster I refused to acknowledge.
I threw myself into work like my life depended on it.
Check the feed schedules. Review the irrigation timeline.
Walk the fence line near the north pasture.
Keep moving. Keep busy. Don't think about the empty cabin.
Don't think about the note burning a hole in my pocket.
Don't think about Jack driving away while I slept, putting miles between us with every passing minute.
Don't think. Just work.
It almost worked. For about an hour.
I reorganized the supply room that didn't need reorganizing.
Updated the vaccination records that were already current.
Made a list of repairs that could wait until spring and then starred half of them as urgent anyway.
When thoughts of Jack tried to creep in, I shoved them down and found something else to do.
I snapped at two cowboys before eight a.m.
The first one was five minutes late—five minutes, which on any other day I wouldn't have noticed. He backed away with both hands raised, muttering an apology he didn't owe me. I watched him retreat toward the parking lot and couldn't make myself care.
I kept moving.
I rewrote the day's schedule three times, each version more aggressive than the last. The whiteboard in the office looked like a battle plan instead of a work roster—tasks stacked on tasks, no breaks, no room for error.
When a ranch hand asked a simple question about feed delivery, I bit his head off so thoroughly that he retreated without another word.
My eyes stayed dry through sheer force of will—because if I started crying now, in front of everyone, I might never stop.
No one knew what was wrong. No one dared ask.
I moved through the morning with my spine locked straight and my face carefully blank, because if I let even one crack show, I'd shatter into a thousand pieces right there in the dirt.
The nausea sat low in my stomach—that awful churning that comes when you know you've broken something and everyone's about to find out.
I smiled when I had to. Gave orders. Checked things off lists.
Performed the role of Maggie Blackwood, woman who has her shit together, while my insides liquefied with shame.
No one could see. No one could know I'd fucked this up.
Until Wyatt.
He approached mid-morning, concern flickering beneath his usual intensity. He fell into step beside me as I stalked toward the barn, his voice careful in a way that told me he was trying not to spook me. "You okay, Mags?"
"Fine." The word came out like a blade. "Just busy."
He studied me for a long moment. He'd seen me stressed, angry, exhausted. He'd never seen me like this. "Have you seen Jack this morning? I wanted to—"
"He's gone."
Wyatt blinked. "Gone? What do you mean, gone? Did something—"
"What part of gone is confusing to you, Wyatt?
" The words ripped out of me, louder than I intended, sharp enough to draw glances from across the yard.
"He left. He's not here. There's nothing else to say about it, so can you please just—" I stopped.
Pressed my hand to my forehead. The silence around us was deafening.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—I'm sorry."
"It's okay. We're good,” he said straight away. But his eyes said something else entirely. Something careful and worried and far too knowing.
He retreated. Smart man.
I stood there for a moment, pulse hammering, face burning.
Get it together. Get it together. I could feel eyes on me—ranch hands, family, everyone pretending not to have heard.
My throat tightened with the effort of not screaming, not crying, not doing anything that would confirm what they were all probably thinking: Maggie finally lost it.
I walked toward the barn like nothing had happened. Like my hands weren't shaking.
Ivy watched from a distance, uncertainty in her soft eyes. She started toward me twice and stopped both times. When our eyes met across the yard, she gave me a small, worried smile. I looked away.
Hunter made a dry comment about someone waking up on the wrong side of the bed.
The look I gave him could have stripped paint. He actually apologized—Hunter, who never apologized for anything. The fact that I'd rattled him badly enough to produce genuine contrition should have made me feel guilty.
It didn't. Nothing did. I was hollow inside, operating on autopilot, running through the motions of a life that no longer meant anything. The sickness in my gut had settled into something duller now—a constant low hum of dread, the feeling of waiting for a blow that had already landed.
Even Daddy gave me a wide berth after one clipped exchange about irrigation schedules. Owen Blackwood had raised seven children through all manner of crises. But something in my face that morning made him step back and let me be.
"We'll talk later," he said quietly, and walked away.
Clay passed me near the equipment shed and didn't say a word. Just looked at me with those steady eyes, then kept walking. Somehow that was worse than questions.
I told myself I was functioning. I didn't need Jack. I was fine before him and I'd be fine after.
I was lying to myself so hard it was almost impressive.
Every time I walked past the barn, I saw him there—leaning against the fence post, watching the horses with that quiet patience of his.
Every time I looked toward the bunkhouse, I remembered him walking out in the mornings, Sully at his heels.
Every time I passed the spot near the stock tanks where we'd had the water fight, I felt the ghost of his hands catching me, his laughter, the cold shock of water and the warmth that came after.
He was everywhere.
The note sat in my pocket like a live coal.
If you ever come for me, come all the way.
By midafternoon, I'd retreated to the small office near the tack room—the same office where Jack had found me talking about the horse program.
Where I'd spread out breeding charts and five-year plans and dreamed out loud while he listened like every word mattered.
He'd looked at me like I was extraordinary that day. Like my dreams were worth having.
Now I sat at the same desk, staring at paperwork I hadn't actually read in twenty minutes.
Momma appeared in the doorway without announcement.
She didn't knock. Didn't ask permission. She just walked in, closed the door behind her, and stood there with that calm, immovable presence that had been calling me on my bullshit for thirty-two years.
"Jack's gone," she said. Not a question.
My throat tightened. I kept my eyes on the paperwork. "He quit. Left this morning."
"Maggie."
"It's fine. We'll hire someone else. The horse program can wait until—"
"Magnolia Grace Blackwood." Momma's voice was soft but unyielding—the voice that had gotten confessions out of seven stubborn children for three decades. "Look at me."
I looked up.
Her face was gentle. Patient. Completely undeceived by the armor I was wearing.
"Are you hurting?"
Three words. Simple. Direct. Impossible to deflect.
I broke.
Just like in the cabin, these tears were messy. Ugly. The kind of tears I hadn't let my family see in years.
Momma didn't shush me. Didn't offer platitudes. Didn't tell me it would be okay. She just crossed the room, gathered me into her arms the way she'd done when I was five and scared of thunderstorms, and held on.
I cried into her shoulder and let it all pour out.
The words came in fragments, broken and raw—the fear, the shame, the realization that I'd destroyed something precious because I was too scared to claim it. I told her about the bar, about Georgia asking who Jack was, about introducing him as the ranch hand like he was nothing.
"I just said it," I gasped. "Without even thinking. Like it was the most natural thing in the world to pretend he meant nothing to me."
"Oh, sweetheart."
"And he just... he smiled. He shook her hand. He didn't say anything. He didn't call me out or make a scene." My voice cracked. "He drove me home and made love to me like I was the most important thing in the world, and the whole time he was saying goodbye."
I told her about the note—what Jack had written, how he needed to be chosen, how he wouldn't stay where he had to shrink himself to fit.
"I thought the walls were protecting me," I said. "I thought if I just stayed small enough, stayed careful enough, no one could hurt me. But all I did was hurt myself. And hurt him."
I admitted how terrified I'd been to want Jack. How every time I felt myself falling, I'd pulled back. How I'd kept him at arm's length even when I was letting him into my bed, into my life, into every part of me that mattered.
"I didn't realize I was already all in until he was gone," I whispered. "I was so busy protecting myself from loving him that I didn't notice I already did."
Momma held me through all of it. She didn't try to fix it or minimize it or tell me everything would be okay. She just let me grieve.
"I ruined it," I gasped between sobs. "I had something real and I ruined it because I'm a coward."
"You're not a coward." Her voice was firm, her hand rubbing steady circles on my back. "You're scared. There's a difference."
"He left because I couldn't say it out loud.
Because I couldn't choose him in front of people.
" I pulled back, wiping my face with furious embarrassment.
"He saved my life, Momma. He stepped in front of a charging boar for me.
He looked Daddy in the eye and told him he wanted to be with me.
He did everything right. And I called him the fucking help. "
Momma cupped my face in her hands. Her eyes were fierce and tender all at once, the way only a mother's can be.
"Listen to me," she said. "You made a mistake.
A bad one. But that man didn't leave because he stopped loving you.
He left because he loves you enough to demand you be brave.
" She paused, letting that land. "That's not the action of someone who's given up, Maggie.
That's the action of someone who believes you're capable of more. "
My breath caught. I hadn't thought about it that way.
Jack hadn't left in anger. Hadn't left in punishment. He'd left because he knew—the way he always seemed to know—that I was capable of being braver than I'd been. He was waiting for me to prove him right.
"What if I go after him and he won't take me back?"
"Then at least you'll know you tried." Her thumbs brushed the tears from my cheeks, gentle and sure.
"But sweetheart—I saw the way that man looked at you.
Your father told me what he did in that pasture when those hogs came.
Jack Remington isn't the kind who walks away from something real unless he has to.
You give him a reason to stay, and he'll stay. "
"I don't even know where he went."
"Then find out." She released my face but held my gaze, steady and certain. "You've spent your whole life solving problems for everyone else. It's time to solve this one for yourself."
I took a shaky breath. Then another.
My mother was right. About Jack being worth the risk. About me being capable of more than I believed.
Jack had seen that in me from the beginning. He'd looked at me—all my sharp edges, all my walls, all my fear—and he'd seen someone worth loving. Worth waiting for. Worth demanding bravery from.
He hadn't left because he gave up on me. He'd left because he believed in me enough to know I could do better.
Now I had to prove him right.
If you ever come for me, come all the way.
I was terrified. Wrecked. Not sure I deserved a second chance after what I'd done. But that fear had already cost me everything.
I wiped my face one more time, straightened my spine, and met my mother's eyes.
"I need to talk to Liam."
If anyone could help me find Jack, it was him. Liam had connections I didn't—people who knew how to track someone who didn't want to be found. And more than that, Liam understood. He'd almost lost Stephanie. He knew what it meant to fight for someone you loved.
Momma smiled—small, proud, knowing. The smile of a woman who'd been waiting thirty-two years to see her daughter finally fight for something she wanted.
"That's my girl."
I left my mother's arms wrecked but determined. My face was blotchy, my eyes swollen, my carefully constructed armor in pieces on the office floor. But somewhere underneath all the devastation, something new was taking shape. Something that felt like courage.
Finding Jack was only the first step. Choosing him out loud—in front of everyone, without fear, without apology—would be the hardest thing I'd ever done.
But Jack had asked me to come all the way.
And for the first time in my life, I was ready.