Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
CLAIRE
Iwake to the smell of coffee and the sound of metal on metal.
For a moment, I don't know where I am. The bed is unfamiliar, the sheets softer than the ones at the inn, the pillow beneath my head carrying a scent that makes my stomach flutter.
Then I remember.
Max's hands on my skin. Max's mouth on my throat. Max inside me, filling me, claiming me in ways I didn't know I needed to be claimed.
Heat floods my cheeks as I stretch beneath the covers. My body aches in the most delicious way. Muscles I forgot I had protest the movement, reminding me of every position, every angle, every moment of last night.
We didn't just have sex once.
After that first desperate coupling, Max held me against his chest while our heartbeats slowed. I thought he might fall asleep. Instead, his hands started wandering again. Tracing the curve of my hip. The dip of my waist. The swell of my breast.
The second time was slower. More deliberate. He mapped every inch of my body with his mouth, learning what made me gasp and what made me moan. He brought me to the edge three times before finally pushing me over, and when he followed, my name was a prayer on his lips.
The third time was somewhere around two in the morning. I woke to his hands between my thighs and his voice rough in my ear. "One more time. I need you one more time."
I gave him everything he asked for. And then some.
Now morning light streams through the window, and I'm alone in his bed.
I find one of his shirts on the floor and pull it over my head. It falls to mid thigh, soft and worn and smelling like him. Like iron and smoke and something uniquely Max.
The sound of metal leads me downstairs.
He's at his forge, shirtless, sweat gleaming on the muscles of his back as he works. The orange glow of heated metal illuminates his face, throwing shadows across the scars that crisscross his torso.
He's beautiful.
Not in the polished, perfect way of the men I've known before. Derek was handsome in a catalog model sort of way. Clean cut and symmetrical and utterly forgettable.
Max is different. Max is wild and weathered and marked by a life I can barely imagine. Every scar tells a story. Every line on his face speaks of survival.
I want to know all of it. Every story. Every battle. Every demon he's still fighting.
"You're staring."
His voice startles me. He hasn't turned around, hasn't stopped the rhythmic fall of his hammer.
"How did you know I was here?"
"I always know where you are." He sets down the hammer and turns. Those green eyes rake over me, lingering on my bare legs, the hem of his shirt riding high on my thighs. "You're wearing my shirt."
"I couldn't find my dress."
"I hid it."
A laugh bubbles out of me. "You hid my dress?"
"I like you in my shirt." He crosses the distance between us, and suddenly I'm in his arms, his mouth hot against my neck. "I like you in my bed. I like you in my space."
"Max."
"I made coffee." He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes. "And there are muffins from Maggie's. Sarah dropped them off about an hour ago."
"Sarah was here?"
"She took one look at your dress on my floor and left the muffins on the counter with a very enthusiastic thumbs up."
I groan and bury my face in his chest. "The whole town is going to know."
"The whole town already knows." His hand strokes down my back. "Small town. No secrets."
"You don't seem bothered by that."
He's quiet for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough with something I can't quite identify.
"I spent ten years hiding from everything that mattered. From you. From the promise I made your father. From the guilt of surviving when he didn't." His arms tighten around me. "I'm tired of hiding, Claire. Tired of being alone. Tired of pretending I don't want things I have no right to want."
I pull back to look at him. Really look.
The shadows are still there. The haunted look that never quite leaves his eyes. But underneath, I see something new. Something that looks almost like hope.
"You have every right," I tell him. "My father loved you like a brother. He'd want you to be happy."
"Would he want me to be happy with you?"
The question cuts deep. Because I've wondered the same thing. Lying awake at night in my room at the inn, I've wondered what my father would say if he could see us now.
"I think," I say carefully, "that my father would want me to be with someone who would protect me with his life. Someone who understands loss and grief and what it means to keep going anyway. Someone who looks at me like I'm the most precious thing in the world."
Max's throat works as he swallows.
"I do," he says hoarsely. "You are."
I rise on my toes and press my lips to his. Soft. Sweet. A promise more than a kiss.
"Then stop questioning it. Stop looking for reasons this is wrong." I cup his face in my hands. "Just let yourself have this. Have me."
Something shifts in his expression. The last wall crumbling.
He kisses me back with a tenderness that makes my eyes sting.
"Come on," he says when we finally break apart. "Coffee's getting cold."
We eat breakfast at his small table, my feet in his lap, his thumb tracing circles on my ankle. The muffins are incredible. Blueberry and lemon, still warm from Maggie's oven. I devour three while Max watches with an amused expression.
"What?" I demand around a mouthful.
"Nothing. I like watching you eat."
"That's weird."
"Probably." He shrugs. "I like a lot of weird things about you."
"Like what?"
He considers the question while I sip my coffee.
"The way you talk with your hands when you're excited. The way you hum under your breath when you think no one's listening. The way you stood up to me that first night, even though you were scared."
"I wasn't scared."
"Yes you were." His eyes soften. "But you did it anyway. That's braver than not being scared at all."
I set down my cup and study the man across from me. This complicated, wounded, beautiful man who's somehow become the center of my world in less than a week.
"Tell me about my father," I say softly.
He goes still.
"Tell me what he was like when you knew him. Tell me the stories I never got to hear."
For a long moment, he doesn't speak. I watch the battle play out across his face. The pain of remembering warring with the need to honor the man we both loved.
Then he takes a breath.
"Marcus was the best man I ever knew."
The words open a floodgate. He tells me about BUD/S, about Hell Week, about the night they almost rang the bell together and talked each other out of it.
He tells me about deployments and missions and quiet moments between the chaos.
About the way Marcus would talk about me and my mother for hours, showing everyone photos, bragging about my report cards and my dance recitals.
"He was so proud of you," Max says, his voice rough. "Everything you did, every milestone, he'd tell anyone who would listen. 'My little girl got straight A's again.' 'My little girl made the honor roll.' You were his whole world, Claire."
Tears stream down my face. I don't bother wiping them away.
"I miss him so much."
"Me too."
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. Our fingers intertwine, his scarred and calloused, mine smooth and delicate. We're so different. And yet, in this moment, we're exactly the same. Two people who loved Marcus Harris. Two people trying to find their way without him.
"He would have approved," Max says quietly. "Of us. I didn't believe it before, but I do now."
"What changed?"
"You." He brings my hand to his lips and presses a kiss to my knuckles. "You changed everything."
My heart swells until it feels like it might burst.
"Max."
"I know it's fast. I know we barely know each other as adults. But I feel like I've been waiting my whole life for you, Claire. Like everything that happened, every mission, every scar, every nightmare, led me here. To this moment. To you."
"That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me."
"I'm not romantic."
"You're a little romantic."
He scowls, but I can see the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Take it back."
"Never."
He lunges across the table and I shriek with laughter as he pulls me into his lap. His mouth finds mine, and suddenly breakfast is forgotten. Coffee grows cold. Muffins sit untouched.
None of it matters.
Because I'm in Max's arms, in Max's home, building something I never expected to find.
And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.