I suck in a breath I didn’t know I needed and press my palms into my eyeballs while I process what I’m hearing.
She found her.
Maisey found June.
“No, no, shh. Shh, sweetie. It’s okay. It’s okay,” she repeats, over and over.
There’s June’s voice on the other end of the phone, high pitched and upset, too, but it’s June.
June’s okay.
“Juniper. Do not ever apologize for standing up for yourself. You deserve so much better than that. So much better than that. You hold tight, sweetheart. I’ll be there as fast as I can get a ticket.” Maisey turns a desperate Please get me to the airport right now look to me, and I clear my throat, nod, and pull back onto the road.
Twenty minutes later, I drop her at the front door.
Twenty-three minutes later, I’ve parked and am walking in the door myself.
“No, please, I don’t care what it costs,” she’s saying to the clerk at the counter for the lone airline that flies out of Laramie. “I need to get to Tampa today.”
“Ma’am, we don’t have any more flights out with space today that can get you—”
“I can drive you to Denver,” I interrupt quietly behind her.
The clerk looks at me.
Maisey does, too, but there’s anguish in her face that wasn’t there when she was talking to June. “Thank you, but you don’t—”
“I can get you on a direct flight out of Denver in three hours, but I don’t have anything leaving for Denver between now and then,” the clerk says.
“I’ll rent a car.”
“Maisey—” I start.
She cuts me off. “I can’t—”
“Take help from a friend when it’s the fastest and easiest way to get you to June?”
I know what she’s fighting.
I know exactly what she’s fighting.
And it fucking sucks.
The worst part?
I understand.
To the very pit of my soul, I understand.
At the end of the day, you’re the only person you can depend on.
And sometimes, you have to feel like you’re the person meeting the needs of everyone around you to feel like you have any worth at all.
My very, very, very favorite thing about Maisey?
It’s that she turned her whole damn life around to make sure her daughter knew she was loved, protected, and safe. She’s doing for June what I desperately needed my entire childhood and never got.
I can’t judge her for that.
Even knowing what she’s thinking.
Even knowing she’s thinking it without knowing that I told June I ran away.
And what would it solve if I did?
I’ll tell her. I will. I’ll apologize.
Later.
When she can handle hearing it.
If she’ll give me a chance and let me be what she still wants once she and June come home.
If they come home.
I hold up my hands. “I won’t say a word the whole drive. You can pretend it’s a self-driving car. Just—just let me get you to where you need to be to get to June.”
“Next best thing from here won’t get you in until about seven tomorrow morning,” the clerk says.
Maisey squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m paying for gas.”
“Okay,” I agree quietly.
She hands the clerk her credit card, and five minutes later, she has a paper ticket in hand. “I was always Team Maisey,” the clerk says as Maisey tucks the ticket into her purse. “Dean was such a pompous ass, and I knew there was no way you were as dumb as they made you look. I hope your daughter’s okay.”
Maisey blinks once, then reaches across the counter to hug the woman. “You are a good person, and I will never forget this. Thank you.”
We hustle out of the airport and back to my truck.
Maisey shoves her credit card at me to use for parking.
I don’t argue, mostly because I know she needs a win. And she sees paying for parking as a win.
“Okay?” I ask her hesitantly as we get back on the highway and head toward Denver and its massive airport.
“No,” she whispers. “Not yet. And probably not for a long time. But thank you.”
“Anytime.”
She buries her head over her phone, thumbs flying. June must’ve gotten her phone plugged in. Or else Maisey’s activating the gossip chain back in Hell’s Bells to explain why she won’t be at the parade.
A very, very long two hours and one bathroom stop later, I drop her off at the Denver airport. “I’ll put your truck back at your house,” I tell her as she climbs out of my truck at the curb. “Can you let me know when you get there?”
For the first time all morning, she looks me straight on. “Thank you. And I’m sorry. And thank you.”
I don’t let her drop the eye contact. “I will be here.”
“That’s ridiculous. You should get home. Enjoy—enjoy the parade. The festivities. Sleeping. Whatever you need.”
I sigh. I don’t mean here, literally, and I think she knows it. “I’ll be there too.”
Her chin wobbles. “You shouldn’t. Not if—not if you find a better . . . there.”
“Been looking for twenty years and haven’t yet.”
“Flint—”
“Go get June. Bring her home. Do what you need to do for you. But whatever that is, Maisey, you don’t have to do it alone.”
She doesn’t believe me.
Or she’s afraid.
I know today sucks. I know it does. But she’s not alone, and I need her to know that.
Mostly because I need her to come back.
I can’t be there waiting if she doesn’t come back.
Her phone dings, and she steps up onto the curb. “It’s Junie. I have to—thank you. Again. For the ride. And—you deserve so much better, Flint. You really, really do.”
She shuts my truck door and turns to dash inside the airport.
I wait in the parking lot until I know her plane has departed, and then I start the long drive home.
Alone.
Chapter 34
Maisey
I move Junie’s flight home and book myself on the same flight before I land in Tampa. Everything gets crazy as soon as I’m on the ground. There’s airport security. Sheriff’s-office paperwork. Dean and his parents and the woman who’s apparently on her way to being Junie’s stepmother.
And there’s Junie.
Hunched in on herself, looking like she would’ve rather a whale swallowed her whole last night.
“I told you not to come,” Dean says to me.
He’s thinner than he used to be. Either that, or I’ve gotten so used to Flint’s bulk that anything looks small now. “I’m not here for you.”
I step around him and kneel in front of Junie, taking her face in my hands until she looks at me. “I have missed you so much. And I am so glad you’re okay.”
There’s absolutely no point in yelling at her for running away. She’s beating herself up enough over it, and I’d imagine Dean’s laid into her already a time or two.
Let him be the bad guy.
“You stink,” Junie whispers.
“I haven’t showered in four days, and I rode on an airplane,” I whisper back.