I think about how she has so easily given me so much of herself, even when I couldn’t give her anything in return.
She understood and loved me despite it.
And I just fucking ran out on her because I couldn’t handle my emotions. My anger.
I couldn’t control it. Again.
But goddamnit, she deserves more than that.
I drag my hand across my mouth and blow out a breath as my temper begins to settle and guilt and… shame set in.
I just fucking left her to deal with processing this all alone because I wasn’t thinking straight.
Because it’s easier to fall back into the same shit, the same patterns of not coping, not facing anything in my life head-on.
And Maisie deserves more than that.
If there is anything at all that I have learned from falling for her, it’s that everything is so much lighter with Maisie.
When I give her these pieces that feel too fucking heavy, she makes it easier to breathe.
She makes me believe in things that I never thought possible. Things that I never allowed myself to have hope in. She gives me the strength to face these demons head-on, to confront my past instead of hiding from it, knowing that she’s going to be there through it all. Even when it’s fucking brutal.
She’s taught me that love isn’t the weakness I believed it was. Not the real kind that you can feel beating in your chest alongside the beat of your heart.
That love is strength when it feels impossible.
My fingers still shake as I put my truck into drive and pull out of the parking lot and back onto the highway.
There’s only one place to start.
And that’s with the woman I love.
CHAPTER 57
MAISIE
I’m lyingin my bed with Sebastian, my stomach twisted into knots from worrying about Wilder, and checking my phone for the hundredth time to see if my texts have been answered, when I hear the front door open.
Sebastian bounds off the bed and disappears through the door.
There are only three people who have a key to my apartment, and right now, only one of them is the person I need it to be.
I follow Seb down the hallway and into the living room, coming to a screeching halt when I see him.
In Wilder’s arms.
Wilder… is holding Sebastian.
Wilder’s rubbing his favorite spot behind his ear, and even from here, I can hear my cat purring like he’s the happiest cat in the world.
Why does that make me want to cry?
Shit. I am crying.
Again.
“Baby. Fuck. Don’t cry.” Wilder’s eyes go wide, panic sweeping through them, and he immediately sets Seb down onto the couch and strides toward me. He gathers me into hisarms, and they make me feel so safe, and that only makes me cry harder. “Please don’t fucking cry. I’m sorry I left. I’m so goddamn sorry, Maisie. I?—”
