by Marni Mann
“Suit yourself.” She traced her finger over the window, and after a few minutes of silence, she glanced at me. “How much of your time am I going to be lucky enough to get?” The excitement in her tone was gone. In its place was apprehension.
Her question reminded me of something Eve would have asked.
Something Scarlett would fucking lecture me about.
“Kristin, you know how busy I am.”
“I know. That’s why I’m asking. I need to know what I can expect from you.”
The same thought had been on my mind during the last few times I saw her. I hadn’t come up with a conclusion. With this new merger, I had a feeling I’d be working even more, traveling between all three offices until we found a process that worked for everyone.
“When I’m in town, I promise you’ll get as much of me as I can swing.”
Her smile was weak, but it was there. “I’ll take whatever I can get, I guess.” She turned her head straight, looking out the windshield, gripping and squeezing the top of her seat belt as it rested across her tits. “You know, when we were engaged and you were working for your old agency, you weren’t as busy as you are now.”
“That’s because I have triple the client load.”
“That’s not even what I’m talking about.” She put her feet down and tilted her body toward me, her face resting on the corner of the seat. “You were just more present. When I was with you, you listened to everything I said. I never had to repeat myself. You didn’t look at your phone as much. You were able to relax and breathe, and I didn’t feel like your brain was totally consumed with work.”
“Why don’t you tell me how you really fucking feel?”
“I’m being kind.” Her tone softened. “The truth is much worse than what I’m describing.”
I shook my head, baffled at how she could think I wouldn’t have changed. “I own a goddamn business now. I have hundreds of agents working beneath me. We just built a second office, and we’re merging with two more. I run a fucking empire, Kristin. My brain might be just a tad bit busy at times.”
“I miss that guy. The old version of you, I mean.”
I sighed, tired of everyone telling me how I needed to be and how I wasn’t enough and the changes I had to make. If it wasn’t Scarlett, then it was Eve, and now, it was Kristin.
I didn’t understand why they couldn’t accept me for who I was and just shut the fuck up about it.
I pulled into a parking spot in front of the high-rise building that Kristin and I were going into, and I turned off the car. That was when I felt a vibration in my pocket. I took out my phone, and James’s name was on the screen.
Fucking Christ.
Before I opened the door, I turned toward Kristin and said, “Listen to me, the guy you’re looking at is the same guy you knew back then. I’m just a hell of a lot busier now. I travel more, and I have too much shit going on in my head. If you’re not feeling me, then maybe what we have going on here isn’t a good idea.”
She stared at me for several seconds, as though she were thinking about what I’d said. And then her lips finally parted. “You know it’s everything I want.” Her voice became so goddamn soft. “It’s all I think about. Don’t take that away from me.”
I nodded toward her door, signaling for her to get out, and I did the same. Just as we were walking up to the building, my phone vibrated again.
I held the door open for her while I gazed at the screen.
James had called four times in five minutes.
Something was fucking wrong.
“Kristin—”
“Please just answer the call. I’ll wait for you in the lobby.”
She continued to walk inside, and I released my hold on the door handle.
Then, I pressed the screen to accept the call. “James—”
“Thank God you finally answered.” She sounded so fucking panicked. “It’s Eve, Max. She’s been in an accident, and I didn’t know who else to call.”
My feet froze over the goddamn pavement.
Eve?
Has been in a fucking accident?
It felt like someone had just punched me in the fucking gut.
My hand went into my hair, and I pulled at the strands. “What the fuck are you talking about, James?”
“The hospital in Milan called me. I guess I’m listed as her in case of emergency. There was an accident. She was on a bike, and a van hit her.”
“Oh, fuck no.”
“It’s bad, Max. They said she’s hurt, and they’re taking her straight in for surgery.” There was so much fucking emotion in her voice. The only time I’d heard her this fucked up was in one of her movies. “I’m filming on location, and if I leave, I’ll be in breach of my contract.”
My brain was trying to keep up, but this was too much to process.
Eve was in a hospital, going into surgery.
We didn’t know what was going to happen.
We didn’t know what was wrong.
We only knew that it was bad.
She was over four thousand miles away.
She needed someone there.
That person was going to be me.
“I’m headed to the airport right now,” I told her.
She let out a sob. “Max, I’m freaking out. I can’t lose her. Do you hear me? I can’t lose my best friend. She means everything to me. I don’t know what they’re doing to her or if she has a good doctor or—”
“James, take a breath and hear me out. I’m leaving for the airport right now, and I’m going to take care of everything.”
“Okay.”
“She’s going to be fine.”
I didn’t know if that was true, but I had to fucking say it. And I had to fucking believe it because I didn’t want to live in a world that didn’t have Eve in it.
“You’re going to take care of her,” she repeated, like she needed to say it to convince herself, to calm herself down.
“I’ll let you know the second I get there and I find out what’s going on with her.”
“Okay.”
It took a lot to shake me.
But hearing that something had happened to Eve rocked me harder than when Kristin had called off our engagement.
“I’ll text you the name of the hospital,” she added.
“James?” I’d been pacing the front of the building, but I started to move back toward the entrance. “I won’t let anything happen to her.”
“I know.”
I hung up and slid the phone into my pocket, and my eyes connected with Kristin’s as she stared at me through the glass walls of the lobby.
I opened the door and said, “I have to go.” I reached into my other pocket and took out my wallet, removing a hundred dollar bill that I handed to her. “I don’t have time to take you back to your apartment, so use this to pay for a car service.”
I released the door, turned around, and headed for my Aston Martin.
“Max!” I heard Kristin shout from behind me. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll text you from the plane,” I said over my shoulder, and I got into the driver’s seat and drove straight to the airport.
Thirty
Eve
The first thing I felt was warmth. It was in my chest, trickling down my arms and legs like little bursts of electricity. I’d never felt this toasty or this comfortable before. And it wasn’t just a heat that was spreading but almost a happiness, too, that made the black behind my lids as pretty and as sparkly as the ocean.
I moved my toes, flexing them up and down, crossing the first two and then wiggling the rest.
I could tell there was stiffness in my ankles; I couldn’t move them as fast as I wanted to. They didn’t hurt. Not even a little. There was far too much hotness in my muscles for that.
“Eve,” I heard.
It was a voice I recognized.
A voice that made me want to smile.
A voice I loved so much.
“Max.” Th
e voice that came out of me didn’t sound like mine. It was hoarse and extra scratchy, and it made me think my throat should be sore. But it wasn’t; I couldn’t feel it.
What I did feel was my tongue. I swore, it was a hundred pounds.
“That’s it, baby,” he said. “Come back to me.”
Come back?
But I hadn’t left. I was right here, in this cozy cocoon.
“Open your eyes, Eve.”
I knew they were closed.
I wasn’t sure why.
And, when I tried to lift my lids, they felt as heavy as my tongue.
Maybe I just wasn’t ready to wake up from this nap yet.
If it were a nap I had taken.
Surely, it was, and I’d just fallen asleep while I was tanning out in the sun.
“Can you open your eyes and look at me?”
I wanted to do what he’d asked, so I focused solely on them. My chest rose and fell so fast as I tried to lift my eyes. My toes twitched. And, with more effort than I thought it would take, they finally cracked.
A medium amount of light crept in.
Medium, like the blinds had been opened just a notch.
Not like the sun was sitting directly over me.
I pushed harder and got my eyes halfway open, my pupils burning from the air. I felt them water, and I blinked away the drops. And then I drove them up the rest of the way, taking in the first thing I saw.
It was Max.
He was standing over me. I saw concern. Sleepiness. I thought I saw fear.
“Hi.” My voice was just as scratchy as it had been before, my tongue even heavier.
“Gorgeous girl, thank God you’re awake,” he whispered. “You scared the fuck out of me, you know that?” He bent down, and his mouth pressed against my forehead.
He kept it there.
The air he exhaled tickled the top of my head.
Each breath sent me more of his smell.
Leather and spice.
It was a beautiful scent, just like the blackness I’d seen that gleamed the same way as the ocean.
“You scared the fuck out of me.”
But why?
How?
I’d just been napping under the sun. Or maybe it wasn’t the sun because the light wasn’t strong enough. Maybe this was his room. Or the couch.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
What is that noise?
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Max?”
“Yes, baby.”
“What’s that sound?”
“It’s your heart rate; it’s being monitored.”
“My…what?”
Max moved several inches back, his lips no longer touching me. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t know.” I turned my head, and a wave of exhaustion hit me.
But, with this new view, I saw that there were two windows to my right. A television was across from me. A white blanket was over me, and large, rectangular armrests were on each side of me. I turned my head to the other side and saw a machine. There was a pole, too, that had bags hanging from it.
This wasn’t Max’s bedroom.
This was a hospital room.
And the machine had wires coming out of it with round pads at the end that were attached to my chest. The bags that hung from the pole were hooked to a tube that was taped to my hand.
“Max…”
It was all starting to come back to me.
I was riding my bike to the store. I wanted a bottle of wine and some focaccia. I cycled down my cobblestone street and stopped where it forked.
I heard something behind me and looked over my shoulder.
It was a van.
I moved as far to the right as I could. I peddled faster. The street was so narrow, as most of them were, and it was squeezed between the back side of long residential buildings.
I slammed against one.
I bounced to the left as my body flew off the seat of the bike.
I hit the van.
I tasted the stone that I had fallen against.
Pain.
It was blinding.
There was screaming. Loud voices. Cries.
A pulse so intense, I felt it in my ears.
That was all I could remember.
And, now, I was here.
“Max…”
“I’m right here, baby.”
Here?
Here was…Italy.
Milan.
A job I had accepted, designing Horse Feathers’ new summer collection.
Here because Max hadn’t asked me to stay.
He wouldn’t give me the things I wanted.
More.
I’d broken up with him at the soft opening.
Then, I’d flown to Miami.
I’d wanted to tell him I loved him.
But Kristin. She was there.
I’d changed my phone number.
We were done.
Forever.
“Max…”
“Listen to me, Eve, your body has been through so much in the last two days. Waking up and talking to me have taken a lot out of you. I know you probably have so many questions, and I promise you’ll get all those answers. But, right now, I want you to close your eyes again and go back to sleep. I’ve already alerted the nurse, and she’ll be here any second.”
There was gentleness.
On his face.
In his voice.
“But I—”
“Trust me, you need the rest. It’s the only way you’re going to heal.”
Heal?
I looked down again and saw that my arm was in a cast. It went all the way to my shoulder and stopped at my wrist. And then there were the pads on my chest that were causing the machine to beep, beep, beep.
Is my heart okay?
Are other parts of me hurt?
What happened to me?
The beeping got louder, faster, and two women were suddenly standing over me. They were speaking in Italian.
I didn’t know what they were saying.
“Max?”
“Eve, you need to relax and bring your heart rate down. Focus on your breathing, baby. Slow breaths—can you do that for me?”
Slow breaths.
Baby.
Baby?
There was more Italian. More faces staring at the machine. More movement. A syringe poked into the thing that was taped on my hand.
Warm.
There was so much more warmth.
And then there was darkness.
My eyes no longer felt like they weighed a hundred pounds. Maybe just half that weight, and they were extremely sensitive. Still, I was able to lift my lids without putting in every bit of strength I had.
When I finally got them open, I saw Max. He was sitting in a chair beside my bed, his arm extended over to me with his hand resting on top of mine. His eyes were closed, and I could tell he was sleeping.
It was darker in the room. The blinds were still open a crack, but the moon shone in instead of sunlight.
Time had passed.
I just wasn’t sure how much.
“Hi,” I whispered.
His lids flicked open, and his stare caught mine. He immediately leaned forward in his chair, so he could get closer to me. “The nurse gave you something to knock you out. She was concerned you’d start to panic and rip out your drain.”
“My drain?”
With his other hand, he brushed the hair out of my face. Once all the strands were moved, he continued to stroke my cheek. “You punctured your lung, and they had to surgically repair it. You have a drain in until tomorrow.”
“What else is wrong with me?”
“Several broken ribs, a tear in your shoulder, fractured wrist, elbow, and humerus. They repaired your arm during surgery, and you now have several pins holding it together.”
“Oh my God.”
“You’re going to be fine.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ve had every fucking doctor who has walked through your door assure me of
that.”
The worry had worn on him. He seemed as exhausted as me.
He looked soft.
I’d never seen him appear that way before.
“How did you get here?”
He rested his chin on the armrest that was only a foot away from me. “James called me when she found out you were in an accident. She couldn’t come because she’s filming, but she might as well be here. She calls every ten minutes.”
I laughed, and a scorching hot, burning sensation seared across the sides of my stomach.
I pulled my hand away from his to put pressure on the places that hurt.
“It’s your ribs,” he said. “They’re going to take a while to heal, and there’s nothing they can give you to speed it up. I’ve asked, trust me. But you’re on an IV pain med, and I can tell them to up the drip if you need it.”
“No.” I could feel the pain med in my system. I was sure it was the warmth that pulsed through my body and the fuzziness in my head. “I don’t want any more drugs.”
“I don’t want you to be in pain.”
I could handle the hurt in my ribs. It was minimal compared to how bad it could be, and I was sure the meds were the reason I was able to tolerate it.
The real pain came from the man sitting next to me.
“Why are you here?”
“James called me—”
“No, Max. Why are you really here?”
It took him several seconds to respond. “When I heard you were injured and in the hospital, there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be.”
“Why?”
“Because I care about you. You know that. I’ve been saying that to you for years.”
I licked the inside of my lips, feeling how dry and cracked they were, not knowing the last time any water had touched them. “Tell me something, Max. Tell me something I want to hear.”
His hand was still on me even though I’d pulled mine away. He moved his down my leg, stopping mid-thigh. “When I thought I might lose you, I lost my fucking mind. I screamed at every goddamn person in this hospital until I got the answer I wanted to hear.”
Disappointment washed through as fast as these meds were pumping through my veins.
“That’s all you’ve got?” I asked him, hearing my voice crack.
He shook his head, his eyes wide, his lids red with tiredness. “What do you want from me, Eve?”