Maeve #3
“Because you do,” he whispered. He fastened the bandage around her palm.
“Sometimes instinct recognizes a pattern before the brain catches up.” Maeve understood exactly what he meant.
She’d spent years trusting code because code followed rules.
People were harder. Hell, Peak was harder.
Nothing about him fit into the categories she’d built for survival.
He was a mechanic who could out-hack government contractors.
A biker who carried a gun but bandaged her hand as if she might break, and he was a man who joked about everything except her pain.
“Tell me about your grandfather,” she said.
Peak’s hands stilled around hers. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything.”
He sat beside her on the bed, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “My grandfather hated motorcycles.”
Maeve smiled. “That must have made your career choice interesting.”
“He called Dixon Customs an expensive rebellion,” Peak said.
“Was he right?” she asked.
“At first, yes.” Peak leaned back slightly. “Then I realized I was good at it.”
“At fixing bikes?” she asked.
“At fixing anything.” The words held more weight than they should have. Maeve looked down at their joined hands. “You couldn’t fix him, though.” She was guessing that was the case, but the look on his handsome face confirmed her suspicions.
“No, I couldn’t,” he admitted. His thumb moved once across the back of her hand. “I tried.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Cancer.” The answer came quietly.
Maeve’s chest tightened. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he whispered.
“How long?” she asked.
“Eight months from diagnosis to the end.” She hated how broken Peak looked just talking about his grandfather.
“That’s fast,” she said.
“Too fast.” Peak stared toward the closed curtains. “He spent his whole life telling me I was wasting mine. Then, when he got sick, he started telling me he was proud of me.”
“Did you believe him?” she asked.
“No,” he breathed.
“Why not?”
“I thought he was saying it because he knew he was dying.” Maeve understood that too well. Fear made people say things they should have said years earlier.
“Maybe dying made him brave enough to tell the truth,” she said.
Peak looked at her, and for a moment, the sharp edges of his expression softened. “My grandmother said the same thing.”
“She sounds like a smart woman,” she said.
“She was terrifying,” he said.
Maeve laughed softly. “Were you close?” she asked.
“She practically raised me. My mother left when I was young, and Dad worked all the time.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be. My grandmother was enough for ten mothers.
” The affection in his voice made Maeve ache.
Wren had once spoken about her that way.
It was as though Maeve had been enough to fill every space in their family.
She wondered whether Wren still felt that way or if eighteen months in captivity had changed the love between them.
She wondered if her sister blamed her for everything that had happened to her.
Peak’s fingers tightened gently around hers. “Where’d you go?”
Maeve blinked. “What?”
“You disappeared for a second.”
“I was thinking about Wren,” she admitted.
“Good memory or bad one?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She took a shaky breath. “What if she hates me?”
Peak frowned. “Why would she?”
“Because they took her to punish me.”
“That wasn’t your choice,” he assured.
“I started digging and looking into things that I shouldn’t have,” she said.
“So did she,” he reminded.
“I was older. I should have stopped her.”
“You think she would’ve listened?”
Maeve almost smiled. “No.”
“Then there you go, he said.
“That doesn’t make it my fault,” she breathed.
“Exactly.” He smiled over at her and squeezed her hand in his.
She shook her head. “You twisted that.”
“I clarified it.”
“You’re annoying,” she grumbled.
“So I’ve been told.” His thumb moved across her skin again, slow and absentminded.
The simple touch made something warm unfurl inside her chest. For eighteen months, every hand reaching toward her had felt like a threat, but Peak’s didn’t.
He didn’t demand anything. He simply stayed.
Neither of them noticed they were still holding hands—not until a loud crack of thunder rolled across the marsh. Maeve jumped instinctively.
Peak looked toward the window as rain began pelting the glass in heavy sheets.
Within seconds, the parking lot disappeared behind a curtain of water.
The lights flickered once, twice, and then the power went out.
The room fell into complete darkness and Maeve's breathing caught.
She hated the dark—always had, but especially since Wren disappeared.
A second later, the beam of Peak's flashlight cut through the blackness.
He looked at her. "You okay?" She started to answer, and another clap of thunder shook the motel. Without thinking, she took one step closer to him, and then another. Neither of them spoke. Neither of them acknowledged the few inches separating them.
Outside, the storm raged, but inside, the tiny motel room suddenly felt even smaller. For the first time since she'd met Peak, Maeve realized the safest place she'd been in eighteen months wasn't a fortified clubhouse or an underground tunnel—it was standing in the dark beside him.