“I don’t remember you or Fred or the boat. I remember the phone call and Jason and whiskey. I remember a moment of fucking terrifying clarity that I needed to get away. So I did. I didn’t even question it; it was more like an instinct than a fully formed thought: a drive to get the fuckaway.” He tilted his head to make better eye contact. “Away from here, from you. On some functioning level of my brain, I did not want you walking up on something worse than you did that one night.”
Cassidy’s eyes dropped to the ground. What she’d walked up on in the bar was worse. So much worse.
Reaching out his other hand, Mac grasped her chin, ensuring her undivided attention as he stared into her eyes, a depth of emotion she hadn’t seen in him before as he repeated, “You never were supposed to be there, Day.”
She stared back, the heat of his words blazing through her, breaking her heart. Yet, “But I was, Mac.”
“Ah, fuck, sweetheart, you’re killing me,” he whispered, his gravelly voice clawing through her. “You owed me nothing. Youoweme nothing. What do you want me to do?”
Cassidy looked back at him, searching his dark eyes. He was staring back at her with a desperation she’d never thought she’d see in a man like Mac, like her refusal to bend was devastating him. Marge’s earlier words,You’re hanging on to your anger a little too tightlyechoed in her brain.
Maybe she was, but her anger was something tangible she could hold on to when she’d been so close to losing…
“I want Fred back,” she answered, pushing her thoughts away.
His brows pinched. But he smiled. “Yes, ma’am.”
Pulling her elbow from his grip, she took another step away from him. Addressing them both, she said, “I’m going in. I’m…” She didn’t need a reason. Looking at him again, his gaze warm, without the innuendo, she said, “I’m going.”
He nodded, hope battling with the anguish on his face.
Chapter sixty-three
Cassidy
HARD PILL TO SWALLOW
Shewantedtohatehim. She wanted to hold on to the anger, to blame him for everything, and keep on blaming him.
After all, everything he had done had beenhim. No one else had made him do what he’d done, and those had been his words. Was being drunk an excuse? She couldn’t answer that. Was grief an excuse? Had she done unforgivable things while grieving?
Maybe.
But what was unforgivable when someone was grieving? What had he done that wasunforgivable?
The situation—her being there—had not been Mac’s call; it hadn’t been his choice. He couldn’t have foreseen that; wasn’t planning out his DD while in the grips of his loss. She’d answered someone else’s call. She’d decided to go.
She could have refused to help, refused to acknowledge his pain. She could have let Darlene call the police, and he could have woken up in the drunk tank at the police station.
She’d chosen to go.
She’d needed to go.
As much as he’d needed her.
As she’d pointed out before, they were two catastrophes that collided. No matter what he’d done that night—leaving his cabin to distance himself from her or not—they were fated to have collided. Two disasters culminating in one perfect storm.
It was a hard pill to swallow, but she swallowed it.
And with it came its own release, a burden lifted.
Marge had said forgiving him would bring her peace. And it wasn’t forgiveness because there was still so much that happened that shook her to her core, whether or not she should have been there.
A couple of nights later, she was sitting in her Adirondack chair, sipping a glass of wine and scrolling idly on her iPad, looking at boats for sale. She lifted her gaze from the illuminated screen to scan the lake as the last gasp of color exploded over it, but her eyes froze as she saw a figure emerging from the tree line.
Adrenaline burst through her at the first sight of him walking toward her, his gait always so cocksure and leisurely. Jeans, Henley, and boots. The man had casual stud down to an art. Even from a distance, his gaze locked with hers. She pulled in a breath, feeling her cheeks heat, her body warm.
As Mac approached, however, another dark silhouette followed him out of the woods. Cassidy rose to her feet, her heart thudding for a different reason. Fred. He was bringing Fred to her.