Chapter 7 #2
It would be so easy to agree. Too easy. Which was why she couldn’t accept. Yes, she’d promised him answers; that didn’t mean she was all right with him delving deep into every one of the things she’d prefer to keep from someone who had no idea Boe demons didn’t have kidneys.
“Why would you want to stay?” she said. “So you can poke through my apartment more? Find out all the things you think I’m keeping from you?”
Maxim frowned at the irritation she couldn’t keep out of her voice, even though it was irritation with her own lack of restraint rather than with his proposal.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said. “You’re weak. That’s why I offered. Nothing more.”
Nothing more. Pippa mentally shook off the sting from that. “No need to worry about my constitution, Sheppard. I’m—”
“If you say ‘I’m fine’ one more time, I’ll poke through your apartment until my fingers bleed.”
It didn’t seem conducive to keep reinforcing how she was not nearly close to death, and, if given a few hours to collapse onto a soft surface, would once more be able to legitimately threaten him with a good charring.
Which, without a doubt, he’d shrug off and call her out again on the lack of creativity with her threats.
It struck her then that his attitude was far too accepting of all of this.
Pippa leaned against the ceramic toilet tank. “The thing I can’t quite understand is how fine you are.”
He let out a soft snort. “Not the best compliment I’ve received, but thank you.”
“No, you’re . . .” She tried again, despite the flustered heat wrapping her throat. “You should be babbling. Panicked. Driven halfway insane from everything you’ve seen today and yesterday. You should be afraid of me. But you’re not.”
The muscle in his cheek jumped. She wondered (for a brief, confusing moment) how coarse his stubble would be on her lips if she was ever able to kiss that tic.
“I was,” Maxim murmured, as if speaking to himself. “At first, I definitely was. A little afraid of you. Terrified of the rest. Magic. Demons. Monsters.” He blinked several times, then stood and went over to the sink to wash his hands. “Then I guess the excitement won.”
“Being able to fight evil, you mean.”
“Sure. Maybe.” He rinsed the lather off and grabbed a clean towel. “At the very least, getting beaten up by evil.”
“Oh, I’m excellent at that part.”
Maxim smirked at Pippa’s thigh. “Yeah, I figured.”
“I’ll settle for having you be a little afraid of me.”
“I was a little afraid. Past tense.”
Pippa looked at him askance. “What changed?”
He rolled the towel around as if he could find an answer in the terrycloth. “I realized that you felt good.”
She lifted a brow. “Not the best compliment I’ve ever received.”
Maxim gave a low, short laugh, like it had been startled out of him.
“I mean . . .” He lobbed the towel into the same corner as his ruined jacket.
“I don’t know anything about any of this.
” He made a broad gesture at what seemed to be the entire world, then sighed and leaned his hip against the counter.
“But evil should make your stomach squirm, right? Or make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. All the cliches. It should feel bad. It should make you want to get away from it. Fight it, even.”
He paused.
Pippa swiveled on the seat to face him. Her knee dug into the sharp wooden corner of the vanity, yet she ignored it in favor of her intrigue.
“I’ve never felt like that with you,” he said. “Even when you were glaring scimitars at me from across the meeting table. Or when I asked you to print out hundreds of pages of things I ended up not needing, and you called me a bastard under your breath when I walked away.”
“I don’t remember doing that.” She definitely did that, at least twice.
“You felt . . .” Maxim appeared to concentrate, searching for his next word. “Good,” he said simply.
Hearing this shouldn’t have given her the amount of relief it did.
And it really shouldn’t have made her want to preen.
And it definitely, absolutely should not have tempted her to say the same back to him, because she remembered that yes, he had felt good pressed up against her during the various chaotic awfulness today. All tight and hard and—
“Thank you,” she said, her words rushing out before she could fall into more of those thoughts. Then she realized she hadn’t shown any appreciation for his hasty doctoring. “And thank you for your help. It looks better than if I’d have done it.”
He nodded. “You saved my life. Figured a few stitches was a good place to start repaying you.”
They fell into silence. Pippa unstuck her thighs from the seat yet again and struggled to figure out what to say.
“Cool, thanks, see ya!” seemed callous; “You want to stay for dinner?” implied she had the energy to cook.
Fatigue was settling over her like a blanket, swaddling her brain in cozy fleece.
To Pippa’s great relief, Maxim spoke first.
“What will you do next time?”
“Next time?”
“When you lose your magic. When you get stabbed again.”
Her relief faded as quickly as it had come. “I’ll make sure to avoid running into knives.”
“And if they run into you? Going to magic yourself an exoskeleton?”
“I can’t do that.”
Maxim pushed off the counter, his jaw working.
She didn’t wait for him to continue. “When did I get stabbed?”
He frowned. “What?”
“What time? Do you remember how long ago it was?”
His nostrils flared in a frustrated huff, then he looked at his wrist in the universal gesture of someone who had forgotten to wear their watch. He shook his head. “Forty-five minutes?”
Well that was reassuring. Not that Pippa planned on getting poisoned ever again.
“See? That’s not long to be magic-less.”
“It doesn’t take very long to be murdered.”
“I’ll take a self-defense class or something. I saw a sign for a place that gives a two-for-one discount on demon fighting.”
Maxim inhaled sharply through his nose, like someone would do before putting forth an idea that scared them, then said, “I can help you.”
Pippa scoffed.
“If you want. I mean it,” he added to her continued skepticism. “I used to teach a few classes at my old gym.”
“Self-defense against demons?”
“Self-defense, a little Krav Maga, some Muay Thai.”
Pippa’s laugh burst out of her. It was just so . . . excessive. “Gotta defend yourself against those New York lawyers any way you can.”
“That’s not—” He gave a short, low growl of irritation. “I’m offering to help.”
“Why do you even care?”
For such a simple question, Pippa marveled at how effectively it made him look as if he’d been punched in the stomach.
He should have a lot of experience with that, considering his extracurriculars.
Yet she saw a bolt of panic in his expression, and when she thought of their conversations, his actions, his reactions, she stiffened in realization.
“Oh, I get it,” she said. “This is how you endear yourself to me. How you dig your way into this life so you can get your rocks off living in a fantasy world.”
Hell, of course this was why he was here. Bitterness twisted Pippa’s chest into a tight knot. But this world was hers. It was who she was, how she’d lived. It wasn’t something she got to choose for excitement.
“I’m not trying to ‘get my rocks off’,” Maxim snapped.
“Whatever thrills I got from today were equally tempered by the horror of it.” He gestured at her leg.
“The blood of it.” His sigh was so deep that it strained the topmost button of his shirt.
“But this is . . . This could be how I can make a difference. If I can help . . . I don’t know, the city?
The world? If I can help you, then maybe I’ll—” He cut himself off with a firm press of his lips.
How would he complete that? Finally be happy? Finally feel useful?
She thought of their conversation in the alley, before the panic and the demon and the flames.
“Do you know what it’s like to want to make a difference?” Maxim had said then.
Guilt writhed in Pippa’s chest. She sighed. “All right.”
“Yeah?”
She tried not to let his excitement affect her decision. “Yeah. Sure. Teach me how to punch things.”
“It’s not just punch—” Maxim stopped himself against what must have been some soap boxy tirade he’d made before. He rubbed his forehead. “Okay. Great. We’ll start tomorrow.”
“We both have work tomorrow.”
“We’ll use sick time.”
Pippa raised her eyebrows high enough to make her forehead twitch. “Are you suggesting blowing off work? You? The same guy who came into the office after getting dental surgery?”
“It was a crown.”
“Half your face was numb. I watched you try and drink your coffee. It was hilarious.”
Maxim gave an impatient grunt. “Then after work. I can come over. Or you can come over, or we can meet at a gym.”
“I have things to do tomorrow night.” Demons didn’t handle themselves, after all.
“Saturday, then.”
“Saturday.” It’d give her time to keep healing, which she would greatly need if she was going to be wrestling with someone the size and weight of Maxim Sheppard.
Before that could lead to another unfortunate mental tangent of slippery skin and grappling bodies, he asked one last time if she was feeling decent enough to be left alone.
Then, with her promise to call if anything happened, which although nice enough of a gesture, was a little hollow, considering the potential circumstances that would necessitate it, he was gone. Pippa’s apartment returned to its lovely, quiet state.
Exhaustion fully settled on her. She’d limped with him to the door, mostly to show him that she could move well enough to get around, and she now sagged onto her couch with a groan that would have impressed a bear.