The other two had recovered when Max turned around again. They circled him and tried to pretend they weren’t still in pain. Max looked at me long enough to throw me a wink.
Is he enjoying this?
Collar Guido leapt at Max with a pathetic battle cry, but Max caught him mid-air and, turning into his jump, effortlessly tossed him into the nearby trash cans. His landing tossed them all loudly around the ally, forcing rats to scamper out of their winter hideouts and past our feet. Unfortunately, Pipe Guido saw his opportunity, and with both hands, he hit Max squarely in the stomach with the pipe like a baseball bat.
Spit and a little bit of blood shot out of Max’s mouth as he fell backward onto the ground, landing on his back. Goatee Guido was already on his feet, lifting his large boot in preparation to kick Max in the face.
“No,” I yelled shortly. The Opalescence went cold and tingled against my chest. Like it was telling me what to do, my hand shot up and raw, untamed power shot out flinging Goatee Guido at the wall. He bounced off it like rags in a hamper before landing on the trash cans.
Luckily, Max was too occupied to see me use those powers. Pipe Guido had made an unskilled attempt to kick him once he’d stood up, but he easily blocked it. Max’s right leg came up and struck Pipe Guido in his kidney with the flat top of his shoe. Then he pulled the same leg back to his body and without putting it down, he launched the bottom of his foot directly at Pipe Guido’s face.
“Enough,” Collar Guido yelled, holding his bloody nose with one hand and pulling a small knife out of his pocket with the other. He pulled back to regroup, and Pipe Guido stepped behind him.
“Shit,” Max said as they both approached him.
My heart stopped as the knife sliced through the air at Max. At the last second, he somehow managed to dive into the open space between the two men, landing nimbly on the ground behind them. As he twisted around to get back up, Max pushed against his back and drove both his feet into the rear of Collar Guido’s knees, forcing him to land hard on the ground. Collar Guido screamed out, as both his knees popped and slammed against the pavement.
“Max!” I called out, throwing him a broken broom handle from one of the trash cans. It hurtled through the air and, as if the make-shift staff was an extension of his own arm, Max caught it and the force of the weapon followed through to spin around his body. The splintered end landed first across Pipe Guido’s face, drawing blood. The other end caught up quickly, striking him across the back of the head.
Max followed through and used the end of the broom’s solid tip to poke Collar Guido’s jugular. Hitting someone there doesn’t require a lot of strength, as I saw by Collar Guido falling to the ground and struggling to breathe. One brilliant strike after another with the staff, the sound of wood against bone rattled off the brick walls at us. A cracking noise was next, as the staff struck and broke Collar Guido’s nose.
Like an instrument, Max continued skillfully using the staff in the symphony of their defeat. Watching him was entertaining, so much so that I didn’t see Goatee Guido get up and come at me from behind. He threw himself on my back, reaching his hand into my shirt and pulling the Opalescence off. “Ha,” he yelled into my ear.
“Is this what you came for?” I hissed, throwing my elbow into Goatee Guido’s stomach, pushing him backward. Then I turned and thrust the palm of my hand into his nose. He set his arm to throw a forceful punch, but before he could hit me, my foot shot up between his legs.
I grabbed the back of his swaying head with both of my hands and thrust it down upon my waiting knee. His eyes were closed before he hit the ground, unconscious and bleeding. I slipped the Opalescence back over my head before Max had finished with the other two. Pipe Guido ended up in a crumpled mess on the ground, and Collar Guido escaped, limping down the alley.
Max came over to me, dropped the broom handle and kissed me softly. I could taste blood from his split lip in my mouth. “You okay?” he asked me.
“Is this what you do on all your dates?”
Chapter 23
One early morning, months later, I was sleeping in Max’s heavenly, oversized bed when the light sounds of one of my favorite songs tickled me awake. Max sat on the edge of the bed wearing only a tight pair of trunks and a guitar. I rolled over and wrapped his fluffy white comforter around my naked body and gave him a sleepy, content smile, with my eyes still half closed.
He continued his song and I was drowning deep inside his sound as his fingers danced over the guitar strings. His voice was both invading and inviting. It was like standing at the base of a waterfall and letting its warm, fresh water pour over your head and down your body. I hummed the song along with him, swaying a bit from side to side. Each movement of the strings was like a movement in my heart, another happy moment I’d be sad to leave.
When he finished, he laid the guitar at the foot of the bed and climbed back into the covers with me. He forced his head onto my pillow, kissed me, and stared into my eyes. “Good morning, handsome,” he said. He smiled and the spot where the doctor had stitched his lip a few months before was still a light shade of pink, reminding me what a dead sexy hero he was.
“How come I didn’t know you could sing like that?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. I guess it’s not something I just give to anyone.”
“What’s that on the side?” I said, pointing at the guitar.
“My dad’s signature. He and my mom were really into music when I was younger. I think my sister and I learned how to sing before we learned how to talk. We didn’t even have a TV growing up, just a piano. Sometimes I really miss him, and his guitar makes me feel better—like I have something of his to stay close to. Is that silly?”
I laughed. “Definitely not.” I held up the Opalescence, the only thing I was wearing, and showed it to him. “This was my Mom’s.”
“What was she like?”
“Amazing. I know everyone says that about their mom, or I guess people who like their mom say that about their mom, but she really was. She was gentle, and warm, and so full of love.”
“Hmmm,” he hummed into my ear, “it sounds like someone else I know.”
“Yeah?” I laughed and pretended I didn’t know who he was talking about. Then I kissed him deeply to change the subject.
Time was helping me heal, but Max’s overly inquisitive nature, combined with my complete comfort in telling him anything, meant we could too easily fall into a sand trap of questions that I couldn’t answer.
“So why don’t you sing more often? For me more often. I liked it,” I said.
“I guess I have to be inspired.”
“And you’re inspired this morning?” As he went to speak, I covered his mouth quickly with my hand. “I swear if you say some dribble about me inspiring you, I’ll have to vomit all over your nice sheets.”
He yanked my hand away and we both laughed as he leaned in to kiss me wildly. I liked kissing him enough that it didn’t even bother me that he had morning breath, or that the stubble on his face was scratchy as all hell.
“It’s not like these sheets are all that clean after last night anyway.” He laughed, slapped me on the thigh, and got out of bed. “What do you have going on today?”
“Ugh. I have to go into the office for a couple hours and get ready for some big meeting that’s happening this week. Exciting, right?”
“I guess it’s exciting if you make it exciting. You going to stop by the gym after?”
“Maybe.”
He looked like he might have been a little disappointed when I said that, but if he was he didn’t say it. “Come on, you’re getting so much better with your balance, and I still can’t believe how fast you’ve picked up some of the blocks and strikes I’ve been showing you.”
“I learn fast.”
“Oh yes, I know.” Mr. Gym-body was already dressed and ready for his workout.
The only workout I was planning that morning was several reps with my full coffee mug.
“Do you have plans tonight?” he asked me.
“Just hanging out with some friends, you?”
“Work. But nothing after.” He lifted his eyebrow. “When do I get to meet these supposed friends of yours?”
I laughed and dragged my feet over to the coffee pot. “When I’m ready to share you.”
Being with Max made everything else that happened in my life a little easier to digest. He grounded me from the intense spinning of the world around us. He made me feel good about myself; so good that keeping him away from Equinox and the people there got harder as time went on. He hadn’t met any of my family either, at least not in the context of us being together. The connection I once had with all of them had yet to repair itself, which was the only thing Max ever thought was suspicious about me.
“You talk about your family a lot. They seem like such a huge part of your life, but you never see any of them,” he said to me a few weeks after we first started dating.
I brushed it off as being busy, with him, and work, and everything else. I couldn’t have begun to explain to him that my detachment from them was about my exploration into a life that I couldn’t share with them, or him for that matter. Knowing them as well as I did, and knowing that they knew me as well as they did, it would only be a matter of time before one of them forced my hand.
My family’s size and closeness already created a dynamic that was too hard for Max to truly understand. No matter how I said it, there was no way to explain to him what the change in my relationship with my family was about, not without risking what we had.
“Okay, so tonight’s taken by your friends. When do I get a piece of you?” Max asked as he chugged a protein shake.
“You got a piece of me just last night, Mister,” I said. “Tell you what, this Sunday, you and me. I’ll cook.”
“Oh yeah? Since when do you cook?” Max came up behind me as I poured my coffee and wrapped his strong arms around my stomach. “What are you going to make?”
I turned around tilted my head back to look at him. “Something fast and something we can eat in bed. Maybe eggs.”
“I love sex and eggs,” he said before kissing me. “You have a deal.”
With coffee in hand, I went to the window and tightened Max’s terrycloth bathrobe around my waist. He was so much taller than me that the tail-end of the material dragged behind me on the ground as I walked. His condo had an amazing view of the Providence River, and his window was just high enough to be able to see the surrounding streets start their lazy movement. I pulled my cell phone out of the robe’s pocket and looked at the time, 10:00 a.m.
Okay, so maybe it’s not so early.
It wouldn’t be the first time I was late to work because of Max.
I was only on my second rep with my coffee when Max ran past me with his gym bag. “Late. Gotta go,” he said, reaching in and kissing my neck. “Stay as long as you want, just lock the door when you leave. Or . . . you could call out of work and stay in bed until I get home.”
“Bye,” I said, throwing a packet of raw sugar at him as he walked out the door.
* * * * *
The fleeting months of winter had somehow landed me in a normal cycle, if normal was ever something you could describe my life as. For the first time since I found out my mother was murdered, I felt like I was moving forward. I would never forget what happened, but like the cut above Max’s lip, I was slowly healing and accepting that life goes on.
The inherently relaxed environment at Equinox made it easy to not dwell on that or any of the other things that pulled at me from the past. Without any visions, ghosts, or gangs of thugs to remind me of my obligation to it, the Opalescence became more like a piece of inherited jewelry, and less like a burdensome duty with powers I didn’t understand yet.
“You got another message from your sister,” Talia said to me when I got to work the next morning. “Are you going to call her back?” The pink message paper she handed me was crumpled up and in the trash can before Talia even finished speaking.
Victor was still floating around Providence, which didn’t do anything to ease my discomfort around my family. After I finally signed those papers, they were able to put my mother’s house on the market. They’d gotten a few low-ball offers, but none they were willing to accept. Knowing Victor, he would never leave town until he got his cash. Knowing me, I would spend a lot less time around all of them until he did.
“Damon was asking about you the other day too,” Talia said as I scrolled through my email. “He said he hasn’t seen you since your sister’s birthday party.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ve been busy.”
“With Max?” Talia asked, sitting on my desk.
I kept reading through my emails, or more appropriately, deleting emails without reading them. These days my focus was rarely on my job.
“Hello? What’s going on with you?” Talia asked, waving her hand in between my computer and my face.
I sighed and turned away from my email. “Sorry. What did you say?”
“What the hell is wrong? Did I do something?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Then why don’t you ever talk to me anymore?”
So much of my life involved magic these days. Keeping it a secret meant sacrificing close relationships with those that weren’t in that world, like Talia. And it meant I had to be more guarded than usual.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
She shrugged and pouted a little. “Is it because I’m dating Damon again? I know things have been weird between you and your family, but if that’s it, I won’t tell him anything you don’t want him to know, I promise. I just want things with us to be like they were before, you know . . . best friends forever.”
That was not a phrase I had ever used in my life, with her or anyone else for that matter. “I swear it has nothing to do with you, or Damon. I’ve just been in my own little world. And yes, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Max.”
“How’s that going?” Talia asked.
My feelings for Max grew every single day we were together, and we had been together a lot in the last few months. He was patient with me, so patient, as I slowly figured out who I was and freed myself from the reclusive thoughts that had dominated my life before him. He never once pressured me to do or say anything more than I was ready to. I had never experienced feelings at that level for anyone before, and I didn’t know how to express them to him, or myself. I spent so much time just allowing myself to be happy that I hadn’t really thought about how to put words to it all. The only thing I did know was that it no longer mattered to me that those feelings were toward a man, especially a man I found as captivating as Max.
“It’s been really . . . exciting,” I said, smiling as I thought more about Max. Just as Talia started to say something else, an IM popped up on my screen. The receptionist was informing me that my sister was in the lobby, and she refused to leave until she talked to me. “I have to go take care of this. I’m sorry.”
“Wait,” Talia said, as I walked away.
“What’s up, sis?” I asked Sydney when I got to the lobby. She was standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed and eyebrows pointed.
“Can we talk somewhere?” she asked.
I brought her into a nearby conference room and pulled out a chair for her, but she didn’t bother to sit down.
“I just want to say that I think it’s really shitty that you haven’t called me back,” she said. “Fifteen messages. That’s how many I’ve left. What if it were important? What if one of the kids were hurt and I needed you?”
I panicked a little. “What happened? Are the kids okay?”
“They’re fine. I’m just saying, it could have been that.�
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“Okay, fine. You know I never check voicemail. So, what’s up?”
“What’s up? You want to know what’s up.” She started pacing the room. “Okay, well, my mom died last summer, and since then my brother has decided to completely abandon me and the rest of his family.”
“Come on,” I said, trying to hug her. “I didn’t abandon anyone.”
“No. You can’t just hug me and think I’m going to forgive you. I’m trying to hold this family together, Hat, and I have to tell you, I’m not doing a very good job of it.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say that you’ll stop hiding out. You know I understand how you work. You avoid things when they get rough, and I tried, or I’m trying, to be patient about that. But you can’t do it forever. Not with us.”
“Syd . . .”
“I can’t figure out if you’re just being selfish, or if you think we don’t all know about that boyfriend of yours. Oh god, please tell me that he’s not the reason you’re hiding out. Trust me, no one cares who you sleep with . . . and it’s not like it was a huge surprise to anyone anyway.”
“Thanks, that’s sweet,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“I’m serious Manhattan. I feel all alone out there. You’re not around, Finn is about as much help as he ever is, and Victor is . . . Victor. I had to tell him, you know, about what you did with your share of the house. He exploded all over me about it. Me. He exploded all over me about something you did. How fair is that?”
“You’re right, it’s not fair at all. I’m sorry.”
“That’s it? You’re sorry?”
“What do you want me to say? Things have been . . . I’ve just been . . . I don’t know. Things haven’t been the same. I haven’t been the same, and I’m trying to figure it all out. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder.”
“How about at all?”
“Syd, I said I was fucking sorry, what more do you want?”
“I want my brother back.”
Secrets The Walkers Keep: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Casters of Magic Series Book 1) Page 19