When Tomorrow Ends

by Cyndi Raye

  “Man, I told you to get help with the past. You can afford to.”

  “I don’t need to be counselled by someone who doesn’t know me. No, I need Maggie and I blew her off like she was a girlfriend who cheated. I didn’t give her a chance to explain. She tried to tell me.” Jake raked his hand through his hair over and over.

  “Dude, you need to call her.”

  “Yeah, I know. Not sure if she’ll talk to me at this point.”

  “I’m gonna call Abby to let her know I made it here. Chances are Abbs went over there to take Jax back. Let’s get out of here and we’ll make that call.”

  Jake almost fell off his bar stool when he went to get up. He was stone cold drunk. It was something he didn’t do often but Jon wrapped his arm around his shoulder and the two left the bar and walked down to the water, where they sat on a bench. The moon shone across the water. It’s soothing ripples began to put Jake in a trance. He shook himself. “I want Maggie.”

  Jon was on the phone with his love, Abby. He seemed hesitant to give Jake the phone. “Jon, get Maggie. I need her. I need to talk to her.”

  Jon spoke in the phone again, this time it sounded like he argued with someone. “Jon, what the hell are you doing? Give me the phone.” He reached out and pulled it from his twin’s hand.

  “Maggie, baby? Are you there?” He heard her tiny breaths through the cell. “I hear you baby. I know you are there. I love you. I’m man enough to say I’m sorry, I need you. I can’t spend another moment without you in my arms.”

  He heard her gasp and cry out. Then there was a commotion and Abby’s voice came on the phone. “Jake? Listen up. I’m speaking for Maggie. She wants you to know she’s moving to the bungalow below until you do the right thing and make her your wife.”

  “What? I plan to,” he slurred, as the alcohol hit him like a ton of bricks. “We were going to go get rings when all of this happened.”

  He heard Abby shuffle the phone and her voice came back on. “Maggie knows, but she wants it all and until you do the right thing and get rid of all these demons and marry her, she’s not going to move back in. By the time you get home, her things will be down in the bungalow.”

  “Abby, stay out of this,” Jake growled. “Unless I hear those words from Maggie, I don’t believe a word you say.”

  The phone shuffled again. “Jake.”

  “Maggie. Oh hell Maggie. Is this true, you want out?” His gut wrenched. She breathed deep, her tiny gasps filled his ear. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, his body ached for her. “I’m coming home, right now. I need you baby.”

  “No Jake. No. You sound drunk. Stay with Jon.” Her voice. It sounded as if she would welcome him with open arms.

  “Maggie, do you forgive me for being such a jerk?”

  “I love you Jake. I do, but-”

  “Then I’m going to sober up and ride back in to your arms because I want you right now so bad I can taste you.”

  “Please! Abby, I can’t-”

  The phone shuffled and Abby’s voice came back on. Jake didn’t want to talk to her. He wanted Maggie. “Jake Hatfield, stop it right now. You listen up! Maggie loves you but you need to understand she’s serious. She wants the whole thing, love, marriage, a baby-”

  “A baby! What do you know?” Jake looked at his brother. “Jon, is Maggie pregnant? I thought we used protection. Oh hell! Abby, let me talk to her. She’d tell me if she were pregnant.” His head began to swim.

  Abby laughed. “Jake, she isn’t preggo!” Jon grabbed the phone from his hand. He spoke to Abby and then hung up.

  Jake reached up to pull it back out of his hand. “Oh hell, bro. Why’d you hang up? I need to find out if we’re having a girl or a boy.” He stared at his brother. “Can you believe this? We’re gonna have a baby? How’d that happen?”

  “Hell Jake. You’re hammered. Come on, let’s get you back to the motel. It’s right across the street.” Jake didn’t argue. He stumbled over the macadam road with his arm slung around his brother and began to laugh. “I’m going to be a Dad.” All of a sudden he stopped dead in the middle of the street. “Who the hell got her pregnant? It wasn’t me! Was it that sonofabitch Ben? Ben!”

  “Bro, quiet down. No one got Maggie pregnant. She’s not, trust me. Now let’s go, take a step up.”

  Jake looked dumbfounded. “She’s not gonna have my baby?”

  “Nope.”

  “I need a drink.”

  “No more drinks for you, bro.”

  “If she wants a baby then we need to have a baby because I will do anything for her, give her whatever she wants.” He stumbled in the motel room. “Where is Maggie, bro?”

  Jon closed the door.

  <><>

  “We drank too much,” Maggie groaned as she stumbled out of the bedroom. Abby spent the night with her, too drunk to go home. They drank both bottles of wine and then found some half opened bottles of something they couldn’t pronounce the name of.

  “Coffee?” Abby offered.

  Maggie moaned. “How do you do it, Abb? You look like you never drank a thing last night.” Abby looked fresh as a button, her bright red hair gathered up with a scrunchy.

  She laughed. “I feel it, trust me. We better hurry if we want to move you downstairs before they get back. Jon said about an hour ago they’d be on the bikes within the hour.”

  Maggie bit her bottom lip. She hadn’t been too drunk to remember her plans to move to the bungalow. “Oh Abbs, do you think maybe I should wait and talk to him first? I mean, you heard his words last night?” She remembered how he told her how much he wanted to be in her arms. How could she be away from him for any amount of time?

  Her friend and soon to be sister-in-law walked over to her and grabbed her upper arms. “Look at me. Do not back down. Jake has promised you marriage since you got back from the road trip. Tell me what he’s done to make good on his proposal to you?”

  Maggie groaned. “Work.”

  Abby raised her brows. “That’s right. You know Jake, he will continue to work because he doesn’t know how to stop. You showed him how to have a good time away from work when you went on the road trip. The moment the two of you were back home, it was back to long work hours and empty promises.”

  “He did say we were going for the ring before all this happened.”

  Abby shook her head. “It doesn’t matter, it’s a ring. He needs to learn to let go of the past. He got so upset because he doesn't feel worthy. When you were out on the boat in the water, he wasn’t there to protect you. Jon told me. He thinks you’re pregnant you know.”

  “What!” Maggie groaned. “This keeps getting worse by the minute.”

  Chapter 6

  “He thinks I’m pregnant? How did he ever get that idea? Oh Abby, what did you say?” She tried to remember every single word they spoke last night, but all she could hear in her head were his words to her of how he wanted to come right home because he wanted to hold her in his arms.

  “I don’t know. When I told him you want it all, marriage, a baby-”

  “You told him I want a baby! Oh Abbs, I do. But not like this. Not yet, I’m not ready for one yet.”

  “He assumed you were preggo when I said those exact words. He was drunk, he won’t remember.”

  Maggie began to pack some things. “Hurry Abby, I want to be out of here when he comes home. Maybe I’ll go take a bike ride.” She dropped her clothes on the bed. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

  Abby threw more clothes in to the suitcase. “You can do this, you have to. Beside, you’ll be right below him. It’s not like you’re leaving him forever. But you have to get this point across. If you don’t, you’ll be getting married for the next three years or longer.”

  “Maybe I don’t even care. Being with Jake is all I need, it’s all I ever needed.”

  “Nonsense. You ache to be Mrs. Jake Hatfield.”

  “Yes and I’m going to be.” Maggie sat on the bed. This wasn’t right. “I can’t do this. I ca
n’t walk away from him. No, I can’t.”

  Abby plopped down beside her. “Oh Maggie, are you sure? Because you’re the one who can help him. He needs to get over this nonsense. Jon told me the reason he got so angry wasn’t because he thought you were with Ben, but because Ben was there and he wasn’t. It could have been any man on the boat with you and he would’ve felt the same way.”

  Maggie let a tear slip down her cheek. She looked at the leather piece of luggage opened on the bed with some of her clothes packed in it and shook her head. “Then I can’t walk away, not even to go down to the bungalow. I can’t. He needs me.”

  Abby hugged her. “Oh Maggs.”

  The sound of motorcycles made the girls jump up. Maggie paced back and forth in the bedroom, her knuckles white. She ran on to the balcony, then stopped. This was no good. Did she run in to his arms and forgive him for what happened? He was drunk last night. Would he remember how he told her he wanted her so bad? Was he still angry? Her hands clutched the thick rail.

  Abby gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m out of here, you two have things to work out.”

  Maggie stood at the rail and waited. Jake came through the gate and around the corner, his steps heavy, his clothes crumpled, his hair a mess. He looked up at her as she waited at the top of the steps. He ran his hand through his hair in typical Jake style and took one slow step at a time, as his eyes never left hers.

  The intensity that was Jake, it was all in his eyes. Her hands fell away from the rail and she went to the top step and met him head on. He put his arms around her and pulled her close. His head swooped down as he pressed his mouth to hers but didn’t try to part her lips. He rested there, his eyes closed, their lips touching and yet she could feel the warmth of him penetrate every single fiber of her being. “Oh Jake,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “I’m an ass,” he told her. His warm breath flowed in to hers.

  She smiled. “Kiss me like you missed me.” His tongue parted her lips right before he delved in, crushing her to him as he picked her up at the same time. She wrapped her long legs around his waist. He walked her backwards, stumbled over the door step and backed her against the kitchen wall. “I want to take you right here, right now.”

  “Do it, Jake.”

  He growled in her mouth then brushed his lips over her skin as he began to place desperate kisses all over. “I missed your touch baby.”

  “I need you to love me right now.”

  She felt his warm breath across her earlobe as he tugged and pulled on it evoking sensations from her head to her toes. She wanted him to do that to her breasts and reached down and pulled the top she wore over her head in one smooth move. He stripped her of her bra and squeezed them together, his tongue and mouth all over them. Maggie rocked against him as he pushed her deeper against the wall. “You taste so good,” Jake mumbled. He ran his hands up and down her sides, and arms, around the thighs that cradled him.

  “Take me Jake. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours.”

  “So sorry baby, to put you through so much pain. I’ll marry you right now. If that’s what you want. Whatever you want.”

  His voice was mesmerizing as he covered every inch of her exposed skin with his mouth. Maggie didn’t think she could take much more. He was so sexy. Holding her up against the wall like this, she couldn’t move. It made his touch so much more intense. It made her want to explode against him. “I need your clothes off Jake. I need to feel you against me, inside me.”

  Jake stilled. His heavy breath against her ear tickled her skin. “Take them off of me.” He gave her enough room as slender fingers tore off his shirt and peeled open his jeans. She let them fall down over his hips and smiled a wicked smile as they dropped to the floor. He pressed his nakedness against her and she moaned out loud. He did it again. She could feel him, rock solid, between her legs. She struggled to be free of his weight that held her to the wall so she could remove her shorts and panties. The thin cotton shorts she wore, she needed them off of her this instant so she could take him, every single inch of him, inside of her.

  He teased her, relentless as he let her rock against him. He devoured her breasts with his tongue and held her hands above her head, against the wall. “I’m going to come,” she whispered. “Please, don’t let me, not like this. Oh yes, like this.”

  Jake released her arms and pulled her shorts and panties to the side as he plunged inside of her. Maggie moaned against his mouth, her hands on his shoulders as he pounded in to her, against the wall. She held on for the ride of her life until she screamed his name and shattered. Jake called out her name and stilled as every muscle went taut against her own release.

  He picked her up and carried her through the bedroom and in to the shower where she leaned against the wall as she tried to compose herself. Jake took her in his arms as the water pounded her skin. “I love you Maggie,” he said and held her close. She whispered how much she loved him back as he took a bar of soap and rubbed it all over her skin, massaging her muscles and soaping her up. She turned and placed her hands against the wall as he soaped up her back. Maggie let the water rinse her off and did the same for him.

  They loved each other until the water chilled and Maggie grinned as he towelled off. She had her Jake back, the one who was fun and loving and couldn’t get enough of her. His eyes, so intense when he loved her made her shiver. She went in to the bedroom to get dressed when she realized her clothes were in the suitcase. Maggie began to shuffle through them to find something to wear.

  Jake came out of the bathroom, his body relaxed, a towel around his neck. When he saw her root through the suitcase, he stopped cold. His eyes, intense and dark, stared at the suitcase. “You were going to move out?”

  She sighed. “Yes. Don’t you remember our conversation last night?”

  He closed his eyes. “I was drunk last night. Big time. Jon told me this morning what happened but he never mentioned you were going to move out. I don’t remember every detail.” He took a step closer. Maggie didn’t like the look in his eyes. She tried to explain.

  “Abby told you I was going to move downstairs until you make me your wife. She thought you were dragging out the promise of marriage and would never go through with it until I forced you to make a choice.”

  Jake raked a hand through his wet hair. He stared, his eyes intense. “Is this how you feel too, Maggie?”

  Maggie stiffened. She looked down at her hands, which held the top she was about to put on. How did she tell him she wanted to be his wife and yet if he wasn’t ready she could wait no matter how long it seemed. Except it wasn’t the truth. She wanted to be called his wife, and she didn’t want to wait. It was all or nothing.

  “Maggie, I’ll do whatever you want, I’ll marry you right now. I don’t want to lose you. The night you were out on the sea and I couldn’t get to you tore me apart.”

  She turned to him. “The reality is I do want to marry you, right now. I want to have a family and live every girl’s dream, you know I do.”

  “Then I don’t see a problem. Let’s go to Vegas.” He grinned.

  “Vegas? You want to whisk me away and marry me in Vegas?”

  “Why do I get the feeling I said the wrong thing?” He tried to pull her close but when she looked at him, he let her go.

  “That makes me feel even worse.”

  “What did I say baby? Vegas is the place to get married quick and fast and we can take a red-eye there and be back by Monday. It’ll be a great weekend getaway and I won’t have to miss much work.”

  She opened her mouth then clamped down. She tried to say something but her pulse raced and her heart began to pump. Maggie looked around the room, down at her suitcase and shoved her top over her head. She began to close the suitcase, then picked it up.

  “What are you doing?”

  Maggie bent down and picked up a pair of her shoes off the floor. She shoved them under her arm instead of on her feet. She was about to explode and he didn’t even realize
why. “Jake, I’m going to the bungalow. I don’t want to go to Vegas to marry you this weekend real quick so you don’t miss work on Monday. If all we can afford is a quick get-a-way, then maybe we need to re-think things. It’s obvious we have different ideas on marriage. Maybe it’s always been this way.”

  “You’re going to leave me after all? Because I want to marry you, now you leave me? What the hell did I do wrong?”

  Maggie turned to him before she walked out the door. “If you can’t figure it out, then we aren’t meant for each other Jake.”

  “What is it you want Maggie?”