14. Max
— ? —
Max
The motel is the only one with a vacancy sign still lit.
Three hours north of that church, through back roads and empty highways, checking mirrors every thirty seconds for tails that never came. Cat slept for most of it, or pretended to, her face turned toward the window, her hand pressed against her belly like she was shielding it from me.
Fair enough. I haven’t earned her trust yet.
An hour into the drive, Nico found unfamiliar cars outside the property I had meant to use. We changed course. At a garage owned by one of Enzo’s men, we changed vehicles too; our driver went back to draw any attention away. I took the wheel and told Cat each change before making it.
I pull into the gravel lot and cut the engine. The place looks exactly like what it is: last resort lodging for people who’ve run out of options. Flickering neon, peeling paint, a front office with a bored attendant who barely looks up when I walk in.
“One room.”
“Just got one left. King bed.”
“Fine.”
He slides the key across the counter, and I pay cash, enough that he won’t remember my face, not enough to make him curious. When I get back to the car, Cat is awake, watching me through the window with those guarded eyes.
“We’re staying here?”
“For tonight. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”
She doesn’t argue. Just opens her door and follows me to the room at the end of the row, moving slowly, one hand on her lower back. The pregnancy is harder on her than she’s letting on. I can see it in the way she winces when she walks, the way her breath comes shorter than it should.
Five months. Five months she’s been carrying my child, and I didn’t know.
The room is exactly what I expected. One bed, one chair, a bathroom the size of a closet, carpet that’s seen better decades. I drop our bags by the door and check the windows, locked, no exterior access, then turn to face her.
She’s standing in the middle of the room, arms crossed, jaw tight.
The door clicks shut.
“So,” she says.
“So.”
“You want to tell me what happens now? Or are you just going to make all the decisions without consulting me, like always?”
“Cat-”
“Because that worked out so well last time. You deciding what I needed to know, what I was allowed to be part of. Really stellar results.”
“I was trying to protect you,” I say, and even I hear how thin it sounds.
“You were trying to control the situation.” Her voice rises. “There’s a difference, Max. And the fact that you can’t see it is exactly why we’re here.”
“I can see it now.”
“Great. Wonderful. Four months of running for my life, and you finally get it.” She laughs, and it’s bitter as ash. “Do you have any idea what it was like? Hiding in motels, working cash jobs, not knowing if every stranger who walked through the door was someone you’d sent to-”
“I never sent anyone to hurt you.”
“I know that NOW.” She’s shouting, and I let her, because she’s earned it. “But I didn’t know then. I found something, Max. In your study. Something that made me think-” She stops, jaw tight. “It doesn’t matter what it said. What matters is what I believed.”
“What did you believe?”
“That you wanted me gone. That you were working with people who wanted me dead.” Her voice cracks. “That every cold moment, every locked door, every time you looked through me like I was furniture, that it all meant exactly what it felt like.”
“Cat-”
“Don’t.” She holds up a hand. “Don’t explain. Don’t justify. I’ve heard Nico’s version. I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.” She drags a hand through her hair.
“I don’t know what I want. I know I dyed my hair in a motel sink with a kit that smelled like a chemical spill.
I know I learned which floorboards in that bar creaked so I’d hear anyone coming.
I know I wore an apron three sizes too big for months so nobody would look at my stomach. ”
“I never meant-”
“I don’t care what you meant.” She jabs a finger at the door, at the dark beyond it. “I care that a stranger at a window could make my hands shake for a whole shift. I care that I called nobody, because the only number I know by heart is yours.”
“I spent four months terrified, Max. Four months of looking over my shoulder, sleeping with a knife under my pillow. Do you understand what that does to a person?”
“No.” The word comes out raw. “I don’t. I can’t imagine it.”
“I needed you.” Her voice breaks entirely now. “I needed you, and you weren’t there. You were locked away, unreachable, and I was falling apart alone. Crying myself to sleep wondering what I did wrong.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why did it feel like I was being punished?”
I don’t have an answer for that. There isn’t one, not one that makes any sense, not one that justifies the choices I made. So I do the only thing I can think of.
I cross the room.
Drop to my knees.
And press my lips to her belly.
She freezes. I feel it, the sudden tension in her muscles, the sharp intake of breath, and I wait for her to push me away. I deserve it. I deserve worse.
But she doesn’t push.
Instead, she breaks.
The sound that comes out of her is something between a sob and a scream, raw and wounded and ancient. Her hands come up to push at my shoulders, but there’s no strength in it, and then she’s crying, really crying, the kind of tears that come from somewhere deep and don’t stop.
“I can’t,” she gasps. “I can’t do this. I can’t just-”
“I know.”
“You don’t get to just show up and fix everything with, with-”
“I’m not trying to fix anything.” I look up at her, still on my knees, still pressed against the swell where my child is growing. “I’m just trying to be here. For whatever you need.”
“What I need is space.” She steps back, forcing me to let go. “What I need is time to figure out what the hell I’m feeling without you, without you doing THAT.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Max. I can’t think when you’re-” She gestures vaguely. “When you’re being like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like you actually care.”
The words hit harder than any blow I took tonight.
“I do care,” I say quietly. “I’ve always cared. I know you don’t believe that. I know I gave you every reason not to. But it’s true.”
“Then prove it.” She wipes her face with the back of her hand, smearing tears across her cheeks. “Give me space. Let me sleep. Stop looking at me like you’re about to fall apart.”
“I am about to fall apart.”
“Then do it somewhere else.”
I nod once. Stand. Cross to the door and sit down with my back against it, facing the room. My gun comes out of its holster, settles in my hand.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Giving you space.”
“On the floor?”
“You take the bed. I’ll be here.”
“Max-”
“Someone tried to kill you tonight, Cat. Someone who knew exactly where you were. I’m not sleeping until I know we’re safe.” I settle my shoulders against the wood. “This is me, giving you space. This is the best I can do right now.”
She stares at me for a long moment. I can’t read her expression, exhaustion, maybe, or disbelief, or some combination of both.
“You’re going to sit there all night.”
“Yes.”
“With a gun.”
I check the window, the sightlines, the lock. She can call me insane all she likes. I’m not moving.
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“Probably.”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to argue more, then closes it. Shakes her head. Crosses to the bed and sits on the edge, still facing me.
“I’m not sleeping with you watching me.”
“Then don’t sleep. But I’m not moving.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Maybe.”
She’s sagging where she sits, too proud to admit she’s exhausted. I brace my shoulders against the door and prepare to lose a staring contest with my own pregnant wife.
“I hate you.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
She glares at me across the room, and I hold her gaze without flinching. This is what she needs, to be angry, to be furious, to feel something other than fear. I can take it. I’ve been taking it for four months, in my own way.
Finally, she turns away. Lies down on the bed, still in her clothes, still facing me. Her eyes stay open, watching me watch her.
“Nothing I said in the church has changed,” she says.
“I didn’t expect it to.”
“And I’m still not going back to that house.”
“We’ll figure something out.”
“And you’re not making decisions about this baby without me.”
“Never.”
Silence stretches between us. The motel settles around us, creaking walls, distant traffic, the hum of a dying ice machine somewhere down the row.
Her eyes drift closed. Open again. Close.
I wait.
Dawn
She screams.
I’m on my feet before I’m fully awake, gun up, scanning the room for threats that aren’t there. The windows are intact. The door is still locked. Nothing has changed except for Cat, who’s sitting bolt upright in the bed, breathing like she’s just run a marathon.
“Cat.” I holster the weapon, cross to the bed, crouch beside her. “Cat, you’re okay. You’re safe.”
She’s shaking. Her whole body trembling, hands clutched in the sheets, eyes wild and unfocused.
“They were-” She gasps for air. “They were dragging me, and you weren’t-”
“It was a nightmare. Just a nightmare.” I reach for her hand, wanting to steady her, wanting to help…
She flinches back.
“Don’t.”
I freeze.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice is raw, scraped thin by sleep and fear. “I can’t, I don’t want-”
“Okay.” I pull my hand back slowly. “Okay. I won’t touch you.”
“I just need a minute.”
“Take all the time you need.”
I back away from the bed, giving her space, even though every instinct is screaming at me to hold her. She’s terrified. I can see it in every line of her body, and I’m the one who made her this way. My silence, my strategy, my goddamn good intentions.
She takes deep, shaky breaths. Slowly, the trembling subsides. Her hands unclench from the sheets.
“I’m okay,” she says finally. “I’m okay.”
“Do you want water? There’s-”
“No.” She looks at me, and in the gray morning light, I can see how exhausted she is. How thin. How fragile. “I want the truth. From now on.”
“You’ll have it.”
“I mean it, Max.” She swings her legs over the edge of the bed, facing me. “No more secrets. No more deciding what I can handle. If we’re doing this, whatever this is, I need honesty. Starting now.”
“Starting now,” I repeat. “I can do that.”
“Even when you think I’ll hate the answer?”
“I don’t have a choice.” I hold her gaze. “You’re carrying my child. And I’ve already lost you once.”
She’s quiet for a moment, processing. I watch her face work through it, doubt, exhaustion, something guarded that I can’t quite read.
“I need to see Enzo,” she says finally.
“I know.”
“He thinks I’m on a writing retreat. He has no idea what’s actually been happening.”
“That needs to change.”
“Yes. It does.” She stands, a little unsteady, and I resist the urge to reach for her. “So what now?”
“We’re going to visit your brother.”
Her eyebrows rise. “Enzo?”
“He deserves to know the truth. And we need allies.”
“He’s going to kill you.”
“Probably.”
“I’m not going to stop him.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
The corner of her mouth twitches at that.
“Fine,” she says. “Let’s go see my brother.”
Before we leave, the doctor Nico found cleans and closes the cut along my ribs. Cat watches until the dressing is secure, then lets the doctor check her too. This time I stay beside her chair and answer every question she asks.