Chapter 40
AVERY
The request comes through in the afternoon.
VIP pickup. Cedar Ridge Airport. Terminal A arrival. Passenger listed as unassigned.
No name. No details. Just a destination and a time stamp.
It’s not unusual. Not for this service. The Season has begun, somewhat officially, and while I’m exhausted from the uptick in business at the coffee shop, they haven’t been able to fill the rideshare position in town.
But the closer I get, the tighter something in my chest becomes.
Terminal A is already busy when I pull up. Travelers spill out in waves, rolling suitcases and tired faces and reunions happening in the middle of the sidewalk like the world is constantly arriving and leaving at the same time.
I park where I’m supposed to and open the app again.
No name, just Arrived.
I wait in the car for a moment, knowing I’ll be sent on my way if the client doesn’t arrive within two to three minutes of me parking here.
There’s a crowd of people all clumped together with their luggage and phones.
Then I hear a tap on the passenger window. The man leans down, and my breath catches as I see Max.
He looks just as tousled as he did the first time I picked him up on the highway.
My breath catches so sharply as I see Max.
It makes no sense. He’s supposed to be in New York with his future wife.
I roll down the window, doing my best to stay calm when all I want to do is interrogate him for hours.
“Avery,” he says, relieved.
“I thought you were in New York,” I say before I can stop myself.
“I was,” he says quietly. “I’m not anymore.”
That should feel like an answer.
It doesn’t.
I get out of the car, opening the trunk so he can put his bag inside. Instead of one suitcase, he’s brought three.
It takes several attempts to get them all loaded, one of them squished in the backseat. I feel like I’m on autopilot and don’t know what to do.
“Are you—are you engaged?” I ask, after sliding into the driver’s seat.
Max focuses on me before saying, “No.”
I scowl at him, wishing I wasn’t trying to pull answers out of him. Why do I care? I should just complete the ride and move on.
There’s a car directly in front of me, and I have to turn sharply to miss it as I inch back out to the main road. My hands lightly shake, trying to get some of the anxious energy out.
We make it down the road about two miles when I pull over onto the white line.
“Please tell me you’re not going to make me walk from here,” Max says, giving me a worried smile.
“I don’t even know where to begin with the questions I have. But will you even answer them?”
“I’ll answer anything you want to know.”
“Why did you go back to New York?”
“I had to attend a board meeting for my company.”
I glance at his bag. “Start talking.”
“Avery—”
“No.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to. I swallow and try again, lower this time. “No carefully chosen words. Just…talk.”
That finally gets him to look at me.
And it’s worse than I expected.
Because he doesn’t look like the version of him I’ve been trying to sort in my head. Not the polished man in expensive suits, not the controlled voice on the other end of assumptions I made without realizing I was making them.
He looks exhausted.
Real.
Like the mask finally slipped and he didn’t bother getting put back on.
My chest tightens anyway.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“That depends on what you mean,” he says quietly.
“I mean,” I exhale, trying to hold myself together, “are you the man I met in Penrose Beach or the man from New York?”
His eyes don’t leave mine.
“I’m both.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only honest one I have.”
That lands somewhere I don’t want it to.
I look away first, out the windshield, where nothing is happening and everything feels too still.
“You lied to me,” I say.
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t tell me,” I cut in, turning back. “You let me think you were just…Max. Not that Max.”
His hands flex once in his lap, as if he’s holding in as much nervous energy as I am.
“I didn’t correct it because I didn’t want you treating me differently.”
That makes a bitter laugh slip out of me before I can stop it.
“Right. Because that worked out so well.”
Silence again.
My thoughts won’t slow down. They’re all crashing into each other too fast.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I ask.
“I was going to,” he says immediately. “But I was thinking logically, trying to sort through whatever seemed the highest priority at the time. And that was to get my father to see that I wasn’t going to marry Victoria.”
“When were you going to do that?” I press. “After I figured it out from receipts? After I embarrassed myself by defending you?”
His head turns slightly at that. “That’s not what happened.”
“It’s exactly what happened.” My voice cracks a little on the last word, and I hate that he hears it.
I force myself to keep going anyway.
“Do you have any idea what it feels like?” I ask. “To think you know someone and then realize you were just…not given the full version of them?”
His gaze drops for half a second, then returns to mine.
“I know,” he says.
That stops me and I blink. “No. You don’t.”
“I do,” he says, quieter now. “Because I’ve spent most of my life being the version of myself people expected instead of who I actually am.”
Something in my chest tightens loosens.
But I don’t let it sway me completely yet.
“Great,” I say. “So we’re both damaged. That fixes everything.”
“Avery—”
“And don’t.” I point at him now, shaking slightly. “Don’t say my name like that makes it better.”
He goes still. The silence stretches again, thicker this time.
I force myself to say the thing that’s been sitting under everything else, the thing that caused the most doubt in this whole situation.
“You were engaged,” I say.
“I wasn’t.” He shakes his head once. “It was an arrangement that never became anything I agreed to.”
I stare at him, trying to process that fast enough to make it feel real. “And you were going to go back,” I say anyway, because I need it all out.
“I wasn’t going back to her. I was going back to help sort out the company I’ve put my blood, sweat, and tears into. To save it, and myself, from my father.”
That’s the first crack.
I turn slightly in the seat now, fully facing him.
“Then why come back here?” I ask, softer without meaning to be. “Why come find me?”
His eyes hold mine for a long moment.
And when he speaks, there’s nothing rehearsed in it.
“I have unfinished business here. Have you seen that building down at the end of the road before the bigger beach houses? Talia is going to have a lot of work ahead of her.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I whisper.
“I know.”
A beat.
“I just didn’t want a life where you weren’t in it.”
Everything in me goes still, like the world forgot to keep moving.
“You don’t get to say that,” I breathe. “Not after everything.”
“I can. It’s up to you whether you accept it or not,” he says. But he doesn’t look away, and that’s what undoes me.
“You make it sound so simple,” I say, my voice breaking around the edges now. “Like I’m just supposed to believe you and—”
“I’m not asking you to believe me,” he says, cutting in gently. “I’m asking you to look at me and decide what you see.”
That’s the moment something in me snaps loose.
Because I have been looking at him. I haven’t stopped.
“I love you, Avery Parker. Not because you fit into anything I planned, and not because I know how to explain it to myself or anyone else. I love you because you beat me at go-karts and laughed like that’s what mattered more than winning, because you fell asleep on my couch like you trusted me without even thinking about it, and because when my car ran out of gas and I had nothing, you showed up like it was the most normal thing in the world, and I—”
I reach over mid-sentence, grab his shirt collar, and pull him into me.
Our lips meet, and it’s like an explosion of heat coursing through them. He reaches up to cup my chin, slowing things down so we can savor the moment.
Pulling back slightly, I say, “Sorry, you were saying.”
He gives me a glazed-over look and says, “Well, now I can’t remember anything else I was going to say.” He hesitates, then, “I’m sorry, Avery. Just know, aside from my career and my name, everything else was and is real.”
I lean forward and give him a peck on the lips, not sure I can stop now that I’ve experienced this. Then I pull back, that little insecurity peeking through. “Why me?”
He frowns for a moment, then says, “Why not you? Avery, you challenge me. You make me excited to get up in the morning. And I love how passionate you are about things.”
We lean in for another lingering kiss, one I feel all the way to my toes.
“So, you’re attracted to a slightly chaotic caffeine addict, who just wants the best for her family?”
“Absolutely.” He opens his mouth to say something and then closes it quickly.
“Yes, I’ll give you full texting access,” I say, as if it were just another boring line item in a contract negotiation.
He pumps his fist and grins.
I lean over, touching my forehead to his. “I love you, too, Max Bauer.”