13. Max
Max
D raven opened up his front door the moment I stepped in front of it, as if he’d been waiting for me to arrive.
He looked like he must have just finished a workout. He’d clearly just showered, his hair still falling in damp, dark waves around his face.
He motioned for me to come inside and then closed the front door behind us.
He was shirtless and had loose black sweatpants on, slung low around his waist so that the V-shape at his lower torso was more visible than ever.
Draven always looked strong but right now he looked like a Greek god—his golden skin chiseled from marble, his tattoos adorning him in intricate, beautiful patterns.
“Everything’s fine,” I assured him. “I called Kane, and he said there’s nobody he doesn’t recognize at the bar tonight.”
“Take off your shoes,” Draven said. “Finally got all my floors cleaned yesterday. Couch still hasn’t arrived, because I imported it from Italy, and shipping’s a bitch. All I have is the bed. Come lie down with me.”
He was barking out commands like a goddamn drill sergeant.
I kicked off my shoes, leaving them by the door and walking in through the living room.
“You propositioning me?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows slightly. “If you want me to fuck you, then yes.”
His house was all dark wood. I’d seen Mr. Marsden’s old house many times over the course of my life, but ever since he’d moved out of this one and into a new one, it was like this house remained a time capsule from another era.
Draven had been putting his touch onto every corner of it, though.
The first thing I noticed was that it smelled incredible in here, like a mixture of his spiced body wash from his recent shower and a flickering candle I saw burning over in the kitchen.
He’d knocked down the wall that used to separate the dining room from the living room, which had been flimsy drywall—one of the things that had always looked so out of place in an otherwise wooden house.
The light probably looked ten times better in here during the daytime now.
I glanced over at the kitchen again as we walked past it and noticed another telltale sign of Draven. There were more than a few bottles of whiskey near the edge of the countertop, in various states of fullness.
He stopped to grab a glass that was half full of amber liquid before continuing on down the hall.
So you drink whiskey after a workout and shower. No wonder you made fun of my electrolytes.
He continued briskly down the hall, but I paused at the start of it, watching him.
“Why were you so freaked out about the DMs you saw earlier? How did you know that particular guy would be a problem?”
He stopped and turned, looking me up and down. “Just a hunch.”
“Bullshit.”
“Listen, I don’t know the difference between that guy and any other, but his commenting history was vile.”
“You were looking through things that thoroughly?”
He furrowed his brow. “I’m not fucking around, Max. You’re not getting hurt on my watch.”
He turned and disappeared into the bedroom. I let out a sigh, frustrated all over again.
I didn’t know why Draven had decided to take me on as his pet project. Why he wasted his time on me.
Why a guy like him would have any interest in me at all was incomprehensible, but somehow, he kept showing up.
I’d had girlfriends in the past who hadn’t paid this much attention to me.
I found him in the bedroom, kicking back on his bed with the glass of whiskey in his hand.
If he’d looked like a Greek god in the entryway, he looked like a splayed out king in here.
Sitting lazily up against his tall, carved headboard, sipping liquor, his pecs, abs, and biceps still prominent even when he was relaxing.
Two dim lights flanked each side of his bed.
When he looked at me like that I felt like I was his possession. And the worst part about it was that I liked that feeling. I felt drawn to the empty spot on the bed next to him.
If I got in there beside him, would he finally let me kiss him?
Or was that still off limits?
I watched his lips, craving him like a drug all over again, but I pulled myself back to reality. I wanted to get into bed with him, but…
I had things to sort out before that.
“You going to finally tell me?”
His eyes were like liquid silver as he met my gaze. “No.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“Keeping my privacy isn’t being an asshole.”
“You said you were going to tell me about your life. What changed?”
“I remembered why it’s never going to happen. Like I said, privacy.”
“Yet you want access to my security cameras? Since when do you care about privacy?”
“I care about preventing you from getting killed, Max.”
I let out a frustrated sigh and popped off my backwards hat, tossing it onto one of the nightstands beside the bed. I ran my fingers through my hair, closing my eyes shut for a moment before looking back at Draven again.
“Yeah. And I don’t fucking understand that, either.”
“What?”
“Why it’s any of your business keeping me from getting killed or whatever the hell you’re so obsessed with. I got along on my own just fine for 22 years before you got here, Draven?—”
“22 years, huh? You protected yourself when you were an infant?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. I know I’m younger than you, and I know I’ve never traveled to a big city or been on an airplane or been in trouble like you. But I’m not helpless.”
“Not helpless. But you sure are too fucking trusting.”
“Haven’t trusted you since the moment I met you.”
He shook his head as he took another long sip of whiskey. “Even of me. That first night, you believed me the moment I said I was Lily’s boyfriend. I could have been lying. I could have been anyone .”
I clenched my jaw. “And you still could be. You won’t tell me what the hell happened in Montana?—”
“I did things I shouldn’t have, Max,” he interjected. “And other people did, too. End of story. I was responsible for… too many things.”
“You were responsible for other people? Do you have some sort of estranged child , Draven?”
He puffed out a hollow laugh. “No.”
He got up from the bed, standing tall again, polishing off the remaining whiskey in his glass at an alarming rate. He set the glass down on the nightstand, gently moving my white ball cap to the side.
“Whatever. You don’t want to tell me shit. You certainly don’t owe me shit. Give me a blanket and I’ll go sleep in the back of my truck tonight, if you’re so concerned about me going home alone.”
“There was a kid,” Draven finally said, pacing over to one edge of the room. “Not my kid, but somebody else’s kid. He was at my party, when he shouldn’t have been.”
My blood went cold. “How young?”
“Twenty,” Draven said. “Told us he was twenty-two.”
A flood of relief filled me, hearing that at least this “kid” was an adult.
Draven paced over and opened the front doors of the armoire cabinet on one end of the room and pulled out yet another whiskey bottle, going back over to replenish his glass.
“Devvy Franklin was in my house, drinking at age 20, and getting into a fight that he couldn’t win. Ended up bleeding, broken, bruised, and then later on when he found himself in a hospital bed getting his stomach pumped for alcohol poisoning, he was told he had a minor concussion, too.”
“Fuck.”
“Devvy Franklin also happened to be the son and heir of Franklin Cooperative,” Draven said. “I’m not going to get into it right now, but let’s just say… my father has always hated me, but now he wishes I didn’t exist. I jeopardized the biggest business deal of his career.”
“Who gives a damn about a business deal when a kid could have died?”
“My point exactly,” Draven said. “My dad isn’t exactly a warm-hearted type. To say the least. Never was to me, never was to anyone else other than my brother.”
“So now you’re ostracized?”
He watched me. “I have dirt on him, too.”
Draven told me a story about finding his father’s second cell phone—a burner phone—on his desk.
Apparently, his dad was Randall Lyons, a prominent figure in their home and also a massively hypocritical person.
He’d go to church, preaching love and loyalty to family, but then he’d cheat on his wife relentlessly, also dabbling in hard drugs.
His father lived a secret double-life, and Draven had discovered it. It was the only leverage he had against his dad, but he also didn’t want to reveal it to the public.
He wanted to do it “the right way,” whatever that meant.
It didn’t seem like Draven was trying to protect his father’s secret.
It seemed like he was just trying to protect himself .
“So you don’t want to just show the world the screenshots and photos you found of him?” I asked.
“If my father comes down, he comes down like a bowling pin. So many other people will be hurt.”
“And you want to protect certain other people?”
Draven nodded. “There are some people I deeply want to protect.”
I furrowed my brow.
So there was something more.
Something behind Draven’s voice when he talked about his father. He hated him, without a doubt. Finally, he was telling me something —but I knew there was more, and I knew this wasn’t the right time to push him on it.
There had been more that happened with his father.
“Your dad… wasn’t good to you, growing up?”
Fuck .
Put those words back in .
I’d already asked too much, but now, when I looked at Draven, I saw that the liquor was getting to his blood.
He was going to tell me more.
He puffed out a bitter laugh. “I got hit more than I got hugged when I was growing up, if that’s what you mean.
He… acted like it was his right, as a father, to put me in my place.
One time when I was four, I ran into his office crying from a scraped knee, and he shoved me down on the floor.
I was interrupting a business call. Very important stuff. ”
I suddenly felt like I had a lead weight in my stomach.
No .
Draven seemed… impervious. Like nothing, or no one, could fuck with him.