Chapter 9 Kari #2
He laughed sadly. “So Cane and I go to this party, do our thing, drink a little, whatever. I don’t know—I can’t remember much at this point.
It’s all kinda a blur. Sam’s number called a couple of times but I ignored it.
It just irritated me that my little sister’s friend was blowing up my phone.
I always tried to do right by her, but I’d had enough.
I just ignored her all night. A few hours later, I got a call from my dad.
” He turned away from me. “Sam and Bri were at the hospital.”
“What? Why?” I asked, trying to figure out how they had ended up there.
Max was looking at the floor, motionless.
“They were out doing God knows what and got a flat tire in the country. A couple guys stopped to help them but instead of changing their tire...” Max swallowed hard, his jaw working back and forth.
My breath caught in my throat as I waited for him to continue. He started moving again, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He finally drew his eyes up to mine.
“Sam was raped.”
I gasped in horror, my hand grasping my throat.
“Brielle wasn’t, thank God. They just kind of tossed her against the car a little.”
“Max, oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
“Some guy pulled up on the scene and the guys took off,” he said, not even seeming to register that I had said anything at all.
“Did they find them?”
He shook his head and turned to face me. “Nah, they got away with it. The hospital did a rape kit on Sam but neither of them could really give much detail about what the attackers looked like. It was really dark out there, so there wasn’t much to go on.”
“I am so, so sorry.” I got up and went to him, wrapping my arms around his waist. “I had no idea. Those poor girls.”
“Yeah. If I would’ve just answered the damn phone, that wouldn’t have happened. It’s my fault.”
The pain in his voice, all of the emotions I had seen in his eyes earlier now breaking through in his tone, about broke me. I had no idea he was carrying around so much pain, so much guilt. My beautiful, in control, as-sweet-as-he-was-sexy guy was nearly as broken as I was.
“The hell it is,” I said, refusing to allow him to blame himself. He brushed my hair back and held me tight against him. “It was not your fault. How can you blame yourself?”
He snorted but didn’t say a word, just held me close for a long time. I finally pulled my head back and looked him in the eye.
“It wasn’t your fault. There’s no way you could have known what was going to happen.”
The sparkle in his eyes was gone, the greens cloudy, murky, dull. I’d never seen him like that and it shook me to the core. I wanted to erase his pain, to make him smile. To figure out how to show him the truth.
He smiled sadly. “I shouldn’t have been a dick and should’ve answered the phone. After the weekend before, I should have—”
“They weren’t your children, Max! It was your little sister and her friend, not your responsibility! And I can see why you were annoyed with them, especially after the weekend before. Cut yourself some slack.”
“I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
My mind swam with ways to convince him it wasn’t his fault. “What happened was a tragedy, but who knows if you would’ve been there in time anyway?”
“Easy for you to say,” he mumbled. “You didn’t sit in the waiting room, watching your mom cry her eyes out.
Watching your dad try to keep his shit together, knowing what could’ve happened to his daughter.
You didn’t see the looks in Bri and Sam’s eyes when I went back into their rooms for the first time. ”
His jaw clenched as he worked it back and forth. “You don’t know what it felt like to think I was throwing back beers without a care in the world while my little sister needed me, really needed me, and I was chasing tail with Cane. What does that make me, Kar?”
“It makes you a human being that was in a bad situation. It makes you a man whose little sister and her friend made a bad decision. It. Wasn’t. Your. Fault.”
He spun around to face me, looking at me like I didn’t get it, a look of disbelief written across his face.
“Max, listen to me. You can’t blame yourself for this.”
He watched me for a minute, his jaw pulsing.
“That night messed up so much. You had the physical stuff—the bruises and...stuff.” He swallowed roughly.
“And Mom and Dad went crazy, into total over-protection mode. Brielle went wild, got into some trouble. I just sat back and watched my whole family start to crash and...” He hung his head.
I reached out and grabbed his arm. “What happened was awful, but everyone seems to be okay now, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Bri got through dental school and seems alright. But Sam... She doesn’t have anyone to help her. Her mom is pretty much non-existent. Sam says she’s not around much and I know she doesn’t help her. I just feel like I should. Do ya know what I mean?”
The vacant look in his eye began to float away, hope filtering its way in. “If it’s gonna bother you, I get it and I won’t bring it up again. But I’d like to do this for her.”
I understood why it meant so much to Max, why he was always going out of his way to help Sam. The thing that had annoyed me was really his way of trying to make up what he deemed to be his failure towards her.
Even after hearing all of that, I still didn’t trust Samantha. But, I trusted him. And he needed this. “If you want to hire her, go for it, babe.”
A small smile spread across his lips. “I appreciate this.” He squeezed me again before letting me go.
“Yeah, well, just make sure she keeps that red lipstick off of you and everything will be fine,” I joked, trying to get some levity back in the conversation.
Max laughed. “No worries there. Now get ready for some exercise.”
Kari
The turn-off for Pinnacle Peak flew by an hour later and I gave Max a look. “Um, you missed your exit.”
“Nah,” was all he said, humming along to Tim McGraw on the radio. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel and seemed lost in his own thoughts, effectively ignoring me for the most part.
“Yeah,” I countered, switching off the radio. “The exit was back there.”
“The exit I’m looking for is about 3 miles ahead, give or take.” He bit his bottom lip to keep from smiling, but his dimple still shone in his cheek.
“You’re seriously going to hold me to this?”
“A deal’s a deal, sweetheart,” he grinned. “I got you locked in and there’s no way you’re getting out of it.”
“You said we were going hiking!”
“I never said that,” he laughed. “I said I needed exercise and loading your shit in the back of my truck is going to cause me to break a sweat.”
“You’re a tricky bastard,” I pretended to pout. I couldn’t let him see the bubble of excitement rising in my core. Living with him would make things so much easier and it was what I really wanted. My opposition to it had been to protect him and my heart. He clearly was pushing for this.
We drove the rest of the way in a comfortable silence. Max’s happiness at his victory over me creating an undercurrent of warmth in the truck. The sun, which hadn’t been out in a couple of days, was shining brightly.
Max pulled the truck into my driveway and we went to the door, unlocked it, and walked inside. He disabled the alarm while I looked around, the enormity of the situation slamming into me.
What am I going to do with all this stuff? We can’t fit it all in his truck. What am I going to do with this house? What about the mortgage? Do I call Dad and list it?
Oh, hell, I can’t do that! I need to...
“Stop,” he whispered in my ear.
“Stop what?”
“Don’t overthink this. I know you’re rolling a thousand things through your pretty little mind right now. We’ll figure it out. Just take it a day at a time, okay?”
I relaxed, relieved. “Okay. So we are clear that this isn’t permanent?”
He laughed loudly, turning to walk up the stairs. “Don’t kid yourself, sweetheart. This is as permanent as it gets.” He took the stairs two at a time and disappeared into my bedroom. I followed, each step adding to the dread I felt.
“I’m overwhelmed,” I muttered, looking at all of the things I owned. “What do I take? How did I accumulate all this stuff?”
“Just take enough stuff to get ya through the week. We’ll get a U-Haul or something for the rest of the stuff.”
He was making this too easy. “What if I want to take my bed? What do we do with yours?” I asked, challenging him.
“I’m not attached to my bed. For all I care, you can sell everything I own and move your shit in, as long as it means you are moving in with it.”
I turned to face the wall so he wouldn’t see the huge grin on my face. I cleared my throat. “I have some big boxes left in the garage that Jada didn’t use. I’ll go get them. Can you gather my shoes out of the closet?” I asked.
“You’re worried about your shoes?”
“I can stay here,” I warned him.
He saluted me. “Shoes. Check.”
I laughed and left him to his task while I grabbed the boxes from the garage. I swiped a few pictures I wanted out of the living room and made my way back to the bedroom.
He was standing outside my closet, his hands on his hips. “Do you even realize how many shoes you have?”
I nodded. “I do. I know each and every pair, so don’t think about leaving any behind. I’ll know.”
“For shit’s sake,” he muttered.
“Excuse me? Did I hear you complain?”
He took a box and started filling it with shoes, making me laugh.
I grabbed another and tossed in some scrubs for work, workout clothes, and lingerie.
I opened another and laid a blanket inside.
I sat my jewelry boxes and trinkets off my dresser carefully on the material.
A pair of sunglasses fell out of a dish and hit the floor, cracking the lens.
I tossed it in the trash, the sound getting Max’s attention.
“What was that?” he asked, nodding at the trash.
“A pair of sunglasses.”
“Do you have another pair?”
“Yeah, those weren’t even mine,” I said, emptying my bedside table into the box.
“Who do they belong to?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. They were just here a while back.”
He looked puzzled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I don’t know where they came from.
They were on the kitchen counter a few months ago.
Jada lived here then and she and I went for a walk.
We came home and they were laying on the counter.
I saved them in case someone asked if they left them here, but no one did.
They look expensive, too, so I’m surprised no one was missing them.
It was kind of a joke between us for a while. ”
“That’s weird,” he said, standing up. “I think that’s all the shoes. What else do you wanna take?”
“Can we take my treadmill? Do you think it’ll fit in your truck?” It was the one thing I missed not having at Max’s. I ran outside when I was there and it was just too hot most days.
“Yeah, it’ll fit. Want me to take these boxes down now?”
I nodded, smiling at him. Instead of picking up a box, he walked across the room and stopped a few feet in front of me.
“I’m glad you finally agreed to live with me,” he whispered, the sparkle back in his eyes, gold flecks catching the light.
My heart swelled, burst, and pooled at my feet. “Me, too.”
“You know I love you, right?”
“I do,” I said breathily. “I love you, too.”
“Marry me?” he asked, grinning from ear-to-ear.
“Not today.”