Page 8 of The Locksmith’s Promise (The Promise Duet #1)

This Side of Moose Lake

M aggie

The first time he said it I convinced myself I was hearing things.

The second time, there was no mistaking his words. Or what they did to the foolishly na?ve organ in my chest.

I came back for your mom .

For what exactly?

And why did it run me out of my own house?

The fiery carpet of fallen leaves crunched under my feet as I left my kid with a man I hadn’t seen in over a decade.

It didn’t matter that he was his father.

It didn’t matter that I’d never known him to be anything other than kind.

It didn’t matter that I could not remember a time when my soul didn’t recognize his, or the fact it still did.

I sighed and gave a gentle tug on the end of Jeff’s lead.

None of it mattered.

Because there was a time I didn’t think I could live without that man.

A darker time when I didn’t want to.

I’d scraped and clawed my way out of that hole so I could be a good mom to my son. Now, I had to be a good mom to myself and look after my heart.

Or risk sliding back down into that pit.

“Come on, Jeff,” I coaxed quietly giving a gentle tug on the lead. “Let’s go home.”

Tail wagging like a flag of surrender, she followed me up the steps to the second story balcony entrance to our shoebox apartment.

Baxter’s deep chuckle and Cor’s high-pitched laughter seeped through the door like an invitation I desperately wanted to accept.

Staring at the closed door, I slid down the post to sit on the top step and pulled Jeff onto my lap.

I had the strangest sense of Deja Vue, a prickle of warning spreading beneath my skin, but it was no more than a sliver of a life I used to dream about a lifetime ago.

When I pulled myself together as best I could, I went back in.

I’d expected Baxter to leave once Corwin headed for bed, had even braced myself for it, but he asked if we could talk.

I nearly declined, but I owed him that much.

After tucking in our son for the night, because at ten years old, Cor still wanted that fifteen-minute debrief of the day before conking out, I headed back to Baxter.

He waited for me at the kitchen table.

I paused. “Do you want a coffee?”

He shook his head. “Is it okay if I ask you some questions?”

He was entitled to know everything there was to know about his son. And I intended, to the best of my ability, to fill in all the gaps.

I nodded slowly. “I’ll do my best to answer them.”

He blew out a breath as I slid into the chair across from him.

“I understand why you left, Mags. I do. But why didn’t you come back when you found out you were pregnant?”

I gaped, staring back at him with wide eyes. “Uh—” I stuttered.

He sat, dark eyes patient and steady, waiting for an answer that would make sense of his new reality.

“Bax,” I whispered. “I knew I was pregnant before I left.”

It was his turn to stare, slack jawed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“That’s why I went looking for you,” I began, stopping when the agony of that day rose fast and hot.

His brow furrowed. “You went looking for me?”

I gave my head a shake and met his eyes. “I called you.”

My voice shook with my rising blood pressure.

“As soon as I calmed down, I called you. Over and over and fucking over,” I hissed. “I left messages, Bax. I told you about him.”

He rubbed a rough hand over his face. “Fuck.”

My breathing grew shallow as my body remembered the fear and anxiety of those early days.

“I even thought about going to your father and demanding he get in touch with you, but I couldn’t face him.” My mouth twisted. “And I couldn’t stand the thought of asking Jenny.”

He winced, the bitter stench of regret rolling off him in waves. “She wouldn’t have known. Why were you afraid to face my father?” His eyes widened, a wild look about them as they skittered back and forth then narrowed on my face. “Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head. “I was more humiliated,” I bit out, wrapping my hand around my aching throat.

Talking about it snapped the memory into sharp focus.

The sun shining through his bedroom window like a beacon highlighting long black hair spilling across his pillow. Jenny’s slender leg slung over his, her hand splayed across his naked chest.

Bile stung the back of my tongue.

I needed to spit it out then never think about it again.

“When I went to your house looking for you, your father sent me back to your bedroom. He laughed when I ran back out crying.”

I shuddered as the vision assaulted me.

His eyes widened as he drew back in horror. “You saw—I never knew how you knew what happened. Jenny swore—"

I nodded, my lips pressed in a tight line.

I could hold it together for one more minute. I could. Then l would be finished with this topic forever.

His eyes searched mine as he put the clues together.

I witnessed the moment he realized the extent of his father’s betrayal. Saw the jolt of pain that jerked him backward, the utter contempt with which he held himself curling his lip as he turned his face away from me.

Gentling my voice, I gave him the rest. “Later, my dad insisted I keep myself and Corwin as far away from your father as possible.” I raised my hands to the sides. “Nobody in town knew he was yours until I came home.”

“How is that even possible?” He shook his head.

I ticked the reasons off on my fingers. “No social media, no visits home, and there was no one here I wanted to keep in touch with after what happened between you and her .”

Face blank, eyes stark with pain, he pushed his chair back, tapped his fingers on the tabletop, and stared into space.

I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t watch him relive the suffering of the past like I so often did. Something I suspected we were destined to do until we found a way to make it right.

If there was one.

After a moment, he cleared his throat. “I’m going to take off now.”

“Bax,” I whispered.

He shook his head, his gaze lighting on mine briefly before dancing away. “I deserved it, Maggie. Hopefully, you’ll see I’ve changed.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he turned away. “I’m not the same man. I just,” he stood and pushed the kitchen chair back, his gaze downcast. “I just need to digest this.”

With my heart in my throat, I watched him walk away. Everything in me wanted to hold him, but the ounce of self-preservation I clung to tethered me to my chair.

At the door, he paused, his finger on the spine of Corwin’s baby album. “Can I still take this?”

“Of course,” I whispered, my throat tight.

Raising tortured eyes to meet mine, he called my name, “Maggie.”

“Yes?” I swallowed.

“None of this was your fault.” He shook his head then tapped the cover of the album. “I’ll bring it back.”

“Take your time,” I murmured.

He huffed a bitter laugh. “Right now, free time is the one thing I have too much of.”

I didn’t move until the door clicked shut.

And then I crumpled like a used napkin, folded my arms on the table, and silently screamed for all that we’d lost.

All we might have been.

All I refused to allow us to have.

Three days and two visits later, as I prepared dinner in our tiny kitchen, I was no closer to finding my equilibrium.

Baxter texted me a couple of times a day. He kept them short, mostly focused on Corwin, but every time his name popped up on my screen, my blood pressure bucked like a wild donkey.

Immersed in kids and the school routine from 8:30 to 3:30, I put Bax out of my mind. But as soon as that bell rang, my interior clock tick, tick, ticked until he showed up at my house after dinner.

Not that I needed that internal countdown with Corwin bouncing off the walls giving me updates at fifteen-minute intervals.

This would be the fourth night in a row we’d be hanging out with Baxter.

I didn’t begrudge him the time with his son. God knew I screwed up by disappearing off the face of the earth and not tracking him down.

But me spending this much time with him was detrimental to the organ in my chest that had fiercely and unknowingly harbored the dream.

Corwin slid across the old wood floors in his stocking feet. “Why can’t Baxter come for dinner?”

Sit at the table? Play happy family while my heart broke? No, thank you.

“Maybe you guys can go out for dinner.”

He drew back. “Where?”

“Where?”

Where, indeed. There wasn’t a whole lot of choice in Moose Lake.

“The Loose Moose grills the best burgers in all of Ontario,” I informed him.

He brightened. If there was one thing my boy liked, it was a good hamburger. “Really?”

I shrugged, unwilling to double-down on my exaggeration. “Maybe you could go with your dad and find out.”

By this point, I was more than comfortable with Baxter taking Corwin out. Or maybe, considering Baxter was still staying with Miller and Maxine, I should go out and leave them the apartment.

But where would I go?

After seven, my only option was The Loose Moose, and with it being the be all and end all of Moose Lake’s nightlife, I avoided that place like the plague. I supposed I could have gone to my parents, but that would have invited questions I wasn’t ready to answer.

They knew Baxter was back and that Corwin had met him. Other than that, they were in the dark.

Probably as much as I was.

It took me a moment to realize he hadn’t answered.

I turned my head and cocked my eyebrow. “What?”

“You called him my dad.”

I flushed and swallowed. “Well, he is your dad.”

He dipped his chin, uncharacteristically shy.

I put the knife I’d been using to chop the salad down and turned to face him. “What’s bothering you, bud?”

“Does it hurt your feelings?”

I frowned, wiping my hands off on the tea towel. “Does what hurt my feelings?”

He shrugged, his mouth pulling down at the corners like it always did when he was close to tears.

I opened my arms. “Come here, baby.”

He walked straight into me, not stopping until his head hit my chest, and wrapped his skinny arms around me.

Tension vibrated through his body.

“You wanting to be with your dad doesn’t hurt my feelings,” I whispered.

“I love Baxter. I’ve always loved Baxter.

He was my best friend and my first love.

I don’t regret anything we had. The only thing I regret, and I regret it deeply,” I paused to regain control of the waver in my voice, “is that you didn’t get to meet him sooner. ”

His shoulders relaxed. “You don’t care if I spend time with him?”

“I want you to spend time with him. I want you to know him,” I replied fiercely, tightening my arms around him. “You deserve to know one another.”

He waited a beat. “You don’t seem happy. When he’s here, you don’t seem happy.”

I stilled. The sweetness and downfall of being a single mom to a single child is the focus and synchronicity you develop on each other.

“It’s a big change,” I hedged. “Sometimes change is hard, even when it’s a good one like this one,” I murmured, lightly scratching his scalp just as I’d done when he was a baby.

Before I could go on, there was a brisk knock on the door.

Frowning, I walked over and swung it open to find Baxter. Standing on the small porch in a black henley and a thick lumberjacket, hands tucked into the pockets of his faded jeans, he’d reverted to Moose Lake attire.

This was how I remembered him.

Seeing him like this, feeling him near, was like sunshine breaking through the rain, finding water in the desert, and spying the first shoot of green breaking through the snow after a long, hard winter all at once.

God, I’d missed him so much.

My chest tightened.

“You’re early,” I barked.

He dipped his chin and looked down at the ground for just long enough for me to figuratively kick myself.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t know why this is so hard for me. I wanted this, but—”

His dark eyes shot up to hold mine. “It’s okay, Maggie. We’ll find our way.” His gaze sharpened. “I promise.”

I stared back at him.

Tempted to fall back into his arms, I took a tiny step forward.

He moved, ready to meet me halfway, but I balked.

What did I know of the man he became?

I thought I knew the man he was, and I was wrong.

Giving my head a shake at my foolishness, I stepped back. “Come on in.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, his long legs stepping over the threshold as I backed up further. He nodded down at my toes. “Blue today?”

I flushed and admitted, “It’s my one guilty pleasure.”

His low voice wrapped around me. “You only have one? We’ll have to do something about that.”

Before I could formulate an answer, Corwin bounded into the kitchen and bounced up and down on his toes with a broad smile on his face. “You’re here!”

Baxter’s sweet smile broke through the remaining sadness on his face. “I’m here,” he agreed.

“Why are you early?”

He shrugged, hands still tucked in his pockets. “I thought you might want to go out for dinner.”

His question ripped open my ribcage and sucker punched my heart. I swallowed the gasp brought on by the shock of him cutting me out. Which was ridiculous because I’d just suggested it myself. Of course, they needed to get to know one another without me tagging along.

I forced a smile. “Good idea.”

Baxter brightened, his eyes lighting with hope. “You think so?”

I nodded firmly. “I do.” Spinning on my heel, I turned to Corwin. “Grab your coat, bud. You’ll need it later.”

September in Moose Lake was like November where we used to live. Lots of sun during the day, but once it slipped below the horizon, the temperature dropped rapidly.

“You too, Maggie,” Baxter added.

“What?” I spun back around to face him, hope and fear dancing around in my heart like boxers waiting to throw the first punch. “That’s not necessary. You guys should get to know one another without me hanging around.”

Baxter’s eyes narrowed on my face before turning to our son. “Cor, has Mom eaten dinner yet?”

Mom.

“Nope!” Corwin chirped.

Tilting his head with a small smirk, Baxter challenged, “What do you say, Maggie? Will you let me treat you to the best burger this side of Moose Lake?”

“Mom said The Loose Moose has the best hamburgers in all of Ontario!” Cor exclaimed.

Baxter laughed, the sound squeezing through the gap in my ribs and expanding to fill my chest with a light so bright I couldn’t bear to look at it.

I couldn’t help but smile back at him. “All right. I’ll go with you guys for a burger.”