Page 2 of Mack

“I didn’t think you really would. I appreciate it—”

“You appreciate it.” He heard his own voice echo down the hallway. “You appreciate it?”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“We’re supposed to be getting married. How long?”

She looked at the floor. “Terrance and I have been seeing each other for almost two years.”

He stared at her. “Two years.” Then the name caught up with him. “Terrance? Your boss?”

She nodded.

“Terrance.” He said it again, not quite believing it. “The man who is lucky if he weighs a buck forty soaking wet, is an inch shorter than you, and is going bald. That Terrance.”

“Yes.”

He lost it. He laughed until he had to sit down, until tears rolled down his face, until his ribs ached. And when he finally looked up at her and saw her standing there waiting, the laughter stopped. He stood up slowly.

“Grab your things and get out. This is my house.”

“But—”

“There’s no but.”

She walked away that night, and he spent the weeks after drinking until the world blurred. Empty whiskey bottles accumulated like crime scene evidence across every flat surface in his home. If he’d still had a badge, he’d have lost it. He wasn’t sure which stung worse, that she left him, or that she left him for Terrance.

Six months ago, Sam called from Clifton.

“I could use your help,” he’d said, and Mack could hear the desperation under it. He nearly refused. Then he remembered that Sam was a good friend. He got himself together, loaded his battered duffel into his truck, and drove out of Billings without looking back.

He and Sam had been friends for years. Both were born and raised in Clifton. Mack left right after high school to pursue a job in law enforcement and ended up in the US Marshals, along with Sam. They worked together for years that either bonded men or broke them. When Sam went home to Clifton and ran for sheriff, Mack had missed him but understood it. But he had gone to Sam and Tessa’s wedding and told Sam he was a lucky man. Tessa was a beautiful woman.

Being in law enforcement had taught him to see what others missed. When he came home one Christmas, he knew something in his sister had changed. When he found out what her boyfriend had been doing to her, he’d come close to killing the man. He settled for making himself very clear instead, then helped her get into college and out of Clifton. Now Juliette lived in Whitefish in a sunlit house by the lake, married to a barrel-chested contractor with gentle hands who had looked Mack in the eye and said he’d rather die than let anyone hurt her. Mack believed him. Knowing she was safe was all that mattered. He shook off the thought and yanked open the cruiser door. Behind him the neon sign of Dewey’s pulsed red and blue against the dark. He paused, hand on the frame.

Inside, that singer was still at the mic. Ebony hair falling in waves, brown eyes catching the light. Her voice carried through the walls, warm and low, and it moved through him. He hadn’t expected it nor could he name it, but he wouldn’t mind hearing her again. Or standing close enough to hear her speak.

He slid into the leather seat, the upholstery creaking under his weight. The dashboard lights glowed soft amber as he turned the key and the engine rumbled to life. Sam had warned him that Clifton, and the surrounding towns swelled in summer, tourists filling the bed-and-breakfasts and the guest ranch out in Spring City. Now, in late August, the leaves were beginning to yellow at their edges and the season was winding down. Mack looked forward to the hush of winter, the snow fell silently on the pines and blanketed everything in stillness, erasing noise and hurry alike.

He eased onto the two-lane blacktop that snaked out of town, tires humming over asphalt. He couldn’t shake the image of her. The way her slender fingers curved around the microphone. The quiet intensity in her eyes. She was beautiful. It felt like the beginning of something, and that was exactly why he wouldn’t let himself think about it too long.

He drove into the dark, the mountains rising ahead.

****

Mallory shouldered open the front door of her bungalow, careful not to jostle the sleeping three-year-old against her chest. His warm breath came in tiny puffs against her neck, dark eyelashes resting on dream-flushed cheeks. The weight of him still surprised her sometimes, that particular ache of loving something so completely. She dipped at the knees, wincing as her purse slid from her shoulder onto the entryway tiles, then nudged the door shut with her hip and twisted the deadbolt.

She was tired. The deep kind, the kind that settled into her bones and didn’t lift.

The shop was open seven days a week, closed only on holidays. Shane’s band played Dewey’s most weekends, and she did it because Shane was her little brother, because he had their mother’s dimples and their father’s stubbornness and a dream he hadn’t let go of yet. It’s what family did. At least hers did.

She was praying that Wendy showed up tomorrow.

She carried T.J. to his room, pulled back the dinosaur blanket, and lowered him onto his toddler bed. When she straightened, her lower back protesting, she stood for a moment just looking at him. His face was peaceful in the glow of the dinosaur nightlight. He had her heart-shaped face, her cupid’s bow lips, her black hair and brown eyes, and she was grateful for every bit of it. She didn’t want to see Troy when she looked at her son. She’d taken her maiden name back for the same reason. She wanted nothing left of that chapter. Not even an echo. Every day, she prayed that wherever he was, he stayed there. No one scared her more.

Mallory knelt beside the bed and smoothed T.J.’s silky bangs from his forehead. He didn’t stir, his chest rising and falling in the deep rhythm of childhood sleep. She missed him during the week, though some days she brought him to the shop for a few hours until her mother came to collect him, always arriving with homemade cookies that filled the whole place with the scent of vanilla.

She didn’t know what she would have done without her parents when she left Troy. Her father’s face had gone crimson when he saw the bruise blooming purple and yellow across her cheek. He’d reached for the phone with shaking hands, and she’d had to talk him back from it, tears running down her face, explaining what she understood in her bones; if the charges didn’t stick, Troy would come back worse. Men like him always did.