Chapter Thirty-Four
For a moment Bo stared at Max, still frozen with shock, still full of disbelief, but also — wildly and bizarrely — completely and unequivocally pissed off at him too.
It might have been the months he’d left her hanging, or maybe it was a habitual response to his presence, but she was annoyed and couldn’t help her annoyance from seeping into her voice when she finally spoke to him.
“You really are one for walking through doors and surprising me,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “You did it the first day we met, and apparently, we’re sticking with that theme.”
Max blinked back at her. “It’s a shop, Bo,” he replied slowly. “The doors are for walking through.”
He had her there, damn it. She brought her thumb to her lips, chewing on her nail, and watched as Max stepped towards her.
“You look well,” he remarked, “and this place is beautiful. Well done, Bo.”
“Thanks,” she said tightly, before gesturing to him. “You look well too.”
“I’ve been travelling.”
“So I heard.”
He looked at her with interest at that. “Did you? I wasn’t sure.”
She stared at him. “Of course I heard. Your, umm, tour.”
“My tour,” he repeated, his tone even, and he looked thoughtful.
She took a deep breath. “You really do look well, Max.” She tried to soften her tone. Anger and annoyance would get her nowhere, and neither would bitterness. Don’t let him see how much he hurt you, she lectured herself. Don’t let him see how much his silence stung.
“Thanks,” he said, and for a moment, quiet sitting between them, awkward and heavy. Finally, Bo cleared her throat.
“You said you needed a bouquet?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a little late in the day. I close at seven. I also have a wedding to prep flowers for tomorrow.”
“Oh.” Inexplicably, Max’s face fell. “Right. I just . . .” he paused. “It’s taken me a long time to build up the courage to come in here.”
“Because of me?” she asked, before she shook her head. “That was a silly question. Of course it’s because of me.”
Max nodded slowly.
Bo took a deep breath. “You don’t have to be afraid to come in here. It’s just me, regardless of our history. Still just me.”
“Just you,” Max repeated. He gave a small smile. “That’s good. I’m living locally now, you see.”
Bo’s stomach turned over, and she chewed on her lip. “What? You left Berlin?”
“I did.”
“And you’re living locally? You mean, around here?”
“Yes. I’ve bought a place nearby. I moved in just recently.”
His words played on repeat in Bo’s mind as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. “So, we might run into each other then,” she thought out loud. “I’m living in the bedsit above the shop, you know.”
He looked puzzled. “You made enough money from selling your garden to live in a bigger place than that.”
She gave an embarrassed shrug. “You know me. I just need a room and a shower.”
“And a garden,” Max added thoughtfully. “Do you have one here?”
She tried not to let wistfulness steal into her eyes. “No. One day I might buy a place with a garden, but for now, I have my store and all the flowers. That’s enough for the time being.”
“You must miss your summer house,” Max said, and he gazed at her intently. “Do you miss it?”
“Of course I do. But I hear it was sold to someone who wants to make it a family home,” Bo shrugged again. “So, I can’t be sad about that. It would have broken my heart to see developers build flats on it.”
Max smiled. “I know. I think it would’ve broken mine too.”
Again, silence fell between them, and Bo shifted awkwardly. Clearly, Max wasn’t going to mention the daisies or her note, and she was damned if she was going to mention the Jacobien Concerto. If this was a battle of wills, she wanted to win. She had her pride.
“What sort of bouquet do you need?” she asked.
“You said you were closed,” Max stated.
“For you I’ll make an exception. What do you need?”
“I don’t really know. Music is my forte, not flowers.”
Bo nodded. “Okay. Well, who are they for then? I can probably help pick something if I know who they’re for.”
Max paused, as though weighing up what to say next, and Bo felt trepidation run through her. Why does he need to think? Why, unless they’re for . . .
“They’re for my girlfriend,” he said flatly, and Bo’s stomach sank, while her chest physically hurt. So that’s why he never messaged me; because it was too late. He’s already met somebody else. He’s already moved on.
“Oh.” She exhaled hard. “Oh, well . . .”
“Bo—”
“No, it’s fine.” She refused to let him talk, refused to let him placate her, or God forbid, console her. “Okay, umm, so, what sort of flowers does she like?”
Max looked sheepish. “I don’t really know.”
“It’s, umm, new? Your relationship?”
“Kind of.”
Raphaella, Bo’s mind instantly realized. He’s back with Raphaella.
The name bloomed in Bo’s mind like poison ivy, spreading fast and stinging everywhere it spread.
Of course he would be back with her. Raphaella was clever, educated, glossy and effortlessly chic.
She was everything Bo wasn’t. Everything Bo would never be.
Raphaella was the kind of woman Max would go back to, whereas she . . .
“Right, well, I’ll just put something together for you.
Something pretty, don’t worry. Maybe roses?
Or lilies? Or maybe gerberas, everyone likes gerberas.
” Bo realized she was babbling, and stopped herself.
She forced herself to take a deep breath and slow down, just as she forced herself to look up into Max’s eyes. “I promise I’m good at this.”
He returned her gaze with eyes that were soft, even warm. “I know you are.”
“So, gerberas then?”
Max’s eyes didn’t leave hers. “I like daisies,” he said slowly. “Can you put some daisies in there?”
It was the first veiled reference he’d made to the bouquet she’d sent him, and Bo’s hands stilled.
“Gerberas are a kind of daisy,” she replied, but she knew her cheeks were turning pink, and she looked down and away from the intensity of Max’s gaze.
“Bo, look—”
“Gerberas then,” she flustered, turning away from the till to walk to her stock room.
Ostensibly, she was going to get the flowers, but in reality she just needed a minute.
A minute away from Max and his eyes and the heartbreaking knowledge that he was now, once again, forever denied to her.
Infuriatingly though, Max followed her, leaning against the doorway as she busied herself collecting stems.
“You’ve been okay then?” he asked, looking around the stock room, and Bo shrugged.
“Yes.”
It wasn’t a lie. If sleeping with Max’s purple shirt just once a week and no longer crying herself to sleep counted as okay, then she was doing just fine.
“And are you, uh, seeing anyone?”
She looked up at that. Max’s face was bland, but she heard the waver in his voice and tried to decipher it. For a moment, she was tempted to say ‘yes’, if only to even the score between them. If he could have a girlfriend, she could have a boyfriend, right?
She didn’t want to lie to him though. She’d never lied to him, not once, and she didn’t want to start now. So, instead she smiled, shaking her head.
“No. I’m not seeing anyone.”
Max stood taller at that, shoving his hands in his pockets once more.
“What’s your girlfriend like?” Bo couldn’t help herself. She had to know. She’d torture herself later otherwise.
Max smiled, and it was a soft smile, full of affection. It made Bo wince inside to see him so happy with someone else. “She’s great. She drives me crazy eighty per cent of the time, but it’s a good crazy.”
“And the other twenty per cent?”
Max smiled again, and it was that same soft, loving smile. Bo thought she might vomit into her gerberas. “The other twenty per cent of the time she makes me so happy I could sing with it.”
“You don’t sing,” Bo returned, looking down to her flowers so that Max wouldn’t see the hurt passing over her face.
“You’re right. Actually, she makes me so happy I’ve been writing music again.” He paused, looking at her intently. “Lots of music.”
Bo swallowed. So, the Jacobien Concerto really was Max’s way of saying goodbye to her, his way of finally letting her go.
“And you love her?” she asked quietly.
Max took a step towards her. “Yes. With all my heart. Not that I’m any good at telling her that. Maybe if I was . . .”
“Yes?”
Max took another step towards her. “Maybe if I was, I wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t need these.” He nodded to the bouquet of flowers Bo was tying a ribbon around with shaky fingers.
Bo nodded. She chewed on her lip as she finished up Max’s bouquet, wrapping tissue paper around the flowers carefully.
“I don’t want any money for them,” she said as she handed the bouquet to Max. “But you can give them to your girlfriend with my blessing, okay?” She took a deep breath. “We’re okay, Max. Everything that happened between us . . . we’re okay, right? I’m okay.”
Max seemed to think for a moment. “I wrote this piece of music recently,” he began slowly. “Because I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay at all. I called it the—”
“The Jacobien Concerto,” Bo finished for him, and now her cheeks flamed red. “I know. I’ve heard it.”
“You have?”
“Of course I have. You wrote it. Of course I was going to listen. You could’ve written a jingle for the world’s most annoying advert, and I’d still have listened to it.”
“I sent you tickets to see the premiere,” Max said flatly. “But you didn’t go.”
“I did go.”
“No, I looked for you, you weren’t there—”
“I was there.” Bo couldn’t help herself. She leaned forward, taking one of Max’s hands in her own. “My sister bought her own tickets. We sat in her seats. You didn’t see me, but I was there.”
Max looked down to where their hands were now joined and Bo disengaged instantly. What was she doing? Max was dating someone else. She wasn’t that woman. She never wanted to be that woman, and she never wanted Max to be that man.
Max however, seemed to have different ideas, and he instantly reached for her hand again. “You were there? In Sydney?”
“Yes.”
“I hoped you would be.” Max squeezed her fingers, and Bo felt hope, unwise and unexpected, jump within her.
“I knew it was your hometown. I sent the tickets weeks in advance, hoping you would understand. Hoping you would read between the lines. When I looked down and saw that the seats were empty,” Max gave a sad smile, “I thought I had my answer.”
“I was there,” Bo said again. “It was beautiful. I’d never heard music like that before.”
“You sent me flowers,” Max replied. “I read your note again and again, hoping and hoping, and then I would doubt myself, again and again. You weren’t there; I told myself. You see, I’d decided that if I had any chance at all, you would be there. And then you weren’t.”
A chance? Bo turned Max’s words over in her mind. He sent her the tickets to see if he had a chance with her? More than that, he’d been hoping he would? Bo felt a bubble of excitement rise within her. Was it possible that Max still loved her?
“I was there. I promise I was there,” she replied fervently, telling herself not to fuck this up.
Max nodded, before he looked at the bouquet in his free hand, as though noticing it for the first time. He thrust them at her. “These are for you. My florist sends her blessings.”
Bo frowned, looking into the bouquet she’d just made. “Max, I don’t understand.”
He gave a soft chuckle. “I told you once that I’m not good with vague.
I need things spelled out for me. So, I realize that these flowers are probably the height of hypocrisy.
Maybe the tickets were too. I’m not good with expressing myself, you see, and I’m downright terrible at sharing my feelings.
Not that I don’t feel anything; the exact opposite in fact.
I feel a million things inside, but they all come out in my music.
I’ve been miserable this past year, Bo. Absolutely miserable.
I’ve missed you. Missed everything about you.
My language is music, your language is flowers.
I tried telling you my way, and here we are, months later, still apart.
So, I’m trying your way.” He nudged the flowers to her again. “These are for you.”
She stared at him, absolutely astounded. “But you said they were for your girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
“But you want me to have them?”
“Yes.”
“But, Max, I’m not your girlfriend.”
Max gave her a look. “Bo, I really need you to understand what I’m saying right now.”
“You . . . you want me to be your girlfriend?”
Max nodded. He pulled her close to him, pressing his body against hers, and oh, Bo had forgotten how this felt.
She’d forgotten how impossibly wonderful Max felt next to her.
She’d forgotten how wonderful he smelled and how wonderful he looked, and she’d forgotten the feelings that erupted inside both her body and soul when he was with her.
“That’s the general idea, although ‘girlfriend’ feels like an inadequate term. I think what I’m trying to say is that I’d like to keep you forever, if it’s okay with you?”
She nodded, still stunned. “I think that’s okay with me. More than okay.”
Max bent towards her, kissing her softly. It was odd, how familiar it all still felt after all this time. Her lips met his, following his lead and matching his movements, and it was sweet and sexy and so full of promise that Bo couldn’t help but sigh against him.
He pulled away, smiling down at her. “Can we go for a walk? Talk on the way? I really want to talk to you. Tell you everything.”
She nodded, and he nuzzled her nose softly.
“You understand the flowers now, right? Because if you’re still uncertain, I did get something bigger. Just in case.”
“Something bigger? I told you; I’ve heard your concerto.”
“It’s your concerto, really,” Max replied easily. “Actually, I did something else too. I told you that eighty per cent of the time you drive me crazy, but it’s a good kind of crazy? Hopefully when you see what I’ve done, you’ll think it’s a good kind of crazy.”
“Max, what have you done?”
He grinned down at her, kissing her softly once more. “Let’s go for that walk, and I’ll show you.”