I didn’t know what to say when people spoke to me so bluntly. I preferred it to a bunch of bullshit, yet there never seemed to be a good answer. “Maybe it’s possible to be really shallow and still not want kids to die. And as for your brother, there is social media involving the two of us, which I am sure you know about.”
She nodded. “I do. I appreciate you owning it like that instead of pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“Max knows I’d do anything to make it right.”
Susan put her hand on my shoulder. “When I look at the video, I don’t see you, not as I see you standing here now. I know it was years ago and people change, but I’m wondering…were you feeling okay? Obviously, you were puking. But other than that? Your eyes right now, in pain and worried about what I’m going to say next, it still doesn’t look like you in that recording.”
I swallowed. “I’m not really ready to share the answer to that with you.”
She touched my arm. “Fair enough. I’m guessing you shared it with Max and that’s why you’re here. The way he looks at you? Whatever you’ve told him is clearly good enough for him, that makes you great in my book.”
“Thanks.” I nodded at her. “And I appreciate you doing this for me.”
Susan smiled. “I know we’re keeping your presence here secret, but it’s a bit of a kick for me to know I worked with one of the Redheads.”
“There’s only one as far as I’m concerned.” Max walked toward us from where he had clearly been listening to our conversation on the porch. “Just one.” He held up a finger like he was going to illustrate that. “And the Broadleys are far too nosy for their own good. Hope doesn’t owe anyone explanations for anything. Her life story isn’t fodder for conversation on long winter nights.”
Susan held up her hand. “You know I’m not going to be the worst of it.”
His mother stepped outside, pulling her sweater around her. “Worst of what? Ooh, it is getting chilly out here. Get your girl inside, Max, before she catches a chill.”
Was it cold? Since we’d started moving around, I hadn’t noticed it. In fact, I should have paid more attention to a lot of things, like the fact that the leaves on the trees and the ground were stunning in color. Yellow. Red. Orange. I saw them change every year in Central Park, but it wasn’t like this. They were everywhere, like we were intruders in the world of the leaves.
“Are you cold, Hope?” Max walked down toward us. “Or are you just falling in love with the colors right now?”
I pointed at him. “You only read me that well because you were out staring at them yourself.”
He smirked. “I wasn’t staring at the leaves.”
“Sure you weren’t.” I patted his arm in a dramatic way, and he grinned.
“You two, you know you have to come to dinner Sunday.” Hayley smiled at us. “Since you’re here, you have to.”
Max rocked back on his feet. “I don’t know, Mom.”
“It’s my birthday.” Hayley said in a sing-song voice. “When you’re in town on your mother’s birthday, you have to come to her house for dinner. That is one of those must do things.”
He ran a hand through his hair, and I watched as a million different responses crossed his face, finally ending with him nodding and putting on a smile. “Sure, we’ll be there, Mom. But I want it clear to everyone that they are to go easy on my friend here. The last thing she needs while she’s healing is to be overwhelmed by the Broadleys.”
“Oh.” His mother came down the stairs toward us. “She is pretty tough. Made of strong material that doesn’t fall apart. I think being overwhelmed by the Broadleys might be just what she needs.”
I’d just gotten out of the shower when the first scent of whatever delicious thing Max cooked wafted into the bathroom, taking my attention from the strawberry shampoo I’d used just minutes before. I ran a hand through my hair to comb it rather than going through the process of using a brush. I put on shorts and a T-shirt before I wrapped myself in a huge bathrobe. Probably Max’s robe, based on the sheer size of the thing.
I watched his back quietly as he placed something that looked like russet potatoes in the oven. A bottle of truffle oil sat next to the sink, and without watching what he was doing at all, he put the oil away into another cabinet.
Max was almost never at his home in Maine. How did he still manage to cook in it so naturally? Did the man instinctively find his way around any kitchen? Or maybe it didn’t matter where he put the oil, since it was his kitchen, so wherever he put it became where it belonged?
“Smells good.”
He looked over his shoulder. “That is the barbecue sauce on the pork you’re smelling. I made it on the stovetop. I haven’t really started cooking anything else, except those potatoes.”
A bottle of wine sat open on the counter, and he had a glass next to him, while next to the wine he’d poured a glass of seltzer over ice. I walked over and picked it up. It was cool on my tongue. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. It’s nothing.” He sipped his wine. “How are you feeling? How much pain are you in?”
I stretched my arms over my head. “I can do that, which is apparently a very good sign. And some of my other muscles are sore, but I’d say the areas where I’m shot don’t hurt additionally.”
He swung around and picked me up by my waist and set me on the counter. I grinned at him. “What are you doing?”
“I’m fucking hungry.” His gaze held mine like I was captured in it.
“Then I guess it’s a good thing you’re making dinner.” I smiled at him.
He shook his head. “Not for food.”
Max bent over, pushing my legs apart gently. “Let me know if this causes you any pain.”
Pain wasn’t on my mind a second later when he kissed my thigh. I actually trembled. He laid a long, warm kiss on the other thigh before he took an audible deep breath. “Can never get enough of this. Missed this.”
He pulled my shorts off, dropping them on the floor. I hadn’t put on panties, preferring instead to sleep commando under the shorts. Now I was glad I hadn’t put them on. This was a lot easier. I loved Max having access if this was what was on his mind.
Max kissed my clit, finding it with his mouth, and I sighed. Yes. This was just what I wanted. So much had happened since the last time he touched me like this. We’d been in New York, and I hadn’t known yet what my decisions were going to do to my life. There were bullets and missing children. Air travel. Pain. But there was also this moment. Fuck. There was Max’s clever tongue swirling around my clit like he knew just how I needed his touch.
This was life. This was pleasure. This existed too. It wasn’t always hard. Sometimes it was downright incredible. I grabbed on to the back of Max’s head and held him right there. It helped to hold on to him, otherwise I could get lost in the sensations. There was such a thing as too much pleasure for me.
He moaned, and I quit thinking. Max thrust his hips into the counter as he ate at me. He held on to my thighs, keeping me open to him, but dropped one of them right then just to cup himself on the outside of his pants. He groaned like it hurt him and put his hand back where it was.
“Stop.” I spoke quickly, and he pulled back to look at me.
“What’s the matter? Did I do something you don’t like?” He panted.
I shook my head. “Together. Not just me. Both of us.”
Max smiled at me. “You…you are always surprising me.” Max had me off the counter in seconds, and both of us were back on his couch.
He lay on top of me, pressing his finger inside of me, and I reached for his cock, which took a lot of maneuvering. It was hard to get his pants off, but I managed it. By the time I’d freed him of the clothing, we grinned at each other like stupid idiots.
It always seemed so romantic when people did this on television or in the movies. We were sort of goofy, and I loved it. I stroked him from his balls to his tip. He moaned. “You do things to me, Hope. I can�
�t begin to explain to you what you…”
He kissed me rather than finishing the thought. I wanted to know what he wanted to say, but I wanted what his mouth was doing to me more. Kissing me all the way down my neck, stopping right at that point where my neck met my shoulder. I gripped him harder, closing my eyes to feel that moment.
Max kissed me there again. And again. Apparently, I had a spot, and he’d found it. I squirmed, and he sucked in a long breath. “I love when you make those noises.”
I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to, not when he was making love to my body, pressing his fingers right where I needed them on my clit. Over and over again. “Such a good girl. I love how prettily you moan against me.”
“Inside of me,” I told him. “Please. Inside of me.”
He shook his head. “Not until you come for me, Hope. You come for me, then I’ll press inside of you and stretch out your pussy with my cock until you are screaming for it a second time.”
I caught my breath. His words were hot, scalding hot, but it wasn’t his words that threw me over the edge of pleasure. His fingers did their work too, but what really got me was how he looked at me. I’d never seen myself in someone else’s gaze before, but right then, it felt as though he threw the warmest adoration at me that I’d ever experienced. I came, but it wasn’t sudden or explosive, more like a release of everything inside of me that had been tied up with nowhere to go.
Maybe he understood I was having a moment because he kept his gaze affixed to mine, neither of us able to look away from one another. Max cupped my cheeks. “So fucking beautiful.”
“You,” was what I managed to say. It wasn’t much, but I must have made myself clear because he nodded and reached over me to pull out his wallet from his pants where they’d been discarded. In two seconds, he’d gotten a condom out and then dropped his wallet again. I watched all of this like I was looking through a fog. Maybe haze was a better word. The haze of wanting to fuck Max. Right then. No more waiting.
He sheathed himself and then was on me like he rode the same edge of desperation drowning me. It didn’t matter that I’d just come. It had been exactly what I needed, and yet I required more now. I had to feel him, experience the connection that only happened when Max was deep inside of me.
Wasting no time, he pushed inside of me. I cried out at the feeling, both from the fact that he’d met my craving and also because he was big, it had been a little while since we’d done this, and my muscles weren’t ready for him yet.
Staring at each other, I panted like I was running a race, while he smoothed my hair off my face. “Just breathe with me, baby. I’m going to make you feel so good.”
I loved when he used endearments like that in these moments. Like he wasn’t guarding what he said, like he wasn’t weighing if he should. It was Max just being Max. I breathed with him, and then he moved again. In and out of me, each thrust passing by the bundle of nerves that made me gasp, made me dig my fingers into his back so hard, I was sure I would leave a mark. I couldn’t help it. Max took me like I belonged to him, and I only needed to hold on for the ride.
I wrapped my legs around him tighter, drawing him even deeper inside of me. His moans matched my own. We both practically shouted. I arched my back as pleasure drove me to the peak of what I could handle and grinned when I felt him finish.
Falling back down, my back hit the couch cushions, and I grinned some more. Actually, I couldn’t stop grinning. He held himself off my body, finally kissing me all over my face. “I think I made you giddy.”
“You did.” I kissed his chin. “What did I make you?”
“I don’t know that I have words for it.” He kissed my nose, then groaned as he pulled himself out of me. Faster than I would have liked, Max got off the couch and went to deal with the condom. “Did I hurt you?” he called over his shoulder.
I shook my head. Not that he could see that, which meant I actually had to answer. “Right now, I’m feeling no pain.”
“Good.” This time he answered me from the kitchen. “That was fun, Hope.”
It was. For me, it had been a lot more than fun, though. But I knew this trap, and I wasn’t falling into it. Too many of my girlfriends felt ecstatically emotional after sex and ended up on their own that way because the guy had already moved on to what or whoever he was doing next. I didn’t have the slightest intention of being one of those women.
I knew the score with Max. He wasn’t in this for the long term except as my friend. Eventually, we’d have to stop having sex, and the thought pushed my euphoria away. Wow. That had been fast. I got off the couch and dressed slowly. Max had left his clothes where they were on the floor, wearing pajama pants he must have grabbed from the bathroom instead.
They were the same brand but differently colored than the ones he’d had on this morning when he’d gotten out of bed before me. We’d been sleeping like two people who didn’t know each other since we’d gotten here. Me on one side of the bed, him on the other, and never the two shall meet.
I sort of hated it. Did cuddling have to be off the table? Or maybe it was that I—thanks to the drugs—had been sleeping, and I had no idea if he had because I passed out every night and didn’t wake up till morning. That would probably stop since I’d cut back the drugs. Maybe we’d go back to late night conversations and dozing together.
Pretending I hadn’t needed more hugging after we’d just had sex, I slid onto the stool to watch him cook. He smiled at me. “This is something I’ve been working on for Hyperion, so be brutally honest when we eat, okay?”
“Sure.” Of course, it was the only thing I was going to be brutally honest about since I had to lie, even to myself, about what was going on between us. Sure, I could be easygoing Hope who didn’t get her heart involved.
But I had to ask, why did the guy who followed me into gunfire and brought me home to care for me have to be off limits? Why did it have to be no?
He said he was fucked up, but I saw no evidence of that. Not really. “How long have you been working on the recipe?”
I really was a coward sometimes.
Chapter 18
We needed to get his mother a gift. It was her birthday. The thought occurred to me the day before we were supposed to have dinner at her home, where I would meet the rest of his very large family. Max had been twitchy all day, and when I reminded him about the need for the present, he immediately suggested we should go to Portland to buy it. This was going to be my third time in Portland, since I counted landing there in the plane as one. The doctor had been the second visit, and now we were shopping for his mom.
I’d never gone shopping for someone else’s mother before. Moms had been a foreign concept to me growing up. Something other people had, sure, but I never did. I used to make Mother’s Day cards in school, because we had to, and then throw them out. Teachers would say things that were meant to be helpful, like how I could make a card for a grandmother—we really didn’t see them very much, either, and then they were both gone from this world—or that I should make a card for my mother in heaven. I’d burst into tears with that one—maybe I’d been in second grade?—and Bridget had told off the teacher. Not all holidays were celebrated in all countries, but Mother’s Day was one of those celebrated most places. I just never knew exactly what day I was going to have to face that pain.
So picking out a gift for Hayley Broadley was a novel experience, and Max wasn’t helpful when it came to deciding what to get her. I got a lot of I don’t knows when I asked specific questions, which eventually led me to buying her a soft, warm designer blanket that was tan in color and hopefully she wouldn’t hate. She could put it into a trunk, if she hated it, and people always needed extra blankets. I was pretty sure they did, anyway.
The small store was happy to giftwrap the gift, so we left. I was bundled in what I was pretty sure was an old coat of Susan’s, and it was sort of hard to believe that just a little over a week ago, I had been in Germany dealing with having been shot. I was
still dealing with it, but it was a world of difference now.
His sister had been over every day to work with me a little bit, and I liked her more and more each visit.
Max remained incredibly quiet. “Something wrong?” I finally asked him.
“No, I love it here.”
Well, I hadn’t expected that answer. Not in the least. “Good to be back in Maine?”
“I meant Portland. I do love Portland. Always did. Used to think that this would be the perfect spot to open a restaurant.” We headed toward the car. “Close enough to my family that I could visit, or they could come see me a lot, but not close enough that my mother is in and out of my house all the time.”
So far, his mother had dropped over once a day. She was always bringing us stuff, like jam she’d found in the grocery store she thought he would like. She’d realized that I didn’t have enough socks and brought some over. I’d kind of loved the attention, but I was probably desperate to be mothered, and she wasn’t mine anyway. Who was I to say what too much of a good thing was for Max?
“Then why didn’t you? Open here? Why choose New York City?”
He grinned. “Ego.”
“What?” I didn’t know how ego played into business management.
“I went from culinary school to working in kitchens in Manhattan. Feels a little bit like the center of the universe there, sometimes. And I wanted to make it there. Like the song or whatever. I wanted to be a hit there.”
I squeezed his hand. “You did that. How is it going, by the way? Anna still okay?”
“Anna is loving life, and I’m pretty sure the staff prefers me being away too. Eric came back yesterday to work a little bit. He cooked for an hour and then went home. Huge moment.”
So something I did had made a big difference. I’d helped to make that happen, in a small way. “That is incredible.”
Do you need to go back? I almost asked him the question aloud, but then I didn’t. He’d just tell me to worry about recovery. I didn’t have to keep questioning him about things when I knew what his answer would be before he gave it, even if the answer was somewhat dissatisfying.
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