Chapter Nineteen
Max
The coffee smell finds me before consciousness does.
I’m aware of it—distant, warm. And it pulls me awake. Then I remember where I am. I blink and flip over, pushing the blankets from me.
I get up. I don’t think about what I’m wearing or not wearing or the fact that it falls to approximately mid-thigh and my feet are bare against the cold white tile of the hallway.
I am operating on the reasoning of someone who is following a coffee smell and has not yet fully engaged their brain.
I do think of Cal, and like a magnet, the smell and thought of him draw me into the kitchen.
Cal is at the stove with his back to me.
He’s in a dark henley and sweatpants with his hair doing something completely unhinged that I have been desperate to see and didn’t know it.
I bite down on my bottom lip and take him in.
Dark against the white of the cabinets and white counters.
He has a mug in one hand and whatever he’s stirring in the other and he says, without turning around:
“I hear you back there.”
Completely at ease.
And it startles me.
“Morning,” I mumble out, ripping my eyes off the wide expanse of his shoulders as he turns around.
The mug he’s holding hits the floor.
Not dramatically—it doesn’t shatter—it just slips from his hand and hits the tile and coffee goes everywhere and Cal goes absolutely nowhere. He takes one step back until he’s against the cabinet.
I fast walk to the other side of the island before he can move and reach for a towel lying across the counter beside him, whirling around to start wiping up the mess. I bend down and glance up at him long enough to see his eyes bounce from me and point up. Directly up. Ceiling. Fixed there.
Both hands raised, palms out like he’s been stopped at a checkpoint.
I look at the spreading puddle of coffee.
I look at him.
I look at the coffee.
I squat down and start trying to wipe it into a contained lake to keep it from spreading along the white of the tile where it bleeds into the grout.
“Cal—”
“I’m fine.”
“The coffee is—”
“I’m aware.”
“It’s still—”
“I know.”
I stand, my back to him, and reach across the island for a roll of paper towels. I stand up on my tiptoes and feel the shirt glide up my thighs before my fingers reach the roll. I lean down and continue mopping at the coffee with the dish towel and paper towels.
Cal stays exactly where he is. Eyes up.
I’m directly in front of him. Crouched down. I stand up again and reach for another towel across the island, vaguely aware of the t-shirt riding up.
“Max.” His voice has a quality I haven’t heard before. Very controlled. Very deliberate, but gravelly. “If you want me to be capable of moving, you need to stop bending over in front of me,” I hear him swallow, “in my t-shirt.”
I stop.
I lower myself back down to my heels and I can feel myself go very still.
I spin around slowly, realizing my ass was probably just on full display.
He’s looking at the ceiling still, hands still slightly raised, and there is a flush of pink high on his cheeks that I have not seen on him before.
His hair is completely ridiculous, curls facing every direction.
And the dark lines of him standing out in the bright room paired with the blush is fucking gorgeous.
His jaw is set. He looks like a man holding a very thin line with significant effort.
I realize something about this is deeply satisfying to me, and I beam.
I set the dish towel on the counter. I look at him and place both hands on my hips.
“So let me understand this,” I say it low, and take one step closer to him.
“You can stand in the elevator with your hand on my back doing small circles for weeks. You can look at me the way you look at me approximately forty times a day—don’t think I don’t see it.
And you can tell me you came back for me, specifically, on a plane at thirty thousand feet.
” I pause, taking another step forward, the edges of my chest brushing the cotton of the dark shirt he is wearing.
“You can appreciate me in your t-shirt. But you can’t kiss me.
All of which is wild, Cal, because you’re still actively not cleaning up this coffee you spilled—and my eyes aren’t up there. ”
He looks down. Just his eyes, then the rest of his face.
He takes me in. Slowly. All of it. His expression changes from caught to calm, to appreciative, and God does it do something to my insides.
He drops his hands, and his eyes take stock of every inch of me, and heat rises every place they touch—my toes, my thighs, his eyes graze up my body and back to my eyes, briefly pausing at my lips.
He shakes his head, just slightly, and laughs—a short incredulous sound—and puts his hands on my hips, where I swear they burn permanent marks, and moves me gently two feet to the left so he can get to the cabinet under the sink.
He crouches down himself, gets the cleaning things, and starts on the floor.
“If I kiss you right now,” he says to the tile, “I am not going to want to stop, especially with you wearing that.” He gestures in my general direction but doesn’t look up.
I open my mouth to ask why that would be such a bad thing, but he continues talking.
“And, it is a bad thing, before you ask, because before that happens,” he stands, moves to the bin, comes back, “we need to have a conversation. An actual one. About all of this.” He gestures vaguely at the apartment, at himself, at the general situation.
“Before I drag you any further into my mess.”
I close my mouth. Embarrassment starts to weed its way into my veins, and I cross my arms over my chest. If he wanted to kiss me, maybe he already would have. But we’ve been on actual dates, we have called them dates. And all the little touches—
“Don’t make that face.”
“I’m not making a face.”
“You are. Stop. It’s not—God Max, I want to kiss you. I want to very much, especially—” His jaw tightens slightly, and his eyes look at the hemline of his t-shirt on my thighs before he looks back at the floor. “Fuck. Especially right now. But conversation first.”
I don’t say a word.
We clean up the rest of the coffee in silence. He hands me another mug. I take a sip.
I take another sip. Because I must be mistaken.
I look at the mug. I look at him.
“Did you go out and buy this?”
It’s my coffee. Exactly. The hazelnut, the mocha, the precise ratio of caramel and it tastes exactly right, like he ordered it from a café.
He turns back to the counter and opens what I’d assumed was a cabinet door. It swings out to reveal a small built-in coffee station—syrups lined up in a row, eight of them, and even from here I can see they’re barely touched. New, maybe. The seals on two of them are still unbroken.
I look at the syrups and I look at him.
“It’s almost like you bought these for me,” I say. “Except that can’t be true because you didn’t know I was coming.”
He looks at me. The corner of his mouth tilts up. It’s a small smile but it sits a little sad underneath, the way some smiles do when they’re hiding something.
He says nothing.
He gestures toward the small kitchen table. I sit. He sits across from me with his own coffee, his hands folded around the mug. He looks at me like he’s about to make a case I’m going to have to debate—like he’s already thought through every counter argument and knows how it ends.
My back straightens, because nothing is better than arguing with Cal when he thinks he’s already won.
“You have to go back,” he says.
I take a sip of my coffee, keeping my face entirely blank.
“Max.”
I hold his gaze but don’t say a word, just continue to sip my perfect, delicious coffee. I’ll let him get his argument out before I shut it down, because no way in hell am I leaving.
“The situation with the—” he pauses, his eyebrows come together in concern as he does.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, Max. I told you a lot yesterday, but there’s stuff going on…
There are people who could use you to get to me if you stay.
People who are already looking for leverage and who will not hesitate to—” Another pause.
He sighs and chooses his words carefully, “You being here puts you in the middle of something that has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me and my family’s business.
I can handle it. But not if I’m worrying about you. ”
The rules, as established over the next forty minutes at the kitchen table—where Cal makes me another fancy coffee complete with whipped cream.
I drool over the show of him making it, the way he moves around the kitchen, rather than the caramel he drizzles into the cup.
During the conversation, two bags full of brand-new clothes arrive with Gio at nine fifteen. The rules he gives are as follows:
No last name. I don’t have one. Not Cal’s, not mine. If anyone asks, I work with him at a law firm, which is true, and that’s all they need to know, which is also true.
I stay with Cal or with Gio and Rudi.
Both of whom he was kind enough to let me introduce myself to—with my name—so they at least know my name. Well, my first name. So, I can’t go anywhere alone. Not ever, not in this city, not until the situation is resolved and the family is satisfied that the territory question has been settled.
I don’t ask questions in rooms with other people.
I opened my mouth to protest this one, but he stopped me and continued with: Whatever I want to know, he will tell me after. Privately. He won’t keep any secrets, but I can’t know things in public.
I don’t go looking for things I wasn’t told about.
If I find or hear something I don’t understand, I tell him and we figure it out together.
I have to listen when he tells me to do something, even if I think it’s wrong or stupid.
If he says take two steps to the right, then I do it—he clarified this before I protested by telling me I could ask why later. He went as far as to practice this, and I made him put his hands back on my hips and he showed me exactly how far two steps to the right are.
Still didn’t get kissed.
Most importantly: I am to follow the rules even when they seem unnecessary. According to him, especially when they seem unnecessary.
I had to agree to all of these immediately, which he noted with a slightly suspicious expression, and I smiled into my coffee and said nothing. He watched my face for a moment before I nodded, then he shook his head like a man who is at peace with the consequences.
“One more,” he says now as he washes our mugs and I sit on top of the counter next to the sink, my bare legs hanging off the side and his t-shirt barely covering the private bits.
“Yes?”
He turns off the water and dries his hands, shifting to move into my space, placing his hands on either side of my hips on the counter. His eyes look into mine, searching for something.
“You tell me if you want to leave. Any time. You say the word and Gio takes you home and that’s it. I won’t be upset, no questions, no—”
“Cal.”
“Max.”
“I’m not leaving.”
We stare at each other, and his head falls against my shoulder with an exasperated sigh. “It was worth a shot.”
“Bound to fail, but I appreciate the effort,” I slide a hand up his arm, rubbing the back of his bicep through his shirt.
He steps back and helps me off the counter. The shirt rides up a little farther and his eyes tilt up to the ceiling.
“For fuck’s sake, get that bag of clothes Gio brought and go change.”
“Is that one of those things I have to listen to or…”
He looks down and sees the challenge in my eyes.
“Is it up for negotiation, Calogero?” I push him again, figuratively and literally with his body still crowding into my space, heat between us.
I see him swallow and look down at where we almost touch.
He puts his mouth next to my ear, and I feel his breath on my cheek as he whispers, “Not at the moment, counselor.”
“Whatever you say, you’re the boss.” I step forward, bumping into him and he takes a small step back with a laugh.
Before he can open his mouth, I reach down and grab the hem of his t-shirt with my fingers and lift.
“God damn it, Max,” I hear his strangled voice and see him spin around before the hem even lifts an inch.
He walks away from me and towards the staircase, mumbling over his shoulder, “You know, there are people downstairs, there’s a separate entrance and—”
I follow behind him and toss the shirt over his shoulder, stopping right behind him. “Just giving you your shirt back, Mr. Renzetti.”
I turn to the right and go into the guest room, shutting the door behind me while he audibly groans from the hall.
He said I had to follow the rules, but not that I had to play fair.