The softness in her voice cracked something apart in my chest, shaking loose something I didn’t want to feel.Fuck, I just wanted that drink.Still, I slipped off the barstool and followed her, grumping angrily as I went to a corner booth with her. I sat across from her with my arms crossed and a scowl on my face.
“I just want to drink, Millie,” I informed her. “I don’t want to talk.”
“I think you need to talk,” she said. “Or at least you need someone to sit with you, so you don’t throw away all the progress you’ve made.”
“Jesus fuck,” I scoffed. “I don’t need you to save me.”
“Oh, I’m not here to save you, baby boy,” she replied. “But everybody needs somebody.”
“I don’t need anybody.”Every time I tried, I just got hurt.I was better off alone.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“No.”
“Okay then.” She smiled at me. “Then we’ll just sit here in silence until you cave a little bit.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“They all say that,” Millie told me. “But I’ve raised a houseful of kids, baby boy. Silence always makes them cave.”
True to her word, she shut up. I sat across from her with my pulse slowing down in my throat. And in the quiet, all the things I was trying to outrun came rushing back in.
The anger drained first, leaving behind something cold and heavy. I replayed every microscopic detail in my head as I tried to make sense of it.But I couldn’t.Why hadn’t I pushed him harder about his life? About staying here? Why hadn’t I seen the lie right there in front of me? Fuck, even Aidan could see it. What was so wrong with me?
Did everyone else know? Was I just some idiot left in the dark while the rest of the town laughed at my demise?
“Did you know he was married?” I demanded gruffly.
“No,” Millie answered, her voice calm and quiet. “Mrs. Lowell didn’t talk about her son and certainly not to people she deemed inferior to her. When he was gone, he was gone. We were all surprised by his return.”
Lips pressed together tightly, I just nodded.
The anger gave way further, making room for something worse.Grief.Not just for the loss of him, but also for the loss of what I’d become in his presence. For a moment, I had actually started to believe in second chances and a better life. I wanted to see the version of me that could have a future with him.
Instead, I became this version of myself, humiliated and stripped raw for his entertainment. I swallowed hard as my eyes burned with unwanted emotion. I blinked them back to the best of my ability, and if Millie saw the tears, she said nothing.
Fuck, I was so goddamn stupid.
I wasn’t Harley’s first choice, and I’d never be. I was an easy escape—a thing to be used and discarded however he wanted. I wasn’t worth any more than that.
My chest tightened as I bit back a sob. I stared hard out the window, doing whatever I could to keep from falling apart right there in the middle of the bar. I didn’t want anyone to see me break.At least any more than I already was.
“Two broken people can’t make it work,” Millie said softly into the silence between us.
“You think I’m broken?” I whispered. I knew I was, but was that how everyone else saw me? How she saw me?
“Broken’s not a bad thing, honey,” she replied, “not when it comes to people.”
“Right,” I drawled. I was so fucking broken that there was nothing left to put back together. There was nothing left worth saving. “What makes you think that?”
“We’ve all been broken by something in life at some point, baby boy,” she told me. “Being broken by the world is just an agent of change. It means what you’re doing isn’t working. It’s the universe’s way of telling you that it’s time to work on that part of your life. To fix it or to let it go.”
“I don’t know how to fix this.” And for all my anger and hurt, I didn’t know if I could let Harley go. Not really. Not even after everything. Harley was etched into my very bones. More than a decade had proven that.
“You’ve spent your whole life looking for that boy to be the one to love you when he couldn’t even love himself. And you don’t love you either, Maverick.” Millie paused as I scowled at her—as if waiting for me to fight her—but I didn’t. How could I when she was being so damn honest? I hated every word coming out of her mouth, but she was right. “Maybe this is the universe’s way oftelling you that it’s time to heal the parts of you broken over the years by people who were supposed to love you.”
I drew in a shaky breath as that last line hit too close to home.
