PROLOGUE
Eleven Years Ago
Maggie Sinclair watched rain tap softly against the backseat window of her Uber. The storm outside raged but was nothing compared to the one that thundered inside her.
Tears pressed at her eyes, but she blinked them back. She would not cry. It had been hours since the fight with her aunt. A one-hour drive from Deep River to Bozeman, then an almost four-hour flight to California.
The tears had tried to come, God, they’d tried so many times, but she’d refused to let them. Her aunt was not worth crying over.
She glanced down at her phone.
Nothing. Her screen was completely blank. Why? She’d called and texted him so many times she’d lost count. He should have seen them by now. He should know something was wrong. That she needed him.
It would be fine. As soon as she saw him, he’d wrap her in the sanctuary of his arms and every comment that her aunt had thrown her way like a grenade, every attempt the woman madeto make her feel like she was taking up space she didn’t deserve, would disappear.
She breathed as she watched those raindrops, ignoring the gaze of the driver. She didn’t need to see the pity in his eyes a second time. The one that had cast a frown between his brows when she’d climbed into the car.
Obviously, she didn’t need to cry for the world to know something was wrong. For strangers to see the shadows beneath her eyes and the downward cast of her lips.
More water hit the glass, making the world feel cold and dark outside.
She wasn’t a spontaneous person. Everything in her life was meticulously planned out. At eighteen, she’d moved from Deep River, Montana to LA to work as a flight attendant. She was twenty-two now. She’s been dating Ethan long-distance for four years while working for Delta.
But this? Booking a last-minute flight to see him because her world was closing in on her after one visit to see her aunt? This wasn’t her.
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, her aunt’s words replaying in her head.
“You’re nothing but baggage. You’ve weighed me down for the last decade. Your mother got the easy way out when she died in that river.”
Maggie’s chest constricted, like there was a band around her lungs, choking the air out of her.
How many times had her aunt made comments like that? Every day since she was ten and the woman had taken her in. And every time, she felt them so deeply in her bones that they chipped away another part of her.
She’d become a flight attendant to get away from that. She hadn’t been in Deep River to visit Lilith, she’d been visitingPolly. Why had she even left her best friend’s home to see her aunt?
A tear fell down her cheek, but she scrubbed it away.
The driver cleared his throat. “Uh, ma’am? Are you okay?”
She nodded, because if she spoke, her voice would shake, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want her aunt’s words to have any power over her.
Her phone vibrated with a text. Hope lit her chest. Hope that it was Ethan. That he would soothe some of the pain inside her.
Polly: Did you get in okay? Are you with Ethan? God, Mags, I’m so worried.
Out of everyone in her life, it was Polly and Ethan who’d kept her head above water since her mother died. Polly had been her best friend since the first day of school.
Maggie: I’m in an Uber but I can’t get through to him. I’m checking the bar and if he’s not there, I’ll try his apartment.
It was Friday night, and he was a Navy SEAL. When he wasn’t away on some dangerous mission, the bar had become a Friday-night tradition for his team.
Polly: I’m calling you in a second. You need to pick up because I need to hear for my own ears that you’re okay.
Even though her best friend wasn’t with her, she nodded like she was. While she’d always been the quiet one, Polly was her opposite. Loud and brave and strong, everything that Maggie had never been.
Sometimes there was this whisper in her head that maybe her aunt was right. Maybe she wasn’t enough of anything. Smart enough. Pretty enough. Strong enough. Maybe not even enough to find a meaningful place in this world.
For so many years, she’d tried to be what Lilith wanted her to be. It was sick that she’d had to try to earn the woman’s love. It never happened.
