Chapter Sixty
Nine Months Ago
Tucson, Arizona
This was a mistake.
Maggie had packed the wrong dress and she was wearing the wrong shoes and she’d ordered the wrong cocktail. It had only been
three months, but she hadn’t left her apartment in what felt like so much longer. She had never been very good at peopl ing , and then she’d up and lost her people—her only two—and so when Deborah emailed to ask if she still wanted to attend the
Tucson Festival of Books, Maggie said she was totally planning on going! And was looking forward to it! And was absolutely
up for the challenge! ( Three exclamation points! She’d used three! )
In other words, she’d lied.
But her only other option had been curling up in a ball and thinking about the husband and best friend and big break that
had all disappeared since December.
So that was how she ended up at a party she didn’t want to be at, with a beverage she didn’t want to drink, standing on shoes
she didn’t want to wear while sharing awkward smiles with people she didn’t want to talk to.
Oh, everyone was nice enough, but Maggie heard her name in whispers; she read their thoughts in stares. She wasn’t Maggie
Chase, bestselling author at that point. She was the woman who’d been dumped by her husband and passed over by her publisher.
She was the person whose whole life had fallen apart and paved the way for Ethan Wyatt, and no one in that ballroom knew whether
to pity her or avoid her because that kind of bad luck might be contagious.
So she got another drink at the bar, then looked pointedly across the crowded party, smiling big and walking fast, the personification
of Oh, there you are! and Isn’t this fun? When a woman from her panel waved for her to join their group, Maggie was overjoyed to look down and realize that her phone
was actually ringing, so she mimed I’ve got to take this! and headed for the doors.
It was either someone concerned about her car warranty or the attorney who was going to take all the money Colin hadn’t claimed
yet, but Maggie didn’t care as she brought the phone to her ear and pushed her way outside.
“Maggie?” The screen had said UNKNOWN CALLER, but Maggie knew that voice. She knew it better than she knew her own. “Hello?
Mags, are you there?”
Emily sounded nervous, which didn’t make sense. Emily had been born pretty and wealthy and fun. Emily would have known the
names of everybody at that party. She would have made eight funny videos for four different people and already be organizing
an after-party at a great karaoke place nearby. Emily was never nervous. But Maggie always was. It was good to know at least one of them was capable of changing.
“I bought a prepaid cell phone,” Emily explained. “I knew you wouldn’t pick up if you saw my number.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“I know. It’s just...” Emily trailed off, like she was waiting for a click or a curse, but Maggie just stood in that empty
courtyard outside that busy restaurant, phone against her ear, frozen.
People filled the busy sidewalk, rushing out to dinner or off to drinks. They crawled into cars and laughed with friends,
and the desert turned cool with the fall of night while Maggie shivered, wishing she’d worn a heavier jacket, pretending she
was only shaking from the chill.
“Maggie?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you. Please contact my lawyer with any—”
“I’m pregnant.” The silence was louder then, violent and pulsing in her ears. Even after Maggie closed her eyes, she could
still see the strings of patio lights spinning behind her eyelids. “I know we’re supposed to do the lawyer thing, but...
I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”
“Who would I hear it from, Em?” Her voice didn’t break at least. “You were my only friend, remember?”
“That’s not true.” Emily had the audacity to laugh, but it wasn’t mocking. It was don’t be silly . Which was almost worse. “Everyone adores you. You just don’t see it, but that’s okay.” It wasn’t okay. Nothing was okay. “I saw it enough for both of us.”
Maggie wanted her to say something selfish and greedy and cruel. She wanted her first best friend to be Female Colin and not
the girl who had “lost” a laptop, a cell phone, and two winter coats their sophomore year and then suddenly found them once
she had replacements and Oh well, Maggie, do you want the old ones? because she knew Maggie would never take a handout.
Maggie’s throat burned and her eyes were wet, and she would have given anything for her friend to be a lie. To be dead. To
be anything but the voice on the phone, breaking her all over again.
Emily was still talking. About baby names? Baby classes? How lovely the guest room in Maggie’s house would be for a nursery?
Maggie didn’t care until she heard a deeper voice in the background. Colin.
She’d know it anywhere, that accusatory tone. None of this was her fault, but when he told this story later it would be. It
would be all her fault, and...
Maggie looked down at the active call and then she threw her phone in a trash can because she’d honestly forgotten that you
can just hang up.
She forgot. And then she remembered.
It was fully dark by that point, those strings of multicolored lights shading everything in red and green. It might have been
March in Arizona, but it felt like Christmas in upstate New York. She was homeless and alone with absolutely no place to go
and no one to worry if she got there.
She was alone. And tears were running down her face while the phone she really couldn’t afford to replace sank deeper in a
glob of guacamole.
She was still standing there, trying to decide how to dig it out when a strip of bright light sliced across the patio.
She was practically standing on her head, reaching to the very bottom of the trash can when she heard the words—
“What happened?”
Maggie knew that voice. Maggie loathed that voice. He must have been drinking because it was pitched lower—darker—than usual. Or maybe he just didn’t bother with
his Mr. Charming act for her.
A foot scraped against the ground and she grabbed the phone and pushed herself upright because Ethan Freaking Wyatt was there,
watching her dig in the garbage and cry. Ethan Freaking Wyatt was walking toward her so slowly that she barely registered
the movement. She just knew that one moment he was on the other side of the patio, lost in shadows, and the next he was right
there with his stupid leather jacket inches away from her stupid tearstained face.
“Who did this to you?” he asked.
She tried to hear the taunt in the words, the joke, the punch line. She tried to hear the Ethan she knew, but the words were
as cold as the wind and his face... it was darker than the shadows. And Maggie felt herself crumbling, breaking into a
million pieces and turning to dust. The wind blew across the patio. She was going to fly away.
“Tell me.” The words were soft.
“No.” It came out more petulant that defiant, but that was close enough. “It’s nothing,” she tried again, wiping the phone
clean with a napkin. “I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine. “I’m...” She choked on the words but managed a pleasant “Good night,
Ethan. Enjoy the festival.”
And then she walked away, off the patio and down the sidewalk. She thought her hotel was that way, but it didn’t matter. Maybe
she’d end up in the desert. She really didn’t care. And maybe that’s why it took her two full blocks to feel the presence
behind her.
“You’re kind of annoying, you know that, right?” she called over her shoulder but kept walking.
“Now, Marcie, that might be the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.” She laughed in spite of herself because it was no
doubt true.
She glanced back again, then stopped. “If you’re here to kill me, make it quick. My feet hurt.”
But all Ethan did was smile, a little sheepish, like he was honestly embarrassed he’d been caught. “It’s after dark in an
unfamiliar city, and I’m not letting you walk home alone.”
He was ten feet behind her then, hands in his pockets like the most harmless guy in the world. It was the posture of oh shucks and gosh darn , but the words echoing in her mind where different.
Who did this to you?
She watched him catch up, but she couldn’t make herself move. And when she asked, “Aren’t you going to mock me?” her voice
cracked.
“Nope.”
“Tease me?”
“Not tonight.”
Maggie looked down at the sidewalk and the words slipped past her defenses. “Figure out my deepest, darkest fears and torture
me with them until I’m driven slowly insane?”
But that time Ethan didn’t even smile. “I’m going to walk a lady to her door and make sure she’s okay.”
Oh.
He took a step closer, slow enough that she could bolt if she wanted to, just run away, but Maggie was frozen, caught in his
gravity—the slow, steady pull she couldn’t feel and couldn’t break. He was holding her, and he hadn’t even touched her. “You
are okay. You know that?”
His voice was too soft—too gentle and kind. She wanted him to chide or taunt or tease. Even one of Colin’s mumbled insults
or backhanded jabs she could have handled, but Maggie no longer knew what to do with kindness. She didn’t trust it. She didn’t
trust him . But the streetlights were blurry overhead, and when she closed her eyes, the tears spilled over.
Her face was wet and her eyes were shut tight. She couldn’t see. Didn’t want to. And when the strongest arms she’d ever felt
wrapped around her, she let them. When his big hand cupped the back of her head, fingers weaving through her hair and pressing
her cheek against soft, warm leather, she didn’t try to pull away. She just cried harder. Gasping, ugly tears that were soundless
and desperate and cruel.
It was the sound that hope makes when it leaves the human body, but Ethan didn’t say a thing. He just held her tighter.
And tighter.
And tighter.
When she finally remembered to breathe, her throat was raw and his jacket was ruined, but she managed to croak out, “You will
never speak of this.”
“Okay,” he whispered into her hair.
And true to his word, he never did.