by Jolie Day
“You know, I thought that you might have missed me while you were away,” she said.
“I didn’t have time to miss anybody, Mar,” Max retorted. “I was a little busy.”
“Still,” Mary said. “I missed you.”
“That’s nice and all,” Max said, “but I don’t have time for it now, either. I just…I’ve gotta figure this out.” He stood and made his way out of the room, heading straight for Grace’s office. It took everything he had not to turn back, to look at the woman he’d loved and left behind.
He almost didn’t make it.
*****
Regina
She had just switched the “Closed” sign to “Open” when the door opened and a familiar face stepped inside, her head held high and her shoulders straight back. Regina’s eyes widened at the sight of her. Mary Sawyer looked just as beautiful as the last time she’d seen her and she felt that same pang of envy she’d experienced the last time, as well.
“What can I get you?” Regina asked, playing it cool as she returned to the safety of her bar and scanned her eyes over the different liquors and wines.
“Whatever you have on tap is fine,” Mary said, taking a stool. “I haven’t had a beer in forever.”
“You still breast-feeding?” Regina asked.
“Oh, I usually fill up enough bottles to get him through the week, anyway. I’m trying to switch over to formula, but it…you know what, doesn’t matter.” She shook her head. “I’m not here to talk about my son.”
“What are you here for?” Regina asked, though she knew very well. She placed Mary’s drink down in front of her and waited.
“Max,” Mary started, predictably, and Regina turned away with a huff. “He really cares about you!” Mary insisted. “He just wants to protect you. He wants to protect all of us.”
“By putting my bar on the line?” Regina hissed, turning back around. “This place is my livelihood, Mary. It’s everything I have. If I lose it—”
“You won’t,” Mary insisted.
“You can’t promise me that.”
“Yes I can,” Mary said, her voice firm. “My parents know a lot of people in this town. They’ve made a lot of friends in high places. Reparations, if any are necessary, will be done quickly and cost-effective. I can promise you that.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that he could die,” Regina said, her voice low. There was fear in her eyes. “How are you going to stop that from happening?”
“Honestly?” Mary sighed. “I can’t. I can only reassure you that Max will have plenty of backup and that CJ will be surrounded. We’ve got Caesar Alvarez on our side, so who knows how much of an advantage we already have?” She took a long sip of her beer, never breaking eye contact with Regina. “We’re well-prepared, Regina,” she said. “And I will do everything in my power to make sure that Max is safe and protected. I don’t want to see him die, either, you know.”
Regina nodded and looked down at her folded hands on the bar top. “I still have to think about it.”
“Go ahead and do that. But…well you don’t have too much time. If he doesn’t show up to that raid on Thursday, they’re gonna come looking for him.” She drained her beer and placed a ten-dollar bill on the bar. “And they’re gonna come here, Regina.” She stood up, gave the other woman a mock-salute, and made her exit.
Regina watched her with gritted teeth and a tense jaw, her fists clenched on the bar as she watched Mary leave. Her mind was racing with so many thoughts, she couldn’t isolate just one and she lowered her head into her hands, taking a deep, shuddering breath.
“You okay, kid?” She looked up at the sound of Jimmy’s voice as he sat down on Mary’s vacated stool, the wood creaking a little bit with his weight. “You’re looking kinda blue. And a little bit green.”
“I’m a verifiable rainbow today, huh?” Regina chuckled, then shook her head. “I’m fine, Jimmy. Just tired. Is it scotch or whiskey today?”
“Bourbon.”
“Special occasion?” Regina teased as she reached for the bottle and a glass, pouring a few fingers, before handing it over.
“Just tryin’ something new before I leave town,” Jimmy informed her. Regina furrowed her brow at that.
“Leaving town?” she asked. “What for?”
“Just a change of pace, kiddo,” Jimmy said, taking a long sip of his bourbon. “Nothing to be concerned about.” He looked around. “This place is dead today, ain’t it?”
“I just opened, Jimmy,” she laughed.
“Still. Usually there’s already a game of billiards in full-swing by the time I come in. And where’s that boy toy of yours?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Regina huffed, placing the bourbon back on the shelf.
Jimmy scoffed. “You know exactly who I’m referring to,” he growled. “That hairy fellow. With the big brown eyes and that love-struck smirk. You two have been making moon eyes at each other all damn week. You really expect me to believe that there was nothing going on there.” He huffed. “Please. Ol’ Jimmy is smarter than that, you know.”
“I never doubted you for a second, Jim,” Regina assured him, patting his hand, “but this time you are way off.”
“Okay,” Jimmy snorted, taking another sip of his bourbon. “You go on living in denial, Sweetie. It don’t help nobody; least of all, you.”
Regina took a deep breath and shook her head, turning to the next customers as they entered and took seats at the bar, next to Jimmy. But she couldn’t help the nagging thought at the back of her mind, the voice that kept repeating a mantra that she was finding it more and more difficult to ignore.
Talk to him. Talk to Max. Call him. Go to him. Talk to him. Talk to Max. Call him. Go to him. Talk to him. Talk to Max. Call him. Go to him.
Over and over and over and over until she could barely think of anything else.
“Brandy,” she called to her waitress, who appeared at her side in seconds.
“Yes, Regina?” the young woman asked.
“I…I have some errands to run that I forgot about,” Regina lied, untying her apron. “Do you think you’ll be alright here while I’m gone?”
“It’s Tuesday,” Brandy said. “Nothing exciting’s happening tonight. Go on. I’ve got everything covered.” There was a knowing glint in her eye and something in her smile that Regina was too scared to question, so she just said thanks and made her way out, encouraged by the mantra in her head.
Go to him.
*****
Max
A knock on the office door disrupted his slumber and Max sat bolt upright, his chest heaving, his eyes frantic as he looked all around, trying to remember where the hell he was.
“Max?” Grace’s voice brought him back to earth and he breathed deeply, running his hand through his hair. “Honey, you’ve got company.”
“Company?” he mumbled, kicking the sheets off his legs as he rose from the futon and padded to the door. He was fully clothed now, though he preferred to sleep in just his boxers (or, sometimes, much less), and wholly uncomfortable to be sleeping that way, though he was painfully aware that this was not his permanent bedroom, nor was it exactly private.
He opened the door, still rubbing sleep from his eyes, and nearly tipped over at the sight of Regina Carlisle standing there, next to Grace. Regina’s face was impassive but he could see the barely restrained joy in Grace’s eyes. She’d been pushing him to apologize since he got there earlier that morning, but now it seemed that Regina had come to him.
What a twist.
“Hey,” he greeted, clearing sleep from his throat. “What…what are you doing here?”
“What do you mean what is she doing here?” Grace hissed. “Isn’t it obvious?” She rolled her eyes, turning to Regina. “Men are so dense,” she huffed and Regina laughed in response, which made Max’s heart swell. Oh, how he’d missed that laugh.
“Yes,” she said. “They really are.” She turned back to Max, her eyes guarded.
“Can we talk?” She eyed Grace. “In private.”
Getting the cue, Grace nodded and started toward the kitchen. “I’m gonna go see what I can whip up for dinner,” she said, by way of explanation. They watched her until she disappeared around the corner, and then Max stood to the side, inviting Regina into the office. She gave him a tight smile as she stepped past and her eyes scanned the room as she walked over to the futon, still messy with his pillows and sheets.
“This is where you’ve been…sleeping?” she asked. “It’s only been a few hours.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t sleep too well last night,” Max admitted. “Not that it had anything to do with you, though,” he hastened to add. “Not exactly. I just…I didn’t really know how to tell you about…you know.” He looked down at his feet. “I’m so sorry, Regina.”
“It’s…it’s not really fine, but I’ll get over it,” she said, honestly. “Right now, though, we should probably talk. Go over plans and…I don’t know.” She sighed, dropping to sit on the futon. “I’m terrified, Max.”
“Your bar will be okay,” he assured her, stepping closer.
“That’s not why I’m terrified,” she huffed. “Not entirely, anyway.” She took a deep breath and looked up at him, shaking her head. “I wasn’t supposed to have feelings for you. Nothing past lust, anyway. And then we started sleeping together and it’s like…I can’t imagine my life without you in it. It’s been a week, Max.”
“Ten days, actually,” Max laughed, sitting down next to her and reaching for her hand. “And I feel the same way, to be honest. I didn’t think that I could, after my father died. I figured I’d always be too preoccupied with revenge to even think about loving another woman. I left Mary because of it, but now…” He trailed off and cupped her cheek, pressing his forehead to hers. “I just want this all to be over with. I want us to be safe and, most of all, I just want you. I want to spend as much time with you as I possibly can, without the threat of death or CJ Alvarez hanging over our heads, you know?” Regina nodded and nuzzled his nose with her own. “Which is why I have to do this. I hope you understand that.”
“I’m trying to,” Regina admitted. “I’m just still so goddamn scared that he’ll…that you won’t…” She trailed off as her eyes filled with tears.
“Hey,” Max whispered, cupping her cheeks in his hands and pulling her face closer to his. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? Not if I can help it. You’re gonna be stuck with me a long, long time.”
“Swear it,” Regina said, wrapping her hand around the nape of his neck.
“I swear on my father’s and my mother’s graves,” Max said. “I’m not going to leave you; not without one hell of a fight.”
Regina gave a watery chuckle before pressing forward, taking Max’s lips in a heated, emotion-filled kiss, to which he passionately responded, reaching for the hem of her shirt. Regina reciprocated, tugging his undershirt up and over his body, before allowing him to lay her down and rain kisses down her chest, reaching for the waistband on her jeans. He pressed kisses everywhere he could reach, his thumbs stroking her hipbones and sending tingles up and down her body, making her shiver and moan and he grinned against the wet spot on her panties, licking a stripe up and stroking her clit through the soaked material. Regina’s hands took hold of Max’s hair as she canted her hips up into his mouth and allowed the feeling of being with him so intimately again take over her body. Max slipped his fingers into the waistband of her panties and tugged them down, over her hips, sliding them off of her and practically ripping them in the process as he finally found the bare juncture of her thighs, diving in with enthusiastic glee.
Regina moaned and reached out for the sheets covering the futon, grabbing a couple handfuls and attempting to hang on as Max ate her, giving her sensations like she’d never felt before. Her legs opened further and she hooked them over his shoulders, holding on for dear life as his tongue and teeth assaulted her senses, sending her over the edge and flooding his mouth. Max lapped it all up, before kissing his way up her body, losing his pants on the way up.
When he met her mouth, they were both grinning into the kiss and Max wasted no time in entering her, swallowing his moan with his mouth, and pressing into her with fervor. They were both mindful of the other bodies in the house, but neither wanted to slow down as it became increasingly harder to suppress their moans and sighs and grunts of ecstasy.
When Max finally emptied himself inside of Regina, they felt their bodies go slack, his covering her like a heavy blanket and her legs wrapped securely around his midsection, holding on for dear life. Max pressed kisses to her lips and cheeks and jaw and neck and chest, before rolling them so that they were on their sides, facing one another.
“Everything is going to be just fine,” he promised on a whisper in her ear. “I swear.”
Regina tried to believe him as she burrowed against his chest. She really did.
Chapter Twelve
Regina
She was tense for the last two days at work. Nobody but Brandy and Jimmy had even noticed, but she couldn’t help but feel like it was glaringly obvious; like what they had been planning was playing on a movie theater screen right in front of their eyes, courtesy of her brain. Regina tried her best to relax as she poured drinks and took orders and cleaned the bar, but her hands continued to shake and her breath was uneven most of the time. She felt like she was constantly on the verge of a panic attack, no matter how hard she tried to stay calm.
Every time the front door opened, she expected a man with a Hell’s Seven jacket to step in and start firing. It helped only moderately that Max hadn’t left her side since their conversation at the Sawyer household. Half of his presence was to keep up appearances that he was still living above the bar, despite the fact that both he and Regina had made the temporary move to the Sawyers’. Grace had taken her grandson and Mary to her parents’ house for safekeeping, while Ray stayed back.
“I’m not going to fire any kind of weapon,” he promised his wife when she insisted that he stop being foolish and come be with his family, “but somebody’s gotta watch out for the kid. He’s just as much our son as Mary is our daughter, don’t you agree?” Grace hadn’t been able to argue with that. So Ray stayed and Regina lived in constant fear that they would be attacked at any second.
“They still think I’m going to show up to that staged raid,” he reminded Regina when he felt her shaking next to him in bed one night. “CJ has no reason to come after me until he realizes that I’m not coming to him.”
“But what if Caesar is lying?” Regina had whispered. “What if he’s really just planning to take you down?”
“He could have done it when he came to see me the other night,” Max said. “He had a guy with him; Flaco. The man’s not very strong or particularly muscular, but he had stealth on his side. He could have taken me out, easily. But he didn’t. Because Caesar is not the one that wants me dead.”
“You really trust him?” Regina asked. “After all he’s done?”
“It’s harder,” Max admitted, “than distrusting him. But yes. I do. I trust him, implicitly. It’s weird, but it’s true.”
So she had trusted Max, despite the anxiety it gave her.
Now she sat here, with Ray, alone in the Sawyer household, staring at the phone and waiting for the call that would tell them whether or not he had survived the ambush. It was more nerve-wracking than the last few days had been and instead of counting the minutes until something would happen, Regina found herself counting the minutes since he left her in bed. She had told Brandy not to show up for work that afternoon and had given her all the tips she had made in the last few days to make up for the night of lost work. Brandy had, thankfully, not asked any questions and had taken the money gracefully, glad to have the night off.
Regina was certain that the young woman wouldn’t be showing up to the bar anytime soon and that, at least, made her breathe a little easier as she continued to watch the phone, her hands playing with th
e rings on her fingers and pushing her glasses up her nose.
“He’ll be fine,” Ray assured her, placing his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. “You’ll see. Max is a resilient young man.”
Regina nodded, even as she felt her chest tighten.
*****
Max
The bar was dark and he was surrounded by men he hadn’t seen in years. Caesar Alvarez was nowhere to be seen (too sick to leave his bed, it seemed), but Flaco was there, standing just feet away, with a stony look on his face. He had a gun holstered on either hip and looked ready to fight the second CJ and his cronies entered.
By last count, Max was assured that they’d be evenly matched and that a few of CJ’s men had either turned or been silently offed just recently, so it was likely that they would get their men. Max didn’t care how many of CJ’s men died, so long as he was the one to put a bullet through the brain of the punk, himself.
If it came to that.
He had promised Caesar that he would make an honest effort not to hurt his son or cause him any permanent damage, but he didn’t know how willing the others would be to keep it. He knew that CJ Alvarez had caused a lot of damage in the Hell’s Sevens and he wasn’t certain that the kid would make it out alive. Part of him didn’t care, but the other part had made a promise to a loving—if somewhat complicated—father. He wouldn’t be the one to take a child away.
Not unless he absolutely had to.
“They’re coming!” somebody exclaimed and everybody threw up their weapons, pointing them toward the door, situating themselves between the makeshift barricades of pool tables and dart boards that they had taken down from the wall. Regina would kill him, but he would replace them. He hoped.
When the door opened, the lights flickered on and they came face to face with none other than CJ Alvarez, whose eyes just barely widened at the sight of them. “Whoa,” he laughed, stepping further into the room with his men surrounding him. “What’s this? A surprise party? Y’all know my birthday isn’t for another three months; this is so unexpected.”