Chapter 10
MAX
By the time I made it back to the table, Lorde and Pat had left, leaving my parents to pass on their goodbyes.
I tried to go after him, just like the prince in Cinderella, but he’d disappeared.
And I would not admit it out loud, but I did search the ground, looking for anything he might have left.
This was not Cinderella, however, and I found no glass slipper, shoe, or anything of the sort.
I trudged back inside, wishing I could leave as well, knowing that was impossible. This was my event, and we still had hours to go before the clock struck one, and I could return to my castle in the sky.
Now that Lorde had gone, my swan was once again begging to be set free. The only good thing about the need to shift this time, the desperation from earlier was gone.
“You okay?” my father asked as soon as he spotted my return.
I frowned and smiled at the same time, blowing aside his concerns. “Yeah, perfectly okay. I wanted to see if I could catch Lorde and Mrs. Jeffries to thank them for coming tonight, and to thank him for his donation. He surprised me when he started bidding.”
“Surprised us, too.” Dad chuckled. “Buck up. It isn’t like this will be the last time you see him. He did win a date with you.”
Buck up? I couldn’t recall the last time my father said something like that to me. “You’re right.” I lifted my hand to my chest and rubbed, the swan getting more insistent about breaking free, and I pleaded with it to settle down for a few more hours.
“Something wrong?” His gaze was on my hand.
Dropping it back to my side, I shook my head. “Not at all.”
“Max, any time you need to talk about anything that has to do with…things, you can discuss them with me. I mean anything. I realize you haven’t had—” He stopped abruptly when some of our guests came over to join us momentarily.
By the time they were done gushing about the success of tonight’s fundraiser and the mysterious stranger who bid on the last two items, the crowd around us had grown.
Many wanted to know the identity of the man dressed in black, and I had to stop myself from singing Johnny Cash. Sometimes, I was a sarcastic asshole.
Surprisingly, my dad didn’t give Lorde away, and neither did my mother.
The guests had to have known he was sitting at our table when he bid; it didn’t take a genius to put it together from there.
When my parents said they didn’t know who the stranger was, the people surrounding them accepted their words as fact.
That did not mean Lorde wasn’t the topic of many conversations.
Every person I danced with chose to discuss Lorde.
Every. Freaking. Person. Man or woman, it didn’t matter.
He was their new juicy morsel of gossip, and like a dog with a bone, they would not let it go.
And here I was back on the subject of those damn mongrels.
One o’clock arrived, the last dance played, and I left, sighing with happiness the moment my ass hit the plush leather seat in the limo with Fizz next to me. “Next year, I think a luncheon might work better than an evening gala.”
“You said that last year, and still wound up doing what you normally do,” he reminded me.
His head rested on the back of the seat, and his eyes were closed.
He was a good-looking man with brown hair, peppered silver here and there.
He was clean-shaven with muscles which made him look more bear than man.
His sharp brown eyes could spot a lie at twenty paces, which was something I used to tell him whenever he busted me in a lie. Nothing slipped past him.
When I was younger, I might have had a small crush on Fizz when he gave me a martial arts lesson.
The way his body pressed against mine, the strength of his muscles.
How could a guy not fall for someone like that?
Within a week, I came to my senses. He could cook, fight, shoot, and probably kill a person with one hand, but he wasn’t the guy for me.
He was an asshole of the first degree, and he loved to yell at me when I did something wrong during our training session.
More than that were his life choices. So sad.
His choice of reading material: nonfiction.
The book world had so much more to offer than biographies and history books.
His favorite food: chicken and rice. Bleh!
There were a million tastier things on this planet.
The man was also locked up tighter than a bank vault.
I had no clue who his ideal partner was.
Not even an inkling. Fizz refused to share anything unless it was absolutely necessary, and his preferences for men did not fall into that category.
The one time I got him drunk and tried to interrogate him, he only gave me his name and some string of numbers along with his rank, nothing juicy or worth the trouble.
Is Lorde willing to share? Is he worth the trouble? I wondered as I stared out the window, watching the landscape speed by. Lorde was dangerous, and if I knew what was good for me, I should stay away from him.
Reaching my building, I took the elevator to my floor, leaving Fizz to deal with anything else.
I began to strip the moment I entered my apartment, dropping my garments along the way to the balcony.
Fizz could clean up, or I would when I returned.
The cry to break free was too loud and would not be silenced, I couldn’t wait any longer to shift.
I stepped onto the cold stone, breathing deeply, and quickly moved onto the balcony wall.
Here I could transform and jump without worrying about a running head start.
Much like a plane, a swan could not just lift off.
Stretching my arms out wide, I allowed the shift to overtake me.
It tingled and made me feel peculiar for a brief moment.
It wasn’t like some of those books I read where bones cracked and elongated or changed, mine was different.
I felt something, but it was more like the small zap one felt whenever they touched those electric balls.
I didn’t need the moon or anything special.
I simply let the swan take over and transform me.
Fizz saw it a couple of times. He said I shimmered, one minute I was a man, and the next, a swan.
I flapped my wings and stepped off the ledge. It was time to fly.