Page 87 of Runaway Bride’s Husband

“It is now!” I yelled the reply without turning around, then climbed into my car, breathing hard as I slammed the door and took off.

My heart was hammering and my hands were shaking, so I gripped the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles hurt, but at least it made my hands feel steadier. “What the hell am I doing? What is wrong with me?”

Maybe I’d finally lost my mind or maybe it had already happened weeks ago and I was only acknowledging it now, but either way, it was too late to get it back. I’d always kept my promises and maybe Maggie hated me right now, but the least I could do was keep my promises to her, too.

CHAPTER 38

MAGGIE

Right now, I was supposed to be at a dress fitting, but instead, I lay in bed with a seventy-pound puppy sprawled across my torso. His head rested under my chin, one humongous paw spread across my ribs, and every time I breathed too deeply, he sighed in his sleep like my lungs were offending him.

I got where he was coming from, though. At this point, the mere fact of my existence was offending me too. This had been without a doubt the worst month of my life.

Nothing was on fire and I wasn’t running, hiding, or shying away anymore, but for a few seconds when I woke up every morning, I forgot that I had lost Ryan. Those were the only few seconds of the day when it felt like everything was okay, but then I would remember and it hit me all over again that my heart had been carved cleanly out of my chest.

For the first couple weeks, I had cried uncontrollably. Before I’d come home from the cottage, I’d spent days curled into a ball on the couch, just sobbing my eyes out, then I’d screamed, and then when that phase had subsided, I’d thrown things.

When I’d finally come back to the city, I’d reached numbness. That was where I was now. Or where I had been until my mother had brought the puppy to my room.

I missed numbness now. Numb had been easier than this.

It had allowed me to go to fittings, planning meetings, and luncheons, smiling my way through listening to my mother talk about the wedding like nothing had gone wrong before. Numb had let me pretend I’d forgotten the way Ryan had looked at me in the rain that night on the sidewalk like admitting the truth was slicing him in half.

Sighing as I felt a fresh wave of tears sting the backs of my eyes, I burrowed my face into the back of the unnamed puppy’s head. I couldn’t bring myself to name him. It felt wrong, doing it without Ryan. Which made no sense, but hey.

Neither did the fact that he and I couldn’t be together.

When I heard my bedroom door open, I didn’t look up until I heard Cathy’s voice. “Good lord, girl. When was the last time you let some sunshine in here?”

“Don’t wake him,” I murmured, finally lifting my head to glance at her.

She cocked her head with obvious concern written all over her face, but then she sighed and quietly shut the door behind her. “Right. Of course. We wouldn’t want to wake a sleeping dog.”

As she lowered herself onto the very edge of the mattress with the same measure of caution used by people getting comfortable beside an armed bomb, she looked me over, her eyes clouding with worry.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, waving a hand around the room. “It smells like wet dog in here.”

“I gave him a bath him earlier,” I said, stroking my fingers across his back as I dropped my head against the pillows. “I guess I forgot to open the windows.”

“Girl, you haven’t open the door or your curtains in days either,” she said, then sighed when I gave her a warning look. “Oh, this is ridiculous, but okay. I’ll keep my voice down.”

She pushed up and strode over to the bank of windows on one side of the room, drawing open the curtains before pushing open the windows too. With that done, she gave the same treatment to the windows on the other side of the room, letting in bright, harsh sunshine that immediately made me squint.

“What’s that for?”

“Fresh air,” she said, then planted her hands on her hips after spinning to face me, but as promised, she kept her voice down. “Maybe also to remind you that there’s an actual world out there, waiting for you to rejoin it.”

“No, thank you.” I shielded my eyes with my free hand, watching as she strode back to the bed. “Why are you insisting on torturing me?”

“What, with a beautiful day and a bright blue sky?” She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She paused for a beat as she sat down, her gaze sweeping across the puppy again but a little slower this time. “So, it’s true, then. An absolutely deranged Ryan Thayer showed up at your parents’ house, handed your mother that beast of a dog, and disappeared?”

Another huge lump formed in my throat as I nodded. “He’s not a beast, but yeah. That’s what happened. Except that I don’t think Ryan was deranged either. He was just keeping a promise.”

Cathy’s expression softened when her gaze lifted back to mine. “Oh, Maggie.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut against the tide of tears building behind them. “I guess this means he thinks I’m stable enough now. He thinks I have a plan and I’m sticking to it.”