Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
MAX
We didn’t say much else until the food was ready. Once plated, we sat side by side at the kitchen island and devoured the chicken and pasta.
“This is so fucking good,” he moaned, mask pushed up so he could eat. “Why is this so good?”
I laughed. “The answer is always butter. Fat carries flavor. And fresh lemon zest—you’d be surprised by how much it brightens things up.”
My chest swelled in pride when he went back for more. He was so endearing during these moments, I could hardly reconcile him with the man I first saw break down the door at the warehouse. “Can I ask you something?”
He peered up, twirling more angel hair around his fork. “Of course.”
“Why do you do it? I mean, why are you a…”
Never one to beat around the bush, he smirked. “Vigilante murderer?”
I snorted. “Yeah. That.”
He pushed a piece of chicken around his plate for a few moments—long enough for me to wonder whether or not he’d answer or if that was one of those ‘it’s too dangerous to know’ questions.
But then he spoke, and I understood why he’d needed to collect himself. “My mom was murdered when I was nine years old.”
Oh, shit. My fork clanged against the plate. I sucked in a breath. “I’m so sorry,” I blurted.
Usually, I was the one dropping the dead mom conversation bomb. Being on the other end of it, I had more understanding for the word-scramble that always came after, and how there were actually very few things that felt appropriate to respond with.
“My mom died, too,” I continued once the surprise wore off. “When I was eighteen. But she’d been sick for a while. Fuck, I’m not trying to compare. I just mean, I know what losing your mom feels like.”
He reached out to brush the hair out of my eyes. “Thank you. You understand more than most could. For a lot of reasons.”
“But having her taken from you like that when you were so young…” I shook my head. That kind of pain I hadn’t experienced. “I’m so, so sorry. Did they at least find who did it?”
Based on how the conversation started, I was afraid I already knew the answer.
His voice sharpened to a blade. “It was never a question of who did it, but whether or not the monster would finally pay for how miserable he made her life. Our lives.”
My stomach sank. “Who?” I whispered.
“My father.”
Fucking hell. I never knew my alpha dad, but based on how little Mom spoke of him, I figured he wasn’t worth the wonder. Maybe she’d been protecting me from something even worse.
I slid off my chair and stepped between his spread legs. Desperate to offer comfort but not knowing what he needed, I hugged him tightly. “And did he?” I asked. “Pay for it?”
Atlas returned my embrace, petting the back of my head with his face pressed into my neck. “Eventually. I had to learn a few hard lessons before then, though.”
I couldn’t help but ask more. I wanted to know everything about him. Everything. “Like what?”
For a second, I thought he’d push me away, but something shifted in his gaze.
One of the walls he’d erected between us crumbled.
“Money will go a long way in protecting the wrong people, but it doesn’t mean anything if you’re dead.
That’s why I do what I do, Max. No one protected my mom when she needed help.
No one protected my brother or me. So, I learned how to be just as monstrous, and my father got what he deserved. I gave it to him.”
He blew out a heavy sigh. “And since I could only kill him once, I continue to do the same for all the others out there who can’t stand up for themselves, yet.”
He expected me to turn away from him. I saw it in his eyes. He thought the more he shared, the further I’d run.
It was the exact opposite.
I wished he’d tell me more. All of it—every last dark piece that hadn’t yet felt the warm glow of companionship. I viscerally ached to know the hurts he buried deep, so I could hold him and show him he wasn’t alone.
I also began to wonder if withholding his identity was less about my safety and more about protecting his own heart.
“I hate that you ever had to learn that,” I said, cupping his face. “But I’ve seen monsters before. You’re not one of them.”
He leveled me with a resigned look, like we were staring at the same image and seeing two entirely different pictures. I pushed away the uncomfortable feeling it gave me, like he knew something I didn’t. Something that would hurt me.
“I am, though,” he said. “It’s important for you to remember that.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I could feel the distance yawning between us. Our hazy heat week was almost over, and he was drawing lines in the sand I never asked for.
And with sudden clarity, I realized I couldn’t lose him.
“Well, maybe I want a monster, then,” I said, digging my claws in and stepping right over that line.
Wide-eyed, he shook his head. “You have no idea what you’re saying.”
Anger simmered in my chest. “What, because you kill people?”
He hesitated before nodding.
“What if I don’t care?” I asked, dizzy with inflated hope.
“You don’t mean that.”
I pressed both hands against his chest. “Yes, I do. It doesn’t bother me that you kill bad people. I’m glad of it.”
Shaking his head harder, he refused to look at me. “You wouldn’t be glad when I came home and stained our shower red with someone else’s blood.”
“Don’t presume to know how I’d feel,” I said, baring my teeth.
His eyes flashed in challenge. “Alright, how about if I told you we needed to leave everyone we knew and loved behind to reinvent our lives because the cops—or someone worse—caught up to me? What if that happened a second time? Or a third? What about then?”
“I still don’t think—”
“What if you ended up in trouble because of me? Used as bait or collateral?” His hands dug into my sides, eyes going a bit wild. “I’ll do everything in my power to protect you, but there will always be things out of my control, Max.”
I blushed. Logically, I knew that, but he seemed larger than any problem I could ever have. “It’s not for you to judge how I’d feel. I know my own mind and can make my own decisions.”
“What if I really did give you children?” he whispered, his bloodshot eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“And we had family picnics together and ate ice cream and danced with the lightning bugs. What if we loved them and cherished them, until one day someone showed up on our doorstep and hurt them? What if someone took them away from us to punish me for something I did? Would a life with me, a family with me, be worth it, then?”
I froze, stunned. Caught between my desperate desire for the life he painted to be true and the pain of losing it, I couldn’t answer.
His eyes shuttered, not giving me a chance to process.
“No. It wouldn’t. And I would never forgive myself for dragging you into it.
You might not be theoretically opposed to bad people not existing on this earth anymore, but the second you see the harsh reality of the job, you’ll decide differently. ”
The distance between us grew further, almost like he stood on one side of a rift in the earth, and I was on the other.
Fire roared in my veins, and I reached across that widening gap. “So that’s decided, then? Just like that? Our hypothetical, nonexistent children might be in danger someday, so we don’t even get a chance to see if this could be more?”
He huffed. “Obviously, that’s just one outcome. But the danger you would be in, whether we were together for two weeks or a lifetime, is not hypothetical. It’s very real.”
Slipping. He was slipping out of my fingers. I’d fall into the pit below if he didn’t hold on tight.
“So then, what? You fuck me one more time and leave? You can’t actually believe that’s going to work. Look at you. You’re falling apart.”
He looked away. “The rejection will work. It has to.”
I couldn’t help my tears. I’d delayed this confrontation for as long as I could, hoping for… something. I wasn’t sure what. Maybe that he’d change his mind and decide he wanted to keep the bond after all? Maybe that he’d give us a chance to see what we could make of it?
Except, when had I decided that was what I wanted?
When he put his hands on my belly, and I wished there was something even more permanent tying us together.
When he kissed me and told me I was the only one he wanted.
When he followed me to the heat teacher’s office and broke in to fix my wall and carried me from that horrible, pulsing room, covered in the gore of the people who hurt me while holding me like I was the most cherished thing on Earth. When he—
I shook my head. Once he came back into my life, letting go was never an option. “What if I d-don’t want it to work?” I asked, wiping away my tears as fast as they fell.
He squeezed his eyes shut like the sight of me crying caused him physical pain. “Max. This isn’t the time to discuss completing a bond. We’re at the end of your heat. You’re vulnerable and not in the right frame of mind. Even if we met normally, we would wait—”
“But we didn’t meet normally,” I said, gripping his shirt. It had sea turtles on it. “We met how we met, and we can’t change that. I wouldn’t change—”
“I would,” he snarled, gripping my shoulders tightly, defeated eyes darting between mine. “I would go back in time and cut Joseph Weber’s throat that first night in the alley, before you ever stepped out that door and consumed my life.”
It would’ve stung less if he’d slapped me. I tried to jerk away, but he held fast. “Because if I’d done that…” he whispered, wiping my tears with his thumb. “He would’ve never hurt you, and you’d be the kind of chef you want to be by now, instead of choosing something safe over your real dreams.”
“And w-what about y-you?” I asked, wiping snot from my nose. “You d-deserve someone t-too. You p-protect everyone else, b-but who protects you?”
“I don’t need—”
“Yes you do!” I cried. “You do. You can’t f-fix everything for everyone else all the time. And that’s okay.” I reached for him again, clinging on. “I can help. I’ll carry things with you, so you’re not—”
“Don’t,” he said, shaking his head.