I can still feel the knot that formed in my stomach, the hot flash of defensiveness that rose before he’d even said anything else. “What about him?”
Maverick stepped closer, lowering his voice even more, as if saying it quietly would somehow make it easier to hear. “I’ve been hearing things. About his business. The people he’s connected to. It’s complicated, Mac, and not in a good way.”
I rolled my eyes then, dismissing him before he’d even finished because I didn’t want to hear any version of this conversation. Not that night. Not when I was finally standing on the edge of the life I’d worked so hard to build.
“Maverick,” I said, my patience already fraying, “you’re bringing this up now? Seriously?”
“I didn’t want to.” He dragged a hand through his hair and looked away for a second before finding my eyes again. “But I can’t stand here and say nothing. The Seminoles have done business with Bennett and some of his partners. I’ve heard enough to know it’s not clean.”
I frowned, more offended than alarmed. “So what? You’ve said yourself the club operates above board.”
“It’s not that simple,” he snapped, frustration bleeding through. “Bennett’s businesses are structured to hide things. To protect the wrong people. I’m worried about you.”
I was already shaking my head before he finished. “His business is none of my business. I’m not marrying him for his balance sheet, and frankly, I think you’re crossing a line.”
“McCullough,” he started again, but I cut him off before he could say anything else.
“No.” My voice came out colder than I intended, sharpened by stress and pride and the need to protect the fantasy I’d built. “Tomorrow is my wedding day. I am not standing here listening to you throw around rumors because you’ve suddenly decided to get protective. My marriage is not up for debate.”
He stared at me, and I can still remember the hurt that flashed across his face before he pushed it down.
“I’m trying to look out for you.”
“I don’t need that.” I can hear myself now and wince. “I need you to be happy for me. And if you can’t do that, maybe you shouldn’t be here tomorrow.”
The words hung between us like something poisonous.
I knew I’d gone too far the second they left my mouth, but I was too proud to take them back. Too stubborn. Too committed to the life waiting for me if I just kept walking forward and refused to look to the side.
Maverick stood there for a long second, jaw clenched, eyes gone hard in a way I wasn’t used to seeing.
“Fine,” he said finally. “Have it your way. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He turned and walked away, and I let him.
He was the only person from my biological family there for me that weekend, and I let him walk away because admitting he might be right would have cracked something open in me I wasn’t prepared to examine. I remember staring after him, wanting for one brief second to call him back, to say I didn’t mean it, to soften the damage before it settled in. But I didn’t. I turned back to the ocean instead. Back to the wedding. Back to the future I wanted badly enough to mistake for truth.
I didn’t speak to him for two years after that.
Now, sitting at my vanity with my brush still in my hand, Ifeel the full weight of it settle over me. The lost time. The stubbornness. The shame. Maverick had warned me, and I dismissed him because the warning didn’t fit the story I wanted to tell myself about my life. Maybe that’s the worst part of all of this, not just that he was right, but that some part of me knew he might be and married Bennett anyway.
I wanted the fairytale more than I wanted the truth.
And now the fairytale is rotting from the inside out, leaving me to sift through what’s left and decide what was ever real to begin with.
I set the brush down and stare at my reflection, at the woman who still looks polished enough to pass for fine, even while everything beneath the surface fractures a little more each day.
I should call Maverick.
I should tell him he was right. Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I was a fool.
But that conversation belongs to a version of me I haven’t quite become yet.
For now, all I can do is sit in the wreckage of what I chose and try to understand which pieces were built on love and which were built on lies. Right now, they all look dangerously similar.
Chapter Forty-Two
The morning light filters through the linen curtains of the beach house, washing everything in that soft, golden glow unique to coastal mornings. Beyond the windows, the bay sparkles in the distance, all silver-blue shimmer and promise, but none of it reaches the unease lodged low in my stomach. I stand in front of the mirror smoothing my hands over the lace of my wedding dress, trying to steady myself, trying to breathe through the strange heaviness pressing against my ribs. The fabric is delicate beneath my fingertips, intricate and expensive and too perfect somehow, as if one wrong move might tear it all open.
