His Holiday Crush

by Cari Z

  Chapter Twelve

  Dominic

  “It’s getting dark.”

  “I know.” There was no way I could not know that at this point, I was staring out the window so often.

  “And Max still isn’t back,” Hal went on, inexorably, hammering out his observations like a damn battering ram.

  “I know.” As if I didn’t feel Max’s absence with every square inch of my skin.

  “This is not okay, Nicky.”

  “Fucking hell!” I stopped pacing and spun around to face my brother, glad that the girls were over at Phee’s house right now, letting Baby play with her ancient chihuahua. “I know that, Hal! You think the fact that he’s out there somewhere is making me happy? Because it’s not!” My hands clenched into fists, and I had to remind myself to breathe. “I told him we needed a little space for a while, that’s all. I didn’t tell him to drive off for hours on end.”

  Hal closed his eyes and rubbed his temple with the heel of his hand, a sure sign he was getting a headache. When the migraines came, they hit him hard, and I was caught between wanting to make him go lie down and yelling at him for making this whole thing out to be my fault. Which it wasn’t, even if it didn’t feel that way right now. “I was trying to look out for you,” I said, deliberately keeping my voice soft.

  “I appreciate that,” Hal said, and I could tell it wasn’t just a line from the sound of his voice, “but I was already looking out for myself. That’s why I went outside, to get the worst of it out where the girls couldn’t see it, and so I didn’t give in and start shouting at Max.”

  And instead, I shouted at him. Fuck.

  It was my turn to rub a hand over my face. “Even if he meant to ask you beforehand, I was so pissed at him for working with Ariel to set this up,” I said. “He couldn’t know how things were before, though.”

  “No,” Hal agreed. “All he saw were my little girls hurting and a way that he thought he could make it better. And he and Ariel have been friends ever since I started dating her. I’m not surprised he wanted to give her the benefit of a doubt.” He sighed. “I could have done that better myself.”

  “Hal, no—”

  “She’s been fighting depression for years, Nicky.” Hal crossed his arms, gripping his biceps hard enough the skin blanched. “She’d get treatment for a while, take pills for a while, maybe get better for a while, but these things aren’t simple. Right? You know that better than me.”

  “Yeah. I know that.” I had my own treatment plan from the Veteran’s Administration for my PTSD, and I was required to keep at it in order to keep my job with the force. Hell, I’d relied on it just last night to help get me home. There had been no one to follow up on Ariel except herself…and Hal. And he hadn’t, or at least figured he hadn’t done enough of it. “She still didn’t have to leave.”

  “She made a mistake,” Hal said tiredly. “One that I’m not sure I can ever forgive her for, but she made my girls happy today, and I reckon that means I’ve gotta work with her limits. For now, at least. I talked to her at the end of the call, and she said she’d try.” He shrugged. “It’s the most civil conversation we’ve had in two months, so I’m taking it as a win. And now,” he pointed toward the darkening sky, “we need to get Max back home.”

  “We can’t call him.” He’d left his phone here, and it had been buzzing with messages for the past few hours, until I finally turned it off. I didn’t have a spare phone in the Jeep…

  I snapped my fingers. “LoJack.” I got out my phone and pulled up the number for the precinct. “I’ve got LoJack. I’ll have the desk sergeant look him up.”

  Hal visibly relaxed. “Great idea. I don’t want to have to explain to the girls why Max isn’t home in time for dinner.”

  I didn’t, either. Guilt pooled in my gut, taking away my appetite and replacing it with pulsing anxiety. I needed to find Max. I needed to explain, to tell him I was sorry for how I’d acted earlier.

  “Martie?” I said as soon as she picked up. “I need a favor, and I will owe you big-time for this. I need you to access the LoJack on my car and tell me where it is.”

  There was a long pause. “Did you get drunk and drive it into a field or something?” she asked. “Or has it been stolen?”

  “Neither. It’s with a friend, but he’s been out a long time, and I want to make sure that—”

  “Oh, wait, is this about Max?” She laughed. “Why didn’t you say so, Nicky? Yeah, let me look you up. Hang on a minute.”

  A few minutes later, I had a location: Barton Park Trailhead. What the hell was he doing at a trailhead this late in the afternoon? “He’s not hiking, right? He wouldn’t go hiking in the snow, in the park with moose and bear and cougars, at night, right?”

  “Let’s hope not,” Hal said, which wasn’t as reassuring as I was looking for. “Look, I’m gonna see if Phee can watch the girls a little longer. I’ll come with you and—”

  “That’s just going to make them nervous,” I pointed out. “I’ll go. If I can’t find him in half an hour, I’ll call you and we can get a search team mobilized.”

  I was dead serious about that, too. If something had happened to Max, if he’d gone off into the woods and fallen down and broken a leg or something, if he was lying there in the snow right now, freezing to death…

  “I’m going.”

  It took fifteen minutes to drive to the trailhead—nothing really took more than fifteen minutes to drive to in any single direction in Edgewood. There was only one car there, a very familiar Jeep with nobody inside of it.

  I got out of the truck, turned on my flashlight, and immediately started calling. “Max,” I shouted, heading for the trail. There was a single fresh set of footprints in the snow.

  “Max!”

  I used the flashlight to follow his path, calling his name and getting no response. My heart was racing, and I struggled to keep my breath under control. How far had he gone? Why wasn’t he answering? Did he not hear me or could he not respond?

  “Max!” I roared.

  “D-Dominic?”

  I looked up from the ground, where I’d been focusing all my attention on footprints.

  Max was standing a few yards away on top of a boulder at the edge of a clearing. His clothes were covered in snow, like he’d been there a while, not moving.

  My heart leaped, and I bit my tongue for a long moment to keep myself from begging him to come down or, worse, shouting at him for scaring the shit out of me.

  “Max,” I said raggedly once I had control of myself, more or less. “Are you okay?”

  He looked like he was frowning under his hat. “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s wrong?” He got down off the boulder and walked over to me.

  “What’s…Max, you’ve been gone all day.” I couldn’t help myself—I reached out and grabbed his arm, needing the contact. “I didn’t mean for you to leave like that,” I said, absolutely sincere. “I really didn’t. I was just upset, and I thought Hal was out back having a crisis, and I panicked, but I shouldn’t have made you feel like you needed to go.” I shivered, and I didn’t think it was from the cold. “You only did what you thought was right.”

  “But it wasn’t right,” Max said, unduly gently. “It was presumptuous of me. I’m not a family member, and I wasn’t here for the worst of it, and—”

  “Don’t say that—you are family,” I said, my whole chest aching like I’d just been kicked. “You are, and you deserve to be with us. We want you there, all of us, whether we’re arguing or not. The second you stepped out the door, I felt like—like I might—”

  The words tangled on my tongue.

  “Max,” I said softly, squeezing his arm. Please don’t walk away from me. “Please.”

  Max’s nose and cheeks were bright red from too long out in the cold. His lips were chapped, his eyes were a little puffy, and his hair was probably a
s flat as a pancake under that hat of his. He was still the best thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to pull him into my arms and tell him that, hold him close and spill my soul out to him, tell him that I knew I’d made a mistake but I could learn from it, that I’d rather he never left again, not like this morning, not at all.

  “Max,” I repeated, and when he licked his lips, I was filled with the urge to kiss him.

  “Dominic, I—”

  Suddenly, my phone began to ring. It was Hal. “Shit,” I muttered, pulling the phone out of my jacket pocket and taking the call. “Hey.”

  “Did you fuckin’ find him or not?” Hal demanded. “I can’t call the cavalry until I know, and I’ve got three of my guys on hold ready to head out if he’s still missing.”

  “I found him,” I said, looking up at Max, who hadn’t moved an inch yet still felt as though he’d pulled back somehow. Damn it. “We’re heading home.”

  “Good. Tell him not to drive like a fucking maniac.”

  I ended the call. “Hal says to drive safe.”

  “Yeah, sure he does.” Max smiled, but it didn’t really reach his eyes. He chafed his upper arms with his hands. “Wow, it’s cold. I didn’t notice before…”

  I put the phone in my pocket and turned my flashlight down the hill. “We better get back. Oh, here. It was pinging a lot earlier.” I pulled his phone out of my pocket and handed it over.

  He turned it on and took a quick glance at his messages, biting his lip—something from work, then? Something good, something bad? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t have the guts to ask a question so personal yet, not after how I’d behaved.

  It took less than a minute to reach the trailhead—not nearly long enough for me to figure out how to get Max and me back to where we’d almost been, but also too long. Max was shivering hard now, and I handed him the keys to Hal’s truck, which was warm inside. “I’ll follow you home.”

  Max smiled kind of wistfully. “Okay, Dominic.”

  This time, my name falling from his lips had no warmth behind it.

  …

  At home, the girls were waiting for us, and they jumped on Max as soon as he walked in the door. Hal hung back a bit, watching with a worried expression. “Where have you been?” Marnie demanded. “We’ve been waiting for you all day.”

  “I’m sorry,” Max said, ducking his chin as he looked at them and smiling abashedly. “I lost track of time while I was out.”

  “You didn’t even get to play with Baby! Look, we taught her a trick.”

  To my surprise, it was Steph who said, “Sit, Baby!” The little dog sat down so rapidly that I figured it was a command she already knew, but the girls were in raptures at how good they were at teaching her.

  Max smiled at them and gave the dog a pat. “That’s really good,” he congratulated them. “You guys will have her rolling over and playing dead in no time.”

  Marnie wrinkled her nose. “Why would you want a dog to play dead? That’s just sad.”

  “Yeah,” Max agreed. “Maybe it is.” He took his cold-weather gear off and sat down on the couch in the living room. “Want to play one of your new games?”

  It looked like our apology would have to wait. Max had outmaneuvered us by bringing the girls into it. There was no way they didn’t want to play the old-school board games their dad had bought them, and so it was Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land until bedtime. Max excused himself as well, letting us know he’d be right back down.

  I stared at Hal. “What’s going on with him?”

  “Avoidance,” Hal said with a sigh. “Max is a pro at it. You’d barely have known his father was such a shit, the way Max acted when he stayed with us before he left for college.”

  Fuck. “I told him I was sorry.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Nothing, that was when you called.”

  Hal made a face. “Maybe—”

  “Daddy! You need to brush my hair!”

  “Go.” I waved him on. “Go be a dad. I’ll…I don’t know, make some coffee or something.”

  “Tea,” Hal suggested. “Or at least decaf. Otherwise, I’m not gonna sleep a wink all night, and I need to after today.”

  “Sure thing.” I went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of decaf on autopilot, my hand working smoothly although my mind was completely occupied elsewhere. I listened to the thumps and bumps upstairs, the girls talking in their high-pitched voices and Hal’s soothing bass-baritone.

  I listened for Max, too, and heard a low murmuring meaning he was probably on the phone. Who was he talking to? What was he thinking about? I didn’t want him to think that we didn’t care. My apology had sucked, so I’d just have to try again.

  Max and Hal came down at the same time ten minutes later, Hal finished with his bedtime stories and Max clearly fresh from the shower. “Ooh, coffee,” he said brightly as soon as he saw my cup. “I’ll be right back.”

  Hal followed him into the kitchen. I heard a brief murmur, then Max was back, sitting in the recliner to the other side of the Christmas tree. It stung because I’d expected him to sit on the couch with me. Hal was right. Max was distancing himself. Shit.

  Max sipped his coffee and, as soon as Hal sat down beside me, said, “So I’m going to leave tomorrow morning.”

  My heart stopped for a moment, freezing in my chest as Hal made an unhappy sound in the back of his throat. “You said you were staying through Sunday.”

  “I know, but I got a text that my car is finally done.” Max looked down at his hands for a moment. “I also got a call from Marcus. Our newest client has some more work he’s thinking of bringing our way, and Marcus wants me to evaluate it as soon as possible, so…”

  “Surely that can wait one extra day,” Hal insisted, leaning forward and taking the reins of the conversation. I let him because my hands were trembling, and my mouth was dry enough that I didn’t think I could speak. “Is this because of this morning? Max, it was a miscommunication, that’s all. You don’t have to go.”

  “It could have been bad for the girls.” His voice was hard, but I knew it was directed more at himself than at us. “I didn’t stop to think about what kind of expectations it could set up. I put you in a bad position, and I didn’t even remember to tell you about it until it was already happening.”

  “It was an accident,” Hal pointed out. “And maybe it wasn’t the worst thing that you didn’t tell me about it, because I’m not sure I would have let it happen otherwise, and Steph’s been talking more today than she has for the past month.”

  “Still.” Max looked down at his coffee then over at me. “I should have put you first. I forgot to do that. I’m just…” He sighed. “I think I need to go home for my own sake, honestly. I need to get back a sense of normality at work, and the only way to do that is to actually work. I brought this client in, and I need to do well by them if I’m going to make partner.”

  Oh fuck. Max wanted to leave for good. He actually wanted to leave, and it wasn’t just because of the girls. He wanted to go back to the city. I’d been working up the nerve to ask him to stay through New Year’s. Clearly, that was shot, and the chance for anything more was…well, it had always been impossible. Max was going back to his fancy life in New York City, and a week here with us—a week with me—wasn’t enough to change his mind. Especially not when, the first second something went wrong, I did the same thing everyone else in town had done years ago and turned my back on him.

  I had ruined his Christmas.

  I had ruined everybody’s Christmas.

  Some of my dismay must have shown, because Max’s eyes softened. “It’s okay.”

  It was the furthest from okay we could get, but I couldn’t form the words to argue that now. My heart felt like it was splitting in two.

  “Everything’s okay between us,” he said. “I promise.”

 
“Okay,” I said hoarsely after a minute. God, that was a shitty way for us to be, this lukewarm state, but it was no better than what I deserved. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Have you eaten anything since breakfast?” Hal asked, doing his best to interject a semblance of normalcy back into the conversation. “We’ve got Christmas dinner waiting for you.”

  Max smiled. “Is it the kind you microwave first?”

  “It’s a honey-glazed ham that I baked in my own oven, jackass,” Hal said. “And brussels sprouts, sweet potato casserole, and chocolate cake that the girls wanted because we haven’t eaten enough sugar yet this holiday season.”

  “Sounds delicious.”

  Max ate dinner, and Hal and I picked at a little more. We tried to get a conversation going, but my words kept failing me. How was I so good at talking when I was at work and so bad at talking when I was with someone I cared about? After we all finished and Hal started up the dishwasher, Max made sounds about heading up to bed.

  I finally found my voice. “Do you have a ride to the mechanic’s tomorrow?”

  “I was going to ask Hal,” Max said, but he sounded ready to be convinced otherwise.

  “Let me do it.”

  Max looked at me for a long moment then nodded. “Okay. Maybe you should spend the night here, then. I want to get a kind of early start, and I know you have work tomorrow.”

  A faint sense of relief washed over my icy core, thawing it a little. “I’d love to stay.” I didn’t even care if we did anything. I just wanted to be with him for as long as I could. This…whatever it was we were doing together, our interlude, our moment—it was almost over. After this, he would go back to New York, back to being Hal’s friend, back to someone who barely knew me and didn’t want much to do with me.

  If this was all I had left, I’d take it.

  We went upstairs together, and Max headed straight for the bathroom, his left hand rubbing his right arm. “I think I’ll take another shower,” he said quietly. “I still feel kind of cold.”