Complete Indelible Love Series

by Cee, DW

  “What the hell was your problem at the club? You didn’t once come and talk to me until you offered me a ride. Why didn’t you make up with me then?” My voice got angrier than it should have, but Max deserved it. “And don’t give me the lame-ass excuse about me hanging out with Donovan. You hung out with Hannah, too. If you don’t want me to be upset about Hannah, then you can’t be upset about Donovan, either.” That’s right. I told him! Fair is fair.

  That’s when the hovering clouds moved right above us and made everything seriously dark and gloomy. Max couldn’t look at me anymore. He stood up from the bed and faced the door for wayyyy longer than it was comfortable. I was too scared to ask him if he was all right, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to berate him any more—No siree, Bob! After thinking about it myself, maybe I was a bit hard on him. The whole NINE unanswered days are still a huge question mark in my head, but he did explain about Hannah. And of course, I do believe everything he told me. But...what was wrong with Max? Why was he so gloom-and-doom, today?

  “There are so many things I thought I’d say to you when I finally got the chance.” He speaks...! Now, if I could only figure out what the hell he was saying. “Whenever I think about you, about us, I know that you’re the root that holds my bearing, the trunk that makes me stand tall, and the branches that help me bear fruit.” Whaaa? When did this turn into a romantic botany lesson? I believe that was romantic..?

  This was getting weird! I needed to lighten up the mood. There were still so many things I wanted to say to this man, but right now was not it. Plus, my head still hurt, my stomach growled, and I needed a cup of coffee.

  “Can we go take a walk and grab a cup of coffee? I’ve a splitting headache.”

  “Sure.” He said and said no more. Thank God. I was weirded out enough. Talk for now was done.

  We walked hand in hand to the local coffee shop in total silence. I don’t know what it was like for Max, but for me, it was a comfortable silence. Mentally, I was making a list of all the things I wanted to say to him. All the angry retorts, sarcastic remarks, witty quips waited in a nice long queue for their chance. After all the mental yelling and finger pointing, all I eventually said was, “Do you like seeing me with Donovan?”

  “No, of course not,” he almost yelled. I jumped back and wanted to yell as well, but held off since this Max was not my Max, today.

  “Well, I don’t like seeing you with Hannah, either. And just remember, I’ve never had any sort of a relationship with Donovan. The only time he’s ever touched me was to give me an innocuous kiss on my head. You think about that, and let’s talk again later.”

  I ended on that note and soon after our coffee run, I convinced Max to lay in bed with me. I seriously needed a nap at 10am. It had been an exhausting many days.

  Max was half-sitting against the headboard, half-laying on the bed to accommodate my body that covered most of his. Sleep hovered and was oh so close when Max’s phone gave me a slight jolt.

  “Hello?” I heard my kind boyfriend whisper so I wouldn’t be disturbed. “Hey Garret.” Oh...it was Garret. It sounded like Garret was asking something similar to “did you do it?” Max kissed me on the head and whispered again, “No...I couldn’t do it. I love her too much.”

  I tried to stay awake to listen in on this unusual conversation, but sleep was overpowering me. I’d try and remember to ask him later. Last I heard before going off into my own world was, “I love you, my precious Gem.”

  May 6, 2013 Honestly!

  My honey was still walking on eggshells, trying to make up to me what he did a couple of weeks ago. Just between you and me, all was forgiven the night he came over and stayed with me, but he didn’t have to know that yet. Secretly, I got great pleasure out of watching Max grovel. And boy, he was workin’ the grovel.

  “What’s with the flower arrangement? Max?” Donovan popped by my cubicle to take me to lunch.

  “Yep.” I answered happily.

  “You still holding a grudge from our tequila night?”

  “Yep!” I answered happily, again.

  “Damn, Woman! That was like a month ago. Remind me not to get on your bad side.” He let out a hearty chuckle.

  “Yep.” I said a third time, still with a smile.

  Since our bonding over tequila, Donovan and I had become even better friends. There was still a tiny bit of tension between us, but we were more buddies than anything else lately.

  “Can we eat something other than egg salad?”

  “Yep.”

  He gave me a funny look, which was still hot on this man, and told me to “cut out the monosyllabic answers.”

  “I’ll stop saying ‘yep’ if you tell me what’s going on with you and Kate.”

  “Holds a grudge for a month, stubborn, and nosy...and yet I still find her attractive. Why is that?” He asked a rhetorical question.

  “Yep,” I said again, laughing.

  “Ok, stop with the yep. I’ve ended things for good with Kate.”

  Oohhhh! This was juicy info. “Why?”

  “She wants marriage, kids, the Jake and Emily life...”

  “And???”

  “And I want the same...but not with her. I’ve decided to listen to my wise friend and try intimacy with my heart rather than just the body or mind.” He said this while laughing to himself.

  “Who?”

  “Who what? And stop the damn one word Q&A.”

  I looked up from my tacos and gave him a questioning look.

  “Please, stop with the damn one word Q&A?” He asked nicely, which made me crack up. “And by the way, that look you just gave me—you should do the whole librarian get-up and try it on Max. That should revive the relationship in no time.”

  I died laughing. “Ok, I don’t need you visualizing me in a librarian get-up.”

  “Yeah, me neither. I don’t need my body parts getting-up unnecessarily, and unfulfillingly.”

  “All righty! Let’s change the subject ‘cuz now you’re giving me visuals I don’t need. Back to Kate. Who told you to stop lusting and to start loving?”

  “A friend.”

  “A friend, who?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Why the secrecy? Why can’t you tell me?” Now I was more than curious.

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me who Hannah really is. And don’t give me the same bullshit you’ve been telling your family. I know she’s more than a girl he dated in high school.”

  Did I want to do this trading of top secret info? Was it worth it to find out who’s been giving Donovan love advice?

  “Well...what’s it gonna be? You gonna put out?”

  “Damn it. Stop making everything sexual.”

  He laughed. “Do I need to tie you to the chair and force the info from you, come to my own conclusion, or will you put out willingly?” Now he was giving me the suggestive waggle of the eyebrow look.

  Part of me died laughing, and part of me was seriously hot and bothered. But I SWEAR, I was thinking of my boyfriend Max! It wasn’t Donovan who was on my mind sexually.

  “You first. You spill your beans, then I come forth with my info, if I deem your info is worthy enough.”

  “Forget it. I’ll spill only if you promise to come...forth.”

  This was a serious case of ROTFLMAO! “All right! Hannah and Max dated back in high school, he knocked her up, almost married her, then she lost the baby, he was relieved, she was depressed, her parents moved her to Michigan, and now she’s back,” I said all in one breath. “Beat that!” I challenged.

  After being bug-eyed briefly (ok, he was still hot even with the bug-eyes), he said, “I kissed your cousin Delaney in her hotel room the night she went missing. That’s where she told me that she had no designs on ‘joining my harem’, and that’s also when she told me that I was ‘with one woman physically, thinking about another woman mentally, but didn’t have the guts to truly love a woman, emotionally.
’” He smirked and continued, “By the look on your face and the hole in your mouth, I think I ‘beat that!’”

  “You what??? What the fuck???”

  “Wow. My story was good enough for an f-bomb? I thought you never said fuck.”

  “Well...I do say it...it’s just not in your ears.”

  Now he was ROTFLHAO. “We need to stop—unless you’re willing to put out...with me.”

  “You are not turning this on me. I want to know about this kiss with Laney. What the hell happened? You kiss her? She kiss you? Is that what you were doing in there the whole time...kissing?”

  “Let’s talk about us first.”

  “There’s no us, Donovan. I love Max.”

  “Let’s be honest with one another.”

  “Shit, if we were any more honest with one another than we are now, we’d be Jake and Emily!”

  “You ever wonder what it would be like with us?” Hell yes! “You ever want to know if we’d have as good a chemistry as lovers as we do as friends?” OMG. I don’t think I can answer this one even to myself. “Well, I want to know. I want to know what it feels like to make out with you, to make love to you, to make you moan my name. I want to be with you in every physical way and see if that will lead to the emotions Delaney accuses me of not being capable of having. I know I’m being an asshole wondering this about another man’s woman, but honestly, I can’t stop wondering.”

  Honestly? I would’ve preferred a lie.

  May 9, 2013 Oh...A Hunting He Will Go...

  You’ll all be happy to know, Donovan got called away the moment he finished his confession, and flew to London to help Kate with a client. PHEW! I haven’t seen him, heard from him, nor really thought about him. Honestly! I haven’t thought too much about us, but this whole idea of Donovan and Laney kissing, was bugging the crap out of me. He never finished telling me what had happened in that room and I couldn’t possibly ask Laney. I asked Emily about it, and she immediately got on the phone with Donovan and chewed him out for “kissing and telling.” After that, there was no way he was going to tell me anything. Emily also told me to mind my own business and to be more of a girlfriend to Max, than a girl friend to Donovan. Well, excuse...me....! Emily was pissed at me and Donovan, and I was pissed with her for being so pissy. Lucky for her, I got a text from Max, so I excused myself and went home.

  You want to go out tonight?

  Isn’t it a school night?

  Yeah...can we not go out on a school night?

  No. We can. You gonna pick me up or shall I meet you somewhere?

  I’ll pick you up in 20. I have my bike. Wear pants...or not.

  See you in 20 and I’ll consider wearing (under) pants...or not.

  That would give him something to think about. He he he!

  “That was the quickest 20 minutes, ever. You on a different time zone?” I said to the man who hopped off his bike and ran up to me.

  “Well, when your girlfriend considers not wearing any underwear, it is worth a speeding ticket to find out whether or not she made the right decision.” He said with a luscious kiss. “Shall we find out?” I had to stop his roaming hands since we were on the sidewalk and any Reid could see our lusty ways.

  “Where shall we go eat?”

  “Before we eat, I want to show you something. Hop on.”

  We got on the bike and rode a few minutes to a more artsy neighborhood near my home.

  “Where are we?”

  “I’ve been doing a bit of research on my own, and I thought this might be the neighborhood you might want to move into...” He cut his statement short.

  “Is there more?”

  “...assuming you still wanted to move in with me...?”

  Oh my gosh, the uncertainty in his voice and in that statement almost killed me. I’d given him such a hard time the last month—didn’t return many of his calls, gave him the cold shoulder from time to time, purposely avoided him when he came over—that he was scared of me. I was just playing games with him, enjoying the upper hand I had in this relationship. What a total bitch I’d been.

  “Max. I’m so sorry for my behavior the last few weeks. I was mad at first, but I shouldn’t have dragged this out for so long. I didn’t mean to make you wonder about my feelings for you. I love you, and I still want to live with you, assuming now that you still want to live with me after my confession.”

  “I love you too, Gem.” His smile told me that it was all right in our world, again. “I want you to see how cool this place is, and if we wanted to, it’s large enough for us to...” he stopped himself again. This time, I didn’t ask why he stopped. I enthusiastically walked into the courtyard of the building and inspected the home he was so eager to show me.

  “I talked to my financial advisor and...”

  I cut off Max’s sentence. “You have a financial advisor?”

  “Kind of,” he laughed. “Josh is actually all of our financial advisor. He’s really good with investments. He day trades with his own money. That’s partly how he’s financing a year in Europe without having to get a job.”

  “Seriously?”

  Max nodded in the affirmative. “He’s been doing it the last six years or so. First he started secretly with his own money, back in high school. Once he successfully doubled his bank account, he showed us what he was doing and offered to do it for all three of us.”

  “Do I need to give him my money? It’s just sitting in a savings account earning 1% interest.” I learned something new every day.

  “If you like. He’s really good and he’s very careful. I didn’t quite understand how good he was till I went to him the other day and asked about my financial situation.”

  Fanfreakin’tastic! Now I had someone who would invest my money, without taking a huge cut.

  “Why did you need to talk about your finances? Do you need money? I have money just sitting in the bank doing nothing if you need it. You’re welcome to use whatever you need.”

  Whoa! Did I just say all those things? I hoped I didn’t freak out Max, nor hurt his manly feelings. Men were so sensitive about the stupidest things.

  “Thanks for the offer, Babe. I’m good.” He answered with a very big smile.

  “I mean it. You can use whatever you need.”

  “Thank you, Gem. It means a lot to me that you feel that close to me. But really, I’m doing okay. In fact, I’m doing better than okay.”

  “So...you’re telling me all this because...”

  “Come check out the place and I’ll explain.”

  Max was right. The apartment was cooler than cool. They were individual, stand-alone units that had high ceilings, a wide-open floor plan, tons of built-ins and cabinet space and two bedrooms. The two bedrooms were both master suites with master baths and a massive walk-in closet. I knew this place was meant to be when I saw the mini shoe closet in addition to the master closet. I have a thing for shoes, if you haven’t noticed already.

  “This place is awesome! How’d you find it?”

  “A med school buddy told me his brother just bought a unit, and because this is not the most desirable neighborhood, it’s surprisingly affordable.”

  “All right. So what are you thinking?”

  “Garret, Josh and I are each thinking of buying a unit. To cover mortgage, Josh will rent his place out before he leaves for Europe. Garret and I will live in our units. After a small down, mortgage won’t be much more than our current rent.”

  And what of me? The question was on the tip of my tongue but I kept it there. It was all me who had put us in this precarious state again.

  Max knew my worry and gave me a tender, reassuring kiss. “If you’re okay with my plans, I’d love for you to come live with me.”

  Did I bring up the fact that I was hurt he didn’t want to buy something with me?

  “Whatcha thinking, Gem?”

  “I’m thinking I love the place; it’s close to my family, and it’ll be gre
at to live close to your brothers as well.”

  “But?”

  I thought about it .Then I thought about it some more. In the end, I just shook my head no and followed Max to the lease/purchase office. Josh and Garret had joined us somewhere during negotiations.