Panic hit fast and sharp, a fist closing around my chest. "Jack?"
My voice sounded wrong in the silence. Too loud. Too hopeful. Too much like a woman who already knew the answer and couldn't bear to hear it.
I scrambled out of bed, grabbing the first thing my hands found—his shirt, the one he'd worn to the bar, still smelling like him. Leather and cedar and something underneath that was just Jack, the scent I'd grown addicted to without realizing it. I pulled it on over my bare skin and checked the bathroom.
Empty.
The porch.
Empty.
I stood in the doorway, barefoot and half-dressed in his shirt, staring at the path that led toward the barn. Waiting to see his familiar silhouette heading to work. Waiting for him to appear around the corner with Sully at his heels, coffee in hand, that small smile he gave me when we were alone.
I saw nothing but early morning light and the terrible stillness of a world that no longer included him.
Last night came flooding back.
The bar. Stephanie singing, her voice filling the room with something raw and beautiful. The Blackwoods turning out in force, loud and proud and everything I loved about my family. Jack beside me, his hand finding mine under the table, his shoulder warm against mine when I leaned into him.
It had been perfect. Easy. The kind of night that made me believe we could have this—really have it. That I could learn to let him in, to be the person he saw when he looked at me, to stop being so goddamn afraid all the time.
But there had been something, hadn't there? Something in the way Jack got quiet toward the end of the night. Something in the way he'd looked at me during the drive home—tender and sad and full of things he wasn't saying. I'd noticed it. I'd asked if he was okay.
“I'm fine,” he'd said. And I'd believed him because I wanted to. Because the alternative was too frightening to consider.
And I'd been too happy, too sated, too sure of him to notice that something was wrong.
Then I saw the note.
It sat on my small desk, folded once, placed carefully beside my coffee mug—the mug Jack usually filled before I woke up, the mug that sat empty now because the man who filled it was gone. His handwriting was neat and controlled, just like him. The paper was slightly wrinkled, like he'd written it more than once before getting the words right.
My hands shook as I picked it up.
Maggie—
I can't be your secret or your sometimes or your safe thing you keep hidden from the world. I need to be chosen. Not later,not when you're ready, but now—out loud, in front of everyone, without apology.
That's not an ultimatum. It's just the truth of who I am and what I need.
You're worth everything I have to give. But I won't give it in half-measures, and I won't accept it that way either.
If you ever come for me, come all the way.
I'll be waiting. But I won't be waiting here.
Jack
I read it twice.Three times. The words blurred as tears spilled down my cheeks, hot and unstoppable, dripping onto the paper and smearing the ink.
If you ever come for me, come all the way.
He wasn't asking me to chase him. He wasn't demanding I fix it. He was just telling me the truth—the same truth he'd been telling me from the beginning, in every patient gesture, every quiet moment, every time he'd shown up without asking for more than I was ready to give.
He needed to be chosen. Fully. Publicly. Without shame.
But he had seemed fine with waiting for me to tell my family. He’d said there was no rush. That we’d take this thing between us at my pace.
I racked my brain, trying to think of what could have made him change his mind between then and now.
