Page 5 of The Locksmith’s Promise (The Promise Duet #1)

A Dog Named Jeff

B axter

The best and worst thing about Moose Lake was its miniscule size.

Walk ten minutes in any direction and you’d find yourself surrounded by woodland and hiking trails. I headed there now. With my head down, I barreled down the sidewalk, hoping against hope I wouldn’t run into anybody I knew.

Which was a big fucking hope seeing as everybody knew everyone.

But it had been ten years.

There was a chance, just this once, I might escape undetected.

I stuffed my hands into my pockets and shook my head, concentrating on the ground beneath my feet as the sidewalk gave way to gravel and finally a well-worn dirt path leading into the forest. Tipping my chin up slightly, I found the entrance to the trail I wanted and disappeared exactly as I used to when things at home became unbearable.

Welcomed into the shelter of the trees, the rich fragrance of damp earth wrapped around me like a long-forgotten memory.

And I took my first deep breath since finding out I had a son.

I’m a father.

Doing the math, Cor must have been ten years old.

I have a son, and I don’t even know his birthday.

How could Maggie keep him from me for ten years?

And why?

Tears stung the backs of my eyes. The further I walked into the woods, the sharper the memory focussed.

Lying side by side on our rock with my jacket pillowed behind her head, we stared up at the stars.

“We’ll have a little house,” I murmured. “It’ll be so clean and fresh inside.”

“You’ll teach and I’ll become a master locksmith.”

She laughed. “That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“Hush your mouth, woman. I’m building a dream here.”

“Sorry,” she teased, squeezing my hand. “Please continue.”

“We’ll have a nice backyard for our two kids and our dog.”

“We have a dog?” she murmured.

“We do. His name is Jeff.”

She barked out a laugh. “Jeff?”

I nodded and rolled onto my side. Placing my hand on her lower tummy, I reveled in her hitched breath as I leaned over and kissed her. “Yeah. Jeff.”

“What if it’s a girl?”

“Still, Jeff.”

I kissed her laughing mouth.

She drew back and smiled into my eyes.

“You and me against the world, Bax.”

Maggie had a son, our son, and a dog named Jeff. She took our dreams and wrote me out of them.

I swiped the back of my hand over my eyes, shocked when it came away wet. I hadn’t cried since the night I left town. I stared down at my hand, shocked to see the tangible evidence of my grief.

Anger boiled up inside me, a welcome respite from the chokehold of regret.

Because I had a son.

And I didn’t know how to be a father.

When I finally looked up, I’d crossed the clearing on the other side of the trees and reached the flat rock at the base of the climb. With the treeline long behind me, there was no shelter from the wind. The temperature was dropping fast but I was nowhere near ready to turn back.

Taking a running start, I heaved myself up to the place Maggie and I had once mapped out our dreams. Here there were no judgements or recriminations. No angry words or harsh tones. Here the future had been wide open and filled with hope.

My hopes and our dreams.

I snorted, bitterness billowing up my esophagus, at just how thoroughly life fucked me over once again.

Had Maggie been out here to our rock since she’d been back? Had she explored the trails with Corwin yet?

Too short to get up by herself, I used to form a stirrup with my hands and give her a boost before clamouring up behind her. She needed just as much help getting down and I fucking reveled in my role.

We’d been best friends long before we were lovers.

And it was that Maggie, the Maggie who was my best friend first, that I needed answers from.

That Maggie would never have hurt me like this.

Even though the Baxter who was her lover hurt her worse than he ever imagined he could. I rubbed my palm over the ache in my chest.

I’d have to face that mistake as well.

Looking along the perimeter of the forest, I noted the entrances to the trails. These were our trails; we knew them inside out.

Me, Maggie, Miller, John, Eric, Jenny, and the rest of the crew who had long since moved away, backpacks loaded with beer, chips, beef jerky, and granola bars, we had followed these trails until we reached the small clearing where we set up camp for the evening.

But this rock, this rock had been mine and Maggie’s.

Back when Maggie was still mine.

She’d been beautiful then, but she was more beautiful now, her sweet face marked with maturity and hard-earned wisdom. Her body, too, had changed. Soft and womanly, my arms ached to hold her. Wipe the fear from her face, clear the confusion from her eyes.

Something, somehow, somewhere had gone terribly wrong between us.

While I knew I was the architect of that disaster, I still didn’t know how or why.

For ten years I dreamed of seeing Maggie again, even winning her back, but nowhere in my wildest dreams had I imagined this kind of betrayal.

I closed my eyes and lay back, the cold, hard rock mirroring the truth.

Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and trailed across my temples into my hair.

How could she have kept him from me?

Did I deserve that?

Perhaps.

My grief shuddered out in one long breath.

Ten years.

Ten fucking years. My hands rolled into fists while my breath escaped in helpless, frustrated pants.

My back burned with a phantom pain as my anger grew. The force of it scared me, but I couldn’t fathom where to direct it.

Did she think I’d be like him? Did she keep my son from me out of fear?

I barely ever thought about that old bastard anymore, but coming back to Moose Lake had opened a whole slew of memories.

Face red, veins in his neck throbbing, spittle flew from his mouth as he screamed, “You’re nothing, you hear me? And nothing’s all you’ll ever be.”

He spat on the floor by my feet. If he weren’t so drunk, he wouldn’t have missed.

“You useless, pansy-ass, piece of shit,” he sneered.

I flung my arm over my face. After all the work I’d put in to separate myself from the past, was coming back to this place going to send me back to that shadow version of myself?

I have a son.

I have a son.

“I have a son.” I said it out loud, the timbre of my voice lending credibility to the most incredible of words.

“Bax?”

I huffed out a disbelieving laugh and rolled to my feet.

Maggie peered up at me warily, the wind whipping her hair around her face, heart in her eyes.

That stubborn tilt to her chin.

I narrowed my gaze. “What are you doing here, Mags?”

She attempted a smile and held out her hand. “I brought your coat.”

Ignoring her offering, I asked, “Where’s Corwin?”

Eyes dimming, she pressed her lips together as she lowered her hand. “I left him with Miller and Maxine.”

As sorry as she looked, I was not feeling all that forgiving.

Did she think I would have hurt him like my father hurt me?

Did she believe it even still?

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

She shrugged. “It’s the first place I wanted to be.”

She didn’t appear to be scared of me.

I sighed. “You want me to help you up?”

My heart softened. Because before I knew I had a son, Maggie had been my sole reason for coming back to Moose Lake. And here she was, standing right in front of me, her sweet face tipped up to mine.

I needed to touch her again. Hold her. I’d take any excuse.

She nodded and threw my jacket up onto the rock before digging her toe into a small outcropping and offering me her hand.

Soft and warm, under any other circumstances, I’d have rejoiced at her touch but all I could think about was the fact that she kept my son from me.

And the probable reason why.

As soon as I pulled her up, I dropped her hand and took half a step back. Pained, I whispered, “I wouldn’t have hurt him.”

She gasped, her eyes wide on mine. “I know that!”

My lips trembled like a child’s. I ducked my head and regained control of my wayward emotions. “Then how could you keep him from me, Maggie?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t keep him from you.”

I stared at her hard, my eyes wide, mouth gaping like a fucking fish. “Well, you sure as hell didn’t tell me about him!”

Her eyes bugged out. “I tried! I called you over and over, but you never answered, Bax!” Her face flushed red. “You left me!”

Tears filled eyes that looked more green than brown in her sadness and overflowed.

I tugged her into my arms, fitting her body perfectly against mine. “Maggie,” I groaned. “I never left you; I left Moose Lake.”

“Well, Bax,” she answered bitterly, fists in my shirt, forehead tucked against my chest. “You didn’t fucking take me with you either, did you?”

I ducked my head, my body trembling with remorse remembering those final days.

How badly I betrayed her.

“Yeah. That, too,” she surmised correctly where my thoughts had run and pulled away.

“It didn’t mean anything,” I murmured, forcing myself to meet those beautiful eyes I filled with tears.

Maybe I didn’t deserve to know about him.

She stared out over the field, tears staining her cheeks. “Well, it meant something to me.”

“I don’t remember what happened, Maggie. I only remember waking up with her beside me.”

“Stop,” she held up her hand.

The pain in her voice halted the rest of my explanation.

“I can’t,” she admitted, her voice strained. “I can’t talk about this right now. I didn’t know you were here. I wasn’t ready.”

“I’m so sorry, Mags,” I whispered, hands hanging useless at my sides.

My anger dissipated. Because however it looked, in the end, this, too, was my fuck-up.

“We’ll find our way back to being friends,” she declared softly.

Friends.

“I loved you, Maggie, I’ve always loved you. It was never a question of not loving you.”

I knew I was pushing too hard, going too fast, but I yearned for her forgiveness, and the words came tumbling out.

She swallowed audibly and edged away from me. “It’s all in the past now.”

Except it wasn’t.

The past had risen, and that fucker was trying to swallow me whole.

No matter how I looked at it, my first day back was a banger.