think it is.” He narrowed his eyes and leaned toward me. “Ah, yes. The look of regret. Since you haven’t pulled out of the driveway yet, I can’t technically say I told you so, but also, I fucking told you so.”
I shot him a glare. “Keep talking and I’m going to reconsider that job in Singapore.”
“Liar,” he mumbled, reluctantly grabbing the wooden handle of my mother’s old trunk.
While I might not have remembered my mom, it hadn’t stopped me from collecting anything I could find that she had ever touched. Pictures, a journal, a few scarfs, and pieces of mismatched costume jewelry were about it, but that deep-red trunk my father had made her on their first wedding anniversary was my most prized possession of all. It was a simple design, and my father’s craftsmanship was nothing to brag about, but she’d carved all of her children’s names into the lid on the inside. From the time I was a child, I’d traced my fingers over those jagged letters more times than I could count.
I’d often imagine what she’d been thinking as she sat on the floor, knife in hand, carving those letters. Was she smiling with love and adoration? She’d only been nineteen when she had Heath. Was she happy? Was that the life she’d wanted? She was younger than I was when Laurie, her third child, was born. I couldn’t keep a fish alive, much less three tiny humans. And what about when I’d come along as number five? Was she exhausted? At only thirty-one, she’d done a lot of living. But how much of it had been about her and not about her kids?
She died four years later, within six months of finding out about the cancer. She’d never traveled or had a career outside of changing dirty diapers. She did laundry, she cleaned, she made dinner while her husband sat on the couch with a beer in his hand.
How could she have possibly been happy?
That was why I had to leave. I needed to get out, see the world, live the life she’d never had the chance to. Nothing against my sisters, who had all settled down in their twenties, but I wanted more out of the—God willing—eighty-ish years I had on this Earth.
So yeah, it was terrifying moving to a new city, twenty-five hundred miles away from the only home I’d ever known, but to me, regrets were far heavier than fear.
“Lift on three?” I asked, grabbing the other side of the trunk.
Heath stared at me for a beat, his innate ability to read my mind in full force. “You know you can always come home, Mags.”
Offering him a tight smile, I nodded. I did know that. The night before, he’d gone so far as to give me a key to his house complete with a Pokémon keychain. That was so uniquely Heath that it had nearly caused me to burst into tears.
I wouldn’t be using it though. I’d come for visits. I’d come for holidays. But home was no longer a place as much as it was a state of mind.
First stop: San Francisco.
After that, only the wind knew.
“Thanks, Heathrow.”
His lips twitched at the silly nickname I’d used for him since I was a kid. “Anytime, Magalicious. Anytime.”
Get When the Walls Come Down here!
STANDALONE CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES
Fade In
All the Way
One Week Stand
CITY LIMITS SERIES SMALL-TOWN CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES
Roots and Wings
Sunshine and Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
THE WAKE SERIES
Bait
Sail
Anchor
THE KNOT DUET
Twisted Desire
Tethered Love
THE BREAKING TRILOGY
Break My Fall
Break Me Down
Break the Faith
M. Mabie is a writer who made thousands of readers hate to love (and love to hate) the angst-filled contemporary romance, Bait.
Mabie lives in Illinois with her husband. She writes unconventional love stories and tries to embody “real-life romance.” She cares about politics but will not discuss them in public. She uses the same fork at every meal, watches Wayne’s World while cleaning, and lets her dog sleep on her head.
She has always been a writer. In fact, she was born with a pen in her hand, which almost never happens. Almost. M. Mabie usually doesn’t speak in third-person.
She promises.
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Standalone Contemporary Romances
Across The Horizon
The Fall Up
The Spiral Down
Release
The Retrieval Duet
Retrieval
Transfer
Guardian Protection Agency
Singe
Thrive
The Fall Up Series
The Fall Up
The Spiral Down
The Darkest Sunrise Series
The Darkest Sunrise
The Brightest Sunset
Across the Horizon
The Truth Duet
The Truth About Lies
The Truth About Us
The Regret Duet
Written with Regret
Written with You
The Wrecked and Ruined Series
Changing Course
Stolen Course
Among the Echoes
Broken Course
On the Ropes
Fighting Silence
Fighting Shadows
Fighting Solitude
Originally from Savannah, Georgia, USA Today bestselling author Aly Martinez now lives in South Carolina with her husband and four young children.
Never one to take herself too seriously, she enjoys cheap wine, mystery leggings, and baked feta. It should be known, however, that she hates pizza and ice cream, almost as much as writing her bio in the third person.
She passes what little free time she has reading anything and everything she can get her hands on, preferably with a super-sized tumbler of wine by her side.
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