by B. N. Toler
With my arms wrapped around her, holding her tightly, I asked, “Do you believe me?”
With each breath she took, her chest rose and fell. Something heavy hung in the air between us and surrounding us. For me, it was fear. I had no idea what she’d say, and the unknown was killing me. A tear trickled down her cheek as she stared into my eyes. She hiccupped, her body beginning to convulse as she tried to control her emotion. A knot lodged in my throat as I watched her. The war waging inside of her was evident. She wanted to believe me, but how could she? Raising up on her toes, she clutched my face in her hands and kissed me once more.
When she pulled away, her gaze left mine. “No,” she whimpered.
He was silent all the way back to his apartment. When we walked into the lobby of his building, the doorman, Braxton, was on the phone and waved, attempting to get Max’s attention, but Max was so lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice him. He continued toward the elevators, pulling the wagon containing a slumbering Pim behind him. Not wanting to be rude, I walked over to the desk.
“He’s tired,” I explained to Braxton, quietly.
He raised his chin. “I see. I only wanted to tell him the motorcycle is ready. I just need to know if he wants to pick it up himself or have it delivered.”
“Motorcycle?” I questioned.
“Found it online almost two weeks ago.” Leaning in, he whispered, “He spent a fortune between buying and fixing it, but Panheads are rare.”
“Panhead?”
He smiled apologetically when he realized I didn’t know what he was talking about. “The motorcycle he bought.”
I wasn’t sure what to think about what Braxton was telling me. The other day Max told me he didn’t own a bike, but was thinking about buying one. That was the day he came home with the trike for Pimberly. According to Braxton, Max had bought this before then. A madness swept over me as I started piecing together dates. Almost two weeks ago would have been before the accident where Max claims that he, as Liam, was hit, consequently saving Max’s life.
“May I ask, between you and me, why did he have you help him with it?”
Braxton tilted his head. “No idea, ma’am. He barely spoke to me before.” Glancing toward the elevators to gauge how far away Max was, he leaned in toward me and whispered, “I don’t think he has many people he’s close to. In fact, this last week or so is the first time I can recall anyone coming to visit him.”
“Really?” I questioned. “What about women he dated?”
“Can’t recall one,” he admitted, “but that’s between you and me,” he reminded me with pleading eyes.
Bobbing my head once, letting him know his secret was safe with me, I told Braxton, “I’ll let him know about the bike.”
I waved as he offered a timid, “Goodnight.”
With a deep frown, I headed toward the elevator where Max was already inside, holding the door, waiting for me, a lost and sullen look on his face. Everything was a huge mess. Max was unraveling, and I wasn’t sure I could help him. I wanted to, badly, but there was one problem. A huge problem. One that scared me to admit because it led to questions about my own sanity.
The truth was, a part of me as warped as it might sound, believed him.
And that was just insane.
And that meant I couldn’t help Max because, in reality, I probably needed help myself.
When we got back inside the apartment, I put Pim in her travel crib and shut the door. Max stood facing the tall windows in his living room, his arms crossed as he stared out over the city. The room was dark but for the lights from outside that cast a soft hue inside.
“I thought you’d be packing,” his husky voice broke the silence.
That’s what I should have been doing, right? I mean, Max was crazy, right? Unable to give him an excuse as to why I wasn’t packing right that second, I let out a frustrated growl as I plopped on the couch and covered my face with my hands. How could I even be entertaining this ludicrous story he had spun? And what did that say about me? Was I this desperate for love that I’d buy into something that was impossible?
“I’m sorry, Waverly,” he said causing me to drop my hands. He was turned now, facing me, his gaze fixed on me. “I know this is a . . . a lot.”
“You told me you didn’t own a motorcycle,” I blurted.
He pursed his mouth as if confused. “I don’t.”
“Max,” I breathed.
Dropping his arms, he flung them up at his sides in frustration. “What?” he asked defensively. “I don’t. Before I ended up on the streets, I owned a Bobber, but I sold that to my friend Lenny.”
“According to Braxton, you do,” I snapped back. “You bought it almost two weeks ago and spent a fortune on the purchase and restoration. That doesn’t exactly fit in with your timeline.” I argued. “If you are Liam and you didn’t become Max until five days after the accident, why would Max have bought a bike? The Max I know, not one time, ever, mentioned motorcycles.”
He stared at me blankly. “Did Braxton mention what kind of bike it is?”
“Umm . . .” What did he say? It was a weird name. “A pan . . . something.” Then I felt stupid. I was telling him the name of the bike as if he didn’t know already.
“A Panhead?” His voice raised an octave in disbelief.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “That was it.”
“He sent it to Lenny?” he mumbled quietly in disbelief.
“What?”
With furrowed brows, he shook his head. “I wasn’t Max two weeks ago.” He paced the floor for a few moments, then stopped abruptly, turning to look at me. “He bought it after the accident, but before we switched?”
I closed my eyes and stopped myself from letting out a loud huff. Was he putting on an act for me now? Max bought the motorcycle, and now he doesn’t remember? “I don’t know, Max,” I sighed. “Did you?”
Suddenly, his head tilted up, and he let out an, “Ah-hah.”
“What?”
“My bag. He took my bag.”
“What bag?”
“I had a backpack. It carried everything I owned, which wasn’t much, but there was a . . .” he motioned his hand around as if it would conjure whatever he wanted to say, “I guess you could call it a journal.”
I didn’t say anything. I simply crossed my arms and waited for whatever nonsense he’d throw out next.
Max noticed this and rolled his eyes. “Just come with me,” he instructed as he went toward the bedroom and quietly opened the door.
After he vanished from my sight, I stared straight ahead. What are you doing, Waverly, I asked myself. If you go in there, you’re only fueling this. Standing, I shook my head. You have to leave tomorrow. First thing.
Creeping into the bedroom, a faint light leaked out from under the door of Max’s closet. Quietly, I opened it to find him on the floor sitting cross-legged, a ratty backpack opened beside him as he dug through it. Dirty socks, what appeared to be balled-up T-shirts, an empty water bottle, and two books were scattered around him. The sound of me closing the door behind me caused him to jerk his head up.
“This,” he said as he pulled out a composition notebook. Some kind of business sticker covered the front, Uncaged Mechanics. The covers and pages were frayed on the edges, the spine splitting, unraveling on one end. It had seen some use. Opening it, he thumbed through a few pages. “This page.” Reaching up, he handed the notebook to me. There was a magazine photo of a motorcycle glued to the page with handwriting surrounding it. At the top of the page, written in bold, was #1.
“The Panhead is my dream bike. Max must’ve read about it here.”
Peering down at him, then at the soiled items surrounding him, I frowned. “This was everything he had in his bag?” It was nothing and what there was, was filthy.
His head dropped. “It was everything I owned.” With a snort, he added, “Pretty pathetic, I know.”
Something in my chest ached as I watched him. He looked so . . . defeated. Broken. “Let’s say,
hypothetically, what you’re saying is true, and you are this man Liam trapped in Max’s body, why would Max buy this bike?”
Raising his head, his eyes filled with something between desperation and anger, he met my gaze. “Why did he take my bag in the first place? Why did he leave me to die? Why did he . . .” he growled in frustration as he pushed up to his feet. “Why did I save his life just so he could end his own?”
Yanking a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, he unfolded it and handed it to me. “He tried to kill himself, I think. I think when he did it, that’s when we switched. It’s the only thing I can think of.”
Taking the creased paper, I read it, slanting my eyes in confusion. Handing it back to him, I pinched the bridge of my nose. He was throwing so much information at me, most of which was too crazy and impossible to believe, and it was giving me a headache.
“I just can’t imagine you killing yourself.” I couldn’t. Max was so many things, but suicidal? I just couldn’t see it.
“You can’t imagine him killing himself,” he countered. “I’m not Max, and the truth is, Waverly,” he huffed, “you didn’t know Max. No one did.”
Glancing up at him, I scowled. “I was married to him. I think I probably knew him better than anyone.”
Stepping toward me, his face was inches from mine. “Don’t you get it? He tossed you aside because you got too close. He wanted you, he wanted a family, but he knew if you ever got to know the real Max Porter, you’d leave him anyway. He thought he could be enough for you, but when you got pregnant . . . it was too much. He didn’t have enough in him.”
My eyes teared up, and I blinked a few times trying to hold the tears at bay. “And if you’re not Max, how do you know this?”
Dropping his head, he let out a long sigh, his shoulders sagging. He was growing tired of explaining; of trying to convince me. “I saw his therapist. That’s where I went the last two days. I wanted to know . . . Max . . . in case I got stuck as him.”
“This sounds insane, Max,” I argued, my voice rising with emotion. Bending down, he yanked the bag up and jabbed one arm inside as he dug around it. When he found what he was looking for, he let the bag drop.
“This,” he held the photo out to me, “is me.”
Taking it, I examined it, letting my eyes slowly review every detail. The photo was of the man, Liam, I’d just saw in the hospital, though he looked a million times better in the picture than he did in his current state. Liam was handsome and rugged. His hair was long and shaggy, and he had a short beard. His teeth filled his smile and even with his facial scruff his dimples poked through as he grinned at the camera standing next to a motorcycle. His eyes were brown, rich and dark, like mine. His arms were decorated with vibrant tattoos; some of which I recognized from seeing his body in the hospital. As I studied it, as I let my eyes memorize every detail, something washed over me; a feeling of familiarity. When I felt Max move behind me, I tensed, the closeness making my breath hitch. Gingerly, he placed his hands on my hips, pressing his chest to my back before grazing his lips softly across my bare shoulder.
“That’s me, Waverly,” he said in a hushed, gravelly voice. “Look at that picture and feel me,” he whispered as his hand slipped under the hem of my shirt, his thumb grazing my soft skin. The intimate contact made my back arch as it sent that familiar shiver down my spine. I knew I should tell him to stop, but somewhere between my heart and my mind, in that place where reason always seems to vanish, the words got lost, and all I could get out were moans and whimpers. Instead of fighting him, I found myself leaning into him, letting my body melt against his.
“I know I’m asking you to believe the impossible,” he went on, his lips brushing the skin of my neck as if it were as delicate as a flower petal as he spoke. I moved to turn and face him, but his hands seized my waist, slamming me back against him, preventing me. “No,” he said firmly. “If you look at me, you’ll only see him. You’ll only see Max Porter, the man that hurt you.”
“But—”
“No,” he interrupted my protest. “Look at that picture,” he ordered as he gathered my hair and pulled it aside so he could rest his chin on my shoulder, his cheek touching my cheek. “Look into your heart. If you look there, really look, you won’t see Max.”
Closing my eyes my breath shuttered as he whispered, “I need, more than anything in this world, for you to see me,” against my neck. I fixed my gaze on the photo, staring into the dark eyes of the man Max claimed he was as he kissed my neck and whispered words of pleading.
“Please. Please see me,” he begged over and over as his mouth scorched my neck with need and desire. His fingers grazed up until they were threaded in my hair where he gently fisted it. I’d never been touched this way; worshiped this way. My breaths escaped me in small pants as he pulled me closer, our bodies attempting to fuse together.
There was no doubt the man he’d been the past week was not the man I once knew. It was like night and day, but there were perfectly logical explanations to why that was—and a body swap was not one of them. There were explanations such as he was messing with me, lying, or mentally ill. My voice of reason strongly advocated that these were valid conclusions, but that heart—my heart—that place he told me to look . . . it saw something else.
“I’m so scared,” I gasped as he gently bit my shoulder. I hadn’t really meant to say it out loud, but once I had, he stopped. Reaching his hand around he gently slid his hand up my throat until he was cupping my chin. Pressing his face next to mine, he said, “I know.”
His next words hit me right in the chest. “I’m scared, too.”
For a moment, neither of us said anything. He held me, his hand firm as it kept our cheeks pressed together, our breaths erratic.
“We’re pulling the plug day after tomorrow. I have no idea what will happen then. I may die.” His chin rested on my shoulder, the words hard for him to say. “I know what I’m asking, Waverly, but can you give me one day? After tomorrow you can walk away and never think about me again if that’s what you want. I may only have one more day in this world, and I know I don’t want to spend it with anyone but you.”
My eyes burned with tears as my throat tightened. His words were devastatingly beautiful; the words every woman wants to hear. This is insane, I told myself as I tilted my head toward his, letting it rest. You can’t get sucked into this. But damn—the way it felt when he touched me. My heart knew. This was not Max. It knew because it had yearned for Max to want me, need me like this.
Raising my hand and placing it over his where it still held me, I sucked in a ragged breath. “Okay, Liam,” I whispered. “Okay.”
I’d texted Helen after Waverly was in bed, asking if she could come over early because I had something I needed to do. As soon as she arrived, I filled her in on the events of the previous night and told her to answer any questions Waverly might have.
Once she arrived, I handed her a sleepy Pim who had just started drinking her sippy cup of milk, and headed out. New York was always bustling, the sidewalks packed with herds of people maneuvering their way around one another, but in the early morning, there was a calm that allowed one to slow down and marvel at the city. As I walked, I took note of the buildings, the lights, and even the few people that were out and about like me. This was my city. This was my home. These sidewalks and these looming buildings had been my shelter for a time when I had nothing. That wasn’t exactly true. Maybe I hadn’t had a home or possessions, but I’d had something of more value. I’d had a conscience. I knew with whatever happened tomorrow, whether I lived or died, I’d done my best. When morals came to call, testing my decency as a human, I’d answered when I saved Max’s life. No matter what my lot in life may have been, I never lost my soul.
It wasn’t long before I reached the shop. I was not surprised the bay doors were already open. Lenny always had been an early riser. As I walked in, he recognized me immediately and shook my hand.
“So, I hear you have my bike r
eady,” I began, casually.
Tilting his head, he slanted his eyes in confusion.
“The Panhead,” I chuckled as I walked over to it and inspected it.
“Wow,” he snorted. “I feel stupid,” Lenny chuckled as he scratched the back of his neck. “I had no idea this was your bike.”
“Sorry, man,” I apologized. I felt bad. When I had stopped by the shop a few days ago, there was no way I could have known Max had bought my dream bike and sent it to the shop where I used to work. I wasn’t sure why in those five days between the time I saved Max’s life and the time we switched bodies, Max would have bought it. There were so many questions I’d probably never have answers to. The only thing I did know was this might be the last day of my life, and I wasn’t going to waste it. I would ride this bike.
“I just wanted to come by and check the place out without making you feel weird,” I explained. It was a lame excuse, but I had nothing else.
“Well, she looks good,” he noted. “Runs good, too.”
Smiling I asked him, “Did you ride her?”
“Uh . . .” he didn’t know how to answer. He was worried I’d be pissed if he said yes.
“I hope you did,” I told him.
He grinned, relief taking over his features. “I did,” he admitted with a chuckle. “Sorry, sir. I had to.”
He followed me as I rolled the bike out of the shop. Stopping, I pulled on my helmet and tightened the strap. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but couldn’t. It wasn’t only because he didn’t know I was Liam, but also because saying goodbye was hard.
“We’ve enjoyed working on her, and hope you’ll use us again in the future,” Lenny offered.
Reaching in my back pocket, I pulled out a check and held it out to him. “Oh, they handle the payments in the front office.”
I snorted. “The bike’s been paid for. This is for you.”
Taking the check, his brows rose when he looked at it. “Fifty thousand dollars?”
“I’m in the business of finding talented mechanics. Not just talented, but good people. I can tell you’re a good guy, and you’re way too talented to work for someone else. You need to start your own business.”
