Contracted

by Marni Mann

  “I felt the same way. In fact, I was so pissed when I found out that I chewed Brett a new asshole because he never told me. I mean, he told me Kristin had ended her engagement to Max, and I’d heard she’d cheated on him. But no one ever told me that she’d cheated on him with a woman.”

  That was a part of the story I hadn’t known either.

  I thought back to the pictures I had seen on Kristin’s social media accounts. They were all focused on her career. None showed any glimpses of her personal life, so there was no way I would have known that she was in a relationship.

  “I’m still trying to process this,” I told her.

  “It took me a minute, too.” She giggled. “Just so you know, I came right out and asked Max. I had to. He and Kristin just seemed a little too cozy tonight at the restaurant opening, so I pulled him aside and asked him if he was fucking her.”

  My eyes widened. “You didn’t?”

  “Oh, but I did. That’s when he told me the whole story. Once I heard it, things just started to make sense. What I thought were lovey-dovey moments between them was really more of a mutual respect for one another. They have a long history, and now, they have a solid friendship, but it’s nothing more than that.”

  I believed her; I just needed to hear it again. “So, they’re really not fucking?”

  “Hell no.”

  I moved my fingers to my temple. “I’m definitely relieved to hear that. Admittedly, I was furious at the thought of them getting back together.”

  “I can tell there’s a but coming.”

  “There is because I’m still gutted over all the other issues. He came all the way to Italy, and he didn’t even tell me he loved me or that he’d move to LA or that he wanted a family or that he was willing to meet me somewhere in the middle.” I took my hand off my head and pushed it against my heart. “I still don’t even know why he came.”

  “He’s an ass, and I want to strangle him. And I’ll tell you right now, if I’d found out he was fucking Kristin, I would have choked him out at the restaurant.”

  I laughed as I pictured this happening. Tiny, petite James standing on the toes of her four-inch heels to reach tall, muscular, over-twice-her-size Max.

  My bestie certainly had my back.

  “At least, now, you can look at his social media accounts and not want to puke at the shots of him and Kristin.” She hiccuped. “That’s a bonus, I’d say.”

  She was right.

  But those same pictures hurt for an entirely different reason, and that made it just as difficult to look at them.

  “You need to go to bed,” I told her. “We can pick this back up when you’re rested and sober.”

  “I’ll call you after my second cup of coffee.”

  “Love you,” I said and hung up.

  I stayed on my bed and held the phone in my hand.

  He’s not sleeping with Kristin, I repeated in my head.

  The two of them were nothing more than friends and business partners.

  My heart was beginning to calm down as the relief really started to sink in.

  When I glanced down at the screen of my phone, I tried to stop myself from clicking on one of my social media icons and searching for Max’s profile.

  It was useless.

  Within seconds, I was on his page, and I was staring at the picture he’d posted a few minutes ago. It was of Brett, James, Jack, Samantha, Scarlett, and himself with the caption, Opening night at Rosemary’s.

  Max was in a navy suit with the most masculine silver tie. Both brought out the blue of his eyes. His beard had been trimmed short. His smile was wide and incredibly sexy.

  God, I missed that man.

  Thirty-Three

  Max

  Earlier today, while I had been hanging out in Jack’s office, the two of us discussing some of our clients, an alarm had sounded from his phone. He’d turned it off and told me he had to go run an errand and asked if I’d go with him.

  I should have questioned what the hell the errand was.

  Because had I known it was picking up Lucy, his seven-year-old daughter, from school and taking her to a high-end kids boutique, I wouldn’t have gone. I had no fucking business shopping in a store like that, especially in the middle of the goddamn day when I had mountains of contracts to sort through.

  But, here I was, in the passenger seat of Jack’s car, listening to Lucy go on and on about her day while we drove through downtown Miami. The music that played through the speakers was for her—a pop band with hardly any talent, who had worked us against our old LA agency and eventually signed with them. That made me dislike them even more.

  Jack pulled into a spot that was a block down from the place, and just as I got out of the car, Lucy wrapped her tiny hand around mine.

  “Come on, Uncle Max. We have so many goodies to buy.”

  I walked slower, so she could keep up, and after a few steps, she stopped.

  “Nope, you have to do it this way.” She lifted her front leg and skipped. “That’s how we’re going to go into the store. No walking allowed. That’s the rule. You ready?”

  Lucy was the only person in the world I’d skip down Biscayne Boulevard for.

  “I’m ready,” I told her as I raised my front leg the same way she had, and I took my first skip.

  It had been a while. I was a little fucking rusty.

  And, to make matters worse, Jack was laughing from behind me.

  If Lucy wasn’t watching me so closely, I would turn around and flip him off.

  “Uncle Max, you need to go higher, like this.”

  I tried to mimic the way she’d shot up from her back leg and pushed off her toes, knowing I looked like a goddamn fool.

  “Higher, higher,” she called out, squeezing my hand, giggling at the same time.

  The humidity was brutal. Sweat had already started to form under my suit, and the higher I went, the harder it was to hold her hand because of how short she was.

  I was never fucking happier when I saw the entrance to the store.

  I held the door open for her, and she walked inside, her cheeks red, her smile as big as when I watched one of my musicians go off on a solo jam.

  As Jack came in last, one of the saleswomen walked up to us and said, “Is there anything I can help you with?”

  “My daddy and Uncle Max are going to help me look for stuff,” Lucy said to her. “Thank you.”

  The saleswoman gave her a warm grin. Then, she glanced at Jack and me and said, “If Daddy and Uncle Max need some assistance, I’ll be right over there.” She pointed to the register in the middle of the store.

  “We appreciate it,” Jack said.

  While still holding mine, Lucy grabbed on to her father’s hand and moved us, so we stood in front of her. “Here’s the plan. I need a new dress for Joey’s birthday party and some leggings to wear after dance class and a pair of jean shorts with flowers on them because, the ones I have, I spilled chocolate sauce all over the flowers, and they look like they’ve been pooped on.”

  “Did you get all that?” Jack asked me.

  “I think we can manage,” I said.

  I still couldn’t believe I was in this fucking store.

  Lucy released our hands and pointed to the right. “Uncle Max, you go over there and look.” Then, her finger went to the left, and she said, “Daddy, you go there.”

  She disappeared toward the middle, and I assumed that was the territory she had claimed for herself.

  The quicker I found her a dress, the faster I could get back to work.

  I could handle this.

  As I went up to the first display, I looked directly over it to find Lucy and saw her head bobbing between the racks. “What’s your favorite color?”

  I needed a starting point. Color seemed the most obvious.

  “Titans blue,” she said.

  I’d seen the way Samantha had decorated Lucy’s room, so I should have known better. Lucy’s uncle, Samantha’s brother, played for the
Titans, and Lucy was obsessed with the team. So much so that Jack flew his girls to almost every game.

  Titans blue had to be the goal then.

  On the first display, the dresses had ruffles and they puffed out like ballerina skirts and they were all in pastels. Before I moved on to the next section, knowing these were all wrong, I quickly peered over at Jack. He was holding a tiny pair of shorts in his hand, and I could tell he was searching for flowers.

  The guy actually looked like he was having a good fucking time.

  “You really like this dad gig, don’t you?” I asked him.

  Jack and Samantha had hooked up eight years ago when Jack signed her brother, and they had all been attending the NFL draft. That weekend, Jack had gotten Samantha pregnant, but the two of them had lost contact, and Samantha never told him she’d had a baby. Only this year, Samantha and Lucy had come back into Jack’s life. So, even though Lucy was seven, this dad thing was new for him.

  He was mastering it like a fucking champ.

  He gazed up, and his eyes locked on mine. “She’s the best part of my life.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not shitting you, Max.” He glanced over at Lucy, who was doing cartwheels down one of the rows. “She makes my life better, and she’s the reason I want to work so hard and hit my numbers and build this empire. Everything is for her.”

  He wasn’t bullshitting me.

  I could hear the honesty in every word.

  It just surprised me. Jack wasn’t the kind of guy who had talked about having kids. Yet I knew he and Samantha weren’t going to stop at one.

  The same was true for Brett before he had met James. Since they’d gotten engaged, he’d told me more than once about his desire to get her pregnant.

  What the fuck is happening to my boys?

  I turned, moving toward the next area of clothes. These dresses were in pink and had bumblebees all over them. They weren’t what I was after, so I slid to the third rack and finally found the right shade of blue.

  I swiped through each dress, looking for one that didn’t have so many bows on it, and I came across an outfit that didn’t fit in with the others. Something about it was demanding my attention, so I took it off the rack and held it in the air.

  “You really don’t see yourself having kids?” Jack asked. “Because, I’ve got to say, the way you are with Lucy tells me you’d be a hell of a dad.”

  I ignored him, continuing to stare at the tiny navy suit that I was holding in my hand. It was so similar to the one I’d worn to the opening of Rosemary. The tie was silver with thin navy stripes, and it was paired with a light-blue shirt. There were football-shaped cuff links pinned to the top.

  It was fucking adorable.

  “Man, can you imagine dressing your little boy in that suit?” Jack said as he walked up behind me. “Having him sit on the bathroom counter while you get ready. Having his own pair of fake clippers that he uses on his face, so he can think he’s trimming his beard like you. You squirting some gel into his hand, so he can do his hair like yours.”

  I glanced from the suit, to Jack, and then back.

  “You take him to the party he’s getting all dressed up for and pull up to the house and watch him get out of the car and run off with his friends. You feel so fucking proud because he’s a piece of you, and that piece wants to be just like his dad.”

  I’d never thought about any of that before.

  I’d never held a little boy’s suit in my hand and pictured how it would fit into my life.

  I’d never even considered the possibilities it presented.

  But, as I listened to Jack and as I looked at the outfit, the idea didn’t freak me out. It didn’t make me want to leave the store, unlike the way I’d felt when I first came in.

  What it did was make me picture a scene in my mind.

  “How do you do it?” I asked him as I thought of a little boy with eyes identical to mine. “How do you find time to get it all done? Because, shit, I don’t know how to balance anything. I had work on one side, and my relationship with Eve on the other, and Eve never won.”

  “When you’re with someone you want to give your time to, it comes natural. You stop strapping yourself so thin. You hire more support staff to delegate to. And you learn how to say no. That’s one of the biggest things. I just can’t say yes to everything anymore.”

  That made sense.

  But it was never that I hadn’t wanted to spend my time with Eve.

  I’d enjoyed every second I was with her. And when I wasn’t with her, she was on my mind.

  It was that I’d made it a choice, and work always came first. In my head, she had been my reward for when I got all my shit done. But it was never done and I never got caught up and I never gave her the attention she needed.

  And she sure as hell deserved that attention.

  But just because I had fallen short didn’t mean she did.

  She’d given me so much.

  She came to Miami whenever I asked her to, and she did whatever I wanted the whole time she was here. She attended events with me, she constantly watched me work when we were supposed to be hanging out, she listened to business calls because I insisted on answering every one that came in.

  She never bitched once.

  What had I done for her?

  When I asked myself that question, my answer was that Eve had gotten more than any of the women I’d dated since Kristin.

  Was that fair to Eve?

  Hell no.

  I’d given her practically nothing besides sex, vacations, and gifts, and she still stayed with me. I’d gone all the way to Italy and couldn’t say the words she wanted to hear. She kicked me out of the hospital and I made no attempt to go back and fight for her.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  I’d ruined everything.

  It had taken me this long to realize it.

  I sighed, my attention shifting over to the saleswoman, who was approaching us.

  “I’m sorry. Someone must have accidentally put that on the wrong rack. It belongs in the boys section on the other side of the store.” She held out her hand. “I’m happy to take it from you.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Max, you’re looking at that thing like you’re going to buy it,” Jack said. “Hand it to her, so we can find Lucy a dress and go get ourselves a drink.”

  He was right.

  Why the hell am I holding this?

  I gave her the outfit, and as she started to walk away, something didn’t feel right.

  “Hey,” I said, calling out to her.

  She turned around to look at me.

  “I’m going to take it.” I reached inside my pocket and removed my wallet and credit card. “Can you get it wrapped up for me?”

  She took the card out of my hand. “Absolutely,” she said before she headed for the register.

  I felt Jack staring at me.

  “Do you have something you want to tell me?”

  I laughed. “You mean, did I get someone pregnant? Hell fucking no.” I glanced back at the salesclerk, watching as she reached inside the sleeve to scan the price tag. “I don’t know, man. Something told me I needed to buy it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, sounding shocked. “Ten minutes in a children’s store, and I’ve already got you building a wardrobe for a kid you don’t even have.”

  “Shut it.”

  “Maybe Eve should start paying me to take you shopping.”

  I punched his shoulder. “She probably would, too.” And then I returned to the rack of dresses, searching for the perfect one in Titans blue.

  The tiny blue suit had been hanging in my closet for a week. Every time I walked in to get dressed, I would look at it. And each time, I would wait for my heart to start pounding or for my hands to grab it and toss it into the trash.

  Neither of those things happened.

  In fact, the more I stared at it, the more I tried to picture a child in my life.

&
nbsp; Not like I’d done at the kids store where his eyes had resembled mine.

  This was visualizing a balance—thinning out my schedule to be home earlier and leaving a few hours later, spending less time on the road, hiring more staff and delegating.

  Even though the idea felt so foreign, it was possible.

  And, every time my brain went in that direction, it always came with images of Eve.

  I wanted to reach inside my head and pull her out and wrap my fucking arms around her.

  Every day that passed that I didn’t talk to her hurt like hell.

  So, I looked at her pictures on social media. Half of them were selfies, and God, she was gorgeous. She’d show small sections of her face with beautiful scenery behind her. The rest were straight shots of Italy’s landscape, and each one came with a heart.

  She loved it there.

  But I wanted her.

  With me.

  In the same bed as me every single night.

  I want to wake up next to you every morning. I want to eat breakfast with you when we get home from the gym. I want to jump in the shower with you as you’re getting ready for work. I want to see your face over candlelight. I want your lips to be the last thing I kiss before I close my eyes.

  I wanted the same thing as her.

  I was tired of grabbing air and seeing an empty place in my bed.

  Something was missing in my life.

  It was her.

  It was always her.

  I knew what I needed to do.

  I couldn’t do it all today, but I had some time before she returned.

  While standing in my closet, my shoulder resting against the little navy suit, I took out my phone and opened a new email.

  Eve,

  You deserved more.

  I know that.

  I wish I’d given it to you.

  I wish you’d let me give it to you now.

  —Max

  Thirty-Four

  Max

  Unknown: Hi.

  Me: Who is this?

  Unknown: It’s Eve. It’s taken me a few days to respond to your email because I just needed a second. It was a lot to take in.