His words, a rough whisper, slipped between her lips. “It’s you I want, Mags. It always has been.”
“Jack…” She had no idea what she meant to say or whether she meant to utter anything at all. It was almost a prayer, or a sigh of relief. A feeling of coming home after a decade of wandering. She stopped struggling and let herself lean into him.
Around them, horns beeped, and Maggie thought she heard a whistle or two. Celebration? Approval? She didn’t care. Every inch of her ached for nothing more than to slip between the sheets of some warm, still bed with Jack and make up for the lost years of a love she’d never gotten over. She pressed her palms against his chest, then let them drop and circle his waist. She pulled him closer. She kissed him again. She breathed him in and made unspoken promises that echoed the ones they’d made to each other so many years ago.
Please don’t let it be a dream
.
Please just let it go on forever.
God, she tasted so good. Jack’s mouth moved down Maggie’s neck. He felt her pulse flutter under his tongue and wanted to make her weak. He didn’t care that misty rain had started to fall on them again, or that around them fists pounded on horns like people were watching some kind of movie in the middle of the street. Hell, let them. This was his girl. She would always be his girl. Jack’s hands moved under Maggie’s coat, cupping the small of her back and sliding downward. Satin rustled under his touch.
“Um…” She made a noise close to his ear.
“What?”
“We left Neve sitting in the car.”
Jack turned. “Oh. Right.” But he didn’t want to let her go.
A curl of Maggie’s hair brushed his cheek, and he fingered it. This was right, then, the way it was supposed to be. All the rest of his days were meant to be with her. After a long moment, they turned back toward the car, dodging puddles as they retraced their steps.
“Stay with me tonight.”
She looked up at him. “I can’t. I have to get back home. And Neve—”
“I know.” He wound his fingers through hers. “Tomorrow, then. And the next night. I’ll come to your place. Or you can stay up here. Or—”
“Whoa, lover boy.” Her face darkened. “There are a lot of things I have to take care of.”
“Then I’ll help you.”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t need your help.”
“Mags, why are you so stubborn?”
She smiled but didn’t answer. Instead, she looked past him, up to the sky. The next time she turned back, her face had changed. “Did you mean what you said before?”
“What?”
“It’s really over with your fiancée?”
Jack nodded. A dull ache started up in his gut. Guilt probably, or maybe regret at waiting so long to make the decision. “I should have called it off a long time ago. I just—” He faltered, still unsure how he’d gotten so swept up in living a life with Paige. He supposed that was how things happened. Months and years passed. Promises were made. Sand slipped through the hourglass before you knew it. “I just didn’t have the guts to tell her until tonight.”
They neared the car, and he let his hands rest on Maggie’s hips for a minute. He pulled her close and let her feel what she did to him. What she always did to him. “Tell me something,” he murmured.
“What’s that?” Her words drifted away as he caressed her breasts, thumbing sharp nipples that taunted him through smooth green fabric.
“What does your license plate stand for?”
“Hmm?” Her back arched into his touch.
He thought about telling her that the vanity plates on her car were the only way he’d found her. Too many Hondas on the road, and blue looked like black and dark green in the darkness. But the Rhode Island plate with its odd collection of letters had given her away. Thank God.
“I just wondered what D-D-S-G-N stands for.”
Maggie reached for the door handle. “It’s the name of my business. I don’t usually spend money on something so silly, but Neve thought that I should celebrate. I got them for my one-year anniversary.”
“What kind of business did you open?” There was so much he wanted to know about her, so many spaces in the catalog of Maggie he needed to fill in.
“It’s a—” She swung open the door and lost her balance, falling against him as she slipped.
“Whoa!” They both went down hard. Maggie’s elbow thumped against the side of the car.
“You okay?” Jack reached for her.
“I think so.” But the look on her face suggested otherwise. She rubbed her arm and winced.
“You’re sure?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s just…my dress. It’s ruined.” She scrambled up and tried to wipe herself with both hands. Her fingers trembled.
“I know a great dry cleaner here in the city.” He tried to reassure her. “I can take it there if you want.” Then he remembered that the place was right around the corner from Paige’s townhouse. And the red dress Paige had asked him to pick up after work probably still hung on their racks, sheathed in plastic. Something stuck in his throat. For the first time, Jack wondered how many fragments of his life would change now, how many pieces would have to shift. On tentative feet, he felt himself skating into a new existence.
“Is that yours?” Maggie pointed at something that had fallen onto the ground between them.
Jack glanced down. “Oh. My business cards.” The sterling silver case, another gift from Paige, glinted up from the dark pavement.
Maggie bent to retrieve it. The case had flipped open, and a few of his cards fell out. She scooped them up and ran a thumb over the engraving. “Nice.”
“Thanks.”
She paused and peered down at the black script on the top card. Curls tumbled into her face, and she pushed them back with an impatient hand. Biting her lip, Maggie looked up at him, her eyes shining with some emotion he couldn’t identify.
“Bullieston? That’s the name of your company?” Her words came out slowly, and with edges that didn’t make sense to him, like sandpaper working its way across bare knuckles.
“Yeah. It’s a software development company.”
“I know.”
He cocked his head and studied her. “You’ve heard of it?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a good sound. “You could say that.” She dropped the case into his outstretched hand. “You’re the company that wants to buy my house.”
For a moment, Jack didn’t understand. “Wait…you’re the woman in Hart’s Falls? With the interior design business?” His glance shot again to the letters on her license plate. “You’re kidding.” Some kind of weird, inexplicable vortex seemed to slow the air around him.
“Do I look like I’m kidding? Some guy called my office yesterday afternoon to ask me about it.”
Jack rubbed both hands across the top of his head, trying to ease a growing ache there. “That would be one of my vice-presidents.”
Anger sliced across her face. “You’re trying to…that’s the kind of business you run? The kind that tries to take advantage of small business owners? The kind that cares more about money than—”
“Stop it. You don’t know anything about my company.” How dare she judge him? How dare she presume to understand the complicated decisions he made every day? And why on earth would she turn down a reasonable offer for a piece of property she was going to lose in a few days anyway? Hadn’t Carl told him the bank was foreclosing? If that was true, then Maggie couldn’t afford any other choice. Could she?
Just like Vegas,
a voice at the back of his skull whispered.
She’s making a decision without even considering the consequences. Without taking a moment to wonder if anyone else is involved.
“Listen, from what I know, the bank is foreclosing on you anyway. Right? You’re up to your neck in mortgage payments—”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” Her face closed. “It still doesn’t mean I have to sell it to you. I can come up with the money.”
“I doubt that,” Jack replied, hating the tone in his voice. Could he bully her into selling? Of course he could. He had friends in every high place one could name.
But it’s Mags
. How could he buy out her business and take away her home? Yet how could he sacrifice his last six months’ worth of work for a single person?
Jack scrubbed his face with both hands.
How did we get here
?
How did we get from making up, from making a future, to fighting about it in less than five minutes?
Maggie’s eyes widened, like glittering emeralds lit from within. A long sigh rippled out of her. “I should have known that’s what you were after. Well, you can stop all the acting now, because you know what? You’re right. I probably will end up selling the house because I can’t afford any other way out. I can’t buy off the bank, or ask a couple of friends for a loan over martinis, or pretend to be in love with someone who’ll ride in on his white horse and save me.”
Stunned, Jack stood there without saying a word.
“That’s what’s going on, isn’t it?” she continued. “You’re trying to get me into bed so you can convince me to sell Doyle Designs…probably for some ridiculous amount, when it’s worth twice that—”
“You think I came after you tonight for a
business deal
?” Amazement bubbled up inside his chest. “You think I kissed you, broke off my engagement, followed you into the dead of night so I could convince you to sell your house? That’s really what you think of me?” Jack felt as though someone had socked him a good one, right across the jaw. Lacing his fingers, he rested his hands on the back of his head and stared up into space. He thought if he didn’t, he might hit something.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he continued, speaking to a lone star that peeked through the clouds. “You’ve never been one to compromise or think about the bigger picture. You’ve never been one to back down, to say I’m sorry, to listen to what anyone else had to say. Never sacrificed one ounce of what you wanted for anyone else.”
She slammed one hand against the roof of her car. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Neve’s wide-eyed face looking out through the windshield.
“You think I don’t know about sacrifice? About giving up what I wanted so someone else could be happy? You still don’t get it, do you? You think everything happened out in Vegas just because I was being selfish.”
Jack took a step back. “Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you? The minute you woke up with that ring on your finger, you were out the door, looking for an annulment. And you got it. Didn’t matter what I had to say.”
She began to cry. Streaks of mascara striped her face, and she rubbed her nose. “You idiot. I didn’t get what I wanted. I
gave up
the thing I wanted. For you. I gave up everything for you.”
Maggie was talking in riddles now, and he was beyond exhaustion. What on earth had she given up for him? After the fiasco in Vegas, she’d gone back to New York and taken up with her last two years of college like he’d been just a ripple in the endless sea of what-Maggie-wanted. “What are you talking about?”
She slumped, half-in and half-out of the car. Resting her head against the doorframe, she looked up at him with eyes so wide, so sad, he thought he could see every star in the universe reflected inside them.
“Jack, I can’t have children. Not ever.”
“Wait a minute.” He shook his head. “What?”
“I had a hysterectomy when I was nineteen.” Her voice dropped, and he had to strain to hear her. “A few weeks before we met. I know I should have told you, but…”
“You’re—you what?”
“That’s why we couldn’t stay married. It’s not fair to you. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now. And that’s why this—” she waved a listless hand in the air— “all this, whatever it is, can’t go anywhere between us. I can’t give you what you want, what you deserve. It can’t start up again.”
“But how—”
How do you know what I really want
? he was going to say.
She didn’t say another word or let him finish. Instead, she slipped back into the car and closed the door in the middle of his sentence. The rain grew heavier, soaking his collar. Horns beeped, and a police officer waved him out of the street. Jack tried to protest, to explain, but it didn’t matter. This time, when Maggie put the car into gear and pulled away, he didn’t stop her.
2:00 a.m.
Oh, God. I told him the truth. I finally told him.
Maggie couldn’t look back. She couldn’t bear to see Jack standing there with that look of disbelief on his face. Hands clenched around the steering wheel, she made her way down one city block. Then another. Cars spaced out and her speed climbed to thirty-five. Good. If she could keep driving, keep her mind focused on the road, she might be okay.
She’d finally revealed everything, told him the one thing she’d always tried to hide, and he’d reacted just as she always thought he would. The expression that darkened his smile, the horror in his eyes, was worse than if he’d reached out and struck her. And the way he backed away from her…Maggie wanted to die. Some part of her was glad she’d kept the secret for so long. If Jack had looked at her that way back in college, she might just have swallowed some pills and ended it all.
He was the one person who kept me together
,
the one person who made me feel like I belonged to the human race.
Ten years ago, she wouldn’t have known how to deal with his rejection. Now, she could handle it. She had to. With everything else jumbled up in her life, Jack’s opinion couldn’t rank anywhere higher than five or six on her priority list. Not number one, certainly. That still belonged to the bank.
Which brought her back to the issue of selling her house. To a company that Jack ran. Maggie let out a little chirp of bitter laughter. Of all the companies jockeying for space in tiny Hart’s Falls, the one trying to beat the bank and buy her out had to belong to her ex-boyfriend. To her
ex-husband
, if you wanted to get technical. The irony of it made her skin ache. Maggie sighed. She didn’t have room inside her head for all the emotions. She couldn’t sift through them to separate Jack the ex-lover from Jack the CEO. Yet that was the way her life seemed to work. Move away, take baby steps forward, build a new life, only to find that the center of it all, like a big black magnet, drew her straight back to the past.
“Maggie?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She flipped on the wipers as rain dripped down. Weak lightning flashed.
She began counting seconds.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi
. Five. Ten. Another block rolled by, and a sign announced four more miles to the interstate.
Thank God
. Fifteen. Twenty. As they left the city center, everything turned hazy, and visibility shrank. Maggie cut her speed. The radio station turned to static, and Neve fussed with the dial.
Up ahead, a traffic light blinked.
Yellow
, Maggie’s tired brain registered as they neared the intersection.
Yellow. That means I have the right of way. The cross street has blinking red
. She slowed down a little, but she didn’t bother to look. They hadn’t seen another car for the last five minutes. With her mind on Jack, the house, and the bank, she didn’t see the sedan speeding down the side street toward them. She didn’t hear its tires squeal. She didn’t see its headlights sweep into their path.
Until it was too late.
Maggie braked, but not soon enough. The other driver swerved, but not quickly enough.
Metal thundered against metal, and the car spun out of control. The sound of breaking glass filled Maggie’s ears. Her head snapped backwards and the force of the impact ripped her hands from the steering wheel. Somewhere on the edge of her awareness, she thought she saw Neve pressing her hands against the door as if to fend off attack as the weaving sedan caught the Honda square in the passenger side and drove them all the way to the opposite sidewalk.
*
A policeman approached Jack, who remained standing in the middle of the street. Cars weaved around him, with some drivers beeping their horns and others offering less kind gestures through open windows.
“Sir? I’m going to have to ask you to move your vehicle.”
He turned. “Sorry?”
The officer pointed a thick finger. “Your Navigator. It’s blocking traffic. Are you having mechanical problems?”
The corners of Jack’s mouth twitched as he considered the question.
Mechanical problems? No. Emotional, messed-up, heart-tugged-upside-down problems? Yes. I’d tell you about them too, if I could wrap my head around them.
“No,” he said after a long minute. “No problems with the truck.”
“Then I’ll advise you to head on home. Streets are flooded, traffic lights out, quite a few accidents around the city. You’d best call it a night.”
Jack nodded, not really listening. Maggie’s last words kept floating around in his skull, looking for a place to land.
I can’t have children…not ever…
I can’t give you what you want…
That’s why she left me? That’s why she wanted the annulment?
A band tightened around his temples.
Why didn’t she just tell me the truth?
Jack stumbled backwards and reached into his pocket for the keys.
How do you make that kind of decision when you’re twenty? How do you know in five or ten or thirty years which things you’ll want, and which you’ll give up?
With all that had happened in the last four hours, Jack couldn’t imagine not having Maggie in his life. Nor could he imagine not having a family. He’d always pictured kids, two or three of them running up and down the stairs, clutching at his legs, making him crooked paper Valentines and Father’s Day cards. His mom had devoted her life to making a safe and solid home for the four Major sons, full of warmth and good smells and spaces where you could figure yourself out. He wanted that too. He’d never worked through the when and the why and the how the way he knew a lot of women did. He’d always just assumed it would happen.
But what happens when you never have the choice at all?
How had Maggie dealt with it? How had she kept that kind of secret for so long? Jack recalled all the times he’d curved his body around hers and tickled the back of her neck with his breath. Did she lie awake after he fell asleep, staring at his walls and missing the children she’d never have? Did she listen to him talk about the future and change his words inside her head? Did she stare at mothers and babies on the subway and then go home and weep? Or had it become simply part of who she was, like a callus or a scar from a long-ago injury? How the hell, by the way, did you heal from something like that?
Jack tried to remember something Maggie might have said back then, a hint she might have dropped about a secret of that magnitude. He couldn’t. And he wondered how well he’d known her all along.
Thoughts of all sorts followed him as he crawled back into the dark of the borrowed SUV. Without bothering with the seatbelt, he made his way to the first open parking spot he found, a block away, and sat.
Why didn’t she ever tell me?
Longing for something he couldn’t identify swept over him, and Jack closed his hands around the steering wheel. He tried to pin down a single feeling and couldn’t. He tried to sift through memories and failed. Everything swarmed around him: pain and frustration and anger and loss, confusion and resentment and most of all, love, ballooning over him despite its ragged edges and kinks. He dropped his head and closed his eyes. He wished he knew which choice to make. But he didn’t.
*
Maggie had never understood when people talked about terrible things happening in slow motion. She couldn’t see how the seconds might slow, how the air could squeeze the life right out of you as time smashed to a halt. If you were staring down a speeding train, wouldn’t you feel as though the world were rushing in at a thousand miles an hour? If you were that close to death, wouldn’t it feel like all your time was running out? Slow motion didn’t make sense.
But that was exactly what happened when the other car hit them. Everything stopped, even the movement of the air around her. Her hands remained frozen in the ten and two positions on her steering wheel, until it ripped itself away from her and the rough, hot fabric of the air bag rushed out instead. Neve’s body flopped like a rag doll, sideways and back. The building across the street moved toward them as their car slid sideways. Maggie heard a guttural sound, like an animal struck, and for a minute she wondered if they’d hit someone standing in the street. When it stopped, though, and her own throat burned, she realized the wail had come from her. Without even knowing, she’d opened her mouth and made some kind of inhuman sound.
The car ground to a halt. Everything quieted. Something warm ran down Maggie’s cheek. She tried to move her feet, but they felt wedged into place. Under something? Against something? She couldn’t figure it out. She looked past the deflated airbag, through her windshield. Something wasn’t right. Something looked…off. It took her a full minute to realize that her car had ended up nose-first inside the metal stanchions of a bus stop. Maggie turned to Neve and couldn’t fix her brain on what she saw: a darkness that spread onto the passenger seat and down to the floor.
“Neve?” Maggie’s voice came out as a croak “Are you okay?” When no answer came, she reached shaking fingers toward her friend. She found a pulse, but barely. “Can you hear me? Neve?” Darkness rushed in, heavy and frightening. Everything dimmed.
Sometime later, maybe five minutes, maybe fifteen, Maggie heard sirens somewhere far away. She stared through a shattered window and realized it was the only sound, besides her own terrified breathing, she could make out.