Chapter Four
Max
Past
Iget home from school in the same bad mood that my English Lit teacher puts me in each time I see her.
I swear, she’s deliberately sadistic, assigning the thickest tomes imaginable to the classroom at large.
And she takes great pleasure in singling me out to read the thick-ass books aloud, despite knowing I have diagnosed dyslexia.
Each time I read, the class laughs. Each time I answer a question wrong, Ms. Lib gleefully lowers my grade.
I hate Ms. Lib.
I walk down the driveway, glaring at the sun, the flowers, the grounds, everything around me. I’m suspended from the swim team because I’m failing English, and I want to punch something—or someone—to blow off some steam. The fight I got into earlier wasn’t enough; I want more.
I pass the abandoned staff’s cottage, only to pull up short.
There’s a girl sitting there, on the steps of the rickety porch. She’s young—younger than me, though I don’t know by how much. Fair skinned, with the darkest hair I’ve ever seen. It kinda looks blue in the sunlight.
Have Mom and Dad resorted to hiring kids because they couldn’t find another groundskeeper? Is that why she’s here?
Her head is turned down, hair curtaining her face, fingers curled around the tattered edges of a book. I cross my arms over my chest, brows furrowing as I watch her.
“Who the fuck are you?” I demand. She startles, jerking so hard her book falls out of her hands and clatters its way down the porch steps.
I get my first good look at her face. Small nose, big eyes, soft features.
No way has she been hired for anything. She looks like she could use a meal or three—she’s so skimpy it gives me second-hand embarrassment.
“You must be Max,” she says quietly, offering me a shy smile. Something tugs at my chest as I watch her lips curve. She’s… cute, kinda in a Bambi way. Small enough to need lots of protection. “I’m Ember. My dad’s the groundskeeper—he got hired last week.”
Now that she mentions it, I do remember Mom telling me we’d have new staff moving in. I was hurrying out on my way to swim practice, so I didn’t really pay attention.
“Oh,” I say dumbly. A lot of my irritation melts out of me as she stands, retrieves her book, and retakes her place on the porch steps. I clear my throat. “So… you’re the groundskeeper’s daughter?”
She casts me a strange look. Right, she just told me she is. I feel weirdly tongue-tied. My eyes zero in on her book. “What are you reading?”
She glances down at the book. “Three Musketeers,” she replies. “By Dumas.”
Irrational anger thins my lips. I’m struggling my way through Fitzgerald, suspended from sports because I can’t read for shit, and she’s reading Dumas? Fuck this girl.
I want to turn around and walk away, but something keeps me rooted in place. Curiosity, maybe.
We stare at each other for a few minutes. Her gaze is curious, searching. Mine is annoyed.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Ten.”
Yeah, fuck her. I should walk away, but I still don’t. Instead, I jerk my chin at the book. “Is it any good?”
Why am I asking that? It’s not like I read for pleasure. In fact, I hate reading. Every time I try, I fail. I’m good at a lot of things, but I can’t make sense of most words. They jumble on paper.
She grins. “It has a lot of swordfights. Do you like swordfights?”
“No clue. Never read about them. They look cool on TV, though.”
She lifts up the book. “Wanna borrow it? I’ve read it, like, three times in a row now.”
She’s read it three times in a row? I repeat: Fuck. Her. I want to say something nasty, but I don’t. Mom didn’t raise me to be mean for no reason.
“I’m not good at reading,” I grudgingly admit.
She blinks. “Oh. How come?”
I lift a shoulder. “Don’t know. Just suck at it.”
She nods thoughtfully. “I can help, if you want. I don’t have much to do but read.”
I frown. “Don’t you go to school?”
“Haven’t enrolled yet. I think I start next week.” She winces. “Dad isn’t super good at those things. He’s better with plants.”
“Hope so, since that’s what he’s getting paid to do.” I wince at the harshness of my own words, just as Ember frowns and gives me another, more uncertain look. I don’t like it at all. I don’t like being mean for no reason. I take a few steps towards her. “How would you help me?”
She shrugs. “I wasn’t too good at reading until last summer. The letters flipped around sometimes. I read a lot, and it got better. Maybe that’ll help you, too.”
That could be a way to pass English and spend more time with her.
That way, I’ll be able to get back to swimming…
and I might get a friend out of it. Friends are hard in school—they’re needy, annoying, talk shit behind my back, and suck up to my face because they know my dad’s rich.
Ember doesn’t look like she cares all that much about money—she’s holding a book that looks like it’s fifth-hand.
“You ever read Fitzgerald?” I ask.
She blinks. “Sure. He’s a little… intense for my tastes. Too much symbolism.”
I scoff a laugh. “And Dumas isn’t?”
She shrugs. “At least there are swordfights.”
I suck my bottom lip into my mouth, eyeing her. “Alright,” I grumble, as if reading with her is an imposition. “Let me get changed out of these preppy clothes.”
Her nose wrinkles as she looks me up and down. “Your pants are stained with ketchup.”
I glance down at my khakis. The dark red mark on them isn’t ketchup; it’s the blood of a teammate I caught talking shit about me, but I don’t want to correct her. There’s no fear in her eyes as she looks at me, and I like that.
I want to keep it that way.
“I’ll be back in a bit.”
She returns her gaze to her book. “Bring whatever you want to read. Let’s see what we can do.”
We.
I like the sound of that, a lot.
Present
Max: 27, Ember, 23
She’s docile as I speed down the freeway, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds to make sure we’re not getting tailed. Her eyes are shut, fluttering in her sleep, and her hands are tied—because the girl already tried to kill me once, and I’m not giving her a chance to do so again.
She doesn’t remember me. Something happened to Ember to erase me from her memory, and I’ll bet my left arm that the motherfucker, Dagon, had something to do with it.
My phone starts buzzing in my pocket. I fish it out, seeing Toby flash across the screen, and pick up, pressing it to my ear.
“Yup?”
“What the fuck happened?” he roars.
I wince. “A shitshow. I take it you saw?”
“Yes, Max, I fucking saw. I saw Dagon running away with a bullet hole in his back, then I saw you dragging a girl out of there by the hair. I repeat: what. The fuck. Happened?”
I cast another sideways glance at Ember. She’s sleeping peacefully, chest rising and falling, supple breasts tempting me for a taste with each inhale.
Soon.
“I collected my chosen,” I say, returning my eyes to the road.
There’s a long, pregnant pause on the other end of the line. I can almost hear Toby having a meltdown.
“You did what?” he hisses. “You were there to kill Dagon, not kidnap a woman. You failed, Max. Your first fucking failure. Cain and Greyson—”
“Have both failed once or twice themselves. Nobody’s record is spotless.” Mine was up until now, and previously, I took great pride in that. But now… well, Ember is worth the price of a mishap.
She’s alive, and she’s here. With me. Once we have a very long talk regarding where the hell she’s been, I plan to enjoy every new curve on her body, and let her enjoy every muscled ridge on my own.
Christ, she’s beautiful. So beautiful I almost forget that she abandoned me at the lowest point in my life, when I needed her the most.
“Leadership won’t be happy about this,” Toby grumbles.
I tense. “Don’t forget that you’re speaking to leadership right now, Tobias. I made a call based on information you aren’t privy to,” such as seeing the girl who’s owned my heart since she was a teenager, “and that’s that. Clean up the mess from the tech side. Wipe my face from every CCTV—”
“I can’t wipe your face from people’s memories!” Toby roars.
“You’re speaking to a commander, soldier,” I say, tone flat. “I strongly recommend you check the fucking attitude.”
Toby wisely falls silent, though I hear his heavy, angry breaths, like the pants of a bull. “Cain will be pissed.”
“Cain has his own problems to focus on,” I reply. “Do your job, and don’t tell me how to do mine.”
Another pause. “When do you expect to make it back to headquarters?”
Greyson’s still pissed at me for feeling protective over his woman, so he refused to loan me a helicopter or jet, which leaves me stuck with driving.
I could drive straight through the night—if I were alone, that’s exactly what I’d do—but I’m not alone.
I have Ember with me. I already knocked her out; there’s no use in being a complete dick.
Besides, driving at night is safer when I know I might get chased.
“I’m finding a motel before the sun comes up, then I’ll resume when night falls and traffic clears,” I decide aloud. “Expect me in about two days.”
“Fine. Be ready to face the two other fuckers in charge.” Toby hangs up on me.
I press my foot to the gas, itching to get the fuck out of the open, and take Ember somewhere it’s safe.