Chapter 24
24
Max
They couldn’t go back to before.
Grey was probably one of the only people in the world who could understand why Max did what she did on the stand for Jackie. She could feel the spot where he’d grazed her scar with his thumb. His fingers were smoother than she’d expected, but that small movement still sent a shock through her like he’d run sandpaper over her skin. She didn’t pay the scar any attention really, tried to avoid it when she looked in the mirror, because of the memory it dredged up. But now it was all she could feel.
She wanted to crack open his brain like an egg, let the yolk of everything he was feeling and thinking ooze over her, covering her completely. She desperately wanted to understand him – to see if he believed her, if he felt the same way about his loyalty to the Barbaranis as she felt about hers to Jackie. Isn’t that what we all want, when it comes down to it? To know that there’s at least one other person out there who feels and thinks in the same fucked up way we do?
She felt resentful, though she’d never admit it out loud. She’d do it all again, a million times over. But he’d hit a nail right into her sternum when he’d called her out or, rather, called Jackie out.
She clearly wasn’t willing to do the same for you.
No, she wasn’t. But Max believed what she’d said to him about love. She would go to the gallows kicking and screaming it. Probably why she’d end up alone, like she’d always known she would since that night, lying on the road, her father’s blood pooling between her fingers.
Grey hadn’t said anything since she’d told him about Jackie and then what Libby had yelled at the TV and, finally, what Alexandra had told her about Libby’s two visitors. Some stupid part of her had thought maybe they’d brainstorm together like in some British crime drama, making a murder pinboard out of hotel stationery on the wall together, drinking stale coffee out of gallon-sized cups and eating cold Thai takeaway.
But he’d said nothing. And now he wasn’t even looking at her.
Her rapid breathing was fogging the glass doors, obscuring her vision of the city, making her feel like she was stuck in a tiny, humid glass box.
In a car.
She’d told him. What was wrong with her? The doors shuddered open against her sweaty-palmed plea for freedom, belching her out into the cold, unforgiving wind. She heaved against the balcony, letting her hair fall over the edge, while the bricks caught her hips hard, begging her to stay upright. What an exhilarating feeling it would be though – to just let go ...
Something tackled her away from the edge.
She clawed at the railings, screaming, ‘Let me go!’
He squeezed tighter, dragging her back to the doors and pinning her against the glass.
‘What the fuck, Greyson!’
‘You were going to jump.’ There was something wrong with his voice. He was breathing like her heart was beating – rapid, manic – and his eyes were bloodshot. He was looking at her like he had in the cellar – like he was somewhere else, while right against her.
‘I wasn’t going to jump, you— What are you doing?’ She tried to claw away again but stopped. His eyes were wide and terrified. What she would have given a mere five minutes ago to see this uncontrolled look on his face ... But this wasn’t what she wanted. He looked haunted . She wasn’t even sure he knew he was still pressing her against the doors, that she could feel his hip bone in her stomach, her chin on his bicep. Every shallow breath moved her – he was an ocean rip, pulsing her out to sea and she couldn’t swim against him.
She wasn’t even sure she wanted to.
‘Greyson? I wasn’t going to jump. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—’
‘You were ... I wasn’t fast enough ...’
‘What do you mean? I’m right here. Hey!’ She tapped his cheek, just a graze. But she felt the same rough sparks shoot through her as when he’d brushed her scar. ‘Greyson, hey ... hey ! Look at me.’ She put her hands against the hollows of his jaw, her hands ice compared to the burning surface of him. Pluto and Venus. Gently, she tilted his head down, expecting him to fight and buck away from her. But to her surprise, he let her drag his gaze down, his eyes still clouded with whatever memory kept resurfacing at moments like this.
I wasn’t fast enough.
This was worse than the cellar – he was wilder. An eagle who’d never been tamed. She was terrified he was going to take flight and she’d never see him again.
‘Look.’ She kept her hands on his face and forced his eyes to meet hers. ‘Look, I’m here. I didn’t fall. I’m right here.’
His breathing didn’t slow, but some of the clouds began to clear in his eyes as he blinked tentatively over her body.
‘Here, feel.’ She guided his left hand down her face, over her scar again, trying to ignore the electrical circuits buzzing inside her. She dragged his hand down her neck, over her throat, let his fingers splay across her collarbone.
He shuddered – that must mean he was cooling down. It was working, she was bringing him back.
‘I’m here,’ she whispered against his chest. She let go of his hands; they were doing their own reassuring. They grazed her shoulder blades, down her spine as though counting every vertebra. Then they moved slowly down.
‘Fuck.’ He pushed away. ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so—’
‘It’s okay.’ But what she really wanted to say, what she really couldn’t say, was Don’t stop. Suspend time. Forget who I am. Forget who you are. Forget how we met and what we still have to do. Just pretend we’re two people standing outside on a cold winter night who’ve just confessed things to each other that they’ll never be able to take back.
But she couldn’t ask him to do that.
He let out a shaky sigh. ‘I don’t even want to know what you’re thinking right now.’
‘I think ...’ I think I don’t want you to let me go. It had been so long since she’d been held. If only it wasn’t by a man who hated her.
‘You didn’t deserve that,’ he said quietly.
She wasn’t sure if he meant what happened with Jackie and Evan and the court case, or what his hands had done. If it was the latter, he was right – she really didn’t deserve that. Someone like Antonella Barbarani deserved that.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘why you thought I was going to jump. Why you held me like that in the cellar. I know you don’t think it’s PTSD, but there’s obviously something—’
‘I killed someone.’ He’d let go but was still standing just as close. She felt like a magnet, her whole body shaking with the base desire to connect. She’d been wrong, Alexandra had been wrong, prison had driven her to the edge. She knew better than to respond. Her eyes found his again, pulling him down, into her. It’s okay, you can tell me.
‘It was the same party where Luca punched Forrest. A kid jumped. I caught him.’ Grey’s eyes drifted to the edge of the balcony.
‘How can you have killed him then?’
‘I couldn’t hold on. I ...’ The muscles in his face twitched against the memory like it was burrowing towards the surface of his skin, trying to pierce the outer layer and consume him completely.
‘You let go,’ she finished for him, her eyes not leaving his face. ‘That’s not killing someone, Grey.’
Not like what I almost did.
‘I was holding him.’ He stretched out his arm, clenching his fist, the tendons in his forearms tensing. ‘And then I wasn’t.’ He splayed his fingers, dropping his arm to his thigh. ‘Life and death. All in my control.’
Max sensed there was something else, something more to the memory, but she didn’t care. It felt like a rabid beast had suddenly stopped thrashing and had settled down by her feet, head bowed. She brushed her fingers against the arm he’d left hanging, tracking the raised ropes of veins – little roads leading to places she should never know.
He shivered against her again. Did she frighten him? But he didn’t back away. Instead, he moved closer as she traced random patterns down his skin – well, they were random at first. She spoke to him silently through the words she traced, lulling him back, away from the memory, away from the guilt and the pain that she understood all too well. They’d tasted the same poisoned cup.
She wanted to siphon that pain from his bones. She would take some of it for him; she could take care of him in this small way. Max always had to be in control, to take care of things, ever since her parents died. Sometimes she did it to a fault, but other times, like now, she knew this was exactly what she was meant to be doing. She wondered if he’d ever had someone look after him.
‘You say you don’t know if you consciously fired that last shot,’ he said into her shoulder. Underneath the cologne that smelled like cherries and whisky, she caught a scent that made her close her eyes. It was the smell of that moment before you rip the Christmas present open. You can feel the curves and edges of that gift you’ve dreamed about, that you’ve wished for with all your heart and you just know it’s there beneath the thin, shiny paper. Greyson smelled like that first tear of wrapping paper. Like the middle pages of a new book. Underneath the expensive Italian perfume, he was real.
‘Yes,’ she breathed, not daring to say anything more in case he moved.
‘Do you think you’ll ever know? Do you think you’ll be okay not knowing?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why?’
His head jerked up from her shoulder, and the movement felt like she’d been tossed out of a boat, capsized and drowning without the heavy weight of him. His brown eyes, the colour of a forest floor after the rain, were no longer clouded. They were burning, dark skies alight with a lightning storm. ‘Because I don’t know if I let him go or he lost his grip.’
His eyes searched her face for horror. For shame, or fear, or whatever it was he was waiting for. She burned back at him, daring him to ask, to confess he thought that little of her. That, after everything she’d told him, he thought she wouldn’t understand.
When he found none of that, he confessed something else. But this time, not with words.