Chapter 23 Rory #2
“It’s not just Killigrew Street. It’s stopped me from bothering with most friendships, in general,” he continued, staring out at the dark water.
“I block as much as I can, but things slip through. The lies, the fakeness, when they actually can’t stand me but are being polite.
How do you build genuine relationships when you know exactly what people really think of you? ”
Oh, how my heart broke for him. I shifted closer, our knees touching now.
“But you know,” I said softly, “you’ve got ready-made friends right at your fingertips at Killigrew Street. They already know about your telepathy! Surely that makes it easier?”
“Does it?”
“They’ll get used to it, after a while. Like I have.”
Maxwell did one of his frowns that slipped down his glasses. “What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t bother me at all anymore.” I shrugged, feeling the truth of it settle between us. “I quite like it. Actually, I love the bonus applications.”
“Rory…”
“What? The sex thing is brilliant. No guesswork. Maximum fun.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“And you love it.” I grinned at him. “Also, Priya was gutted you didn’t show up for the Killigrew Street Christmas party. She’d made you a hat and everything.”
The space between us grew charged, heavy with something that strangely made my heart pound.
Maxwell took a deep breath. “I did show.”
“What? You didn’t.”
“I came in through the street entrance. The basement door was unlocked that day, propped open.” His voice dropped, and he removed my hand from his face. “And then I heard you. Talking about me. So I turned around and left.”
The Christmas party? My stomach plummeted like I’d just stepped off a cliff.
I tried to think back to that night, desperately searching my memory for what I’d said.
The party had been brilliant—by the end everyone had been properly pissed, and I’d been blessed with that Christmas cracker joke about vampires, after Priya explicitly told me no vampire jokes in front of Emma. But what had I said about Maxwell?
The sick feeling spread through my chest, cold and creeping.
“What did I say?” The words came out strangled.
Maxwell’s expression was carefully neutral, but I could feel the old hurt radiating from him like an infected wound.
“Whatever it was, I’m so sorry, Maxwell. I’m so, so sorry.”
He watched me with that same careful mask he always wore around Killigrew Street. Professional. Distant. Safe.
“I can feel how much it hurt you, and I just—” My voice faltered. “I’m disgusted with myself. Properly disgusted.”
The shame was overwhelming, hot and suffocating. How many times had I been cruel without even thinking? How many careless comments had I made, never considering what they might do to him?
“I’m sorry for being such an asshole. Not just that night, but for the last eighteen months.
All of it. Every snide comment, every time I’ve been horrible to you, every time I’ve made you feel unwelcome.
Every time I called you Detective Dickface.
” I swallowed hard. “It’s no wonder you hated me, seriously. I get it.”
Maxwell was quiet for a long moment, his gaze fixed on the dark water. When he finally spoke, his voice was soft.
“I told you before, I never hated you. I just thought you were an immature moron and Seb had hit his head the day he hired you.”
I stared at him. “You’re a bloody saint, do you know that?”
Maxwell barked a laugh. “I’m not entirely innocent.”
“What do you mean? You’ve literally done nothing wrong.”
“What about the whole ‘throwing you in a cell during a full moon’ thing that you’ve brought up every time we’ve met for the last eighteen months?”
My face prickled with heat, shame crawling up my neck. “Yes, well, that was my own fault, though, wasn’t it?”
Maxwell sputter-coughed, damn well nearly choking on his own breath. “Excuse me?”
I picked at the heather beside my knee, unable to meet his eyes. The confession felt like pulling glass from a wound.
“It was easier to blame you, so I did. But obviously it only happened because Dev and I jumped the gun and didn’t wait for Seb to organise sweeping Meridian properly.
We went in half-cocked, got ourselves caught, and then I spent eighteen months making you the villain because it was simpler than admitting I’d fucked up. ”
Maxwell was staring at me like I’d just told him the moon was made of cheese.
“I didn’t want to say no to Dev,” I continued, the admission tasting bitter.
“He had this brilliant plan, and he was so excited about it, and I just… I couldn’t bear the thought of disappointing him.
Or having him think I was too much of a coward to go through with it.
So I said yes, even though every instinct I had was screaming that it was a terrible idea.
That it might even cost me my place at Killigrew Street—my new family. ”
I finally looked up at Maxwell, whose expression was unreadable.
“But in that moment, I was so desperate for his approval that I went along with it anyway. So then, when it all went tits up, when I found myself locked in a cell during the full moon, it was so much easier to hate you than to admit I’d done it to myself.”
“You know, I almost had a heart attack when I saw you there that night. At Meridian.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“It was a horrible coincidence. Or maybe a blessed one, I don’t know.
” He rubbed his face with both hands. “I was investigating a drug ring operating just down the road from Meridian. We were convinced it must be them who’d broken into the research centre.
Anyway, when I saw you…” He shook his head.
“It spun me for a loop. Then you used my name, like you knew me. And my officer heard you.”
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“My career is all I have, Rory.” His voice was quiet, almost defeated. “All I have. I couldn’t have taken any risks that jeopardised that.”
My stomach twisted in knots. “I should never have asked you to.”
“But as soon as they processed you and put you in the holding cell, I was a mess with guilt.” Maxwell’s hands were clenched in his lap. “Did Kit tell you how many times I tried to call him that night?”
“Thirty-three,” I said smoothly. “He brings it up all the time. Obviously, Kit couldn’t answer the phone, though, because you know, shifter… full moon…”
“Right, but I wasn’t thinking straight, and Seb wasn’t answering either. But I did do all I could. I made sure that you and Dev were given cells away from everyone else. And then I just sat there on the floor. All night.”
“What?”
“I sat there, outside your cell, listening to you all night.”
The memories hit me with a slap. The crying. The begging. The moaning in pain as my body tried to shift and couldn’t. The desperate, animalistic sounds I’d made for hours on end.
I fought to speak around my tightening throat. “But why did you sit there?”
He looked at me like it was the simplest thing in the world. “In case you needed me.”
The old Rory would have said, I needed to get out of that cell. But sitting here now, looking at this lovely man who’d spent an entire night on a cold police station floor because he was worried about me, I felt tears prick my eyes. Actual tears.
“And then, morning came, and you were shaking so badly I couldn’t take it anymore, and I called the nurse. Kit still hadn’t answered, and I was in a state by then.”
“I don’t remember you there that morning.”
Maxwell’s tiny smile was heartbreaking. “I thought you wouldn’t want to see me.”
The world tilted sideways, and I had to grip the heather beneath me to keep from toppling over. A horrible rushing sound buzzed through my ears, like standing too close to a waterfall.
This couldn’t be real. This lovely, brilliant man couldn’t possibly want someone like me.
Someone who’d spent eighteen months being an absolute bastard to him.
Someone who apparently made cruel jokes about him at Christmas parties behind his back.
Someone so desperate for approval that he’d throw away everything good in his life for a pretty face and a reckless plan.
How could someone so decent, so genuinely wonderful, ever want to be with a horrible, selfish, impulsive prick like me?
Maxwell’s sharp intake of breath cut through the rushing in my ears.
Fuck, he’d heard! “Maxwell—” I started, then clamped my mouth shut so hard my teeth clicked together. It wasn’t his fault he heard it when I was probably practically shouting at him.
The satellite transceiver suddenly erupted with static so violent it made us both jump.
The crackling was wrong—not the usual white noise of poor reception, but something alive, like the air itself was sparking.
Maxwell frowned and reached for the device, twisting the frequency dial, but instead of clearing, the interference grew worse, a symphony of pops and hisses that seemed to pulse with its own rhythm.
“What the hell—” Maxwell started, but his words died as we both looked up.
The sky was bleeding colour.
The aurora borealis unfurled across the Scottish sky like spilled paint on black canvas.
Ribbons of electric green danced overhead, twisting and curling in impossible spirals.
The lights pulsed with their own heartbeat, shifting from emerald to jade to the palest mint, all threaded through with veins of violet that flickered like lightning trapped in silk.
“You told me seeing the Northern Lights in May was impossible,” Maxwell said in a rush, his voice filled with wonder.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the spectacle above us. The aurora rippled like water, tendrils of light stretching down to touch the mountains.
“I used to think lots of things were impossible,” I whispered.
The lights above us flared brighter, as if the universe itself was listening. Pink blossomed through the green, soft as rose petals, while golden threads wove through the display like embroidery on the night sky.