Shaking my head, my eyes closed, and I felt the first unwelcome tear slide free.
“You can’t fix this, Max. You can’t fix him,” I said thickly, feeling a ripple of my anger reach in his direction.
Max grunted, and then I heard it—the buzz of his phone.
Hope squeezed my chest as he swiped and answered, “Hello?”
Breathe.Just breathe.
“Shit.”
I sucked in a painful breath, and Max glanced at me, saying, “I’ll call you back in ten.”
“Who was it? Did they find Todd?”
“No, Daze. It was my operations manager, Erica. One of my drivers no-showed today, and we’ve got a full schedule of deliveries…” He grimaced as he trailed off. “Sorry, it’s not your problem. I’ll figure it out once we get back to the inn.”
Not Todd. Not about Todd.
Todd was gone.
Once more, time seemed to hop and skip forward like it didn’t want to land too long on any moment of this traumatic day. Max helped me into his truck, and then a few blinks later,we were pulling to a stop by the lampposts out front of the historic inn.
Lou came outside as Max parked, looking hopeful until she realized it was still only the two of us.
The knot in my throat turned raw from all my attempts to swallow.
“I’ll be in in a minute,” Max said. “I just have to touch base with Erica and figure out what we’re going to do about the local deliveries for today.”
“Do you need to take them?”
His head snapped up, and he quickly answered, “No,” but I knew if it weren’t for me, for Todd and our wedding, he would. Max was one of those business owners where there was no task that was beneath him. “I’ll find someone to handle it. I should’ve known Tucker was going to flake,” he grunted. “He’s missed four days in the last three weeks, and I kept covering…”
He kept giving him the benefit of the doubt. Enabling him. Just like he’d done for Todd.
I looked back at the inn and Lou waiting in the doorway, her pity both understandable and suffocating.
Suddenly, the inn was the last place I wanted to be. Not with the decorations. The flowers. The dress. The plans.And now my almost in-laws.
A familiar BMW with tinted windows pulled up behind Max’s truck.
“Can you handle it?” I asked, desperation clawing at my voice.
“What?” Max’s brow creased.
“Can you tell her you’ll deliver them?”
Max used to do all the deliveries back when MaineStems was just getting off the ground. I would ride along in his passenger seat, just like I was now, except I’d be studying between Max’sstops. Driving helped me think. Helped me process. That was why I’d go along for the ride.
Todd never did deliveries. He’d say it was because his job was to schmooze his parents’ rich friends for investment money, which it was, but the deliveries usually started early. If Todd had been out the night before, he never wanted to wake up.
It was actually Todd’s suggestion that I ride along with Max.Ironically.Not because he remembered how much I enjoyed going for drives, but because it obscured how many mornings he woke up hungover. That was before it became impossible to hide.
“I could, but I’m not going to. I’m not leaving you. Not until?—”
“I want to go with you,” I blurted out. “I want to take the deliveries with you.”
He stared at me like I’d grown a second—well, technically, third head. And in turn, my stare darted back to the darkly dressed couple getting out of the grossly expensive car, who stuck out like stuck-up thumbs in this small town.
