Page 14 of Second Chance for the Grump

Now he was just gone.

“We’re going to get him back. Don’t worry.”

I nodded, not fully sure. “I just hope he doesn’t think I’ve abandoned him.”

Rowan’s jaw tightened. “Maisey, you’re allowed to be happy. Once we get Charlie back, he’ll think he was just on a vacation, and he’ll love you even more.”

“You think?”

He nodded. “I know it.”

I looked away before he saw the tears forming in the corners of my eyes.

Rowan’s certainty shook me to my core. I wanted to believe him, and right then I decided I would. He wasn’t going to let me down.

Two years ago, after he left, I thought he’d decided I wasn’t good enough to fight to keep me. It was stupid and juvenile. He had a life in Alaska, and I had one here.

But we couldn’t move forward until we moved past it, and there was only one way to do that so our wounds could heal.

“I hated you after you left,” I admitted.

His expression didn’t change from the one of concern he’d been wearing a minute earlier. “I know.”

“When you left…” I started but then stopped. “It wrecked me.”

They weren’t the words I meant to say, but they slipped out.

Rowan went still.

All the noises and people around us faded away until it became just the two of us in the middle of the walkway.

“Me too.”

“No, really, you don’t understand, Rowan.”

“Yes,” he said, cutting me off. “I do.”

I glanced up at him. His traditionally grumpy look was gone. In its place he seemed… tired. Maybe sad. Not fully complete. Like me.

“That day gives me nightmares,” he started, and I shut my mouth. “I thought you didn’t want to come, and that it was best to leave you here. Not everyone can make it in Alaska, and it would have been selfish of me to force it. You deserved better.”

His jaw flexed.

“You didn’t even say a real goodbye.” Emotion and so many other words I wanted to say climbed into my throat, stopping any other comments.

“I couldn’t.”

For two years I did my best to hate him. To think of him and get angry, but in that moment none of it mattered anymore. None of it. Every bad feeling evaporated.

“I know you’re still mad,” he said, “and you should be.”

“Rowan.”

He took a step closer to me, the smell of cedar and cold air on him. “But leaving you here was the biggest mistake I have ever made.”

My heart stumbled and then slammed against my chest. “You can’t just say something like that to me right now. Here. With everything.”

The corner of his lips tipped up again. “I know, but I guess I have a history of doing stupid things around you.”