Happy birthday, Maggie!
Title: The Next Mistake
Rating: R-ish
Word Count: 2948
Genre: Hancest with a hint of het
Pairing: Maggie/Zac, Taylor/Zac, mentioned Taylor/Natalie and Zac/Kate
Disclaimer: I don't own nor have ever met Hanson. Everything about them is completely fiction, and any similarity with reality is a mere coincidence.
Beta: Wonderful creativitys_end. Any mistakes are my own fault.
Author’s Notes: This was written for loseyouslowly's birthday. She promtped me with the plot within this story. I have changed a couple of things, and the chronology is not exactly the same as you told me, but I do hope you like it the way it is. Happy birthday, love!
Empty bottles.
Maggie turned around in her bed with a groan, and put her right hand on her forehead, feeling dizzy. She surely shouldn't have drunk all that alcohol the night before.
Sound of broken glass.
Maggie opened her eyes, startled by the noises coming from her usually quiet kitchen. Her apartment was small enough for her to feel what was happening in the rest of the rooms, since all of them were near enough to her bedroom.
Groaning again, she made herself get up, and only then realized that there was something keeping her in place.
Strong arms around her waist.
She let a frown form between her eyes while she tried to remember what had happened less than twelve hours ago. The grip on her hip tightened and a male voice whispered, "Mags, where are you going?"
She snapped her eyes open, hangover forgotten, when she recognized the man laying beside her.
Maggie fought to free herself from that grip and set foot on the ground, her back turned on the other person on her bed.
"What have we done, Zac?" she asked in a low voice. "Why are you in my bed? What have we---?"
"Don't tell me you don't remember either."
"Either?" Maggie was scandalized. "All I remember is that I drank way too much, and that you and your brothers were involved somehow."
Zac Hanson stood up; Maggie refused to look at him for fear to find him as naked as she was - she didn't want to even imagine how his body was.
"I had an argument with Taylor last night," he started. "I came here looking for my best friend, and Tay came after me. You let us inside and we began to drink. And that's pretty much everything."
Maggie closed her eyes and shook her head. "That doesn't explain how we ended up together, naked, in my bed, Zac."
"I don't remember either!" he exclaimed. "For all I know, we could have just shared a bed!"
She stood up as well, feeling his eyes on her back all the while as she bent down and picked her panties and bra from the floor. "I guess we didn't just share a bed, Zachary. And if we did what--- I think we did, it was a great mistake."
"Of course it was a mistake, for God's sake, Mags, I'm married!"
"Another good reason for it to be a mistake," tried to reason Maggie. "That, and Taylor, who I'm sure is making breakfast in my kitchen!"
She dared to turn around just then, to find Zac standing before her, jeans in place but shirtless, rubbing his hands together in a nervous movement. Maggie searched for her shirt and her sweatpants, which were somewhere under the bed. She wouldn't be able to sleep in there again after that night.
Soft knocks on the door startled both of them.
"Zac, are you awake?" Taylor's voice sounded harsh, like he had been crying all night. "Zac?"
"Go," she whispered, motioning to the door.
"I'm awake," Zac said aloud.
"Could you--- could you come out of there? I need to talk to you."
She waved her hand and Zac opened the door. Maggie managed to get into the bed with her back to the door before he could have it completely open, giving the impression that she was still asleep.
"Mags is still out of it," Zac warned, the lie burning his tongue, the fear of what he guessed they have done the night before tightening in his gut.
Taylor nodded slowly. He knew how important Maggie was for his brother. Every time they were in California, Zac found time to travel to San Diego and visit his best friend. They had grown up together until Maggie's family moved out of Tulsa when they both were sixteen, and now, five years later, they still shared that special link between best friends that no one, not even Taylor, dared to break.
Things had been tough the last couple of years. Taylor, married with two kids at that moment, had found himself admitting an undying love for his brother Zac - a love that was far too deep to just remain in a brotherly way - during a night full of drinks in a pub in San Diego, to his brother's best friend. The morning after, when he was feeling like a fool with a headache, Zac had gone to the couch Tay and Ike shared in Maggie's apartment while the eldest of them had gone to buy some coffee, and had confessed he had feelings for Taylor as well. From then on, they had hidden from the world, from their own family, from their fans - from everyone but Maggie, who had supported them no matter what for some strange reason.
When they finally realized they couldn't live their fairy tale, with Taylor married and Zac sharing his life with a long-term girlfriend, they had decided to just stop the relationship. Cut it off from the root.
It had been a disaster, with Zac finally marrying Kate and Taylor having his third child. They both had been miserable, and they still were, over a year after writing the last line on their book of love. And, in the midst of it all, Maggie had been the only one to share their secrets, to hear their confessions and their pain hurting them. Taylor had to thank her for that, though he couldn't help but mistrust her intentions. He had always known she loved Zac, maybe more than she was willing to admit, and he had always feared that Zac could leave Kate - leave him for a girl living across the country.
"Zac, I wanted to apologize," Taylor began, gaze low, voice broken. "I shouldn't have said those things. I was just--- I don't know. Please, forgive me."
When Zac was about to reply to the begging in his brother's voice, the front door opened, and Isaac appeared in the doorway, with his hands full of paper bags. "Hey, nobody's going to help?" he asked while comically trying to maintain his balance. His brothers rushed to get some of the contents showing out of the bags.
"Are you ready to start messing up my kitchen?" Maggie said from behind the group of musicians who were keeping a cucumber in place, avoiding its fall. "Because I'm so not ready for that, so I please ask you to leave the kitchen and I'll make breakfast."
Isaac quickly glanced over his brothers to find them as clueless as he was. Maggie was not usually a morning person, but she knew how to behave and she almost never snapped like that. She always let them make her breakfast when they were in the city, because she said it was their way to show her all the love they felt for her while they were away, touring, recording or just being with their girls.
"Is she PMSing?" Taylor asked in a whisper while they got out of the kitchen. "What have you done to her, Zac?"
"He probably tried to sleep with her," joked Isaac; Zac tried to hide his reaction but his blush gave him away. "Oh, no," Isaac looked at him wide eyed. "You haven't. Tell me you haven't!"
"Well, technically... I don't remember, but..."
"But everything seems like you have," Taylor felt his throat aching and the familiar pain in his eyes where tears tried to well in his eyes. "How could you?"
"I'm not even sure!" Zac tried to defend himself. "Neither of us remember a thing, so we could have just slept together, shared the bed, without doing anything else! Tay, you have to believe me! It's not as if I find her attractive or anything!"
The sound of broken china startled the three of them. The blur of a human form running towards the main room and getting locked up inside with a loud bang told them that Maggie had heard their conversation and had gotten somewhat affected by it.
"You're just..." Isaac had been left speechless, which was really strange in him. "You really don't have any kind of manners! You can't go on saying aloud that you find your best friend unattractive, Zachary!"
"Don't call me that!"
"You just insulted Maggie in her house!" Taylor took part, his eyes showing the pain he was in. "Go and apologize, Zac, before she decides she doesn't want you in her life."
"I don't think she--- Oh, c'mon, we're friends! Surely she knows what I meant!" But even he himself was not sure about what he was saying. He knew he had made a mistake, and the truth was he knew Maggie so well that he could feel her pain before his own words.
"Go, Zac," repeated Taylor in a stern voice, waiting for him to obey his order, and when Zac began to walk towards the closed door, Taylor frowned but stood still. Once his younger brother knocked on the wood, however, he couldn't stand it and stormed out of the apartment, fear and rejection and denial and love and hate and all the feelings in between swelling up in his chest, leaving little space for his heart to keep beating. He was sure he could die from heartache because he was now feeling all the symptoms.
In the house, Isaac was torn between running after Taylor or waiting for Zac to apologize. Instead, he entered the kitchen once again and, shaking his head, he tidied it up, gathering all the broken pieces of the cup Maggie had broken, wishing for his brothers and his friend to mend it all - love and friendship was not something to meddle with. "If only they realized how much they need each other, neither Taylor nor Zac would be so sad anymore," he mumbled while cleaning up a bit.
He could hear the door of the main bedroom opening up again; Isaac popped his head out of the kitchen to see a miserable Zac walking down the hallway towards him. "What happened?" he asked, wiping his hands and stepping out of the kitchen. "Have you apologized?"
"No," Zac muttered. "She was asleep again. I swear this girl sleeps more than anyone else I know!"
Isaac shook his head. He guided his brother to the small living room and forced him to sit down on the white couch. "Now calm down, and tell me what you're going to do."
"Where is Taylor?"
"I dunno. He kinda disappeared when you knocked on Maggie's door, but I'm not worried. He always storms out when you're going to fix whatever you did wrong to a girl, I'm used to it by now."
"Are you?" Zac looked at him in awe.
"I found out about you two long ago," Ike explained. "And now, don't try to offer me any excuse. I know, and I'm not freaked out, at least not now. I admit I was at first, but not anymore. Now," he kept on waving off any attempt Zac made to interrupt, "now you tell me what you're going to do, because I won't let you sit around here feeling down while Mags is in her room sleeping and Taylor is out thinking that you don't love him anymore."
"We split up," Zac said through gritted teeth. "There's no reason for him to believe I love him now."
"Don't tell me what to see whenever I look at you both. There's still feeling there, more than attraction, something lingering."
Zac shrugged but let the meaning of his brother's words sink in. "I suppose I have to apologize to Maggie, and then run after Taylor, huh?" he asked without thinking. "But there's not an 'us,' Ike. I don't know what I have to apologize for."
"Well, for starters, you're married, so you should apologize for cheating on Kate. But I don't think he's mad because of that. Taylor's upset because he has to watch while you waste your life away with your wife."
"But---"
"You have to decide what you're going to do. I can't help you with that. Just sit down here, and spend the next ten minutes thinking. Close your eyes and just--- see what you really want to do in your mind. I'm sure it's not so difficult. What d'you wanna do, Zac?" With that, Isaac stood up and headed to the kitchen again, leaving Zac to his own thoughts.
He weighed his options, what he really wanted to do. He had been struggling to keep up with a marriage he wasn't able to believe in anymore, and now he had fucked everything up by supposedly sleeping with his best friend. He closed his eyes, as told, and tried to focus in what he felt.
Only a face showed up in the midst of his mind, fogged by the lack of sleep and the importance of his actions.
Taylor.
He took a pen and started writing down a letter in the first piece of paper he found sitting in Maggie's living room.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
When Maggie woke up, she heard the crumpling of a paper near her ear, and her eyes darted around until they found the piece of paper waiting for her on her pillow. She sat up in her bed, bracing herself. She couldn't believe what Zac had said, and she believed it anyway.
Maggie knew what he meant. Zac would never tell her in her face that she was unattractive, but he had said so nevertheless. That what something she was not going to forget in a long, long time. However, she looked down at the folded paper and tentatively picked it up between trembling fingers.
Unfolding it, she began to read.
Dear Maggie,
You are sleeping as I am writing this, that's the reason why I am not talking to you, though in a way I am. I am really sorry for what I've said and done. I am really sorry that you got to hear me saying that you were unattractive, 'cause it is not true.
You are beautiful, Mags. It's just that I don't swing that way, and you know it. God, you know it. The latent problem here is exactly that one - that I am married but I don't find women attractive. That I'm in love with a man - with my brother. I know it's not right, but I can feel that fighting for what I love is worth all the shit that will undoubtedly come my way for it.
Sleeping with you was a mistake, I'm sure both of us know it by now. We shouldn't have, though neither is sure about what happened last night. All that I know is that Taylor stalked out of your flat in a rush when I had barely knocked on your bedroom door, and that he had his reasons. These last two years have been hell, and the past few months without him for some strange reason that pushed me to marry Kate. I've been dying, and whatever it was that we shared last night made me see it clear.
I do love you, Maggie, more than anyone. But I worship him, and I had come to terms with the idea of not having him for myself until the moment when I felt him slipping through my fingers like grains of sand, when I admitted I wasn't sure whether I had slept with you or not. I can't afford losing him any more than I already have - I need to win him back because he owns my heart, as cheesy as it sounds.
Without him I'm nothing, and I can't go on without either of you. So I'm asking you to forgive me for whatever pain I could have possibly caused to you, because I'm going to fight for what I know it's mine.
You know I will always love you.
Zac
Maggie wiped away some astray tears and stood up, heading to her closet, where she fiddled until finding a big shirt which was Zac's but she’d had since she had moved to San Diego; it was one she felt at ease wearing. She put it over her head and went back to the bed, hugging the teddybear that was waiting for her where she had let it land when her head had hit the pillow. Through the open window, she could distinctly hear the voices of the two brothers talking about everything and nothing. She strained her neck to listen properly.
"You can't hide forever, Tay."
"I'm not hiding. I'm just learning to live with what I get."
"I'm offering you much more than this life. I'm offering you true love, the kind you don't have in your family."
"I'm happy with my children!"
"But you're not completely happy, Taylor! I'm here telling you that I'll fight for you, that I'm sick and tired of concealing my feelings, that I love you! Ido love you. Do you love me?"
Silence met those words, and Maggie could hear how even Isaac stopped fidgeting in the kitchen. There was no sound in the whole world until Taylor's voice reached the air in the form of a whisper.
"Yes. Yes, I do. I love you."
Nothing else was heard but the content humming of Isaac in the kitchen. Maggie smiled sadly, knowing she was slowly losing the best friend she had had a crush on since they were children, but being sure that she could live with that.
In the street, surrounded by the warm breeze of the ocean in July, Taylor and Zac shared a kiss that healed whatever ache they felt, and forgave whatever sin they were bound to commit.
Rating: R-ish
Word Count: 2948
Genre: Hancest with a hint of het
Pairing: Maggie/Zac, Taylor/Zac, mentioned Taylor/Natalie and Zac/Kate
Disclaimer: I don't own nor have ever met Hanson. Everything about them is completely fiction, and any similarity with reality is a mere coincidence.
Beta: Wonderful creativitys_end. Any mistakes are my own fault.
Author’s Notes: This was written for loseyouslowly's birthday. She promtped me with the plot within this story. I have changed a couple of things, and the chronology is not exactly the same as you told me, but I do hope you like it the way it is. Happy birthday, love!
Empty bottles.
Maggie turned around in her bed with a groan, and put her right hand on her forehead, feeling dizzy. She surely shouldn't have drunk all that alcohol the night before.
Sound of broken glass.
Maggie opened her eyes, startled by the noises coming from her usually quiet kitchen. Her apartment was small enough for her to feel what was happening in the rest of the rooms, since all of them were near enough to her bedroom.
Groaning again, she made herself get up, and only then realized that there was something keeping her in place.
Strong arms around her waist.
She let a frown form between her eyes while she tried to remember what had happened less than twelve hours ago. The grip on her hip tightened and a male voice whispered, "Mags, where are you going?"
She snapped her eyes open, hangover forgotten, when she recognized the man laying beside her.
Maggie fought to free herself from that grip and set foot on the ground, her back turned on the other person on her bed.
"What have we done, Zac?" she asked in a low voice. "Why are you in my bed? What have we---?"
"Don't tell me you don't remember either."
"Either?" Maggie was scandalized. "All I remember is that I drank way too much, and that you and your brothers were involved somehow."
Zac Hanson stood up; Maggie refused to look at him for fear to find him as naked as she was - she didn't want to even imagine how his body was.
"I had an argument with Taylor last night," he started. "I came here looking for my best friend, and Tay came after me. You let us inside and we began to drink. And that's pretty much everything."
Maggie closed her eyes and shook her head. "That doesn't explain how we ended up together, naked, in my bed, Zac."
"I don't remember either!" he exclaimed. "For all I know, we could have just shared a bed!"
She stood up as well, feeling his eyes on her back all the while as she bent down and picked her panties and bra from the floor. "I guess we didn't just share a bed, Zachary. And if we did what--- I think we did, it was a great mistake."
"Of course it was a mistake, for God's sake, Mags, I'm married!"
"Another good reason for it to be a mistake," tried to reason Maggie. "That, and Taylor, who I'm sure is making breakfast in my kitchen!"
She dared to turn around just then, to find Zac standing before her, jeans in place but shirtless, rubbing his hands together in a nervous movement. Maggie searched for her shirt and her sweatpants, which were somewhere under the bed. She wouldn't be able to sleep in there again after that night.
Soft knocks on the door startled both of them.
"Zac, are you awake?" Taylor's voice sounded harsh, like he had been crying all night. "Zac?"
"Go," she whispered, motioning to the door.
"I'm awake," Zac said aloud.
"Could you--- could you come out of there? I need to talk to you."
She waved her hand and Zac opened the door. Maggie managed to get into the bed with her back to the door before he could have it completely open, giving the impression that she was still asleep.
"Mags is still out of it," Zac warned, the lie burning his tongue, the fear of what he guessed they have done the night before tightening in his gut.
Taylor nodded slowly. He knew how important Maggie was for his brother. Every time they were in California, Zac found time to travel to San Diego and visit his best friend. They had grown up together until Maggie's family moved out of Tulsa when they both were sixteen, and now, five years later, they still shared that special link between best friends that no one, not even Taylor, dared to break.
Things had been tough the last couple of years. Taylor, married with two kids at that moment, had found himself admitting an undying love for his brother Zac - a love that was far too deep to just remain in a brotherly way - during a night full of drinks in a pub in San Diego, to his brother's best friend. The morning after, when he was feeling like a fool with a headache, Zac had gone to the couch Tay and Ike shared in Maggie's apartment while the eldest of them had gone to buy some coffee, and had confessed he had feelings for Taylor as well. From then on, they had hidden from the world, from their own family, from their fans - from everyone but Maggie, who had supported them no matter what for some strange reason.
When they finally realized they couldn't live their fairy tale, with Taylor married and Zac sharing his life with a long-term girlfriend, they had decided to just stop the relationship. Cut it off from the root.
It had been a disaster, with Zac finally marrying Kate and Taylor having his third child. They both had been miserable, and they still were, over a year after writing the last line on their book of love. And, in the midst of it all, Maggie had been the only one to share their secrets, to hear their confessions and their pain hurting them. Taylor had to thank her for that, though he couldn't help but mistrust her intentions. He had always known she loved Zac, maybe more than she was willing to admit, and he had always feared that Zac could leave Kate - leave him for a girl living across the country.
"Zac, I wanted to apologize," Taylor began, gaze low, voice broken. "I shouldn't have said those things. I was just--- I don't know. Please, forgive me."
When Zac was about to reply to the begging in his brother's voice, the front door opened, and Isaac appeared in the doorway, with his hands full of paper bags. "Hey, nobody's going to help?" he asked while comically trying to maintain his balance. His brothers rushed to get some of the contents showing out of the bags.
"Are you ready to start messing up my kitchen?" Maggie said from behind the group of musicians who were keeping a cucumber in place, avoiding its fall. "Because I'm so not ready for that, so I please ask you to leave the kitchen and I'll make breakfast."
Isaac quickly glanced over his brothers to find them as clueless as he was. Maggie was not usually a morning person, but she knew how to behave and she almost never snapped like that. She always let them make her breakfast when they were in the city, because she said it was their way to show her all the love they felt for her while they were away, touring, recording or just being with their girls.
"Is she PMSing?" Taylor asked in a whisper while they got out of the kitchen. "What have you done to her, Zac?"
"He probably tried to sleep with her," joked Isaac; Zac tried to hide his reaction but his blush gave him away. "Oh, no," Isaac looked at him wide eyed. "You haven't. Tell me you haven't!"
"Well, technically... I don't remember, but..."
"But everything seems like you have," Taylor felt his throat aching and the familiar pain in his eyes where tears tried to well in his eyes. "How could you?"
"I'm not even sure!" Zac tried to defend himself. "Neither of us remember a thing, so we could have just slept together, shared the bed, without doing anything else! Tay, you have to believe me! It's not as if I find her attractive or anything!"
The sound of broken china startled the three of them. The blur of a human form running towards the main room and getting locked up inside with a loud bang told them that Maggie had heard their conversation and had gotten somewhat affected by it.
"You're just..." Isaac had been left speechless, which was really strange in him. "You really don't have any kind of manners! You can't go on saying aloud that you find your best friend unattractive, Zachary!"
"Don't call me that!"
"You just insulted Maggie in her house!" Taylor took part, his eyes showing the pain he was in. "Go and apologize, Zac, before she decides she doesn't want you in her life."
"I don't think she--- Oh, c'mon, we're friends! Surely she knows what I meant!" But even he himself was not sure about what he was saying. He knew he had made a mistake, and the truth was he knew Maggie so well that he could feel her pain before his own words.
"Go, Zac," repeated Taylor in a stern voice, waiting for him to obey his order, and when Zac began to walk towards the closed door, Taylor frowned but stood still. Once his younger brother knocked on the wood, however, he couldn't stand it and stormed out of the apartment, fear and rejection and denial and love and hate and all the feelings in between swelling up in his chest, leaving little space for his heart to keep beating. He was sure he could die from heartache because he was now feeling all the symptoms.
In the house, Isaac was torn between running after Taylor or waiting for Zac to apologize. Instead, he entered the kitchen once again and, shaking his head, he tidied it up, gathering all the broken pieces of the cup Maggie had broken, wishing for his brothers and his friend to mend it all - love and friendship was not something to meddle with. "If only they realized how much they need each other, neither Taylor nor Zac would be so sad anymore," he mumbled while cleaning up a bit.
He could hear the door of the main bedroom opening up again; Isaac popped his head out of the kitchen to see a miserable Zac walking down the hallway towards him. "What happened?" he asked, wiping his hands and stepping out of the kitchen. "Have you apologized?"
"No," Zac muttered. "She was asleep again. I swear this girl sleeps more than anyone else I know!"
Isaac shook his head. He guided his brother to the small living room and forced him to sit down on the white couch. "Now calm down, and tell me what you're going to do."
"Where is Taylor?"
"I dunno. He kinda disappeared when you knocked on Maggie's door, but I'm not worried. He always storms out when you're going to fix whatever you did wrong to a girl, I'm used to it by now."
"Are you?" Zac looked at him in awe.
"I found out about you two long ago," Ike explained. "And now, don't try to offer me any excuse. I know, and I'm not freaked out, at least not now. I admit I was at first, but not anymore. Now," he kept on waving off any attempt Zac made to interrupt, "now you tell me what you're going to do, because I won't let you sit around here feeling down while Mags is in her room sleeping and Taylor is out thinking that you don't love him anymore."
"We split up," Zac said through gritted teeth. "There's no reason for him to believe I love him now."
"Don't tell me what to see whenever I look at you both. There's still feeling there, more than attraction, something lingering."
Zac shrugged but let the meaning of his brother's words sink in. "I suppose I have to apologize to Maggie, and then run after Taylor, huh?" he asked without thinking. "But there's not an 'us,' Ike. I don't know what I have to apologize for."
"Well, for starters, you're married, so you should apologize for cheating on Kate. But I don't think he's mad because of that. Taylor's upset because he has to watch while you waste your life away with your wife."
"But---"
"You have to decide what you're going to do. I can't help you with that. Just sit down here, and spend the next ten minutes thinking. Close your eyes and just--- see what you really want to do in your mind. I'm sure it's not so difficult. What d'you wanna do, Zac?" With that, Isaac stood up and headed to the kitchen again, leaving Zac to his own thoughts.
He weighed his options, what he really wanted to do. He had been struggling to keep up with a marriage he wasn't able to believe in anymore, and now he had fucked everything up by supposedly sleeping with his best friend. He closed his eyes, as told, and tried to focus in what he felt.
Only a face showed up in the midst of his mind, fogged by the lack of sleep and the importance of his actions.
Taylor.
He took a pen and started writing down a letter in the first piece of paper he found sitting in Maggie's living room.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
When Maggie woke up, she heard the crumpling of a paper near her ear, and her eyes darted around until they found the piece of paper waiting for her on her pillow. She sat up in her bed, bracing herself. She couldn't believe what Zac had said, and she believed it anyway.
Maggie knew what he meant. Zac would never tell her in her face that she was unattractive, but he had said so nevertheless. That what something she was not going to forget in a long, long time. However, she looked down at the folded paper and tentatively picked it up between trembling fingers.
Unfolding it, she began to read.
Dear Maggie,
You are sleeping as I am writing this, that's the reason why I am not talking to you, though in a way I am. I am really sorry for what I've said and done. I am really sorry that you got to hear me saying that you were unattractive, 'cause it is not true.
You are beautiful, Mags. It's just that I don't swing that way, and you know it. God, you know it. The latent problem here is exactly that one - that I am married but I don't find women attractive. That I'm in love with a man - with my brother. I know it's not right, but I can feel that fighting for what I love is worth all the shit that will undoubtedly come my way for it.
Sleeping with you was a mistake, I'm sure both of us know it by now. We shouldn't have, though neither is sure about what happened last night. All that I know is that Taylor stalked out of your flat in a rush when I had barely knocked on your bedroom door, and that he had his reasons. These last two years have been hell, and the past few months without him for some strange reason that pushed me to marry Kate. I've been dying, and whatever it was that we shared last night made me see it clear.
I do love you, Maggie, more than anyone. But I worship him, and I had come to terms with the idea of not having him for myself until the moment when I felt him slipping through my fingers like grains of sand, when I admitted I wasn't sure whether I had slept with you or not. I can't afford losing him any more than I already have - I need to win him back because he owns my heart, as cheesy as it sounds.
Without him I'm nothing, and I can't go on without either of you. So I'm asking you to forgive me for whatever pain I could have possibly caused to you, because I'm going to fight for what I know it's mine.
You know I will always love you.
Zac
Maggie wiped away some astray tears and stood up, heading to her closet, where she fiddled until finding a big shirt which was Zac's but she’d had since she had moved to San Diego; it was one she felt at ease wearing. She put it over her head and went back to the bed, hugging the teddybear that was waiting for her where she had let it land when her head had hit the pillow. Through the open window, she could distinctly hear the voices of the two brothers talking about everything and nothing. She strained her neck to listen properly.
"You can't hide forever, Tay."
"I'm not hiding. I'm just learning to live with what I get."
"I'm offering you much more than this life. I'm offering you true love, the kind you don't have in your family."
"I'm happy with my children!"
"But you're not completely happy, Taylor! I'm here telling you that I'll fight for you, that I'm sick and tired of concealing my feelings, that I love you! Ido love you. Do you love me?"
Silence met those words, and Maggie could hear how even Isaac stopped fidgeting in the kitchen. There was no sound in the whole world until Taylor's voice reached the air in the form of a whisper.
"Yes. Yes, I do. I love you."
Nothing else was heard but the content humming of Isaac in the kitchen. Maggie smiled sadly, knowing she was slowly losing the best friend she had had a crush on since they were children, but being sure that she could live with that.
In the street, surrounded by the warm breeze of the ocean in July, Taylor and Zac shared a kiss that healed whatever ache they felt, and forgave whatever sin they were bound to commit.