Page 80 of Edinburgh Escape
“Mr. Callum, are you awake?” a soft, high-pitched voice whispered in his ear.
Callum lifted an eyelid.
Bryce stood beside him, his face inches from his.
Callum jerked awake and sat up.
Holy hell. If he’d been in the middle of one of his nightmares, he could have killed the kid.
His heart racing, he shoved his hands through his hair.
Then it dawned on him that he hadn’t had a nightmare. He’d slept the entire night without a dream.
He straightened and focused on young Bryce. “You’re up early.”
Bryce nodded. “I want to go see Montana. I thought Ms. Maggie would come, too, but she isn’t in her room. Do you know where she is?”
Callum frowned. “Is she in the kitchen?”
Bryce shook his head. “No. Only Cook.”
Callum pushed to his feet. “I’ll go look for her. While I do that, you should have Cook fix breakfast for you.”
Bryce nodded. “When you find Maggie, can you tell her I want her to come with me to see Montana?”
“Will do,” Callum said. The boy must have bonded with Maggie over their shared adversity, having been kidnapped together.
While Bryce went off to the kitchen, Callum climbed the stairs and knocked on Maggie’s bedroom door. When she didn’t answer, he went in, thinking she might be in the bathroom and hadn’t heard his knock.
The bathroom door was open with no sign of Maggie.
As he looked around the room, he noted the neatly made bed and a clean, pristine room with absolutely no sign of the woman who’d been there. No clothes were draped across a chair, no roller bag lay unzipped and open on the floor. No backpack. His own backpack lay beside the door where he’d set it the first night there, but everything that had belonged to Maggie was gone. It was as if she’d never been there.
His heartbeat quickened as an empty feeling settled like lead in the pit of his belly.
She’s gone.
One last glance at the room was all the verification needed. She’d packed up and left.
As he turned back toward the door, something caught his eye. An envelope lay propped against a pillow on the bed. He crossed to the bed and noted his name scrawled across the front in Maggie’s handwriting.
His hand shook as he lifted the flap on the back, extracted the single sheet of paper inside and read.
Dear Callum,
I couldn’t stay and watch you walk away again, so I’m leaving before you have the chance.
You think your PTSD makes you dangerous to me, but what you don’t understand is that I could have loved you—every piece of you, even the broken ones—if only you’d let me. We all carry trauma. We all have scars. That doesn’t mean we’re unworthy of love.
I wanted the chance to love you. Truly, I did. I would have taken you any way you came—nightmares, darkness, and all—because those things don’t define you. They’re only a part of your story, not the whole of you. Together, we could have found a way through the violent dreams and the shadows. But you have to let someone in. You have to let me in.
I’m returning to Montana. If you decide you’re ready—if you decide you want to give me that chance—I’ll be there. The next move is yours, Callum.
Ready to love you,
Maggie
Callum read the letter a second time through a haze of moisture in his eyes. She wanted to love him.
