“We need another day off.” I was sprawled across the floor we just installed and looked up to the ceiling.

“The last time you said we needed a day off, we spent it passing out flyers. I don’t want to do that again.”

I turned my head toward her. “Oh, we will. As soon as this is all finished, we’re going to have one hell of an open house with classes in every room.” I turned on my side and propped myself up on my elbow. “You still haven’t said what you want with the other side of the building.”

“I don’t know. We have the main area with all the equipment and the three classes as well as the self-defense room off to the left. I thought I would wait a little while and use that for expansion when I grew, but I need to wait to see what the requests are. They may want something I haven’t thought of yet.”

I rolled to my back and looked at the ceiling again. “Okay.”

She sat on the floor a few feet from me. “What would a day off be like for you back home?”

“I didn’t take time off before.”

“What did you do?”

I had avoided most questions by changing the subject or flat out not answering, but I was tired of being rude to her. She had opened up to me about her dad and her fiancé, so I felt obligated to give her a little insight no matter how much I wanted to keep her in the dark.

“My brother and I had a business together. He’s still running it, but he bought me out.”

“You don’t want to go back to it?”

I sat up and looked at her. “It isn’t the job for me anymore.” I ran my hand along the floorboards we installed. “I like building now. I like creating something.”

“Did you tear stuff down before?”

When someone hit rock bottom, it was my job to tear them up to put them back together. I couldn’t tell her that. I didn’t want her anywhere near my addiction or the rehab I started because of it.

“Kind of, but not like you think. It may sound stupid, but I like the finished product. I like knowing I did this.” I slid my hand across the floor again. “I created this. It’s a positive footprint. I can’t say I’ve left too many of those in this life.”

“You’ve said stuff like that before, but I can’t imagine you in a negative role.” She motioned around the room. “None of this would’ve been possible if it wasn’t for you. I’d still be looking at the flooring in the first room, feeling completely overwhelmed by the gravity of doing all of this alone.”

“Hey.” I reached out and grabbed her foot to pull her closer to me. “You’re not alone.”

She looked at me for a moment and slid closer. “Neither are you.”

I wanted to pounce on her and never let her go, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring someone else down with my bullshit. Laney found out the hard way what I could do when provoked. I never wanted Maggie to see that. I never wanted her to be in the path of my destruction. Even I couldn’t predict when I would be set off. Until I could, I had to keep her away from that side of me. I had to keep that distance.

“What about a movie?” I jumped up to my feet and held my hand out to her. “Do you have any theaters here?”

“Tons.” She took my hand and stood. “But you have to get your own bucket of popcorn.”

“You don’t share?”

She walked out and looked over her shoulder. “If you want to pop some shit on the stove, sure, but get me in a theater and hands off.”

* * *

I followed Maggie toward the back of the almost empty theater. She paid what she owed me for the couple of weeks I worked along with a little extra to make up for not paying me. I tried to give that back, but she wouldn’t hear of it. So, I used part of that money to pay for the movie and the snacks. It was meant as a gesture to pay her back for all the meals she paid for me and the roof over my head, but it came off more as a date. The movie was a bad idea.

I waited for Maggie to pick a seat and sat with a seat between us. She looked over at me and tilted her head. “Do I smell?”

“Uh, no.” I lowered my eyes to the seat between us when she looked down. “Oh, I thought it would be more comfortable for you not to have me on your lap.”

“You wouldn’t be on my lap. You’d be sitting next to me.”

I took a deep breath before I stood and sat one seat over. “Happy?”

“Extremely.” She smiled and took a fistful of popcorn but lowered her hand before she took a bite. “What?”

I pointed to the screen. “The movie hasn’t started yet. You’re going to eat all your popcorn, and then you’re going to try to dig into mine. Wait for the movie to start.”

“God, you’re bossy.” She let go of half the popcorn in her hand and ate the other half. “It’s best when it’s warm.”

It wasn’t the best time for me to blurt it out, but I was curious and I didn’t know what else to talk about. “Where’s your mom?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’ve talked a lot about your dad and the things he’s done, but you haven’t talked about your mom. Where is she?”

“She’s around.” She ate more popcorn.

“You don’t have a good relationship with her?”

“It’s different.” She looked up when the lights dimmed. “Popcorn time.”

It was probably best the movie was about to start. It wasn’t any of my business, and I didn’t want her prying into my life. It was hard to not ask. I wanted to know more about her. She’d let some things out, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to know more. I just didn’t know why.

My mind wasn’t on the movie as much as I thought it would’ve been. It kept racing between thoughts of Laney and her father and the story Maggie told me about hers. They were both free of the controlling men they had to grow up around, but were they free of the damage and pain their dads inflicted?

I wanted to stop thinking about Laney, but I couldn’t. I needed to know if she was doing okay. I needed to know if she was happy. I almost died to make sure she had the happy ending she always wanted. I should’ve stuck around to make sure she got it.

It wasn’t my job to do that. My job had been to destroy her life. I didn’t know the full ramifications of what her father was really trying to do to her and Bryce. Ryan assured me they wouldn’t be charged for anything no matter how hard her dad tried to get that to happen. They had the paper trail to all the accounts made in their names, and it all led back to Joshua Mosley.

It should’ve came as no surprise the real reason he asked me to kidnap her was to launder money through her business while she was held prisoner in my house. Why I bought the story that he hated her fiancé and thought he was bad for her was beyond me.

I kept telling myself that I was doing her a favor because the men her father had working for him would’ve taken her anyway. They wouldn’t have treated her as well as I would. The only thing I did was give her a bed and balanced meals. I still played games with her mind and her body.

Once it was over, I told myself it was still a better turnout than what it would’ve been had his men taken her. She may never have gotten free from them. She may have been passed around from goon to goon and been used by them all. At least I did ultimately get her away from the man who was toxic to her. Joshua Mosley would still argue that point, but for all I knew he could’ve had his wish, too. I didn’t know if Laney’s relationship with Bryce survived. I rubbed my chest. I made sure she did, though.

What if what I did wasn’t enough? I scoffed. What I did was torment and torture her. I held her for months when all she wanted to do was live her life with the man she loved.

I begged everyone to tell her I died so she wouldn’t live in fear. I disappeared so she wouldn’t have to worry about ever running into me. What if she wasn’t happy? What if Bryce couldn’t accept the changes Laney had gone through?

I may not have had any knowledge of what happened to Laney after I was shot, but I knew she was a changed woman before we even entered that warehouse to put it all behind us. None of us came out of that unchanged. We all had gone through too much to be the same when it was over.

What if they couldn’t get past those changes? What if Laney ended up alone after all she went through? I took her to save her. I stepped in front of those bullets to save her. What if she wished I hadn’t?

I couldn’t breathe. I had to get some air. I went to stand and felt a hand on my arm. I forgot Maggie was sitting there. “I’ll be right back.”

I stood and wanted to run, but I took my time. I didn’t want to alarm her. I didn’t want her to think anything was wrong. I hit the door and looked around for the nearest exit. I needed to make a call.

The cool air hit my face and helped to calm me a little, but I needed more information before I could be calm. I took out my phone and debated between calling Tim or April. I wasn’t sure who would give me the honest answers. I chose April. She hadn’t lied to me yet.

The phone picked up, but nothing was said. I could hear noises as if she was walking to a different room. As soon as I heard a door shut, she spoke in a whisper. “You do know your brother is worried sick about you.”

“Well, he must not be too worried if he still has my fucking money.”

“He wants you to come home. Brody, we all want you to come home.”

“Is Laney okay?” I’ve never needed to pussyfoot around with April. “I need to know that she’s okay. I need to know everything I did for her at the end wasn’t for nothing.”

“It’s been years and you’re just now worried about it? What’s going on?”

“Just answer the fucking question, April.”

“I’m not sure what answer you want, but she’s fine.”

“And Bryce?”

“They’re still together.”

I leaned against my truck and bent over a little as I looked to the ground in relief. “She got her happily ever after?”

“Every bit of it.”

I was relieved, but it stung at the same time. I knew I wasn’t the man for her. She made that perfectly clear in the three months I had her. I never really had her, though. Bryce was always between us.

“Brody? Are you still there?”

“Yeah.” I stood and saw Maggie walking toward me. “Look, I have to go. Don’t tell Tim I called.” I hung up before she could say anything else.

“Is everything okay?” Maggie’s forehead was scrunched up and the concern in her eyes was unnecessary. I shouldn’t have walked out on the movie.

“Yeah, yeah. We should go back in.”

“If you can tell me anything that happened in that movie, I’ll go back in with you.”

I looked at my phone and made sure the screen was off before I put it in my pocket. I couldn’t tell her anything that happened in the movie.

“That’s what I thought. Come on. Let’s go.”

“You want to see the rest of it. I can get up to speed.” I walked in the direction of the theater, but she walked to my truck.

“Not really. Besides, my popcorn is gone.”

I walked back to the truck and put my hand on her door to open it for her. “I’m sorry I walked out.”

“You can walk out on a movie all you want to, but don’t walk out on me.”

The wind was blowing her hair in her face, but she never took her eyes off me. I reached up, moved her hair out of the way, and held my hand on the back of her neck, keeping the hair out of her eyes. I couldn’t make any empty promises no matter how much I wanted to tell her I’d never walk out on her and reassure her fears. The truth was, I probably would at some point.

I wasn’t good for anyone or for anything other than renovating her gym. I had no right to expect or hope for a happily ever after of my own with what I’d done in life and the constant struggle to not fall back into a crutch. Unfortunately, allowing myself to feel the pain and work through it also meant I felt other things I didn’t know how to work through. Those were the feelings that had me wanting to down a fifth of anything or take another hit of the closest drug on the street. I couldn’t do any of that. The only thing I could do was avoid.

Maggie was looking from my eyes to my lips as I was doing to her. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to get lost in the moment with her and forget the world, even if only for a little while, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t worry if she ever found her happily ever after. I couldn’t go through the panic I just did again. Maggie needed to find her perfect man, but she wasn’t going to find him in me.

I opened the truck door and backed up to allow her in. She looked down and nodded before getting in. I wished I could’ve been the kind of man who could’ve shown her what a perfect woman she was. If she hadn’t spent so much time doubting herself, she could’ve had that gym up and running without my help.