Chapter 28 Maverick #2
She studies me like she’s weighing whether I’ve earned the right to ask. I don’t look away. “I’m sorry,” I say, the words rough and plain. “For the door, for the drink, for letting someone touch me when all I wanted was you.” My palm stays open. “Let me make this right.”
She steps between my legs. Her fingers skim my jaw, not gentle, not forgiving—just real. “Show me.”
I guide her with my hands at her hips, turning her so her back rests against my chest. “Slow,” I murmur against her temple.
“Your pace. Your say.” She nods, breath catching, and I help her lower, inch by inch, until I’m seated deep inside her.
We both exhale like we’ve been holding it since the moment the elevator opened.
I slide my forearms beneath her thighs and hold her there, anchored. My mouth finds the soft place below her ear. “Tell me if you need anything different.”
“Just…don’t let go,” she whispers.
“Not a chance.”
I lift her a breath and sink her back down.
It’s not about forcing my way into her body.
It's about keeping time with her—the tiny shivers that run through her, the way her shoulders soften when I kiss her neck, the way her fingers lace over mine where I’m bracing her.
She sets the rhythm; I follow. Every rise and fall is an apology I mean with every heartbeat.
“I should’ve sent her away at the door,” I say, voice quiet, steady.
Her breath hitches. “I should’ve remembered what this feels like—how you fit, how you look when you’re trying not to smile.
” She does, a small, wrecked curve that makes my chest hurt in the best way.
“That’s on me. I won’t forget again. Never again. ”
She tips her head back to my shoulder, eyes closing as she moves.
“Keep talking,” she breathes, and I do—small truths between kisses.
The first time I knew I was gone for her.
How her laugh lives in the back of my throat.
How the room feels different when she’s here and how I hate myself when I make it colder.
I tighten my arms, lifting her a little higher and then guiding her down slow so she takes all of me, so there’s no distance left to pretend with. “Right there?” I ask.
She answers with a shiver, wordless, trusting.
We find a rhythm that feels like a promise.
I press my forehead to her shoulder and breathe with her—four in, four out—until the air steadies.
When her hands tremble, I cover them. When her breath stutters, I kiss the sound back into her.
When she begins to break apart, I hold her through it and keep holding after, rocking us through the aftershocks until she melts against me.
“I’m here,” I whisper into her hair. “I’ll be here.” She turns her face, finds my mouth without looking. It’s not frantic. It’s home.
When I finally follow her over the edge, it’s with her name in my teeth and her fingers dug into my forearms like she’s keeping me from floating off. We stay like that—joined, quiet, the chair steady under us—until our pulses fall into the same slow pace.
“I can do better than sorry,” I say into the hush, kissing the corner of her mouth. “I can be better.”
Her answer is a soft nod I feel in my bones. “Then stay,” she says, and I hold her closer, because that’s the easiest promise I’ve ever made.
She’s boneless in my arms as I clean us up and carry her to the bed.
There’s a savage satisfaction to be had from holding a blissed out woman in your arms. From knowing you did that to her. You’re responsible for her pleasure.
No one else.
When Conrad had me tend her after he used her, I didn’t mind. Time with my girl is time with my girl. It didn’t bother me that I wasn’t the one who took her there.
It doesn’t bother me now. I should have seen it. I should have known.
She’s different after Conrad. Different after Atticus. Storm never lets her out of his sight after they play, but I’d bet she’s different with him, too.
Not better. Not worse. Just different.
I just wish that were enough to make me worthy of her.
“I can hear your mind spinning,” she murmurs, eyes still closed. “Are you ready to talk?”
My shoulders sag, and I hold her tighter.
I don’t deserve her, but she deserves the truth. “Okay,” I tell her, “rip me open.”
“Not in here.” She gets up and grabs one of my T-shirts. It’s long enough to hit her mid-thigh, and I have to admit… it’s a good look on her.
“Why not?”
“Because I meant what I said. I want this room to be sacred. Just you and me. A place for the two of us to escape all the bullshit. This conversation is going to be a lot of bullshit.”
I bark out a laugh, but she shoots me a deadly glare that serves as a very important reminder. Fucking Phoenix into oblivion will never be enough to get me out of trouble.
Why do I like that?
I get dressed and follow her into the living room. It’s still and quiet, everyone somewhere else, thank fuck.
She sits on the couch, crossing her legs, and I go straight to the bar, pouring two glasses of whiskey and passing one to her.
Phoenix takes the glass but doesn’t make room for me on the couch, so I sit in the armchair on the other side of the table. I’m maybe three feet from her, but it feels like miles. Her finger taps the side of the whiskey glass absently—or maybe angrily. I can’t tell which.
I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. She’s staring at me expectantly.
“It wasn’t—” I start, then stop.
She laughs, a single, short, sharp bark. “Wasn’t what, exactly? From where I was standing, it sort of looked like you brought a girl to our door.”
“I sent her away.”
“You still brought her here to fuck her, though, right?” she says, eyebrows shooting up.
“I was an idiot,” I say, because dressing it up won’t change a fucking thing. “I couldn’t find you, and I—”
“So you found the next available warm body?” she says, and there’s a tremor in her voice that isn’t a wobble—it’s fury trying to stay inside its lines. “Newsflash, Maverick: if you want me when it’s convenient and anybody else will do when it’s not, then you need to let me go.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Okay,” she nods. “Then what is it like?”
“It’s like I’m losing my grip,” I say, too loud, and set the glass down on the table with a sharp snap of sound.
“It’s like every time I try to fix something, it breaks twice as hard, and I just wanted five goddamn minutes of not being the guy who screws everything up.
I was drinking, and I told her no. I just… I’m so damn tired of not being enough.”
I rub my wrists, the memory of plastic biting into my skin ingrained there. Phoenix stares at me, unblinking.
“I thought…” I stop. The truth is pathetic, but she deserves it.
Even if I’m only telling her to win the bet, it’s still the truth.
“I thought that maybe you had finally decided I’m the weak link.
That you didn’t want to be near me. I figured you finally saw me for what I am—a pretender—and that you only wanted me because you thought you had to, for the others… ”
Her mouth softens, opens a little on an oh of surprise. “God, Mav. You really believe that, don’t you?”
“I’m not Atticus,” I say before I can swallow it. “I’m not Storm. I’m sure as hell not Conrad. I’m the fuck-up. The one who can only smile pretty for the cameras and do the easy shit that doesn’t matter. But I can’t even seem to do that right now without making everything worse.”
“No! No, Mav…you’re the one who knows how to make rooms breathe,” she says. “You’re the one who remembers every guest’s favorite drink and every dealer’s birthday. You’re the one who makes people want to come here. Baby, you are the life of the party and the heart of the Titans.”
I look at her and want to drop into her hands like they’re the only safe place left. “I’m so sorry.”
“I know,” she says. “I’m still so mad at you.”
“That’s really fucking fair.”
Silence sits with us for a beat but then she gets up and moves into my arms. Warmth spreads through me as I hold her.
“You don’t get to disappear into your worst habit when you feel small,” she says. “You come find me. You tell me you’re drowning. Let me help you the way you help me.”
I draw back and meet her pretty blues, wide with worry for me. “Only if you do the same, Firebird.” I say. She starts to look down, and I put a finger to her chin, tipping her gaze back up to mine. “We know you’re keeping secrets. We want you to trust us with them.”
“I’ll try,” she says. “But not right now.”
I nod and press a kiss to her forehead. “For what it’s worth… if you hadn’t walked in, I still wasn’t going to hook up with her. I told her no.”
“I believe you,” she says, and the muscles in my chest slowly relax.
The elevator dings out in the hall. Somewhere in the building, Atticus is trying to trap a ghost. Somewhere else, Conrad is telling a senator’s wife she looks perfect. Storm is probably interviewing someone who will lie right up until they see his face in a certain light.
Adulting is a rigged game we’re being forced to play before we’re ready. But if I can keep this woman, she might be the piece we need to win.
I close my eyes and let myself have fifteen seconds of not hating who I am.
It lasts fourteen.
“Also,” Phoenix adds, voice casual in a way that makes my stomach flip, “if you ever bring another woman to our door again, I mean it. I’ll kill her, and then I absolutely will light you on fire.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and hold her tighter, wanting to keep the world out for a few more minutes.