Page 130 of The Locksmith's Promise

Asking anyone for anything wasn’t ever easy, but with the stakes as high as they were, it had never been so difficult.

My chest squeezed tight so that I couldn’t take a deep breath, making my voice louder and my words harsher than I intended.

“I need you to feel my fucking pain, Maggie, so you understand how you badly you hurt me and never do it again!”

Inside, I cringed.

My face flushed hot.

But I hung onto her.

She gasped. “How could you even think that? I would never do that again!”

“Run,” I gritted out, my heart beating like a bass drum. “You can’t ever run away and leave me again.” I shook my head. “Not without giving me a chance.”

Her mouth snapped shut as she met my eyes. “I won’t.”

Though my need embarrassed me, I pushed. Because I needed this. “How do you know?”

She cupped my face in her hands and stared into my eyes. “I promise, Bax. Never again will I abandon you.”

She searched my eyes. “I lost my faith in us. Once. It won’t happen again.”

I blew out a breath, then nodded.

Voice soft, she ventured, “You’re not completely innocent in all of this, Bax. You could have picked up the phone.”

Her breath quickened as her own voice rose in volume, and she dropped her hands. “Just once, in all the times I called, hoping and praying you hadn’t completely forgotten me, you could have picked up the phone.”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“What do you mean, yes?” she hissed. “While I was dragging myself out of bed every morning, planning to stay alive just long enough to bring our son into the world, you were out drinking and partying and playing in bands and fucking your way through every weekend.”

I winced. It was ugly, all of it, but the truth often was. “Yes.”

“Yes? Yes?” she exclaimed, sobbing as she struggled to get up.

I gently pulled her back. “No running. Let it out.”

She pulled the sheet up to her neck and armed herself with anger. Her covering her lovely body expressed more than her words.

“I’ve been in love with you since high school,” she spat.

My eyebrows shot up. I hadn’t expected any more surprises.

She nodded fervently, her colour rising with her ire as she fisted the sheet at her throat. “Yeah. And watching you pick Jenny over and over and fucking over while I sat on the sidelines and waited for you to see me in that way?”

My heart clenched tight enough to steal my breath. “That must have hurt.”

“It did,” she choked out, that ancient pain, exacerbated by all the trauma that followed, reared its ugly head.

“I’m sorry, Maggie. I loved you, too.”

“Yeah,” she blurted. “Like a friend.”

I rolled on top of her and tugged the sheet from her hand. “Not like a friend.”

She clutched onto me, using my body to shield hers from my eyes.

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