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  “You didn’t used to like even that.”

  “I gave up diet soda.”

  I leaned back against the counter, crossed my arms. “I don’t believe it.”

  She ignored me, pulling a teabag out from somewhere before filling the mug with hot water, and picking it up. “I’m going to get ready. If I don’t see you again”—her eyes lifted but didn’t meet mine, and I knew it was a deliberate omission—“thanks for your help. I’ve got the rugs picked up, his sheets changed. All the outstanding laundry done, and I’ve got the same nurse, Claudette, who took care of him after his heart attacks coming this afternoon. She’ll be here for a week, so Dad will be—”

  “You’re really going?” I asked.

  Her gaze was on the mug, fingers wrapped around the string as she waited for the tea to steep. “I don’t think there’s a point in me staying,” she eventually said. “I’ll do my duty as I always do, but I won’t stay here and make him miserable.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Think before you finish that statement, Aaron,” she interrupted. “Only now I get the unique joy of making both you and him miserable.”

  “And yet you made cinnamon apple bread.”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” She picked up her mug, turned for the hall.

  “Full-fat and low-fat.”

  Mags snorted. “Is that the barometer of a loving daughter now? Low-fat cinnamon apple bread.”

  It sure as hell wasn’t the barometer of someone who was completely detached.

  “And anyway,” she went on. “You don’t want me here. I get it. I’ll take care of the final details and head to the hotel tonight.”

  My brows drew down. “Hotel?”

  “First flight out in the morning is at five,” she said. “It’s easier if I just stay near the airport.”

  “Easier for who?” I asked, even as I wondered why in the fuck I was pushing this. She wanted to leave, great. She could go, the proverbial door hitting her on the ass on the way out. But numb eyes, shadows beneath those unfathomable pools of a deep, rich brown, and . . . cinnamon apple bread.

  Separate batches.

  For two men in her life who held on to no little amount of anger about her choices.

  Separate batches. Numb. Shadows.

  My heart constricted.

  “Easier for him. For you,” she said, tone filling with granite. “For me.”

  I took the mug from her hands, not having realized that I’d closed the distance between us until my fingers were on the warm porcelain, until I was searching her eyes for the flecks of gray that only someone who was this close—inches separating us—could see. Steel in warmth. Determination peeking through soft.

  “Why did you make separate batches?” I asked.

  She took a step back. “I told you—”

  “No, Mags,” I said, halting her with a hand on her arm. “The truth.”

  Her jaw tightened. “I don’t—”

  I brushed my thumb along the tight muscles ticking there, my pulse speeding up at the feel of her skin beneath mine, sparks shooting down my fingers, my arm. One touch that reminded me so intensely of everything that had come before. One touch that made me forget all of what had come after. “Why, Peaches?”

  Her lips parted on a shuddering exhale. “Don’t,” she murmured.

  I stroked my thumb again, reveling in the sparks. “Why?”

  Eyes slid closed, her body drifted the slightest bit forward. “I hate that I hurt you, and I thought if I made—” Her words cut off, probably because I’d stiffened. Lids peeling back. “I hurt you, and I’m sorry. I can’t make that right. I just thought—”

  I retreated a step, pulse pounding for a different reason this time. “You just thought you could make some dumb ass recipe from a decade ago, and I’d magically forgive you for running?” Ignoring the voice that said I’d forgiven her a long time ago for leaving town, that the only reason I was angry now was because I was furious that I’d wasted so much time and energy hating her, I turned and strode to the sink, dumping the coffee and washing the mug with more vigor than was necessary.

  “That’s not—” she began. “I couldn’t sleep, and I was thinking about the good times.”

  “Good times,” I spat, not liking this side of me, but unable to stop it from bursting free.

  “I am sorry I hurt you,” she said and sighed. “But I’m not sorry I left. Did I want you to find the courage to come with me? Hell yes, I did. But do I also think we would have ended up in a place very much like this?” She set her cup on the counter with a quiet clink. “With you pissed that I couldn’t be the person you wanted me to be? How can I think anything different? We were too young, in a relationship that was too serious, and with two wildly different ideas of what we wanted for the future.”

  I spun back to face her. “We could have made it work.”

  A sad shake of her head. “No, Aaron, we couldn’t have. Either you would have had to sacrifice want you wanted, or I would have had to. Eventually, one of us would have become resentful, and we would have imploded.” Her mouth pressed flat, eyes no longer numb, instead rubbed dull by the painful memories. “Did it hurt like hell when you told me you wouldn’t come? Of course, it did. Did it hurt worse to leave you, anyway? Yes, so much so that I almost forgot it all and turned back anyway.”

  Yeah, sure. Except, she hadn’t. She’d had plenty of time to reconsider. A decade’s worth. “But you didn’t.”

  “You think it was hard being here?” she asked. “You had everything. You had everyone around you, loving on you, treating you like you were the one who was wronged, or at least the only one who was hurt.”

  “You could have had that, too,” I pointed out.

  “I could have stayed. You could have come.” She threw up her hands, paced a few feet away before turning back. “It doesn’t matter now, though, does it? Life moves on.” A sigh as she came close again. “But Aaron, until you realize how unfair it was for you to put that pressure on me to give up my dream, knowing that for years all I’d ever wanted was to move to L.A., to work in films, you’ll never truly understand why I had to go.”

  No. I got that already. I knew I was wrong to have pushed her to—

  Her arm lifted as though she was going to stroke my cheek. “And when I heard your mom was sick—”

  “Don’t.” Fury roared to life at the mention of my mother. God, I’d been heartbroken, totally devasted from Maggie leaving, and then we’d had a family meeting, and I’d been terrified I would lose my mom, too.

  “Aaron—”

  I stepped to the side, grabbed the bag of cinnamon apple bread, and dropped it into the trash, furious that I was affected by this woman again. I should be over it, over her, over a dumb ass high-school-aged broken heart.

  And how can you do that when you live with her father for half the year?

  Something my mom had said repeatedly in the years since, nearly a decade in remission, but a looming reality that terrified me whenever she went for her yearly checkup.

  You’re traumatized because you lost Maggie and then you nearly lost me, and now you’re grasping at the straws of a life in the past, instead of living for the future.

  Unfortunately, I was realizing that was also the truth.

  One that was easier to ignore, easier to be pissed at Maggie for leaving in the first place.

  Ironically, the final push for Mags to leave at all was me wanting to get married and start a family. So young. So stupid. But she’d gone, freeing me up to find that with another woman, but here I was, a decade later, single, a handful of relationships with potential in my past, a potential that had never bloomed . . .

  Because she’d left, and something had broken in me.

  “Fuck,” I snapped, brushing past her and heading for the front door. “Do what you want, Mags. Leave like you’re good at. Or stay and tough it out for a change. Try to bake your way into your father’s heart.” I paused, saw she’d trailed me, was watching me from t
he doorway of the kitchen. “But keep me out of it.”

  The numb crept back in even as she nodded, her voice even when she added, “I’ll leave you out of it.”

  “Good.” I shoved through the door, hauled ass across the gravel to the bunkhouse, grabbing clothes and heading into the shower.

  By the time I was finished, the house was quiet, and her car was gone.

  But when I stepped out of the bunkhouse, I had to do a quick side-step to avoid crushing the bag of cinnamon apple loaves I’d thrown in the trash. A note was stapled to the front.

  I arranged for an earlier flight. Claudette will pick Dad up from the hospital since I know he’d prefer that anyway.

  -M

  P.S. No sense in this going to waste.

  P.P.S. I am truly sorry I hurt you. But I never forgot what we had, and . . . I missed you more than you can know.

  * * *

  A silver circle was taped below the last, and it took me a minute to recognize it for the bracelet I’d scrimped and saved to buy for her senior year. The delicate shining chain held a single charm, a perfectly round peach with the tiniest fleck of a diamond at its stem.

  Peaches.

  Sweet with bite, a tough, rock-hard pit buried deep inside, an easily bruised outer fruit.

  I’d forgotten that.

  Not about peaches. About Maggie.

  And now I had to wonder what else I would have remembered if I hadn’t walked out of that kitchen, if I hadn’t left.

  I had to wonder if she was right.

  Maybe it wasn’t leaving so much as staying gone that was harder. Maybe even hard than being the one left behind.

  I glanced down at the loaves, their delicious scent tempting and filling me with longing that would never be assuaged.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe being left was just as bad.

  Six

  Maggie

  The plane bumped down onto the runway, a smooth landing into LAX and hopefully a sign of things to come.

  Taxiing, pulling into the gate, the doors disarmed, and then I was out of my seat, my go-bag once again tossed over my shoulder, a blast of warm air—at least compared to Utah—hitting me as I exited.

  Bypassing baggage claim.

  Out of the airport and to long-term parking.

  Then into my car, the long drive through rush-hour traffic back to my place. Hitting the code on the gate, pulling into my spot in the covered carport next to the guest house, trying to quietly slip by the pool when I heard voices on the other side of the hedge.

  Failing to go unnoticed.

  “Mags?” Pierce called. “I thought you’d be gone a week.”

  I inhaled, held the air in my lungs long enough to steady my voice. Then I released it and said, “Plans changed.”

  There. Even and calm.

  No one would notice a thing.

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” I said, shifting my bag and moving toward the front door.

  No response trailed me, and I thought I’d escaped, but then Artie appeared in the break in the hedge, the little gate that enclosed the pool closed, their daughter perched on her hip. Artie was beautiful, a surfer girl in looks, a killer businesswoman in brains. A former child star only recently returned to the screen, she’d used her time away to grow her production company into one of the best in the industry.

  Smart, gorgeous, nice.

  And didn’t miss a thing.

  Which meant it took her precisely one look at my face to know that Utah had been a disaster.

  She passed Brenna off to Pierce, pushed through the gate, and came over to grab my hands. “Mags, is . . . I mean . . . did something happen to your dad?”

  I forced a smile. I should have realized she would be worried, thinking things had escalated from a relatively simple broken hip. “He’s fine. Out of the hospital now. Things were”—a slow, even breath—“well, it was better for everyone that I come back.”

  Artie’s fingers squeezed. “I’m sorry.” A beat. “Want to talk about it?”

  That was a hard no, which my boss and friend easily read. “Some other time,” she said. “We’ll have cocktails and kick Pierce out of the house and can self-medicate with pasta from The Restaurant.”

  The Restaurant being an eatery Artie was a silent partner in. One that had some of the best food I’d ever eaten.

  “I thought they didn’t do take-out.”

  She winked. “Sometimes it pays off to be the big boss.”

  I snorted. “Sounds good.” I tilted my head, considering her schedule. “How’s Thursday? You just have that script meeting in the morning, but your evening is free, and you have nothing on Friday.”

  “Maggie Allen,” Artie exclaimed, slipping her hands free to plunk them down onto her hips. “You are no longer in charge of my schedule,” she reminded me. “I have another assistant for that because you’ve got your own schedule and clients now.”

  I rose on tiptoe, pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Old habits die hard.”

  She gave me a quick hug. “I know, babe.” A pause. “You sure you don’t want to talk?”

  I felt flayed open, my heart and the pain I’d buried inside it exposed to the world. “Yeah. I just need some time.”

  “Understood.” She stepped back. “Come over for dinner later if you’re up for it. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you soon and see you Thursday.”

  “Thanks, Artie.”

  “Love you, babe.”

  “I love you, too,” I managed to say, meaning it, knowing she meant it, too, that it wasn’t one of those Hollywood things where everyone loved everyone. Artemis had become family, more than my own.

  And that made everything hurt all over again.

  I raised a hand, turned away, and hurried to the door to the guest house reeling from the impact of her words, of the bond we’d built over the last years—simple and strong and yet without judgment and strings. It was so different from the family I’d just left that it was almost laughable.

  After opening the door, I pushed inside, and leaned back against the cool wood, just breathing.

  Why did I keep doing this to myself?

  Why did I keep hoping things would be different, even while knowing they would always be the same?

  My dad was my dad. He would always be ornery with a touch of mean. He’d never say I love you or I’m proud of what you’ve done. So, why did I keep looking for it? Why did I keep doing the same thing and hoping the outcome would be different? It was quite literally the definition of insanity.

  And insane or not, I just didn’t want to feel this way anymore.

  I wanted my dad safe and healthy, but I didn’t want my heart to feel like it had been put through the meat grinder every time we interacted.

  It was the push-pull that was hard.

  He always seemed to know exactly when I was ready to be done with him completely, to forget about Campbell and the ranch and him and just move on. And that was when I got some modicum of affection.

  Reeling me back in.

  Making me feel small.

  I dropped my bag and sighed, knowing it wasn’t just that, the crumbs of affection he doled out at irregular intervals. I was to blame, too. I was so starved for his love that I grasped at every straw.

  But things were different now.

  I had clients and friends. My life wasn’t hollow any longer. Perhaps that was why the reminder of my empty relationship with my dad was so painful.

  “Why can’t I stop loving him?” I muttered, pushing off the door, scooping up my bag, and heading to the bedroom to repack it for the next time I’d need it. The dress I’d worn to the wedding was critically wrinkled and would need to be saved by the dry cleaner, but everything else was fine to either go into the hamper or the closet. I restocked my bag with clean underwear and socks, along with several staples that could be mixed and matched together to make an outfit appropriate for anything from a photo shoot to a nice dinner.

  But even as my hands went through the
motions of repacking my bag, my mind kept spinning.

  I needed to find a way to break the pattern. I needed to stop feeling this way.

  I needed . . . to come to terms with the fact that my father wasn’t going to be the father I needed. But just thinking that, just having the thought cross my mind, sliced me to the quick. There was still hope inside me that things would change and—

  I needed to let go of that.

  I had to.

  Sighing, I tugged the zipper closed, carried my bag to the little bench I kept by front door—shoe storage below, a place to drop all the crap I needed to carry to my car at a later time on top.

  This fell into the category of crap to bring to my car later.

  Task done, I took a long, hot shower, washing off the travel, the weariness, the confusion that had morphed into resolve. I knew this was an exercise in futility, that I should shrug off the hope and move on, and I wanted it to be that simple. To just move on.

  It wasn’t.

  But I’d also had enough.

  So, even though the flame of hope in my gut wasn’t quite extinguished, I was also done trying to add fuel to that fire, to encourage it to burn bigger and brighter. Time to accept and move on.

  My cell buzzed, and I grabbed it, knowing that Talbot was supposed to be checking in soon after a series of interviews in Australia. He was on location for a couple more months of filming, even as another movie of his was releasing in theaters soon. It was my job to somehow balance his obligations of promotion and promote a reasonable work-life balance between that and starring in a film that was shooting an average of twelve-hour days.

  The first step had been to set up some remote interviews with the bigger bloggers and promotion companies, allowing him to stay on set while honoring that part of his contract. Next, was to consolidate everything into a week of appearances on talk shows and only one junket, where he’d be available for a full day of short interviews with all the different entertainment shows and several large YouTubers.

  This would make it so he only had to fly home once.

  I glanced at the screen, saw instead of Talbot, it was a text from Tammy.