Chapter 24 Maggie
Maggie
The road stretched long and open, and for once, I let myself sit in the passenger seat.
Literally and figuratively. Liam drove, his hands steady on the wheel, his eyes scanning the highway with that calm focus he brought to everything.
Stephanie navigated from the back, phone in hand, playlist queued up, snacks organized with the precision of someone who took road trips very seriously.
And I sat in the back and watched Texas scroll past the window—flat land giving way to hills, then to something wilder—and tried to remember how to breathe without bracing for impact.
We'd left before dawn, Liam's truck packed with overnight bags and coolers and the quiet determination of people on a mission. Stephanie had kissed my cheek when I climbed in and said, "We're going to find him."
Not maybe. Not I hope. Just certainty, warm and steady, like it was already done.
The first day was tracking.
Liam had made calls before we left—Ranger network, veteran contacts, people who knew people who understood how men like Jack moved through the world.
By the time we hit the Oklahoma border, he had a lead: a feed store outside Amarillo where a quiet guy with a shepherd had bought supplies three days ago.
Paid cash. Mentioned he was heading north.
Three days. Jack had been three days ahead of me when I was still falling apart. While I was crying in the office, he was already putting distance between us.
But he was leaving a trail.
"He's not hiding," Liam said, glancing at me. "He's just moving. There's a difference."
"How do you know?"
"Because if he wanted to disappear, you'd never find him." Liam's eyes returned to the road. "Jack knows how to vanish—after the training he's had. The fact that he's leaving a trail means he wants to be found." He paused. "He's just waiting to see if you're brave enough to follow."
We stopped in Amarillo to confirm the lead. The feed store was exactly the kind of place Jack would have stopped—practical, no-nonsense, run by a weathered man in his sixties who looked like he'd been selling supplies to ranchers since before I was born.
He remembered Jack immediately.
"Hard to forget a man that polite with a dog that well-trained," he said, leaning against the counter. "Most folks come through here in a hurry. This one took his time. Asked about work in the area, actually."
My heart lurched. "Did he take any?"
"Nope. Seemed like he was just passing through." The owner scratched his chin. "Mentioned something about heading north. Family business, I think he said."
"He's not settling," I told Liam and Stephanie as we got back in the truck. "He's still running."
"He's not running," Stephanie said from the back seat. "He's processing. There's a difference.” I turned to look at her, finding a hard time believing it. "Jack knows what he's moving toward," Stephanie continued. "He's just waiting to see if it's going to meet him halfway."
The second day was harder.
We picked up Jack's trail at a ranch outside Pueblo, where he'd spent two days gentling a horse that had been mishandled. The foreman remembered him clearly.
"Fixed that mare in two days," the foreman said, shaking his head in admiration.
"She'd been nothing but trouble since we bought her—wouldn't let anyone near her, kicked the last trainer clear across the paddock.
This guy just... talked to her. Quiet-like.
Didn't push. By the second afternoon, she was eating out of his hand. "
"He say anything about where he was headed?" Liam asked.
"Not much. Kept to himself, mostly. Good worker, though. Showed up early, stayed late, didn't complain." The foreman glanced at me. "Seemed like a man who was working through something. You know the type—keeps his hands busy so his mind doesn't have too much time to think."
I knew the type. I was the type.
"He mentioned Montana," the foreman added. "Said he had something to take care of up there. Unfinished business, maybe."
"He's never been back," I said quietly as we got on the road. "Not since the funeral."
Liam nodded. "Men like Jack—when they're trying to figure out who they are, they go back to where they started."
Somewhere in Wyoming, I finally said it all out loud.
We'd stopped for gas and bad coffee at a truck stop that smelled like diesel and regret. Stephanie was inside buying snacks. Liam leaned against the truck beside me, both of us watching the sun sink toward the mountains, and the silence between us felt like an invitation.
"I was so scared," I said. The words came out rough, unplanned. "Of wanting him. Of letting him see me—really see me, not just the version that fixes things and holds everything together."
Liam didn't respond. He just waited, giving me space to find the words.
"I've spent my whole life being needed," I continued.
"That's how I know I matter—because people need me.
Because I'm useful. Because if I stopped holding everything together, it would all fall apart.
" I laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"And then Jack showed up, and he didn't need me to fix anything.
He just... wanted me. For no reason. Without conditions. "
"That scared you."
"It terrified me." I wrapped my hands around the coffee cup, letting the warmth seep into my cold fingers.
The Wyoming wind was sharp, cutting through my jacket like it had something to prove.
"Because if someone wants you without needing you, they can leave whenever they want.
There's nothing tying them to you. Nothing keeping them there. "
Liam was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentle—gentler than I'd heard it in years. "Is that what you think love is? Being tied to someone?"
I flinched. The question hit somewhere soft, somewhere I didn't want to examine too closely. "I don't know what I think love is. That's the problem."
"Love isn't being needed, Mags." Liam turned to look at me, his eyes steady and sure. "Love is being chosen. Every day. Even when it's hard. Even when there's nothing keeping the other person there except the fact that they want to be."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"Jack chose you. He chose you when he could have walked away after that first night at Wild Creek.
He chose you when he talked to your dad and told him the truth about his intentions.
He chose you when he stepped in front of a charging boar without even thinking about it.
" Liam's voice was firm now, certain. "And he's still choosing you now—by leaving a trail you can follow, by waiting to see if you're brave enough to choose him back. "
My eyes burned. "What if I can't? What if I don't know how?"
"You already know how." Liam's hand found my shoulder, warm and grounding.
"You've been choosing this family your whole life.
Showing up for us, fighting for us, loving us even when we made it hard.
The only difference is that with Jack, you have to do it out loud.
In front of people. Without the safety net of being needed. "
The words settled into me like seeds into soil. I'd never thought about it that way—that I did know how to choose. That I'd been doing it all along, just not where it counted most.
Stephanie emerged from the truck stop with an armful of snacks and a grin on her face. "I got Twizzlers, beef jerky, and something called a 'tornado' that I'm pretty sure is just a gas station burrito in disguise. Who's hungry?"
I laughed—a real laugh, brought out of me by Stephanie's relentless optimism.
I wiped my eyes and took the Twizzlers.
"Thank you," I said quietly. To both of them. For everything.
The third day, we crossed into Montana.
The landscape shifted—wider skies, sharper mountains, air that smelled like pine and possibility.
Liam's contacts narrowed the search. A ranch outside Billings where Jack had helped load hay for a widow.
A gas station where the attendant remembered the dog.
A small town where someone saw a Texas plate heading toward the mountains.
"He's close," Liam said. "A day ahead of us, maybe less."
"Stop rehearsing," Stephanie said from the back seat, reading my mind the way she always seemed to.
I turned. "What?"
"I can see you thinking. You're building a script in your head, trying to control the moment before it happens. That's not going to work."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Just tell him the truth." Stephanie's smile was gentle, but her eyes were fierce.
"Not the polished version, not the managed version—the messy, terrifying, real version.
Tell him you were scared. Tell him you're still scared.
Tell him you love him anyway, and you're choosing him anyway, and you'll keep choosing him every day if he'll let you. "
She reached out and took my hand.
"That's all he needs to hear, Maggie. That you're choosing him. Out loud. All the way."
"Okay," I said. "No rehearsing. Just truth."
By evening, we had a solid lead.
A small-town bar where a man matching Jack's description had been seen earlier today. He'd had dinner, talked to the bartender, left heading toward the mountains.
Liam checked the map. "There's nothing out that way except old ranch land and a small cemetery."
My breath caught. "His family's graves. He's visiting his family's graves."
We looked at each other—Liam, Stephanie, and me—and something passed between us. Jack wasn't running anymore. He was making peace with his past so he could move forward.
"We'll find him tomorrow," Liam said quietly. "Give him tonight."
I wanted to argue. The need to see him was a physical ache in my chest. But Liam was right. Jack needed this. Whatever he was doing out there in the mountains, with his family's memory and his own grief, he needed to finish it.
I could wait one more night.
We found a motel on the edge of town—nothing fancy, just clean beds and hot water and a diner next door that served breakfast all day. Stephanie and Liam took one room; I took the other.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out Jack's note, unfolding it carefully along the worn creases.
I'd read these words so many times I had them memorized.
But tonight, with Jack somewhere out in those mountains saying goodbye to his family, they felt less like an accusation and more like an invitation.
Tomorrow, I would choose him. Not because I wasn't scared anymore—I was terrified. But because some things were worth being terrified for.
I loved him. I was scared. I was choosing him anyway.
That was it. That was everything.
Sleep came eventually, fitful and full of dreams I couldn't quite remember. But when I woke to gray Montana light filtering through cheap motel curtains, I felt something I hadn't felt in days.
Calm.
Not because I wasn't scared. But the fear had transformed into something that felt almost like courage.
I'd driven three thousand miles to find a man I loved.
I'd let Liam and Stephanie see me vulnerable, broken, desperate, in a way I hadn’t let anyone in my family see me.
I'd admitted things I'd never said out loud before.
I'd already started coming all the way. Now I just had to finish.