Page 15 of The Locksmith's Promise

She drew back and smiled into my eyes.

“You and me against the world, Bax.”

Maggie had a son, our son, and a dog named Jeff. She took our dreams and wrote me out of them.

I swiped the back of my hand over my eyes, shocked when it came away wet. I hadn’t cried since the night I left town. I stared down at my hand, shocked to see the tangible evidence of my grief.

Anger boiled up inside me, a welcome respite from the chokehold of regret.

Because I had a son.

And I didn’t know how to be a father.

When I finally looked up, I’d crossed the clearing on the other side of the trees and reached the flat rock at the base of the climb. With the treeline long behind me, there was no shelter from the wind. The temperature was dropping fast but I was nowhere near ready to turn back.

Taking a running start, I heaved myself up to the place Maggie and I had once mapped out our dreams. Here there were no judgements or recriminations. No angry words or harsh tones. Here the future had been wide open and filled with hope.

My hopes and our dreams.

I snorted, bitterness billowing up my esophagus, at just how thoroughly life fucked me over once again.

Had Maggie been out here to our rock since she’d been back? Had she explored the trails with Corwin yet?

Too short to get up by herself, I used to form a stirrup with my hands and give her a boost before clamouring up behind her. She needed just as much help getting down and I fucking reveled in my role.

We’d been best friends long before we were lovers.

And it was that Maggie, the Maggie who was my best friend first, that I needed answers from.

That Maggie would never have hurt me like this.

Even though the Baxter who was her lover hurt her worse than he ever imagined he could. I rubbed my palm over the ache in my chest.

I’d have to face that mistake as well.

Looking along the perimeter of the forest, I noted the entrances to the trails. These were our trails; we knew them inside out.

Me, Maggie, Miller, John, Eric, Jenny, and the rest of the crew who had long since moved away, backpacks loaded with beer, chips, beef jerky, and granola bars, we had followed these trails until we reached the small clearing where we set up camp for the evening.

But this rock, this rock had been mine and Maggie’s.

Back when Maggie was still mine.

She’d been beautiful then, but she was more beautiful now, her sweet face marked with maturity and hard-earned wisdom. Her body, too, had changed. Soft and womanly, my arms ached to hold her. Wipe the fear from her face, clear the confusion from her eyes.

Something, somehow, somewhere had gone terribly wrong between us.

While I knew I was the architect of that disaster, I still didn’t know how or why.

For ten years I dreamed of seeing Maggie again, even winning her back, but nowhere in my wildest dreams had I imagined this kind of betrayal.

I closed my eyes and lay back, the cold, hard rock mirroring the truth.

Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and trailed across my temples into my hair.

How could she have kept him from me?

Did I deserve that?

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