Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
After taking a moment to say goodbye to each of them separately, I climbed in the back of Mr. V’s car, and he took us to our apartment. We said goodbye, and Gia and I got ready for bed before ending up in the living room.
She was already sitting on the couch with her feet tucked under her butt and her arm out to welcome me into the space beside her when I walked in.
I crawled up next to her and let her hug me into her side. Then I noticed the ice cream and wine on the coffee table.
“Just in case.” She shrugged and started combing her fingers through my hair. “I also have a guy who can get us what we’d need to set him—I mean, his car—on fire.”
Despite the heaviness in my chest, I huffed a laugh, but when tears pricked my eyes again, I grabbed one of the oversized throw pillows from beside her and put it on her lap. Burying my face in it, I screamed as loud as I could.
Gia waited until I’d let it all out, and when I sat upright and scooted back, she turned to face me. With our legs crossed in the center of the couch, she took my hands and met my gaze.
“Rage or repair?”
I cocked my head. “What?”
“For solutions. Do you want ones focused on rage or focused on repairing? I don’t know. It’s something the new guy says when I’m in a mood.”
Smiling at the annoyed way she scoffed and rolled her eyes, I caught the blush on her cheeks. She liked him—this new guy—and he’d figured her out a bit, too.
“Repair,” I grumbled. “As much as I’d like to rage, the last thing I need to do is add an arson charge to my rap sheet on top of the others.”
She grabbed the ice cream from the coffee table, handed me a spoon, and popped the lid off the top. After she dug her spoon in for a scoop, she put her game face on. “Okay, fill me in on what’s happened. Everything since we last talked.”
I walked her through everything, keeping my focus on Max before I got to the rest. My failed attempts at seducing Max with my lingerie, his full-on flight-risk behavior the third day, the strip poker debacle, and then what happened with Ben in the Round Tableau room.
Her eyes flew wide, and she got up and paced the room while I shared Max’s concerned check-in when I woke up and everything that happened from there.
“I can’t believe he did that after what happened with your dad.
And on top of the golf cart incident! What the hell was he thinking?
I can’t—” She jerked to a stop, whirling to face me and pointing a finger right at me.
“We’re not done talking about that, by the way, but right now—” She resumed pacing, her curls flying as she grew angrier by the minute.
“I could kill him. Murder him. Dead. Does he think I make empty threats? No. And he’ll be too dead to realize it, that—Ugh! That asshole!”
Weirdly, Gia’s outrage quelled my fury over it. It didn’t answer it, just tempered it enough to play devil’s advocate. “To be fair, I don’t know if he knew about the golf cart…”
“It doesn’t matter. Irrelevant! And then he just left you once the police arrested you? Erroneous on all counts, I swear to goddamnmotherfuc—”
“Right before he left,” I added over her tirade. “He said it was too bad he didn’t have a diner napkin lying around.”
Gia froze in her tracks, her expression puzzled. “What?”
“A diner napkin.” I waved at my puffy face. “To dry my tears.”
Hazel eyes narrowing suspiciously, Gia frowned and walked over to the couch. “That’s oddly specific. You’re that’s what he said? A diner napkin?”
As her rage lessened, mine rose. “He was probably twisting the knife about Bill and Diane. That’s where he said he was taking me, so I’d get in the car.
It must’ve been a hint that everything with his special place was a lie, too.
” Growling, I thrust my spoon in the air. “Ugh! I knew they were paid actors!”
Ice cream flew off my spoon and landed on Gia’s shirt.
“Easy, tiger.” She sat down beside me, gripping my hand gently and lowering it back to the ice cream carton. Presumably, where it was safe. “With everything else you’ve told me, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if Max wanted to say something to twist the knife, with everything else he’d done, why wouldn’t he have just said it?
” She put on her best Max impression. “Hey girl, remember how I made you think I was a good guy and then forced you to relive huge traumas? Well, I also hired actors to play Bill and Diane.” When my brow furrowed, she cleared her throat.
“I don’t know, but being weirdly specific about the napkin instead of just saying he lied to you outright?
That feels more like a clue than a dig to me. ”
My lips twisted in consternation. I saw her point, but I had no idea what to do with it.
“Didn’t he make other comments that stood out that way?”
“Yeah…” I ran through the ones that came to mind first, but only one lined up. “Wait, he made a dig about my Skills and Assets list, too! He wrote that on a diner napkin.”
“Well, then. That settles it! Tomorrow, we’ll make a trip to the diner. See if we can get some answers.”
I did my best to smile, but failed to match her enthusiasm.
Maybe Bill or Diane could share something that would clue me in to what was going on with Max. Maybe it wasn’t as hopeless as it felt, and there was a reason for everything he was saying and doing right now.
I wanted so badly to believe that. Because losing hope?
Feeling that faith slip from my grip with each new hurt?
It felt like being a candle in the wind—or a flame fighting to stay lit—despite the elements working against it.
Growing dimmer with each blow. Not knowing when a strong enough force might come. Unsure what might finally snuff it out for good.
Before this, I’d believed that nothing could do that.
But now, so much had been happening, and so much had gone wrong…I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
The next day, after a terrible night’s sleep, Gia and I headed to Max’s secret place, hoping for answers.
By the time we pulled into the diner, Gia had convinced me we’d find something to explain Max’s behavior and something useful to free his stubborn ass from the Valencourts, even if he resisted our help.
Her reaction to the diner was on par with my first impression. Just a little more dramatic, as was her style.
She swooned at the way Diane greeted us at the front, feigning collapse and near death from cuteness overload.
Her words—not mine.
“Oh my goodness,” she hissed excitedly under her breath. “She is adorable!”
To be fair, Diane’s eyes had lit up with excitement. She gasped my name before she came around the counter and wrapped me in a hug. “It’s so good to see you, sweetheart.”
“It’s so good to see you, too.” I smiled at her, gesturing to Gia, who’d clutched her heart. “This is Gia, my best friend. I told her about your diner, and she just had to see it for herself.”
“How nice of you, Gia! Well, you two, come on in. Sit anywhere you like, and I’ll let Bill know you’re here. He hasn’t stopped asking about you since Max brought you for a visit. Even though he knows as well as I do I haven’t seen the boy since then, either.”
Clucking her tongue with a playful roll of her eyes, she ushered us in fully before she disappeared into the back.
“Oh my god, that was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
With the back of her hand, she thwacked her forehead, then swooned like she might faint. I kept her upright, and she laughed before she followed me to the table. Odd sounds from behind me had me glancing over my shoulder.
I caught her fanning her eyes like she might cry.
“I can’t help it! It’s like you’re her daughter-in-law already.”
“Calm down, you nut. They’re both really sweet, but I don’t think Max gave them the impression he planned to propose.” A dark cloud formed over my head. “At least, not to me.”
“Well, it sure didn’t sound like she or this Bill fella have any idea what Max has been up to. That’s a good sign, at least.”
I slid into the last booth—Max’s booth—before I’d even registered choosing a table. My feet carried me there on instinct, like they’d done each time I’d come to the diner.
“Is it? I mean, I want to believe so, but what if he just hasn’t had time to share the good news with them?” I grumbled as I opened my menu, even though I didn’t need to look at it. “I could be making everything he’s done into something it’s not.”
From her seat across from me, Gia frowned. “True. I wanted to be optimistic while you have a lead, but it doesn’t seem like you’re there right now.”
“I guess I’m not. Maybe that’ll change after talking to Bill and Diane, but right now, I don’t know what to believe. And I don’t want to be hurt more, wishing for the best, when all the signs in front of me point out danger.”
Before Gia responded, Diane approached the table with Bill in tow. He pulled me up from my seat and straight into a hug. “Quinn! Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been worried sick.”
“You have? But why?”
He didn’t spare the dramatics, his voice lamenting. “Oh, that the stubborn fool ran you off because he wouldn’t take advice from an old man.”
I laughed and hugged him back, too touched to break the man’s heart by telling him the truth. “Not to worry, Bill. You taught him well. Max turned out to be quite the gentleman.”
He pulled back to search my face, not fully believing me or just pretending he didn’t, before he let out a dramatic sigh of relief. “Good. You two would be good for one another. An old man can tell these sorts of things, you know?”
“You’re not an old man.”
Diane swatted at his arm. “He’s also not the one who said that. But at least now I know he listens when I talk.”
Bill released me to give Diane a peck on the cheek, then urged me to sit back down.
I introduced him to Gia, who had hearts in her eyes over the way he had just treated me, and they chatted with us for a minute before Diane disappeared to make our milkshakes.