by Audrey North
12
Maisie woke up, her body aching from the night before, but the kind of ache that makes you smile, and that makes you remember the feeling of his body pressed against hers. She stretched, reveling in the feeling of the impact of him. But when she reached across the sheet to feel him, it was empty. Smoothing her hand over the sheets, she could tell they felt cold, he’d been up and out of bed for a while. Maybe in the shower?
Getting up she put on her silk robe and synched it tightly to walk to the bathroom, maybe surprise him in the shower. But as soon as she opened the door to the hallway she saw that the bathroom door was open. The kitchen, that had to be it. She followed her instinct to the kitchen and saw that it too was empty. The kitchen connected to the living room so if he wasn’t in any of those rooms then that meant...he had left her?
The air nearly whooshed from her at that thought. He wouldn’t have done that to her, would he? Would he just have had his way with her and leave without even a word? Maybe he had left a note she reasoned and padded quickly back to her room where her eyes scanned the top of her dresser, his pillow that he had slept on, the nightstand, even the floor just in case it had fallen off when she had gone to find him. But nothing. Everything was as she always left it, almost as if he had never even been there at all. But the ache in her body, which moments before had felt delicious were now just a painful reminder that he wasn’t there.
Taking her phone off of her nightstand, she lit the screen. A text message from Easton sat there, waiting to be opened. It should make her feel better to know that he had at least said something but for some reason it made her feel worse to know that she had been an afterthought to his leaving. Briefly, she thought of just deleting it before she read it but curiosity got the better of her and she knew that she had to know what he said.
So sorry to leave. I didn’t want to wake you. But there was something I needed to go do last minute. Forgive me
So that was why he left, he had something he needed to do, most likely for his dad. A shiver of anger raked through her body. But it wasn’t so much anger at Easton as it was for herself. She had been right to listen to her brain in the first place. This wasn’t the lifestyle that was going to be good for her, healthy for her, and probably not safe for either of them. Whatever he kept sneaking off to do, whatever he was keeping hidden, she knew wasn’t good. And in that moment she knew that she couldn’t be with a man who would do things that hurt others and live with it. She knew she could never live with that.
The way the loneliness hit her, Maisie also had just confirmed that she couldn’t be with a man who would disappear the way Easton had a habit of doing. She needed to be with someone who was going to be able to be with her an entire night without having to run off to secretly take care of things for his father, a man who wasn’t going to have to lie and hide half of his life from her, a man who was still in her bed in the morning.
No matter how much she wanted to be around him, how good he made her feel, and how happy she was when she was with him, she had to really listen to her brain this time. No more letting her heart have any say in the matter. Before she could even think about what she was doing or give her heart another second to talk her out of it, she typed up a text and sent it into virtual space where she knew it would end up changing her entire life.
Easton, we can’t do this anymore. I’m done.
She had no idea where he was or what he was doing, and there was a moment where she thought she should have sent something kinder, but she still had that anger bubbling up inside of her. After she showered and dressed for the day, a day of mourning her newly broke heart and binge eating, she checked her phone to find a series of messages from Easton.
Please don’t do this
You don’t understand
I need you in my life
Please don’t end this
Maisie had no idea what to say back to the texts. On the one hand, he was begging her to stay and she knew that he felt the same way about her that she did about him. But on the other hand what was he offering her? Not even an apology, an explanation, nothing. If he wasn’t willing to even do that much for her, then what chance did she have of her life with him ever being any different? Somewhere, so deep inside her that she hadn’t even admitted it to herself, she had hoped he would come running back, offer to change, apologize, to do something other than beg. That was what he’d done the night before, coming begging for her back, but nothing had changed.
Why should I stay? I have no good reason to. I don’t want your lifestyle.
She paced her room, wondering what he was going to stay, the tiny ray of hope dimming even further that he was going to do anything to change his life. And why should he really, she reasoned. They hadn’t been together very long and were only in the beginning throws of a relationship. One that had the potential to be great, but still, it was only the beginning. What had she truly expected? Just because she had felt her whole life spin and change when he had kissed her, didn’t mean that his whole world changed too.
You should have thought about that before
Easton hadn’t needed to point out her fatal flaw, she knew very well that she should have stopped everything the moment she had found out who he really was. She shouldn’t have stopped on the sidewalk when he called out her name, she should have kept walking, no, running away. Maybe if he hadn’t kissed her, maybe if she hadn’t felt the electricity flow through her, then walking away wouldn’t sting nearly as badly.
You’re right. The moment I realized who you were, I should have just kept going. It’s my own fault for thinking I could ignore the truth. Pretend you weren’t really who everyone thought you were. But you are. I don’t know what you’re doing for your father but this is a life I don’t want to be any part of.
Tears streamed down her face as she typed up the message. It wasn’t fair, none of it was. Ben should never have cheated, leaving her heart in shattered bits in his wake. Easton should never have pretended to be Luke, making her fall for him before she had even met him. And Easton shouldn’t be this amazing guy that made her smile and her whole body tingle, who just happened to be in the mafia. Why couldn’t life just be easy, fair, and stop wringing out her heart? There wasn’t going to be much left of her if her life continued this way.
I’m sorry Easton. Goodbye.
Typing the final message was nearly too much to handle. She didn’t want to see his reply, she didn’t want to see his goodbye, and so before she could even see the little bubbles to know that he was typing back, she went into his contact, her finger hovering over the button that would end it, once and for all. As if her finger had a mind of its own, she clicked the button to block Easton from her phone.
No more texts, no more calls, and just for extra measure, she went and deleted her online dating profile. That was it, her hands were clean of him. In a way, the anxiety that she’d been feeling about Easton and his life that had been building up in her for weeks, had eased. She felt as if she could breathe again. But in its place was a feeling that she knew all too well, a feeling that she hadn’t even realized that Easton had been filling for her.
He had been filling up a space in her heart, the gaping hole of emptiness that Ben had left there for her.
13
Easton got into the back of his limo and gave his driver the address his father had sent him. The goons that work under them had found where Cindy was and Easton knew to ensure that she would be there he was going to have to get there as fast as he could. His mind tumbled with far too many thoughts about Maisie and the texts he was reading as his driver quickly took the turns and backroads trying to get there as quickly as he could. It had only been a matter of time, he had known, she was going to end things with him eventually. She was too sweet for his lifestyle, too perfect, and in his gut he knew that he wasn’t going to be able to hang on to her.
But still, part of him had hoped, just maybe, she would have been able to look past it. Yet he couldn’t blame her for being angr
y that he wasn’t there for her, that he had left her alone in her bed. And he couldn’t blame her for wanting to say goodbye, even though he was sure that deep down she felt the exact same way about him that he felt about her. They couldn’t have touched, kissed, and spent all night entwined in each other’s bodies if she didn’t. Truthfully she wouldn’t have even kept him around as long as she had if she hadn’t fallen for him just as hard as he had for her.
Anger was filling him as he thought about how unfair it all was. He wanted to be with Maisie, had finally found someone in his life that was worth anything, and he couldn’t have her. All his life he had spent living under his father’s decisions. In order to protect the family, his father was able to rule almost every aspect of Easton’s life. As a child, playing with only who his father deemed appropriate to be in his life, dating only girls that his father felt were going to be able to uphold the lifestyle which meant that friends and girls were few and far between by his father’s choosing. Not that many of the friends or girls that his father had chosen were anybody that Easton had really wanted around but he had gone along with because it was them or be lonely.
But Maisie was different. Easton had finally found someone that he wanted to be around, who he wanted to be with, who made him think differently and feel differently but because of who he was and what he did, he wasn’t able to have her. After her final goodbye message he had called her a million times and sent her messages, but nothing was going through. He was sure that she had blocked him from her phone. Quickly he logged onto his dating profile hoping to send her a message on there but she had deleted that too. There was no way left to get a hold of her.
For a moment the thought of telling his driver to turn him around and take him back to Maisie’s place but what would he even tell her? He had already shown up at her door the night before, and without any explanation, she had let him in. But the odds that that would work again were very small, not without some type of change in him
Easton’s phone buzzed in his hand and eagerly he checked the caller, hoping against all odds that Maisie had changed her mind. But instead, he saw it was his father. Angrily, he punched the accept button.
“Yes,” he gritted.
“You don’t answer the phone to your father that way,” he scolded. “Are you there yet?”
Skipping the apology Easton answered the second question. “How could I be there? The address was an hour away from where I was.”
“I don’t like this tone from you. We wouldn’t need to be in a rush like this if you had just been able to do your job.”
Words filled his mouth that he wanted so desperately to say, but instead, he bit his tongue and went for the answer that was least likely to cause a problem.
“I was doing my job, I just was trying not to hurt her.”
“Since when does it matter who gets hurt? Just as long as the job gets done.”
“How can you live like that?” Easton exploded. “She didn’t do anything to anybody! Just married a low life man.”
“I’d be careful what you say, he’s not much different than you and me.”
The reality was that was true. The man she married wasn’t much different than Easton or his father. But the more he thought about it, the more he didn’t see why Cindy had to get hurt in the process of it all, it didn’t seem fair.
“So why not just go after him? Why do you have to attack someone who is already hurting enough?”
His father was silent for a moment before he answered his son, but when he did his voice was something deep and terrifying. A voice he reserved for the men he was about to make “disappear.”
“Since when did you become such a caring person?”
Easton knew whatever he said next, he should be very careful.
“It’s not that…it’s just…” he didn’t have the words to say. It wasn’t as if he could say that Maisie had dumped him and that he was questioning everything. His father wasn’t that type of man. His father really wasn’t even a father, but a man who had a child that was born to work for him.
“I don’t care what it is. Get your head clear and go get Cindy. End of discussion.”
The line went dead and Easton sat back, resting his head on the cool leather of the seat. How had his thoughts, his entire life, felt so flipped upside down so quickly? Never before had he truly questioned what he was doing to people, the things his father made him do. It had been a job, not who he was. But now that Maisie had left him, he was starting to see that he and the job weren’t two separate things but all mixed up as one.
Closing his eyes he tried to sort out his mind, think it all through, but before he could get anywhere the car came to a stop and Easton looked out the window. There was Cindy, in a coffee shop, with a book in her hand and some luggage at her side. She was definitely planning on leaving, his father had been right about that. And from the look of it, she was planning on leaving for quite a while if her excess amount of luggage was any indication.
For a moment, he just sat there and watched this woman. She was pretty, her profile picture hadn’t lied, and she sat there calmly, reading a novel with a cover so worn, probably a favorite, that he couldn’t even read the title. This woman was not just a prop for his father, she was not a piece of leverage to be used against someone, and she certainly wasn’t a toy as Easton had even treated her. She was a person, a person who had gotten hurt and humiliated, who had a favorite book and probably a favorite type of coffee, who had a future that she was planning for herself. Most likely to start over.
And what his father wanted him to do…to get her in the back of the car and take her away, scare her, torture her, do whatever he had to do until he got what he needed from her. It just wasn’t right. This woman wasn’t a game, and Easton was not going to treat her like one.
Without hesitation, he rolled down the partition and told his driver to keep going. Weary eyes glanced in the rearview mirror to look at Easton. They both knew what this would mean.
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
If he rode off without securing Cindy in the car, he would be giving up everything. He’d be walking away from his job, his father, his life, and there wouldn’t be a way to come back if he ever wanted to. His father would never speak to him again, possibly never forgive him. But if he took Cindy, he was sure he’d never be able to forgive himself.
“I’m sure.”
The driver put the car into drive and Easton rolled the partition back up. Suddenly the big TVs and cars and having a personal driver didn’t seem important anymore. He thought back to that conversation with his father when he had graduated, the one where he had made the choice to skip college. What would have happened if he hadn’t made that choice? What if he had taken the other path that had been laid before him? He probably wouldn’t have what he had today, the house and the money, but would he be able to look himself in the mirror?
Would he be able to be with Maisie?
His hands shook slightly as he dialed his father.
“Problem?”
For a moment Easton couldn’t speak. He had already made his choice, he knew that, but to say the words out loud…there would be no going back.
“I’m out,” he answered weakly.
“Out? Out of what? The coffee shop? Then why are you calling me? Unless you screwed this up.” His father was gruff, hard, making Easton’s resolve stronger.
“No. I’m out of this. I’m done. I want out.”
His father started to chuckle on the other end. “Out huh? Because of some woman that you don’t even know? Fine, I’ll send someone else to grab her you big softie.”
“I’m really out. I’m not doing this anymore. This isn’t the life I want to live.”
“And what life is it that you think you’re going to live? You think being who you are you will ever get a respectable job? Or that anyone will ever look at you without knowing where you came from, who you are?”
“They will always know where I came from, but
this is no longer who I am.”
For a moment, both father and son were quiet on the line. There was nothing left between them. Easton had broken free of his father’s grasp, he didn’t need him anymore and what was more was that he didn’t want him anymore.
“Bye dad,” he said as he hung up the phone.
“Where to sir?” his driver asked who had clearly been ever dropping.
A breath of relief slipped out of Easton as he realized what he’d just done. For the first time since he had been a little boy, since before he found out who his father really was, Easton felt as if he could breathe. And there was only one place he wanted to be.
“I need you to take me home so I can get cleaned up. Then I’ll need one more ride.”
14
Claire had heard the crying from the living room, and stepped out of her room tentatively until she saw Maisie curled in a ball on the couch.
