Chapter Twenty-One Keely #2
Her brows scrunched. “Weren’t you coming from the hospital yesterday when we saw you at the store?”
He glared at the ceiling. “And?”
“And. . .” Her mouth dried, and she tried to swallow. “That means you’re taking everyone’s turn at the hospital. Not just yours.”
Through a breath, Max lifted and dropped his head on the back of the couch a few times, probably wishing it were a brick wall. “How did I ever forget how intuitive you are?”
She rolled her eyes at his implied insult, but something in her chest tugged all the same.
His head lolled to the side. From this angle, the sunlight turned his irises the color of hot, fresh caramel. It melted her into the couch.
“He ran track,” she offered softly. She didn’t have to specify. “When he was younger.”
“He did a lot of things when he was younger. Healthier.” Max’s throat bobbed.
This was uncharted territory for them, a rubicon that Keely was terrified to cross. But she couldn’t help it. Not when Max looked like he was on the verge of tears. “What happened?” she whispered. “I mean, how did you find out?”
He stayed quiet so long, she thought he wouldn’t answer. “I’m sor—”
“A pain in his left knee,” he said over her apology. “Do you know how often runners get those? How often I—” He sucked in a breath, ran a hand over his damp hair. She thought she heard his jaw click. “He ignored it. Thought it would go away on its own, with enough ice and Advil and stretching.”
Keely blinked new moisture from her eyes.
“Then the pain moved to his hip, which again, is. . .” Max stared at his hands. “Not an immediate cause for concern when those are the two joints that take the brunt of the damage, anyway. Mom finally made him go to the doctor after six months of near-constant pain.
“They weren’t planning to tell us anything until they knew for sure. Didn’t want us worrying over nothing. Thomas’s wife had just had the baby, and I was doing Olympic trials. They wanted me focused on that instead.”
His voice dropped off. She wanted to pick it up, hand it back to him alongside the peace she wasn’t sure she was actually offering.
“Max?” she prompted. “We don’t have to keep talking if you don’t want to.”
He shook his head, and a drop of water from his hair hit her on the side of the neck. She pressed her fingers there.
“They were staying in the same hotel as me. For the trials. I’d gone down to meet them for breakfast that morning when I overheard them talking about it.
It wasn’t aches and pains. It was chondrosarcoma.
” Max said the word like it should have meant something to her.
She wanted it to. He sounded so sad, so angry.
Confused. “Bone cancer. It affects the cartilage around the bones. Hips, knees, shoulders. . . all the places that already ache for runners. Even retired, out-of-practice ones.”
“Is that why you didn’t qualify?” As soon as the words were out, she wanted to snatch them back. This wasn’t her business; he’d shared more than she’d expected already.
To her surprise, though, Max simply nodded.
“I. . . I couldn’t get out of my head. Couldn’t stop hearing that word.
Cancer. Couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like if I made it to the top and he wasn’t there with me.
I lost my timing on the hurdles. Tripped.
Fell. Busted my knee. Screwed my chances and his. ”
“I’m. . .” She swallowed and swiped trembling fingers under her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Max.”
He stared unseeing at the space in front of him. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Me too.”
Her body ached, her heart most of all. “He was good?”
Max let out a dry chuckle, but she didn’t detect any humor behind it.
“He could have been the best if he’d gone pro.
But. . .” He closed his eyes for maybe ten seconds, and Keely waited, studying the lines of his jaw as it flexed.
When they opened, Keely swore his lower lashes were wet like hers.
“My mom wanted a family. And Dad wanted Mom.”
Warmth filled in some of the tender spots inside her chest. “That’s sort of romantic.”
His face twisted, clearing of any lingering emotion. “That’s ridiculous,” he countered. “He was about to reach his prime, about to be one of the best in the world. And just—gave it up. And now he’ll never get there.” He scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“I’m not sure either of them sees it that way,” she said gently.
He flinched, and she murmured an apology. They did have a line, apparently, and she’d crossed it.
Awkward silence filled the room, and she was about to heave herself off this heavenly sofa when he said, “I can give him another go. By winning the scholarship.”
“ ‘Give him,’ ” she echoed, sitting up straighter. “Max, that’s not your responsibility.”
“Isn’t it?” His chest heaved beneath his T-shirt.
She pointedly did not look.
He rested his forearms on his knees and took in a deep, shaking breath. “I have to do this for him.” He spread his palms. “He’s my dad.”
His voice broke.
So did her heart.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she leaned over and squeezed his knee. Electricity still lingered between them from the locker room, but she didn’t mean this as anything other than a show of support.
He stared up at her from under charcoal lashes. At this angle, all she could see were the sharp lines of his face, his nose. She recalled it skimming the space behind her ear and shivered.
Max’s pupils expanded.
This was a mistake. The party, the locker room, coming here today.
She’d vilified Max for so long in her head—from the start of the semester, if not longer—but he was becoming a person again before her eyes. And Keely wasn’t mean to people. She was never deliberately harmful or hurtful. It wasn’t in her nature.
Which meant Keely had some capital-T Thinking to do for the rest of spring break. She’d be sure to pencil in some time between packing up her childhood bedroom and figuring out how to win the scholarship if she couldn’t destroy her biggest competition.
She pulled her hand away and smoothed it over her thigh.
“I think your mom is plenty distracted by now.” She stood up. When had her knees turned to jelly? “I should go.”
Max stood too.
She held up a hand. “You don’t have to walk me out.”
He mimicked her hand gesture. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m getting water.” He was still hoarse. Water would be good for him. But there was a tilt to his lips that hadn’t been there before. He inhaled, his lips parting.
A cacophony of sound cut him off. “Duck,” Virginia yelled.
Keely, as instructed, ducked.
And Max—Max threw his head back and laughed.
She was thankful she hadn’t heard the sound before, because she wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much studying done this semester. Her stomach tightened, her skin too. Her heart might burst right out of it soon.
“What?” she hissed, looking up to make sure nothing was about to knock her out.
He swiped a finger through his tears of amusement. “Nothing, it’s just, Duck is—”
“Duck! Heel!” Virginia yelled from the kitchen, but it was no use. What sounded like a dozen paws skidded across the hardwood, and Keely tried to smother her smile as two fluffs of sunshine rounded the corner, hopping over each other to reach Max.
And then they saw her.
She was enveloped in graying fur, rough wet tongues. A sharp pain pinched her heart. She missed the shelter dogs, every last slobbery toy and ruined shoelace. Farah Pawcett, who had literally eaten out of Keely’s hand last week. Even Biscuit, with his vanishing acts and rancid odors.
“Duck. Goose.” Max hooked a finger in the blue collars peeking out of the shiny golden coats. “Easy, or she won’t come back.”
Did he want her to come back?
There were more pressing questions. “Your dogs’ names are Duck and Goose?”
“Give me some credit. I was obsessed with Top Gun when we got them.” He looked at her, his lashes throwing more shadows on the skin beneath his eyes. “I’ll keep them back, if you still want to leave.”
She did. She definitely did. “I’ll see you around?”
“Only if you’re lucky,” Max said back.
Keely rushed out before he saw her smile.
· · · · ·
Keely was going to die. Death by a thousand cardboard box cuts.
She should have started packing sooner. She should have driven her own car home. At least then she’d have an escape plan.
Mom had instructed her this morning that anything left here when Keely went back to school would either be put in storage or thrown out, at her parents’ discretion.
So Keely now had the logistical nightmare of trying to figure out her save-in-a-fire items, what she could squeeze into her suitcase and duffels and take on the bus with her.
Currently, her entire bed was covered with save-in-a-fire items.
She pulled the cork board off the wall above her desk. She’d have to disassemble it, tuck her photos and ribbons inside her textbooks for safekeeping, and trash the rest.
Something fluttered to the floor, probably a paper or pamphlet that had started in a corner and got shoved to the back over time. She didn’t often let things fall through the cracks this way, but there was a first time for everything.
She picked up the picture. Her heart catapulted into her throat.
A younger version of Keely stared back at her, arm looped around the shoulder of a boy with a gap in his teeth and mischief in his smile.
This was taken at Max’s old house, near the backyard creek where they wasted sticky summer afternoons.
Ice cream speckled the tip of her nose, no doubt placed there by the owner of that mischievous look.
They were so young then. Things were so much simpler. It made her sad for the version of herself who stood here now, who couldn’t honestly remember the last time things were easy.
Tears stinging her eyes, she tossed the photo toward the garbage.