Chapter 8
Eight
“What we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply
becomes a part of us.” —Helen Keller
This had been the best day Max could recall in a long time. Even the drama of Chloe reappearing on the scene couldn’t detract from the pleasure of being with Lexi again.
He’d forgotten how easy it was with her. In three years of dating, they’d never had a fight that he could recall. Their friends had teased them about being the perfect couple, but they hadn’t minded that. It’d been true.
“Remember what people used to say about us?” he asked as he took a bite of now-cold pizza.
“That we were so perfect, we made them sick?”
“Yeah, that. They were jealous of how easy we made it look.”
“Did you hear that Harry and Trish got married and divorced within two years of leaving high school?”
“No! Oh my God. No way.”
“They were married just long enough to have two kids that they fought over in court for five years. It got really ugly.”
“Wow. That’s terrible. Those poor kids.”
“It was pretty bad. For a while, the kids were living with Mr. and Mrs. Donaldson. My mom is friends with Mrs. D, which is how I heard about it. They moved to California or somewhere out West after school.”
Lexi pushed the second half of her salad across the table to Max, something she used to do all the time. Judging by his grin, he remembered that, too.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, that the other couple everyone thought was so perfect in high school made a total mess of things in the real world,” Max said.
“Do you think that would’ve happened to us?”
“No.”
“How can you be so sure?” she asked.
“First of all, we wouldn’t have gotten married when they did. We were both in college. It wouldn’t have happened until after that. Hopefully, we would’ve been mature enough by then to handle it.”
“Hopefully. It’s nice to play what-if. I did a lot of that when I was isolated from everyone in the hospital. I’d pretend that I was in Vermont with you and our family, and everything had worked out the way I wanted it to.”
He sat back in his chair and gave her a penetrating look. “How many kids did we have in this fantasy of yours?”
“Four. Two of each.”
“What were their names?”
“Madeline, Caroline, Sawyer and Cole.”
“We can’t have a Caroline. I had a one-night stand with a Caroline.”
“When?”
“After my brother Wade’s wedding about six years ago. She was the bride’s cousin.”
“All right, then. No Caroline. How about Abigail? That was another of my favorites.”
“I could live with that.”
“Should we be talking about this stuff?”
“Why not?”
“I don’t even know if I still can have kids.”
Max shrugged. “If you can’t, we’ll adopt.”
“You’re pretty far down the road with this life we’re going to have together twenty-four hours after we saw each other for the first time in years.”
“You agreed with me that nothing has changed between us, so why not make some plans?”
“You need to really think about this, Max. My situation is anything but assured. I have four more years until I’ll be considered cured of my illness, and even then, it can still come back.”
“Are you planning to spend those four years doing nothing until you get the all clear?”
“Well, no, but—”
“No buts. You’re going to live, so why can’t you live with me and Caden? Why can’t we make a life together?”
“Max,” she said on a long exhale. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“You said last night that you came back for me. Here I am, offering you anything you want. Since last night, I realized I’ve been looking for what I had with you since the day I last saw you, and I’d like to think I’m smart enough to know by now that what we had doesn’t come along every day.
It has never come along again for me, that’s for sure. ”
Lexi fanned her face, which felt flushed suddenly.
“I love that you blush now. It’s very cute.”
“It’s an effect of the chemo, and I hate it.”
He shook his head. “You’re not allowed to hate it. I love it.”
“What I said about my health is something you need to think about for longer than twenty-four hours.”
“Let me ask you something.”
“Okay…”
“What if I was the one who’d battled a serious illness and was facing an uncertain future? Would you shy away from me because I might have health problems again?”
“No, but this isn’t your run-of-the-mill health problem.”
“I fully understand what you’ve been through, and it doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t fully understand it in a matter of a few hours. You’d be bringing me into your son’s life. If something were to happen to me, we have to think of him.”
“Something could happen to me, too. The work we do on the mountain isn’t without risks, not to mention my brothers and I are on the Search and Rescue Team, and we like to do all sorts of things that could get us killed.
We’ve had some close calls, here and there, like when Hunter took a bad fall when we were rock climbing, and Lucas nearly died in the fire in the inn.
Shit happens. Life happens. I don’t live in fear of dying. ”
“What about Caden, though?”
“If, God forbid, something were to happen to me, Will and Cameron have agreed to be his guardians. My cousin Grayson put that in writing for me a long time ago.”
“You’ve thought it all out.”
“I had to. I’m a single parent. I needed to ensure that he’d be okay if the worst happened. I’ve always been very close to Will, and now I am to Cam, too. Caden is best friends with Chase, and he loves Molly and Murphy. He’d be happy with them, and he’d have the rest of my family around him, too.”
As he spoke, Max got up and cleared their plates, loaded the dishwasher and wiped the table. “What?” he asked when he caught her watching him.
“You’re very domestic.”
“I have to be, or my house would be a disaster.”
“As the youngest of ten kids, you should be completely useless.”
Laughing, he said, “Sorry to disappoint you, but my mother wouldn’t have tolerated a useless kid, even if he was the youngest.”
“No, she wouldn’t have.”
He held out a hand to her. “Come with me.”
“Where to?”
“It’s a good night for a fire.”
“Every night is a good night for a fire.”
“Even in the summer?”
“In Vermont, yes. In Houston, hell no.”
“Did you hate living there?”
“I didn’t get to spend much time exploring. I was in the hospital a lot. But my parents and grandparents don’t care for it. Too sprawling and too busy for them after living here.”
“I’m sure it was a shock to their system.”
“It really was. All of it was.”
He leaned in and kissed her the way he used to, as if he’d been doing that all along. “Stay here. I’ll get some wood.”
Lexi couldn’t believe the way this weekend was unfolding. When she’d arrived in Butler on Friday, she’d hoped to see Max, to have a chance to explain why she’d disappeared for so long and to hopefully leave with their friendship back on track. She’d never expected him to ask her to stay forever.
And now that he had?
She was preconditioned to expect disaster.
It was hard to turn off the part of her brain that was screaming at her to proceed with caution, to take her time, to protect herself from anything that could hurt her.
Her brain was in an epic battle with her heart, which wanted everything Max was offering and to hell with the consequences.
She’d spent years wishing for what he was offering her. Why in the world did she feel hesitant to take the next step? Her therapist would tell her to go for it, to live the life she’d fought so hard to have. But in trying so hard to survive, she’d forgotten how to enjoy life.
Max returned with the wood and had a fire going in a matter of minutes. “I love fire season.”
“I remember that. Your mother called you her little pyromaniac.”
“Yep, Noah had that title in the Coleman family, and I was the Abbott firebug. I went through a stage where I wanted to be the one to start every fire, but my dad was adamant that I was only to do it under his supervision and in fireplaces or firepits. Nowhere else. I think they were worried I’d burn down the town if they weren’t super strict with me. ”
“You were always the one building the bonfires in high school.”
“I still do them for the family a couple of times a year. Funny that my brothers are the ones who put the fires out around here.” He returned to his seat next to her on the sofa, turning to face her. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m all twisted up inside. You’re offering me everything I ever dreamed of, and all I can think about is how it might be a disaster.”
“It won’t be. We’d never let that happen.”
“I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of falling back into what we used to have and it not working out for whatever reason. I’m scared of getting sick again and breaking your heart and Caden’s. I’m scared of everything in a way I never used to be.”
“We need to keep you so happy and so busy that you never have time to think about being sick or to worry about a relapse.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Living, Lex. You need to get busy living so you’re not stuck in worry mode. I know it’s hard to undo years of trauma, and I don’t expect that to happen overnight, but the further away you get from it, the less you’ll worry.”
He caressed her face and held her gaze as he moved in to kiss her, lingering this time.
She reached for him and kissed him back, shocked by the jolt to her system that reminded her of the best time in her life, back when she’d kissed him every day. Like it had then, their sweet, innocent kiss evolved into hot and sexy like someone had lit a match.
It had always been like that between them. While her friends had described awkward, fumbling first times with boys who had no idea what they were doing, she and Max had gotten it right from the beginning. She’d been his first, too, but there was nothing awkward or fumbling about it.