“Sarah, thank you for this.”
“You should probably try it before you thank me,” she said, trying not to sound as stiff as she suddenly felt.
“Not for the food. For being here. I hurt you. I know you’re upset. I know you’re a lot of things.” He swallowed and let her go. “Just, thank you.”
She nodded, her chest tight as Max reached around her and took the plate from her hands. “Sit down. Let’s eat.”
They talked about Carl. Max had been getting updates throughout dinner, and every bit of positive news seemed to lift a weight from his shoulders. The food must have been good enough, because Max devoured two plates of it, though Sarah barely managed a few bites herself. When the meal was finished, they washed the dishes together as they’d done so many times before. After the kitchen was clean, Sarah tried to keep the heavy sighs at bay until she got home, because it was time to leave, and that was the dead last thing she wanted to do.
Looking up from her tote, she watched Max where he stood in front of the sink, staring out the back window. He was tense. It was there in the hard line of his mouth, the set of his broad shoulders and the way his knuckles had whitened where he gripped the edge of the sink. Before she’d thought better, she was beside him, her hand over his.
“Max, is there anything I can do for you?”
“You should go.”
She lifted her hand like she’d been burned, but before she could step back, Max caught her, a warning in his eyes. “If you don’t, I’m going to do something we’ll both regret, and, Sarah, I can’t stand the idea of things between us being any worse than they already are.”
He was right. She should go. To stay would be a recipe for disaster. But instead of simply acknowledging the wisdom of his words and backing out of the room, she stepped closer and did what she’d wanted from the minute she’d arrived. She placed her free hand against the center of his chest and looked up into his eyes.
“What if I don’t go, Max? What if maybe, just for tonight, we put everything else aside, and tomorrow we go back to being whatever we are?”
Those dark brows pulled forward, turning his gray eyes stormy. “What are you saying?” he asked, but his tightening grip as he drew her closer told her he already knew. It told her his answer.
“I’m saying, I don’t want to go.” She moved her hand from his chest to his cheek, where she brushed her thumb against the rough stubble. “And I don’t expect it to change anything.”
Turning into her touch, he closed his eyes and kissed her palm. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t.” She was the only one responsible for the inevitable pain to come, but she couldn’t stop. Didn’t care.
Pulling him closer, she went to her toes and pressed a kiss to his lips.
Max’s arms wound around her back, one hand moving to play with her hair while the other went lower, covering her hip. Their mouths held that lingering contact as her body melted into him. It felt so good. But not nearly as good as when his hold tightened, and his lips parted against hers.
Her arms linked around the back of his neck, and she opened beneath the kisses that quickly escalated until Max’s tongue was thrusting hot between her lips, and her fingers were clenching in the fabric of his T-shirt.
“Tell me to stop, Sarah.” Her back met the counter, and then Max was hard against her. “Tell me if you don’t want this.”
Her breath was ragged, her heart racing. “Don’t stop. I want this.”
A guttural sound ground against her ear, making her clench with need. She looked up into Max’s gorgeous face. His eyes burned over her as their ragged breaths mingled in the scant inches between them. “Max, please,” she whispered.
He searched her eyes a second longer, and then his mouth came down over hers in a savage assault of clashing tongues, teeth, and lips. Her legs wrapped around his hips as he carried her back to the room where they’d spent so many nights together.
When her feet hit the floor, it was all about getting the clothes off as quickly as possible. She ripped her shirt over her head, wrestled out of her bra, and shucked her jeans and panties all at once. Max was just as efficient in getting rid of his T-shirt and jeans. And then she was backing onto the bed as he rolled on a condom before crawling over her, the hunger and intensity in his eyes enough to set her on fire.
“Just tonight,” she whispered when Max was braced above her, their eyes locked. The words were for her as much as him.
“Just tonight,” he answered, pushing deep with one long stroke. “Sarah.”
Then he was moving inside her, telling her she was beautiful, perfect. Telling her he missed her and wanted her more than he knew how to handle. Telling her more than that with his eyes and his mouth and the reverent touch of his hands.
Max had been telling her for weeks he didn’t want her love, but in that moment, she knew down to her soul that he needed it.
* * *
He hadn’t wanted to sleep. But after all the nights of staring at the damn ceiling, on the night when he’d wanted to be alert for every minute of Sarah filling his arms, he’d ended up unconscious. It was the best night of sleep in recent history, and he hadn’t wanted to wake from the dream where a sleep-mussed Sarah was scattering soft kisses around his face, neck, and chest…until he realized it wasn’t a dream at all, and suddenly his hold on his consciousness was iron tight.
“Morning, handsome,” she murmured, a contented smile on her lips. “Sorry to wake you, but I have plans with your sister this morning. I have to go.”
His arms tightened around her, pulling her on top of him. “Five more minutes?”
Her quiet laugh was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. “Five minutes, five hours. Sleep as long as you like. I just didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.”
“I’m glad you woke me. But I meant five more minutes with you.”
She searched his eyes and then nodded. “Are you okay, Max?”
He ran his hand from her smooth hip up to where her hair fanned across her back. Playing with the soft strands while he could, he nodded. Better than he’d been since she left. “Are you?”
Her fingers stroked over his stubble. “Yeah, I think I am. I feel different today.”
“Different how?” he asked, wondering how many minutes he had left on his five.
“Like I think that maybe if friends is still what you want, it’s something I could handle.” She blinked down at him, as his heart began to pound. “I’ve missed you, Max. And I’m not worried about my emotions getting in the way anymore.”
“You’re not?” he asked, his throat suddenly dry as he tried to figure out why getting the best news in the fucking world felt not quite right.
“No, I’m not.” She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his mouth before crawling off him. She was standing naked next to his bed, eyeing the floor before reaching down to scoop up her panties and bra. “So see you around, buddy?” she asked, stepping into her panties, the white cotton bikinis looking hotter on her than anything he’d seen before. Her bra was pretty and simple too. Cotton. White. Sexy as fuck.
She turned to him as she pulled the strap over one arm, then the other, until finally her perfect breasts were contained and his head started working again.
“I mean, unless you don’t think it’ll work.”
“Wait, what? Fuck, no. Sorry, Sarah. I mean yes. I want us to be friends.” Forget that he was hard enough to drive nails through a board. He sat up against the headboard and watched as she bent again, this time giving him the hottest view of her incredible ass while she gathered her jeans and shirt.
Christ.
“Sarah, more than anything I want you to be in my life.” It was the truth. Not exactly the whole convoluted, messy truth, but enough for today’s purposes. “I just want you to be happy.”
“Great,” she said,
bouncing back onto the bed for a kiss. “That was the last one. Just a little left over from last night. I’m good now.” Casting him a quick wink, she crawled off the bed. “See you, Max.”
“Yeah, see you, Sarah.”
Max took a shower and got dressed. He ate breakfast and tried not to notice how empty his place felt without Sarah in it. He rode out to the hospital and tried to ignore that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach every time he thought about Sarah being ready to be friends because her emotions weren’t in the way anymore. He talked to Carl and CJ and a nurse he cornered and tried not to wonder where the line for friends was drawn with Sarah. At least for a while, it probably meant texting her instead of calling when he had something he wanted to share with her, like that Carl was doing well and had asked about her, along with seven other cops and significant others who’d been at the hospital that morning.
He and Sarah texted back and forth a handful of times. But the relief he’d experienced with the first few easy exchanges had worn off, leaving him with an uneasy feeling in his gut as he stared at an emoticon message with a time stamp from the hour before.
What the hell was the matter with him?
He’d gotten everything he wanted. One more night of Sarah in his bed, her confident assurance that she could handle being friends, and a smiley face on his phone.
Walking up to the second-floor room with the bay window overlooking the street, he shook out his arms. Rubbed at his chest. But damn it, his gut was screaming at him that more than ever, things were wrong. He’d felt like this before, the day when he’d faced off with that junkie with the gun. When he’d known, known things were about to get critical.
That lives were on the line. Futures.
He looked around the freshly finished room that was going to sell this building for him. At the pale-sage walls and the white trim, the tall ceilings and the vintage crystal light fixture. The window seat with a bird’s-eye view of a neighborhood perfect for a couple. A family. A life.
Jesus. He rubbed at that aching void in his chest again.
This was his favorite room in his house, but the only time he spent in it was calling Sarah. He hadn’t filled it with so much as a comfortable chair or even a cushion for the window seat.
Why?
Because he knew it wasn’t really his. Not forever.
He had a plan. It was to sell this house. And so he let it sit empty.
But he didn’t have to.
He stared a minute longer and then took a deep, bracing breath.
Pulling out his phone again, he called Sean. “Hey, man, I need a favor.”
* * *
Four hours later, Sean had just pulled away and Max was on his way up to the house when Molly’s text came through.
Glad 2 hear U&Sarah got UR sitch straightened out. She said she’s finally ready 2 move on. Guess thats gd 4 Dave. Date 3 2nite but Sarah says she’s thru counting, whatever that means :-)
The recently replaced device clattered to the walkway as Max stood, clutching at his chest and wondering what the fuck was happening beneath his ribs. If this was what Carl had experienced two days before. Excruciating pain was ripping through the center of him like someone had just sunk a hatchet in it and started to hack, followed by a shooting sensation down his arm like he’d made a fist so hard the bones within were threatening to crack.
She couldn’t be going out with that other guy. Not after last night. Not when he’d just—
Fuck!
Maybe that was what had changed. All Sarah had needed was the right guy to compare him to, and she’d seen that Max really wasn’t the man she wanted. It was what he’d wanted—if you could call hating something with everything you had, but still believing it was for the best actually wanting it. And now he and Sarah could move forward as friends. So instead of imagining Dave gloriously struck down by lightning, maybe Max should be thanking him for giving him exactly what he’d wanted. A way back into Sarah’s life.
He tried to think about hugging Dave, but all he got was the look in Sarah’s eyes when she’d showed up at his place and what it had done to his heart. Basically the exact opposite of what was happening now. Sarah had made him feel alive. She’d made him feel connected. She’d made him feel loved. And somehow, someway she’d made him feel like he could love her.
Like they could love each other.
Only now there was Dave.
Max rubbed a hand down his face, his breath coming too hard to be healthy.
Damn it, what was he supposed to do now that there was some guy out there with a solid chance of scoring a piece of Sarah’s heart? He could let her go. Step aside. Be happy for her.
Or he could stop being the guy too afraid of letting her down to risk letting her in. He could stop trying to take the choice out of her hands and trust that Sarah was every bit as smart and capable as he’d been telling everyone she was, and let her decide for herself what she wanted for her life. For her future. He could stop trying to protect her, stop trying to protect himself, and finally just say what he meant.
“Fuck that. I’m fighting for her.”
Chapter 21
Sarah was just getting out of the shower when the intercom buzzed. Thirty minutes early? What if she hadn’t heard the door or even been home yet? Would he have left?
Throwing a towel around her, she ran for the intercom and panted, “Come on up.” She darted back to her room where she threw on the first things she could find and grabbed her purse.
A knock sounded at her door, and she rushed down the hall. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she called through the panels as she undid the locks. “But you’re earl—Max?”
He stood in the doorway, one hand braced on either side of the frame, his chest rising and falling like maybe he’d run from his place over to hers.
“Max, what are you doing here? Are you okay?”
He shook his head, wild eyes raking over her before looking past her into the apartment beyond. “Is Piper here?”
“No, just me,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. “Why, what’s going on?”
He swallowed and then started in. “I’m an asshole, Sarah. A complete idiot who’s been fucking things up with you since the day we met.” He drew a breath and took a quick glance back over his shoulder. “Can I come in?”
She nodded, too stunned by his proclamation to say anything else.
“Baby, you’ve got to believe me when I tell you that I’ve tried so damned hard to do the right thing with you. But for all the rules I make around you, I just keep getting it wrong.”
“Max, what are you saying?” she asked, not knowing where this was coming from or where it was going, whether that racing in her chest should be fear-based or maybe…something else. There was too much happening in Max’s eyes to read.
His hands were on her upper arms, like he thought he needed to hold her to keep her there. Which was crazy considering the way she’d grabbed his forearms and was holding him just as hard, not willing to risk letting him turn away until she understood what exactly had brought him to her door.
“I’m saying that I’m scared to death of being the reason you’ll end up hating me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I could ever hate you, Max. Be mad at you? Yeah, sure. But hate you? No. You’re one of the best men I know. If you’re worried because you don’t feel the same way about me, or want the same things I do—”
“That’s not it.” He looked at his hands and let out a short, humorless laugh before releasing his hold on her arms. Which meant she should probably let him go too. “I’ve told you a little about my family. About what it was like for Molly and me when we were kids.”
It sounded like they’d grown up in a war zone. “I remember. Your parents fought a lot.” His father sounded like a verbally abusive tyrant, and his mother like she should have taken her kids and go
ne. Sarah knew his father had died after he left school and that his mother lived somewhere on the South Side.
“My mom is miserable,” Max confessed, guilt in his eyes. “But when she was younger, once in a while, you could still get her to smile. It was actually pretty great when she did. But living with my dad…” He closed his eyes, like he was seeing a past he hated to revisit. “It killed that part of her. By the time she got out, she was a drunk. Bitter. Certain that if she’d left the asshole when she was young, she could have had a whole different life.”
“So why didn’t she?”
Max walked over to the window and stared out. When he turned back, his eyes were haunted, filled with regret. “Because of me. Because every damned time they went at it and she screamed that was it, she’d had it and she was taking Molly and leaving—I’d beg her not to go. I’d follow her around the house, Sarah. I’d cry and promise to do anything, as long as she didn’t leave.”
For a moment, Sarah could only stare. The thought of this big, strong man as a vulnerable child pleading with his mother broke her heart, but not as much as the other part of what he’d said. “She was going to take Molly and leave you?”
“She didn’t think my dad would let her take me. And then when I was older, we looked so much alike that I think she didn’t want to.” He cleared his throat and met her eyes. “Yeah, she wanted to take Molly for years and years, but she didn’t. She stayed, for me. And Sarah, to this day, every time she looks at me, that festering resentment is right there in her eyes.”
It was reprehensible. Sarah hadn’t been a fan of Max’s parents from the few stories she’d heard, but after this? Now she wanted to drive over to Max’s mother’s place—the one he paid for—and just shake her. Demand to know how she could have done something like that. How she could have been so selfish. So cruel. How she couldn’t have loved him enough to want to protect him!
Instead, she took a slow breath, releasing it in a steady stream while she tried to get her temper in check. “Max, I’m so sorry. I don’t understand how any mother could do that to her child. Let you feel responsible for her choices. Make you feel like you weren’t worth protecting in the first place. I know I said I could never hate you, but in this moment, I think I really hate your mother.”