Chapter 20
MAX
In the fifteen years that I’ve lived here, my place has never felt like this before.
For the past week, Lacey and I have continued to work on the projects for her cabin, but in the early afternoons, we’ve packed up and come down to mine so I can work on a dining table.
I never thought a dining table — and the chairs I made to go along with it — would be a project for my cabin, but we needed somewhere for Warren and Vanessa to sit, needed somewhere to place the meal.
During this dinner party.
Which I am hosting at my cabin right now.
I stand in the kitchen with a beer in one hand, watching the three of them laughing and talking at the table. Warren and Lacey are drinking the wine he brought, while Vanessa also has a beer and is leaning back in her chair confidently.
She is not what I was expecting. After meeting Lacey — the girl who always wears dresses, gasps at everything she thinks is cute, and asked me which highlighter best complements her freckles — Vanessa is not who I would have imagined as her best friend.
Vanessa knocked on the door, wearing an actual leather jacket, holding her helmet under one arm. When she stepped inside, she complimented the build and shrugged off her jacket, revealing a skin-tight black tank top that showed off her tattoos snaking down both arms.
Vanessa had an aesthetic to achieve, and achieve it she did. Lacey teased her for renting a motorcycle for the weekend, and Vanessa said the roads here were too fun not to try them on the bike.
Lacey shot me a look and mouthed traffic police at me, which made me smile.
The moment Vanessa mentioned riding her bike on these roads, I’d bristled, but I kept my opinions to myself.
So, instead of sharing them, I’d leaned over and said to Warren, grateful for the chance to tease him for once, “Close your mouth, bud. You might make it obvious.”
He snapped his jaw, which was actually hanging open, shut, and turned to look at me, his expression of surprise at my teasing quickly turning to dismissal when he actually processed my words.
“Just not who I was expecting,” he said, shrugging and taking a sip of his wine as nonchalantly as he could manage. And later, when he offered Vanessa some of that wine, and she asked for a beer instead, I could see him watching her, trying to figure out how to get her to like him.
Now, I turn back to what I’m doing, stirring the pasta on the stove and trying to work backwards, to figure out at exactly which moment I went from being the guy who would hide in the workshop to dodge Warren, to being the kind of person who would willingly host a dinner party.
Was it when Lacey pulled to the side of the road, waving her arm at me? Or when she got stuck again later? I’m convinced it happened while looking at her, this realization that I would do anything to make her happy.
“How’s it going?” she asks, her breath soft against the back of my bicep, which she kisses quickly through my shirt, and it sends a frisson of happiness through me.
Maybe it solidified just then. I really would do anything just for a kiss on the arm from this girl.
“Great,” I say, stirring again. “Should be done here soon.”
During the meal, I stay mostly quiet but find myself laughing at Vanessa and Lacey’s retellings of different situations at work.
Warren teases me and lights up with joy when he gets Vanessa to laugh at one of his jokes.
If Vanessa is aware of how she affects him (and the fact that he’s been staring at her like a puppy dog all night long) she doesn’t let on.
Finally, it’s time for them to leave, and Warren is promising to drive behind Vanessa on her bike to make sure she makes it back to the inn okay. She’s spending the day with Lacey tomorrow before flying back to California.
“That was so much fun,” Lacey says, gathering up the plates and bringing them into the kitchen, pushing up her sleeves in front of the faucet.
I already put the food away, washed and dried the pots, and now I push her hair to one side, kissing the back of her neck and tugging her toward me, away from the sink, before she can turn the water on.
“Don’t worry about that,” I say, smiling against the nape of her neck as she laughs, flailing out for the sink as I tug her toward the bedroom.
“But I need to pull my weight,” she says, laughing as I spin her around and walk her toward the bed, my hands skirting up and down her sides, itching to touch every inch of her.
“I have an idea of how you can do that,” I say against a spot just under her ear, and she drops her head back, letting out a low moan, letting me maneuver her onto the bed, letting me slide between her legs, letting me touch her the way I’ve wanted to the entire night.
For some reason, I’d thought doing something like this — having other people around — might make it harder for me to get in the mood, but there was something about watching Lacey.
Watching her smile, watching her cheeks flush, watching her light up with pleasure each time she made a joke that garnered attention from her friends.
Our friends.
The idea of it — that Vanessa could someday be my friend, and Warren hers, that we could share people like that — makes my skin hot. It only makes me want her more.
I take her long and slow, and she clings to me, burying her face in the crook of my neck, tangling her fingers in my hair. I run mine through hers, tugging, liking the noises she makes in response.
When we’re done, I roll off her and shift, so she’s settled against me, still breathing hard and completely worn-out. She slides up, her fingers splaying over my chest as she places a kiss on my jaw, the soft press of her lips against my stubble.
There’s just something about this woman.
“I wanted to tell you about the… rest of it,” I say, my voice coming out raw. I wince at my own clumsy delivery.
A moment ago, she seemed on the verge of sleep, but now she lifts her head up, her gaze sharpening when it lands on me. Silently, she urges me to go on.
So, I do.
“You know about the car accident when I was a kid,” I begin, clearing my throat, suddenly wishing I could take it back. I know I’ll feel better after telling her, but the telling part always sucks.
For some reason, it always feels like I’m fishing for sympathy or trying to make it seem like my life is harder or worse. Like I’m in some sort of cosmic contest for pity.
But I push through that because Lacey promised me that she would be honest with me. And I want to be honest with her, too.
“That… wasn’t the only one.” I take a breath through the dizzy, lightheaded feeling that rushes through my head any time I remember this.
“Right before my high school graduation, Ed and Claire had planned to adopt me. I told them they didn’t have to, but they insisted on it, even though I would turn eighteen soon.
They were coming home from the courthouse with the papers when… ”
I swallow, take a deep breath. Lacey’s hand stays on my chest, and she rubs the spot, pushing like she can massage the pain from my heart. Reaching up, I settle my hand over hers and hold it there.
“The accident that Ed and Claire were in wasn’t nearly as bad as the one that killed my parents. But they were older, and I guess sometimes you just get unlucky. Claire survived long enough to make it to the hospital and tell me she loved me. She slipped into a coma that night and didn’t wake up.”
“Max,” Lacey whispers, and then she’s moving, sitting up and pushing her back against the headboard. “Come here.”
“No, it’s—”
“I wasn’t asking.”
Tentatively, I move so I’m lying my head in her lap, and she runs her hands through my hair. For what feels like the first time in my life, I have the sensation of fully relaxing, muscles finally letting go of the slightly on-edge, always-prepared tension that holds me captive.
We sit like that for long enough that I keep thinking I’ll see the first blush of sunrise through the curtains.
Time feels long and hazy, stretching out around us, and I focus on the smell and feel of her, breathing through the grief and heartache that has accompanied me, like a silent, heavy passenger, all these years.
“When something like that happens to you twice,” I say, whispering into the dark of the room, not even sure if Lacey is awake to hear it. “You start to think it’s a message from the universe. That you shouldn’t get close to anyone, or you’ll lose them. That you deserve to be alone.”
A beat passes, then her hand moves, sliding through my hair again and down, cupping the side of my face gently. Then, she leans down and kisses my forehead, her lips soft and warm.
“Yeah. But maybe I’m a message from the universe, too.”