Page 38 of Time Out

“Um.” I scratched my jaw. After breakfast this morning, I ended up showing Maggie some pics of my nephews and my family. Annie’s growing stomach. Maggie had paled at that one, so I skipped to the next picture quickly, but really, I spent most of the morning before I’d had to get home and then leave for practice talking about me and my family.

She hadn’t said much at all.

“I don’t know. She has like nine siblings or something like that. Doesn’t really talk about her family.”

“Ten kids?” That same whistle repeated.

“I know, right? It’s crazy.”

“It’s like that show. What’s it called?” He snapped his fingers, brows tugged in concentration.

“What show?” Cole asked.

“That reality one. My sister watches reruns on Netflix. About some family with like fourteen kids. But they always had friends over and those families have like ten plus kids, too. It’s freaking wild.”

“You watch reality television about families with massive number of kids?”

“No,” Dawson scowled. “Crystal does and sometimes when she visits, she forces me to watch it with her.”

“Right.” I snorted.

Reality TV was scripted. The only real thing on television was a live game.

“Expand your horizons, kid.”

Cole was looking at his phone, scrolling and then looked up at me. “What’d you say her name is?”

“Maggie. Why?”

He turned his phone around. “Is this her?”

Holy shit. It was Maggie, all right. A younger version, had to be several years old and her hair was longer, down to her waist. She’d learned the power of makeup and wearing decent clothes since then. I tried to reconcile the image of this still beautiful, undeniably so, woman who’d probably sewed the dress she was wearing with the Maggie who let me ravage her body and threw back shots at Lou’s. Well, Magdalene Mary Webber, actually, based on the headline. “Oldest daughter of Michael Webber, whose family has made several appearances on Webber’s sister’s family show, ‘The Blessed Movement’ has been kicked off future appearances and exiled from the family.”

“Exiled?” I rolled the word around on my tongue and tried not to lose my shit.

“Her family kicked her out?” Dawson asked, and there was a growl to his question.

Cole turned the phone back around and it took every ounce of my self-control not to tear it out of his own hands. “Says for drinking or something. ‘Making sinful choices with no appearance of remorse’ is what her father says.”

“Well, damn,” Dawson muttered and glanced at me. “Bet they won’t be too happy to hear she’s knocked up out of wedlock, huh?”

Well, shit.

This explained some things.

Chapter 12

Maggie

“Good shift today, Maggie.”

“Thanks, Madison.”

She was the server shift manager and worked at Julio’s for probably half of my life. “See you Friday?”

“Yep, I’ll be here.”

She glanced around the back hallway. I’d gone into our break room to grab my jacket and was sliding an arm through the sleeves when she stepped in from the doorway that was across the hall from her office. “Um. You don’t have to answer me, and I want you to know regardless of your answer, your job is safe, but is there anything you need to tell me? Or anything I need to know?” She glanced out of the break room and back to me. “Last night, after you left, Will said it looked like you didn’t feel well, and then made a comment about you being tired lately.”

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