“Max, I hate you, too,” I told him, wrapping my legs around his waist as tight as I could. My voice was growing desperate. “I hate you so much.”
His mouth sought mine then, kissing me with passion and need that was overwhelming. His tongue swept in and hungrily licked and nipped at mine while he picked up and maintained a steady rhythm with his hips pushing his hardness in and out of me. It was the sweetest torture and my body reacted immediately, not being able to hold off the impending orgasm that was going to be off the charts amazing. Max must have sensed my body was at the edge of falling over because his mouth broke off of mine roughly but he stayed close, hovering his lips over mine. Which felt so much more intimate than the actual act of kissing. His hands dug into my hips hard, holding me right where he wanted me. He cursed under his breath a few times while I simply closed my eyes and let the pleasure he was building in me reach its peak.
“Yes, right…there…don’t stop,” I managed to say in-between my panting breaths.
He had hit the sweet spot, creating the perfect amount of friction which each stroke, as he pulled out and then pushed back inside of me.
“Yeah?” he asked, building up his movements and I barely nodded. “I’m going with you, sweetheart.”
The idea of Max coming at the same time as me was too much for me to handle apparently. My legs that were locked behind his backside gripped even tighter as I felt myself coming apart. My hands dug into his back, scoring my nails into his skin roughly eliciting a low groan from him that made my insides clench like a vise around him.
That was all it took…for both of us.
I might have said something while I rode the crest of the most glorious orgasm he was giving me, but I couldn’t be sure. Hell, I barely recognized my own voice as I moaned in pure ecstasy during those perfect few blissful seconds. Max, on the other hand, kept on grunting and cursing under his breath. And when he pushed into me one final time then stayed still, his panting breaths fell against my waiting lips as he came hard and fast.
In that moment, there was closeness beyond the naked skin, the actual physical act, and the bed we were sharing. It was more than all of those things put together and then some. And I also knew that I couldn’t give it a name yet…it was too early for all of that.
There was a soft sheen of sweat on both of us, our breathing was coming back to normal and Max looked sexier than ever. I smiled at the fact that his usually styled-to-perfection hair was falling forward and pointing in all directions thanks to my grabby hands. His lips started to turn up at the corners then, smiling a full-on smile to match mine that made my heart do that pitter-patter thing I had only read about in books.
He leaned on one elbow as he brought a hand up to cup my cheek. Tracing a finger ever so lightly across my forehead, my cheeks, my jaw, my nose, and then finally, across the seam of my still upturned lips, his eyes following the movement the whole time. Once he was done, he looked me straight in the eye with the world’s biggest grin, “I hope you hated that as much as I did.”
I chuckled and lightly smacked his arm. He pretended to be in pain. “No, seriously, I hated doing that so much that as soon as I get my energy back, we’re going to be doing that,” he looked down the length of our bodies before pressing a soft, barely there kiss to my lips, “all over again. At least twice, maybe three times. I need to make sure I hate you as much as I think I do.”
After Max got up to use his bathroom, which was as undecorated and plain as plain could be like the rest of his apartment, we both got comfortable in his big bed. He arranged me so that my head fit perfectly in the crook of his arm. I snuggled into him and felt the pull of sleep come for me not long after, helped along by the steady strum of Max’s fingers playing lightly across my back.
The only light that filtered into his bedroom was from the large dome shaped floor to ceiling window that was directly across where his mattress was situated in the middle of his bedroom floor. And with New York City as our backdrop, the twinkling lights and the flickering shadows it cast upon both of our naked bodies, was more than entrancing.
It was magical.
The entire night had felt magical.
And I hoped more than anything that once we woke up, this feeling of magic would still be there between us.
Max was gently prodding me awake.
I blinked my eyes once, twice and then kept them open after what felt like the heaviest and most relaxing sleep ever.
“Hey there, sleepyhead,” he said and kissed my shoulder.
Stretching my limbs long and then yawning so loud I could have woken up the dead, I looked around me to get my bearings. It was still pitch dark in Max’s bedroom with only the light from the sleeping city outside his window filtering in. Sitting up onto my elbows, I wasn’t sure what day it was much less what time it was.
“I would have let you keep on sleeping, but your cellphone has been blowing up for the past ten minutes or so.”
This had me more than slightly freaked out. It was always a given that if anyone was calling in the middle of the night, it was never good.
“What time is it?” I asked alarmed, hoping upon hope that it was just me being a worry-wart.
Max confirmed it was almost two o’clock in the morning. Wrapping the sheet around my body, I swung my legs off of his mattress and like a crazy person, began to dig through the piles of clothes we had strewn across his floor until I found my cellphone.
Max wasn’t kidding.
I had five missed calls. Two of them I recognized as coming from my brother’s phone, which scared the shit out of me. The other three calls came from a number with a seven-one-eight area code that I had never seen before in my life. I was officially freaking out.
“Is everything okay?” Max asked. He came over to where I was crouched down on his floor trying my hardest not to have a panic attack. “Do you need me to do anything?”
“I don’t know what’s going on yet, Max, but I’m about to find out.”
I tried my brother first.
“Eddie, answer your goddamn phone,” I practically yelled into my phone to nothing but a ringtone. As soon I went to his voicemail, I disconnected the call and tried again. “Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up.”
“Daphne, maybe he butt dialed you or something?”
“Max, nobody butt dials anyone that many times in the middle of the night.” I took a big gulp of air, expelling it out in such a rush as I stood and started pacing that I almost felt lightheaded. “I can’t even call my grandmother to see if she knows anything because one, if it’s a mistake, then I’ll have woken her up for nothing. Then again, if it is something, I can’t wake her up to worry her to death since I’m not there to calm her down.” I brought my thumb to my mouth and nervously chewed the cuticle contemplating calling back the other number that had been calling me when my cellphone started buzzing in my hand.
“Well, aren’t you going to answer it?”
I still didn’t know who this number belonged to. Just that it, along with my brother’s phone, had been calling me too. It scared me to death to answer it, picturing all sorts of awful scenarios in my head of what could be the problem, if any. But, taking one last glance at Max who was sitting up in the bed and looking at me as if I was the world’s craziest person, I pressed accept on the call.
“Hello?” I croaked into my cellphone “Who is this?”
“Ms. Rodriguez?”
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Ms. Rodriguez, this is Candace Martin at New York Presbyterian Hospital. I’m calling on behalf of—,”
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! What happened? Is she okay?”
My mind immediately had gone to my grandmother and the tears started to fall.
“Ms. Rodriguez,” the woman’s monotone no-frills voice broke in quickly. “You are listed as next of kin to a…” she paused and I could hear paper rustling in the background. “A Mr. Eduardo Rodriguez. Is that correct?”
It felt as if someone h
ad snapped a rubber band inside of me. My mind went blank, my hands and feet went numb, and my heart tripped over itself as it began beating at an uncontrollable speed in my chest.
“Why?! Oh my God! What happened?!”
Tears were now falling fast and furious. The woman on the phone was talking but I was having a full on panic attack and just shy of hyperventilating so I couldn’t make out a single thing she said. Somewhere between me yelling “Noooo!” over and over, Max came over to where I was, grabbed the phone from my hand and started talking to the woman instead.
I collapsed into a heap of sheets on the floor, crying and trying to catch my breath, while Max spoke. There were a couple of things I made out. One of which was Max asking, “He’s fine then, correct?”
All things stopped, even my breathing as I locked eyes with Max. His smile was there but faint and after what felt like an eternity, finally he gave me the thumbs up as he kept talking to the woman on my cellphone for a minute.
“Hang on, Miss,” he said into the phone and then covered it with his hand. Crouching down to where I was still a mess on the floor, he told me as calmly as possible, “He’s okay, Daph. Your brother is just being held overnight for observation. He got into some sort of car accident and has a slight concussion.”
As if he had snapped his fingers, the panic cleared from my head with his words as I fully processed them. But then it was replaced by pure unadulterated anger. “A car accident?! How does he get into a car accident when we don’t even own a car?!”
“Daphne, did you hear the rest of what I just said?” Max asked, ignoring my questions. “Your brother is fine. He’s going to be totally fine and released in the morning. But since he’s a minor, they needed to contact his next of kin. That’s you, sweetheart.”
“Max, but we don’t have a car! I don’t understand how this could have happened!”
He reached out and tucked some hair behind my ear, a sweet smile playing on his lips as I could see his patience wearing thin. “Let me find out, okay?”
I nodded.
Max got back on the phone and after a minute of him saying “uh-huh” a few times to the woman on the other line; he came back to where I was. Thankfully, I had gained some sort of control of my breathing by then. Little help that was since I was about to lose my ever-loving shit with what Max had found out.
“Sooo, it sounds like your brother was involved in a police chase because he was joyriding in a car that had been reported as stolen earlier today. When the cops got close enough, the car your brother was in lost control and ran off the road. And—,”
“What?!”
“Daph, I wish I was making this up, but I’m not,” he said calmly as if he was trying not to spook me any more than he was. “Listen, here’s the good news.”
“Good news?! You’re kidding, right?!”
I buried my head in my hands as I envisioned my brother’s supposed bright future being flushed down the toilet because of this disaster. It was heartbreaking and infuriating how in a matter of minutes, everything in my life had turned upside down.
“Daphne, yes, there is good news.” Max reached out and gently lifted my chin up to look at him. “According to the nurse on duty, your brother didn’t know the car was stolen.”
My eyes narrowed as I tried to process this bit of information. And I knew, I just knew what was coming next. My heart raced, thumping away in my chest as Max explained further.
“The person driving didn’t tell your brother he had stolen the car. Apparently, the drive has admitted to the police that your brother had no idea what he was up to and was just going along for the ride.”
“That little piece of shit,” I seethed under my breath.
Because I knew exactly who the mystery driver was. It was that mojon, Joey from the neighborhood. Upset wasn’t quite the right way to describe how I was feeling. I was beyond that. I had reached some other ungodly level of pissed that wasn’t even created yet.
“Hey, are you okay?” Max asked, breaking me out of the murder plot I had running in vivid Technicolor in my head. “I have to let this lady know that you’re heading over to the hospital since you know, you’re the next of kin. But I need to know you’re okay to do that.”
I was far from okay.
It wasn’t even funny how far away from okay on the okay spectrum I was at that moment. But, I also was an adult and like the person at the hospital said, Eddies’ next of kin. So, I took a big gulp of air, put on my big girl panties and stood up. Squaring my shoulders and for the moment, ignoring the huge knot in the pit of my stomach, I told him unequivocally, “Yes, I’m okay. And tell them I’m on my way.”
Max arranged an Uber for me that I eventually agreed to. Only because he was adamant about me not taking the subway at this ungodly hour, and two, because he was threatening to drive me himself in a car he admitted he drove maybe once or twice a year. When he told me this I was in the middle of getting dressed like a mad woman in his clothes, because mine were too “club-like” according to Max. He was right, of course. But man, oh man, I was swimming in his track pants and sweatshirt. And his flip-flops were practically flopping off of my feet but they were much better than heels at this point.
He had wanted to come, but as soon as Max brought up the idea of tagging along, I shot it down real quick. Was this really the way I wanted him to meet my family? Hell no! It was embarrassing enough that I got that call while I was with Max. And this thing with us was so new…well, technically not too new. But it was definitely new enough that I wouldn’t feel comfortable to have him around while dealing with family drama.
My Uber driver was a slightly older woman, which was nice. Not that Uber driver AKA serial killers couldn’t be women, but the odds were much more in my favor to survive a ride with a total stranger this way. It definitely made me more relaxed to be sharing her car for almost forty-five minutes. We didn’t talk much either. Which was fine by me, because I was too preoccupied with all the things I had on my mind about my brother. Not to mention I had yet to get in touch with my grandmother. I figured she must still be asleep and thankfully hadn’t woken up to see if my brother was home…hell, even if I was home. A feeling of guilt crept in and settled somewhere around my throat, choking me to near tears as I worried about how my grandmother would take the news about Eddie.
“Here. Take,” the Uber driver said to me as she handed me a tissue. “I’m sure it will be okay, yes?”
“Thank you.” I locked eyes with her in the rearview mirror. “That’s really nice of you to say. But I’m not so sure.”
She spoke with a heavy European accent. But even through the accent, I could hear the genuine concern in her voice. “We have saying in my country, what doesn’t kill you, makes you strong.”
I chuckled. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
“You’ve heard it before. Good. It’s true. You see.”
“Well then I ought to be a strong as an ox by the time tonight is over and done with.”
She laughed and her kind eyes were shone with understanding in the rearview mirror. At this point, I could tell by my surroundings that we were just a few minutes away from reaching the hospital. I took the opportunity to text Max to let him know I had arrived and would update him later. He responded almost immediately.
Max: Glad to hear you got there safe and sound. Please keep texting me updates.
His concern brought a smile to my face and loosened the knot of dread in my stomach just a teeny-tiny bit. When I looked up, the larger than life, bright red, emergency room sign was like a beacon in the darkness straight ahead.
“Right here.” I said, pointing out my window to the circular driveway that led right to where I needed to be. “If you don’t mind, can you drop me off close to the emergency room entrance?”
“Of course,” she answered. “Good luck and hope everything is okay with your family.”
“Thank you, I really appreciate it.”
She pulled up as near to th
e actual double doors as possible. And once she came to a full stop and parked her car, I was already opening the door to let myself out and started sprinting towards the entrance. It was quiet outside and felt almost desolate, but once I was inside…well, that was a whole other ballgame.
It felt like I had arrived in the middle of nuclear meltdown or something. Behind the main desk, there was hospital staff running around from one patient to another. There were a few policemen around along with the regular security guards that were stationed right at the front desk. Not to mention the waiting area had a nice crowd doing just that…waiting. There were a few people stretched out across several bucket chairs taking a nap, or at this time of the night, technically flat-out sleeping. I couldn’t blame them. It was almost three fifteen in the morning. I was running on pure adrenaline at this point. Especially given how zonked out I was thanks to Max, it was nothing short of a miracle that I was awake and not passed out on one of those bucket chairs too.
At the front desk, there was a woman with the closest thing I’ve ever seen to an actual beehive that would rival Amy Winehouse’s hair. It was more than oddly shaped too and the closer I got to her and her hair, the more obvious it was that it was actually leaning and in danger of toppling over. When she addressed me finally in a monotone, nasally voice, you could tell she hated every bit of this job.
“What is your emergency, miss?”
“Oh no, it’s not me that has the emergency,” I said in a rush of breath. “I, wait no, that’s not right. My brother, he was admitted here tonight. I don’t many details other than he was in a car accident, which is like crazy because it’s a school night and he’s supposed to be home studying or something. But no, instead he’s off driving around and—,”
“Patient’s name, Miss.”
“Huh?”
Without an ounce of expression on her face, she slowly pulled a pen out of her beehive. I blinked once, twice, wondering what the fuck else she was going to pull out of there.
The Better Man (Allen Brothers Series Book 2) Page 20