Michael parked next to Val’s car. A quick look around didn’t reveal any obvious reporters or paparazzi who might’ve followed them. The dog howled in his crate. Max got out and retrieved Toby from the backseat. Holding the crate to his chest, he filled his lungs with sweet pine air. He’d only been in the hospital for four days, but it felt like he’d been trapped in a hole for years, only now reaching the surface.
“Sorry about the other night, Toby,” he said. He wiggled his finger inside one of the crate’s holes; Toby licked it.
Val and Michael emerged from their respective cars at the same time. She nodded at Michael, then looked at Max. Her hair fell in loose waves over her shoulders, framing a delicate face dominated by steel-blue eyes. Her lips parted, and already he felt them against his, tasted the coffee she drank for lunch, smelled the apple shampoo in her hair, heard the high-pitched, breathy moan she made when he touched her the way she liked—
Toby whined and thrashed in his crate, pulling Max out of his reverie. He’d been staring at her, and she at him, he realized. He felt himself blush, like they were awkward kids at a high school dance.
Michael turned to Max and opened his arms, and Max lowered the crate to his side so he could give his surrogate father a hug. “Get better, boy, I mean it,” Michael said as he crushed Max against his chest.
“Thanks for everything,” Max said. “I’ll call you soon.”
That made Michael smile; calling was something Max needed to be alive to do.
Michael grabbed Max’s suitcase and dropped it into Val’s trunk, then swept his hands from Max to Val. “Over to you,” he said to Val. She gave him a hug, and Max saw them exchange hushed words, some of which probably had to do with Max’s confession on the ride over. Val nodded, and Michael gave her a weary smile as they pulled away from each other.
Max walked forward and stood in front of Val. Every inch of his skin tingled with the need to embrace her, but he didn’t trust himself not to cause a scene. He clutched the crate instead, an excuse to keep his distance. Michael clapped Max on the shoulder one more time, then stepped away as Max shoved the dog crate into Val’s backseat. Max climbed into the passenger side and waved at Michael a final time as Val drove out of the parking lot.
When side streets blurred into the highway, Val asked, “Are you—”
Behind Max, Toby howled.
“Are you—”
Toby howled again. Rolling his eyes, Max leaned into the backseat and popped the crate open. Toby launched into Max’s lap and ferociously licked his face. Val laughed as Max pushed the dog away.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I can stop and pick up something if you want.”
“I’m fine.” He forced Toby to sit still and used his shirt to wipe slobber off his face.
“How’d you end up with the dog?”
“Toby. He hates everyone else.”
Val laughed and eyed the dog. “Is that so?” She lifted her arm to pet him.
Max grabbed her hand in the air. “Don’t. He bites.”
He held her hand for a moment, enjoying the feel of her skin against his, until Toby licked her fingers.
She jerked her hand away. “Ew,” she said with a smile. “I guess he doesn’t hate everyone. They say you can’t get along with anyone, either. Shows how much they know.”
“‘They?’”
She frowned, looking uncomfortable she’d brought it up. “Oh, you know. The TV.”
“So you’ve been following my latest humiliations in the news.” Not like it was hard. Max’s embarrassing escapades and the mysterious death of Margaret Monroe dominated the airwaves. At least she knew what she was getting herself into with him.
“No, not only that. I’ve been following you since…well, ever since I met you, pretty much.”
He’d been on her mind this entire time? A slow grin spread across his face. All these months, she’d loved him and been thinking about him, just like he’d continued to love and think about her, despite the lies he’d told himself. Wow, what a couple of idiots they’d been to think they could have lived happily without each other.
He let his eyes linger on her, unabashed, in a way he hadn’t been able to before, when he’d been trying to convince himself he loved Abby. She looked a lot better than the last time he’d seen her; healthier. Color had returned to her skin. A little mascara darkened her eyelashes and lip gloss moistened her mouth. She’d put on makeup for him. She didn’t need it, but the effort touched him.
Though she kept her eyes on the road, he saw her cheeks heat up. “Stop that,” she said.
“You’re beautiful.”
“I’m trying to drive.”
“You know how badly I want to kiss you?”
A blush crept up her neck. “I said stop that.”
“Right there.” With the tip of his finger he touched the spot where her neck curved into her shoulder. He felt her shiver. “It’s been too long.”
She chuckled. “You kissed me just a couple of weeks ago, at the Green Door.”
“Really? I thought that was a dream.”
“It wasn’t.”
“So then I actually did swim around an underwater grotto with a bunch of mermaids and penguins?”
“I can’t say, I wasn’t there for that part. But it’s probably safe to assume it happened just like you remember.”
He hoped not; much of the night had been terrifying. The strange visions of the future, everything burning…blood running down Lucien’s face, a future that came to pass the night of the museum fight. He expected a call from his lawyer any day now to tell him Lucien was pressing assault charges. The injustice of it sickened him. Too bad he hadn’t managed to kill the bastard when he’d had the chance.
Thoughts of Lucien soured his mood, and he was quiet for the rest of the ride.
It didn’t take long to reach Val’s home, an unassuming two-story house on a suburban street lined with houses all built off variations of the same plan. Her place stood out for its sloppily mowed lawn and flowerbeds overgrown with weeds.
She parked the car and turned the engine off. “Well, here we are.”
Max looked past her and frowned. “Damn.”
Val scoffed. “I know it’s not as nice as your place, but—”
“No, over there.” He nodded toward where he looked, down the street at a nondescript car parked on the side of the road. “Reporters.”
Her eyes widened. “Seriously?” She craned her head to get a better look.
“See the glints from their camera lenses? It’s a dead giveaway.”
“How’d they find out so quickly?”
He let out a dry chuckle. “Welcome to my life.”
She puckered her lips in an angry pout, then threw open the car door, retrieved Max’s suitcase from the trunk, and stomped up her front walkway as if daring the reporters to photograph her. Max followed, keeping his head down even though he knew it didn’t matter; it was obvious who he was. After they went inside, she slammed the door behind them and snapped the blinds shut.
She looked at Toby, still cradled in Max’s arms. “Does he need to go outside or something?”
“In a bit.” Max put Toby down. “Don’t pee in here,” he told the dog.
“That’s all it takes?”
“Yup.”
She snickered. “He is your dog.”
Max stepped farther into Val’s house, walking to the photo of Robby he’d looked at the last time he was there. Max’s half brother posed on a tropical beach somewhere, a drink in his hand and a toothy grin on his face. He wondered what would’ve happened if Robby hadn’t died, if Robby and Val had married, if Max somehow found out about their shared paternity and struck up a friendship with him. Would he still have fallen in love with Val, quietly pining for a woman he couldn’t have? Would she have secretly loved him, too?
Did somebody really kill Robby so Max and Val would be together? He didn’t want it to be true, but if he was being honest with himself, he preferre
d it to the alternative. Something a terrible person would think.
He ripped his eyes from the picture as another wave of nausea crept up from his stomach. His legs felt weak, and he lowered himself into a sitting position on Val’s couch. He closed his eyes and concentrated on not throwing up.
He heard Val ask from the kitchen, “Do you want me to get you some Suboxone?”
Michael must’ve told her about the pills, not that it wasn’t hard to guess. He wished she didn’t have to see him like this, but Suboxone would only drag things out. Best to get the withdrawal over with as soon as possible. Max wiped sweat from his upper lip. “Nah, I’ll be fine. But thanks for the offer.”
“Do you want some water?”
“I’ll take that.”
With his eyes still closed, he heard water pour into a glass.
“I kept telling myself I’d kick it tomorrow,” he said. The water turned off. “Always tomorrow. I did it once with heroin, years ago, and I thought I could do it again. But I’d always find some excuse not to: that I wasn’t ready for Abby to know, that I had to prepare for the withdrawal, that everybody liked me better when I was high, and a bunch of other bullshit. The truth is, since you changed my future, I wondered if that meant I could die. Without the drugs, I worried I might find a gun, put the barrel in my mouth, and pull the trigger again, to see if it would finally work.”
The nausea passed, and he opened his eyes. The room came into focus again, a collage of subdued blues and charcoals Max guessed were by Robby’s design; the colors didn’t seem Val’s style. Toby laid with his head on Max’s shoe. Max scratched him behind the ears, then stood. He walked around the couch to where Val waited with a glass of water. Her tear-rimmed eyes reminded him of rain about to fall from dark, roiling storm clouds.
“Some people might call me an alcoholic,” she said. She held the glass out to him. “You’re not alone. You never were.”
She’d suffered more than he thought—a lot more. They both had. He took the water with one hand, but held her outstretched arm in place with the other. Setting the glass down on the kitchen counter, he brought her hand to his face and kissed the inside of her wrist. He thought he could feel her heartbeat with his lips, her pulse quickening underneath the delicate flesh. Her fingers brushed against his cheek, then threaded through the hair at the back of his neck. She pulled him to her.
They embraced, not only as lost lovers but as two halves of a whole who’d been desperate to return to each other. He kissed the spot on her neck he’d coveted in the car, even warmer and softer than he’d imagined. The smell of apples wafted from her hair, and he pictured them standing alone together in a huge, beautiful orchard, under a clear blue sky. He’d never felt more comfortable, more at home, than in that moment, holding her. He made a slow trail of kisses up her neck, stopping at her ear. He let out a long exhale, and with it went his worries, fears, and pain. His body slackened, and it was only with great effort he kept himself from collapsing into her arms.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear. He should have said it a long time ago. He’d told Abby he loved her because she said it first, and he’d responded in kind because it was what she wanted to hear, and what he wanted to believe. He told Val because he couldn’t not say it anymore. “I’ve always loved you.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered back. Though she’d already told him, it still made him smile to hear it again, proof that he hadn’t been dreaming or hallucinating. If he could’ve bottled that moment in time, he would’ve done so.
The sound of someone opening and closing the front door broke the spell. He looked up and saw Val’s roommate at the threshold of the living room, glaring at them. Max had only met her once before; her reception of him on that occasion had been chilly, to say the least. He wasn’t sure why she disliked him so much; probably thought he was a bad influence, which was basically true.
Val pulled away from him and turned to face her roommate. “Hey, Stacey. Um, you remember Max?”
He tried to smile warmly. She did not reciprocate.
“Yeah, I remember Max—from the news reports that say he beat the shit out of someone at the Seattle Art Museum a few days ago, then got committed to a mental hospital.”
Val’s lips tightened and she sighed. “He’ll be staying with us for a little while.”
“And you couldn’t tell me this before now because…”
“You haven’t been returning my phone calls.”
“If you’d been home for more than three minutes in the last four days, you could’ve told me to my face.”
Toby barked from where he’d made himself comfortable on the couch. He wanted this fight to end as much as Max did.
Stacey gave the dog the side-eye. “How long?”
“I don’t know.”
She scoffed. “Fantastic. Maybe we can use his rent money to pay some of the bills that’re piling up.” She marched into the kitchen, threw open the refrigerator door, and began pulling vegetables out.
“What are you doing?” Val asked.
She slammed an onion on the counter. “It’s taco night. I’m making tacos.”
Val took Max’s hand. “I’m going to show Max the second floor. We’ll be down in a minute to help.”
Stacey waved them away. “Sure. Whatever.”
Val pulled him out of the living room.
“Toby, stay here,” Max said before they ascended the staircase. Toby whined, but stayed on the couch.
Max followed Val into her bedroom. He hadn’t spared a moment to look around the last time he was there. He’d been too distracted by his bizarre Blue Serpent experience and the possibility he might’ve cheated on Abby, and his conflicted feelings when Val told him nothing had happened between them. Evening sunshine glinted off pictures of brightly colored birds mounted on the walls, gorgeous drawing that looked like they might at any moment erupt from the glass and flit about the room. Many hung crooked; jostled, then ignored. He wondered where she’d gotten them, then guessed they’d been Robby’s, too. A couple of half-spent candles sat on a chest of drawers, next to a photo of a teenage girl with Val’s hair but paler blue eyes—her sister. He recognized a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping aid pills on her nightstand.
Val picked up some stray clothes tossed on her bedspread and threw them in the corner. She crooked her thumb at an adjacent door. “That’s the master bathroom. Stacey’s bedroom is at the end of the hall, just so you know.”
“I’m sorry if I’m imposing on her. I can stay in a hotel—”
“No.” Val grabbed his arm as if she was afraid he might try to flee, which was exactly the last thing he’d do. “I like you here.”
Max took her other hand in his and laced their fingers together. “If you say so.” He kissed the back of her entwined hand, and she blushed.
“She said something about bills. Do you need money?” He would pay her entire mortgage and all her bills on the spot if she’d asked him to, yet she hadn’t mentioned her finances at all.
Val rolled her eyes. “Stacey’s just being a drama queen. We’ve hit kind of a rough patch recently, but we’ll get through it. I hope. It’s complicated. You know how lifelong friendships can be.”
“No, actually, I don’t know. I haven’t had any of those.”
Val rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, Max. You don’t have to admit to being such a sad sack, you know.” He chuckled, and she bit her lip, looking suddenly anxious. “Can I—can I tell her what you can do? That you’re like me? I think it would help her understand why we’re together.”
Max looked away for a moment in thought. He’d just told Michael about their ability because, he’d realized, if you loved someone, then you gave them the truth. If Val truly loved Stacey and trusted her friend to keep a secret, then he didn’t have a problem bringing Stacey into the fold.
“I think that’s what brought us together,” Max said, “but I don’t think that’s why we’re together. You understand me better than anyone else i
n the world, but I would have loved you whether or not we shared the same ability. Because what I love about you has nothing to do with that.”
Val’s lips parted and her eyes grew wet as she stared at him—mooning, it was called. He didn’t normally like it when people did that to him, but he soaked it up when it came from Val. In fact, he felt himself doing the same to her.
“But yes,” he finished, “you can tell her.”
They stared at each other for a moment. His skin grew hot, and he felt himself hardening.
Val exhaled. “Thank you. Well, I’d better try to broker a peace and help with taco night.”
She began to pull away from him, but he gently held her in place. “Wait.”
He drew her flush to him. Where did he begin? He felt as if he’d been starving for months and was suddenly presented a cornucopia of everything he’d ever wanted. He needed one kiss. Just one. Max leaned into her, and she rose to meet him. He kissed her lightly at first, only a brushing of his lips against hers, like touching the petals of a flower. Then he kissed her again, deeper, harder, caressing her tongue with his, feeling the arch of her back through her clothes. His flesh caught on fire, and he realized not only did he love her completely, but he also wanted to fuck her more than he wanted to breathe.
Her hands slipped underneath his T-shirt, explored his abs, and glided up to his pecs. He yanked the shirt over his head and flung it away. Her top came off just as quickly; the bra underneath unlatched and tossed to the side so their bare chests touched. She wove her fingers through his hair and pulled him closer, as close as they could get to each other. He ran his lips up and down her neck, licking the salt off her skin, drinking in the tiny pearls of sweat that bloomed with his touch.
She let out a breathy moan, the one that gained in pitch when she liked the way he touched her, the sound he’d been waiting for. “I missed you,” she said.
He couldn’t stand it any longer. Max swept her into his arms and dropped her on the bed. She laughed as she bounced against the mattress, her face flush, lips red and moist. He popped off her shoes, then slipped her pants and panties down her legs in one handful until she lay naked before him—a king’s feast, just for him.
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