“I shut off the main valve, but I have to get the water out of here before I can do anything else. I’m going to go back to Frank’s to get the shop vac. While I probably can’t fix the pipe problem, I’ll still look into it. I do know a plumber and can get him out here if needed.”
Great.More people to scrutinize the situation. That was just what I wanted.
“I’d start moving boxes upstairs to save what you can,” Maverick continued. “Okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded.
“I’ll be back. Is it okay if I leave the front door unlocked and let myself back in?”
“Yeah,” I repeated. “I’ll just be here… undoing everything.”
Without another word, he left me standing in the shambles of a life I didn’t want him to see. I sat on the step, my head falling into my hands while my chest heaved.Fuck, I hated this.
CHAPTER 51
maverick
Ithrew all of my energy into fixing what I could at the Lowell house to avoid thinking too heavily about Harley. Granted, it was hard not to think about him when he was everywhere. I became acutely aware of his presence and little movements—the grunt he let out every time he lifted a box, the quiet string of swears he let out every time he dropped something, the sighs he tried to hide. Everything he did resonated with me in a way I didn’t want it to.
We spent hours down in the basement, working silently in tandem. I wrestled with clearing out the standing water while he dug through the wreckage. I didn’t envy him. Outside of the waterlogged boxes that needed sorting, there was just so muchstuff.Towers and piles of boxes leaned against one another like they were one bad day away from collapsing. Their house hadn’t looked like this six years ago. Mrs. Lowell had always kept a pristine and suffocating household. This was something else entirely, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell had happened to her.
The thought brought a familiar chill. Memory and warning wove together in the back of my mind—a voice promising me exactly what she would’ve done to me if I hadn’t disappeared from Harley’s life. I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened tothatwoman, but I knew I’d never get the answers to that.
And if I was being honest, I didn’t want them.
Some doors were better kept shut.
It didn’t matter that she wasn’t around anymore. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t a threat to me anymore. I’d learned the hard way thatmightwasn’t something you gambled on when it came to Elizabeth Lowell.
Unfortunately, none of that made me any less on edge when I was finally done for the night. Especially knowing I’d have to be back. All week.
Going home felt dangerous. It was too quiet with too much room for memories to take over. I desperately needed to burn off the nervous energy coursing through my bloodstream before I made a decision I couldn’t take back.
There was only one person I could trust indefinitely: my sponsor.
When I pulled up the gravel driveway, my hands were still trembling on the steering wheel. The little cottage sat onthe outskirts of Wilde Bay. The houses out this way were widespread, and most of them were tiny farms with porch lights glowing faintly in the distance.
The sigh of relief I let out as I turned off the truck was audible. This place always felt safe. It felt like home. Bobby was a retired firefighter from some-nowhere-town in Oregon, and Wilde Bay was his grand adventure of a retirement plan. I wasn’t sure why, but he loved this place. Some part of me hoped to see it through his eyes one day, but I had a feeling I was too jaded for that.
He was the best sponsor I could hope for. His patience and kindness were unrivaled, and he never pushed me harder than I could take. He met me where I needed him to. Sometimes it was the diner so we could chat over pie, and sometimes, he opened up his workshop to me.
The fresh smell of wood wrapped around me as I took up my usual spot on the stool, bent over the piece of driftwood I’d been carving for weeks. The slow scrape of the engraving pen gave my hands something to do—something careful and controlled—while the rest of me tried not to come apart.
“So,” Bobby began when I paused. “Do you want to talk about it, or should I just leave you out here to have at it while I go to bed?”
We both knew he wouldn’t. It was his subtle way of giving me permission to talk about what was bothering me enough to have me sitting here at two in the morning.
“Harley’s back,” I whispered.
Just saying the words felt like confessing to a relapse in and of itself.
Bobby knew everything about Aidan, about Mrs. Lowell, about the frame job, about the ultimatum, about how cruel I’d been to Harley. He never once made me feel insane for believing her threat. He just let me talk and listened.
“My boss has me working a repair job at his mother’s house, and I just…” I trailed off because what was I supposed to say? How the hell did I explain all the convoluted things I was feeling right now?
“Are you safe working there?” he asked. A ghost of a smile turned my lips at Bobby’s concern for my well-being.
“Yeah, she’s not there anymore,” I told him. “I guess she’s in some kind of assisted living center, and Harley’s back trying to deal with the house. The house was a disaster. There were boxes everywhere, it smells awful, it’s just… I don’t know what happened to her over the last few years, but it sure as fuck wasn’t good.”
