Skydance

by Katherine Rhodes

  Groaning that he was being a fool, miserable that she walked away, and feeling cruel for hoping that her fiancé was a dirt bag, Max headed back into the cocktail area and headed over to Niko, Dracen, Xavier, and Henry.

  “How’d that go?” Dracen asked.

  “Oh, about as well as you’d expect.” Max shrugged.

  “So, not well at all.”

  “No. And for some fucking reason, I gave her one of my Victorian handkerchiefs.”

  Niko, Max, and Xavier looked at him, slowly drawing a brow up each.

  “A what?”

  “Before you all had dating apps, we had calling cards and kerchiefs. They had monograms on them, and you could give one to a woman. It usually had your address on it where they could call you. I had dozens made up before they went out of style.”

  “So you were a player back in the day,” Dracen asked, trying not to laugh.

  Max sighed and rolled his eyes. “No. It was just a way of letting a lady know you were interested. Good God, you’re all so young.”

  Niko put an arm around him. “Don’t worry about it, man. I’m sure she’s too preoccupied about the wedding and helping my gorgeous bride get ready up there. She won’t see into it.”

  The other two walked off to find another drink, leaving just Niko, Max, and Henry there, looking around the room.

  “Niko. We only get one shot to find our mate, right?”

  “Far as I know.” He nodded.

  “What if she wastes that time with someone else? She never realizes that there was something better for her.”

  Henry and Niko exchanged looks, and Henry answered,

  “I don’t know, man. I only know of all the stories where the mating goes bad afterward. Like with your parents. And Eleanor’s. I don’t know what happens when you don’t get to bond with a mate.” He paused and looked around. “Honestly. If I were you, and you knew that she was even remotely interested in you, I’d end up being the bastard and destroying the engagement. But then again, what the hell do I know? My mate refuses to talk to me to even find anything out.”

  “Someday you need to tell us that story,” Max said. “I can’t break up the engagement, though. She’s been happy all this time.”

  Giving him a thoughtful look, Niko shrugged. “Are you sure she’s not faking it? She’s not just pretending that she’s happy and ignoring all the terrible things that are really happening? Because think about it, man. Betsy is destroyed that she’s not going to be at Amy’s wedding. If she could go, there is no way, in all that’s holy, I would ever think about even showing up one moment later if I couldn’t get there with her. In fact, I don’t plan on being late even though my mate can’t be there. I will be at Amy’s wedding, come hell or high water.”

  Max nodded. “I kind of had the feeling she was lying to herself. She’s not very good at it either.”

  “You have all the time in the world, Max.”

  He blinked. “But she doesn’t.”

  There was nothing Henry or Niko could say to that. Max shook his head.

  “Sorry, man. I’m raining on your day. Let’s go find some tequila and pretend we’re humans who like to drink paint thinner and lick lemons.”

  The last forty minutes of the cocktail hour seemed to speed by. Max was pretty sure he’d be able to tell when Brent arrived because he would smell a bit like Amy. But no one with any scent of Amy, except her mother and Carl, entered the room after she went back upstairs.

  He did, however, smell a duplicate of Niko walk into the room and got very confused. Turning to see what was going on, he watched Niko plow through the crowd from where he was over to where the analog of his scent was and capture the man in a huge, happy embrace. Wandering over, he looked at the two men standing there. They could nearly have been twins save for the blue eyes versus the rich chocolate brown on the man he didn’t know.

  “Max! Henry!” Niko crowed. “Come here!” He clapped the man on the back. “This is my big brother, Valerian. Val, these are Max and Henry, two of my friends from Pine Valley.”

  Sticking out his hand, with a grin, the older of the Tavoularis brothers offered a shake. “Hey, mate.”

  “Why have we never met you before?” Henry said, shaking the offered hand.

  “Eh, it’s a hard flight up from Oz, y’know?” Valerian grinned. “When you can’t use your own wings, those damn metal tubes are confining.”

  Max shook his hand and in the touch was reminded that Valerian was one of the few pure dragon shifters born in the last few hundred years. There weren’t a lot of dragons, so a pure dragon was highly unusual. He had actually been hatched, not born. “Australian?”

  “Yeh, my parents moved there when I was a small child. Picked up all the annoying speech patterns and I haven’t been alive long enough to lose them.”

  “I am so glad you made it.” Niko grinned.

  “I was not going to miss my little brother’s wedding. I need to meet this little mate you haven’t shut up about.”

  Max and Henry left the two brothers to talk and headed over to the exit for the ceremony. Keni waved at them from the elevators, and they trotted over. “We’re just about ready up there. You guys need to get everyone heading out to the chairs.”

  “Gotcha.” Max gave a terse nod and ignored the thick feeling of tension between the two of them. It had been like that for fifty years, and both of them hating each other for some reason he didn’t understand. But they didn’t really hate each other. After waiting for Henry a moment, Max finally grabbed his arm and yanked him away, pulling him back toward the cocktail room.

  He realized that Henry smelled faintly of Keni, and his eyes went wide. “Henry. Did you… Did Keni—”

  “Cram it, it’s not your business.”

  “You slept with her? Last night?”

  “Slept. Nice word for it. It was more of a hate fuck.”

  Max shook his head. “Look, I’ve been pissed at Amy for months now, but that…that’s not right.”

  “It happens once in a while. She’s my mate. I can’t stay away from her, but I can’t stand her either.”

  “You’re screwing someone you hate?”

  “Once in a while, yes.”

  “You are in so deep.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Leveling a gaze at him, Max nodded. “Yeah, I do.” He held up a hand to stop Henry’s tirade he could see coming. “Let’s get the wedding started. If you’re sleeping with her, you need to figure that shit out because everyone in Pine Valley wants you two to end this crap. We’ve all been in the middle of it. Now, let’s get Nikomedes married.”

  Walking straight away from Henry, he strode into the room. Clearing his throat, he raised his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen! The ceremony will begin in just ten minutes. If you could all please find your way to the chairs on the beach! We have no sides. We’re all one family. Please just keep the first row open on both sides for the wedding party. Thank you!”

  Max knew Brent had walked into the reception room almost immediately. Niko and Betsy were swirling around on the dance floor with their first dance, and everyone was focused on them. But the door creaked quietly, and Max looked.

  Brent was a blond-haired, brown-eyed weasel. He was tall and lanky and slunk into the room like someone who had been caught doing something very, very bad. Peering around, he was trying to stay unnoticed. If Max didn’t know better, he would almost guess that Brent wanted to be in the wrong room so he could leave.

  Amy didn’t spot him. She was too entranced by the newlyweds to see through the dark. Max decided to usher him in. After all, that was part of his job. Ushering.

  “Hey, you must be Brent,” he called the words not quite over the music, but definitely loud enough for the man to hear him. He had his hand out in greeting.

  “Oh, uh, hi.” Brent grabbed his hand in a limp handshake. “Yes. Brent Mitchell. I’m here with Amy Hogan?”

  “Amy’s been waiting for you. You’re sitting at the sweetheart tab
le with her on the left of the table from here.”

  “Thanks.”

  He slunk by, and Max wanted to ring his neck right then and there. He hadn’t been late because he was working in the office. He was late because he’d been busy fucking someone in the office. He reeked of sex and someone other than Amy, but before he could take a step after him, there was a hand on his arm.

  Amy’s mother, Patricia, stood there, shaking her head. “No, Max. I appreciate what you want to do, but not here. Not now. Carl and I know about the affair. We just wanted to get beyond today and Monday before we told her.”

  “You won’t let that wedding happen?”

  “Not on a bet. No. I’m glad we found out.” She sighed and watched her daughter move to embrace her wayward fiancé. “Sometimes, I feel like she’s just trying to replace a hole in her heart where her daddy was with any old thing that might fit. And that’s not the way to do it.” Patricia looked at him. “One, hello creepy daddy issues.”

  Laughing, Max took the woman by the elbow and moved them both back to the dance floor. “Good point. So, breakup and then therapy?”

  “Heavy, heavy therapy.”

  The two of them chuckled as they blended into the crowd.

  Max stood on the back deck of the Hogan house in Blowing Rock. Niko, Keni, Patricia, Carl, and a few other people were sitting and enjoying beers.

  At eight in the morning, the Monday after their wedding, Niko’s wife—Erzabet Tillman Tavoularis—turned herself over to the officials at North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women in Raleigh. Amy had cried the whole time. She felt guilty, not being able to protect her friend, or do the right thing for her.

  “You did the right thing for me, Amy. You found me, and I’m just facing the consequence of my own poor choices. You can come visit me. I’ll be fine.”

  Niko hadn’t wanted to let her go—who would after just one night married?—but eventually she talked him down and she walked in with her head held just high enough to not come off as a snotty bitch.

  Knowing who she was and what she had done, Max had no fear that she would walk back out with her head held high again.

  Sometime around noon, after Niko had let his dragon out and terrified herds of deer and flocks of birds, and the occasional camper still coming off last night’s bender, a group of people gathered on the back deck of Amy’s and Patricia’s house.

  Max knew this was not as innocent as it seemed. They weren’t there only to support Niko, though he did need a bit of that, and they weren’t there only for Carl and Amy. The group gathered on the back deck all knew of Brent’s cheating, and they were going to have Amy call off the wedding.

  Max sat as far away from her as possible. He knew she was going to explode when she found out, and she was going to fight them all about canceling the wedding. Certainly, he didn’t want to be blamed for this, but he was probably going to get it with both barrels at some point.

  Patricia leaned against the table in front of Amy and folded her arms. “We need to talk, sweetie. We’re all here because we have something you’re not going to want to hear, but you have to.”

  Amy took a drink of the beer. “It’s about Brent and that woman he’s fucking on the side, isn’t it?”

  Well.

  That shocked Max, and he wasn’t the only one. Patricia dropped her arms to her sides and stared down at her daughter.

  “You knew?”

  “When he showed up disheveled and disinterested at the party, I suspected. When he ran into the shower that night before bed it was a big sign. He doesn’t shower before bed. Ever. I suspected he had lipstick on his… Well. When I saw the hickey on his pec, I was pretty sure. When he took off at eight in the morning the next morning because there was another emergency, I was convinced.” She swallowed a large amount of beer this time. “Who figured it out?”

  “We all did, slowly,” Carl said. “I suspected about two months ago. He smelled like a cheap perfume when he came to pick you up, and you don’t wear it.”

  “I guessed when he cut out of Memorial Day early, because of work,” Patricia said.

  A few more of her friends and family offered up their suspicions and finally she turned to look at him. “And you, Doctor Maximillian Czerkanowicz? When did you suspect?”

  “Saturday. When he walked in smelling like dirty sex and cheap perfume.”

  She raised the beer in the air, toasting him. “His modus operandi!” She chugged the rest of it and was starting to become visibly drunk. “Kudos all around! So glad you all decided to have this intervention with me about my cheating soon-to-be ex-fiancé! Makes me feel so special and loved!”

  “Amy…” Patricia started.

  “No, no. No, Mother. He’s been nailing that cheap piece of ass for nearly five months. Or at least as near as I can figure, five months. And you all feel the need to come here and bombard me with this when my friend was just put in jail and I’m here needing some support. And don’t tell me that you’re all here to support me. I know that. But that whole ‘building a life’ thing with another person has been severely chucked off the path.” She leaned forward and stuck a finger in her mother’s face. “Do you know that every time I went into his dreams, he would have to say my name before he could see me as who I am? Every time. He was imagining me as that cheap floozie.”

  She grabbed another bottle of beer off the table. “Well. Here’s the story! I’m going to go home, throw all of his shit in garbage bags, and take it all to the dump! Then, I’m going to go find a big deep hole to crawl into and I’m not coming back out. Not until I’ve drunk as much alcohol as it takes to kill all my brain cells and most of my self-esteem.”

  Standing, she fell right back into the chair and promptly burst into tears.

  Most everyone took that as a signal to leave, with only Patricia, Max, and Carl staying behind. Niko tipped his head at him before walking into the house, and Max waved him on.

  Patricia sat down next to Amy. “You knew.”

  “Not for sure until this weekend. Not until he was late to a wedding he knew meant a lot to me. When he would barely kiss me, barely sleep in the same bed, and left while I was in the shower the next morning… I spent the whole day thinking about it while I drove back here. I also wanted to ignore it the whole way as well. But I can’t.” She shook her head. “Why would he do this? To me? To us? We were happy and it would’ve been a wonderful…” Trailing off, her sobs shook her body.

  Carl put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s at work for another few hours. Why don’t we go back to your place and do something about this? Do you want to move out, or do you want to kick him out?”

  Max smirked. “I’d suggest moving out. Stick him with the rent.”

  “I like the way this guy thinks.” Patricia smiled. “You can move back in here.”

  She looked at her mother with rueful eyes. “You’re sure?”

  “Oh, baby girl, you know I am. I got this big old house and your sister is off in France for who knows how long. It’s me and the rabbits.”

  “I don’t have a bed here anymore…”

  “I can take care of that,” Max said, looking at his watch. “If you don’t mind sleeping on the couch one night, we can have a bed tomorrow.”

  Looking between each of them, she tried to calm her tears and hiccups. “You really aren’t angry with me for not seeing this sooner?”

  “Why on Earth would we be?” Carl asked. “I’m just glad this didn’t go other ways. Our loyalty is to you, Amy. Not him. He’s an interloper, in a manner of speaking. He’s not our daughter or our friend. You are. We’re here to support you.”

  Slowly, Amy gave a thoughtful nod. “Okay. Good. Fine. Let me move out. It shouldn’t take me more than a few hours to get everything packed—”

  “Take Keni with you,” Max offered. “She can get everything in boxes and bags as you point it out. I’ll go to the furniture store with Niko and we’ll get a bed for you here.”

  Putting on an angry face
, Patricia stepped in front of Max. “What are your intentions with my daughter and that bed?”

  Max slid his eyes to the right and back to stare at her. “To get her off the couch? And prevent a backache?”

  Carl patted his shoulder. “Good answer.”

  It was somewhat ironic that Brent wound up calling Amy somewhere around three in the afternoon and said he was going to be working late. When Carl and Patricia told him later about the call, Max could hear the pride in their voices for how cool she stayed, and how she played right along with it.

  Max was proud of her too.

  With Keni’s help, they had all of Amy’s clothes and personal stuff out of the house by five anyway. He and Niko had been at the furniture store and decided to completely refurnish Amy’s room in the house and bought a whole new bedroom set as well as the bed. Max reasoned that it would be easier for her to have something brand-new.

  He insisted on a king-sized bed. Niko had just rolled his eyes at him.

  “The bed won’t be here until tomorrow afternoon,” Max stated. “Let me put you up in a hotel.”

  “Oh, no. No. I’m going to sleep on my mother’s couch. I’ll be fine there.”

  “Amy—”

  Her hand sliced through the air. “No. I need this. I need to be back in the house that was always safe for me. I never felt scared when I slept here. And now I need to be back here because I need that safety. A hotel is a bad idea.”

  “I said I would.”

  “She’s gonna sleep here, Max,” Patricia interjected. “I appreciate what you’re doing, but she’ll be fine. I have an air mattress and she can crash on that. You can blow it up for her.”

  Folding her arms, Amy smirked. “You have enough hot air.”

  He narrowed his eyes, but went and found a pump and started working on the bed. She seemed in good spirits the rest of the day, and they were all just waiting for Brent to go home and realize she wasn’t there. After dinner, though, he called again and said he was going to be even later and there was a chance he was going to have to jet to New York for an emergency later that night.