by Kate Meader
“Max—” He swallows my reply with a deep kiss.
“Don’t dismiss our chances just yet,” he whispers, his voice filled with such longing my heart clenches.
“I wasn’t going to. I have hope for you, Max Henderson.”
I have love for him, too. But I can’t say it. Not yet. Him saying he’s crazy about me could mean any number of things. Sexually obsessed. Taking up all his (current) headspace. Good while it lasts. It’s not a phrase I can bank on.
What did I say about my instincts of late? Vague hints and smoke signals are useless to me. I need THE WORDS.
But for now, until I’m sure, until Max is sure, I’ll take the man. The beautiful, once-hurt man who’s in my head, my heart, and I hope, very soon, my body.
I start at his chest but I don’t stay there. My lips blaze a trail down his cut, muscle-packed body.
“Charlie,” he gasps as my mouth finds the most awake part of him. The salty bead of liquid at the tip sends my body into a thrum of anticipation. His hips swivel, lifting off the bed as I take him in farther.
“Hold on,” he says and slips out of my mouth. Within two seconds, he’s arranged me so I’m straddled over his body, my mouth back where I started, his mouth—
Ohhhh! One long sensuous lick through my folds and I’m a quivering mess. I grip his cock, intending to wrap my lips around it but I can no longer focus.
“Max, I can’t—”
He sucks on my clit like it’s a nipple, the most sensitive nipple in the world. And now I’m left holding his dick just so I won’t levitate off the bed. So I’ll remain earthbound. I’m this close to coming—and then he throws another curveball at me.
I’m on my back, and Max settles between my legs. “Need to see that beautiful face, Charlie.”
Emotion—maybe love—is pouring off him, or perhaps I’m imagining things. But I don’t imagine the satisfied groan we both make as he sinks into me. We both look down to where our bodies are connected.
Damn, we forgot protection.
He slips out. I pull him back.
“It’s okay. I’m on the Pill.”
“Thanks, honey, but you’re not ready to trust me yet. Let’s wait.”
It’s a shockingly astute thing to say, and as he suits up and plunges back in, I wonder if Max Henderson might be half in love with me. He certainly understands me.
I want that to be the same thing.
I want it badly enough that as we move in sync, climbing higher and exploding together, I bite his shoulder to stop from crying out something foolish. Something I can’t take back.
An admission that will break me if he doesn’t feel the same way.
Chapter 21
“A good marriage is one where each partner secretly suspects they got the better deal.”
—Unknown
Max
Remember that movie Singin’ in the Rain with Gene Kelly tripping through puddles and warbling away while the sky pisses the tears of the Almighty? Now it’s not raining out. In fact, it’s a perfectly sunny July morning, but I’m feeling like good ol’ Gene as I frolic my way into the Gloucester.
Benji raises a hand in greeting. “Good night at the bachelor party then, Mr. Henderson?”
“Great night, Benji. Stellar night.” I lean an elbow on the front desk, not quite ready to retire to my lonely penthouse at the top of the tower. Sure, Cujo will be up there, but will the little fucker appreciate my mood? I think not.
“I’ve met a girl, Benji.”
“At this party?” the man replies with a healthy dose of skepticism. True love does not occur at last hurrahs for the doomed.
“She was there but I met her before. You’ve met her before.”
“Ms. Trenchcoat?”
“That’s the one.” As I don’t like the idea of Benji’s head now flooded with images of my Charlie in her sexy trench ’n’ heels, I move on quickly to make my case. “She’s not like other girls. And she’s a believer.”
“A believer?”
“True love. Angels singing. Woodland animals cavorting.”
Benji’s smile is…the word I’m looking for is “avuncular.” “I did wonder. You’ve been less…active for a while now.”
I nod, not wanting to think on my life before Charlie. On that version of me who isn’t what Charlie wants. A smidge of doubt gnaws at me, recognition that I can’t do a complete one-eighty here just because I’ve fallen for a woman. How much of myself will I have to suppress to indulge her fantasy?
But I want to try. Like Jack Nicholson says, she makes me want to be a better man.
“She’s stopping by later, so can you just send her right up? Charlie Love is her name.” Crafting love is her game.
“Will do. Need anything from the pantry?” he asks. “Champagne, strawberries?”
“Sounds good. Put an order in.” I asked her to hang with me this afternoon. Just the two of us, sharing stories, filling gaps. Building something.
“How’s Mrs. Benji?”
“Looking forward to our vacation. Galena.”
Galena is for skiing but it’s probably nice in the summer as well. “Gotta give ’em what they want,” I offer wisely.
“Sure do. Oh, Mr. Henderson, I meant to tell you—” Before he can finish, the front door opens with Mrs. Gawlik and her poodle. Benji jumps into action, which is my cue to leave.
Charlie shared a big piece of herself with me this morning. She recognized that she had to lay her cards on the table before she made any kind of commitment to me. To us. And the act of doing that, the act of opening her heart about how Craven hurt her, was the first step in cementing that bond between us.
A brief flash of panic overcomes me as I step off the penthouse elevator. Am I good enough to take care of Charlie’s heart? It’s a gift she doesn’t bestow lightly. Who’s to say I’m man enough for the task?
I try to shake off this negative emotion but foreboding slithers down my spine where before it was only pleasure, brought on by Charlie’s mouth on my body, her pussy gripping my cock and milking me dry. The feeling of pessimism stays with me as I open the door to my apartment, as I drop the keys on the foyer table, as I vaguely register the gym bag I don’t recognize tossed against the back of the sofa.
Cujo runs toward me, tail wagging, happy to see me.
He’s not alone.
I look up at the figure standing by the open fridge, and that shiver of dread becomes a full-scale torrent.
“I’ve left Donna,” Sully says, just like I knew he would.
* * *
—
I head into the kitchen and lean against the island, shooting for casual. Failing like failure.
“Have you told her?”
“Yeah, she…uh, didn’t take it so well.”
A raised eyebrow is the only response I have for that.
“I already told you it wasn’t working out,” Sully says defensively.
“Did you do all the things I said? The talking, the counseling, the fucking talking?”
He shrugs which means a big fat no. “What’s talking going to do? We’ve been talking for years. Well, she’s been talking enough for both of us.” The rest is drowned out by the rush in my ears, accompanied by the not-so-shocking conclusion: Charlie is going to have my balls on a pike.
Maybe she’ll be clearheaded enough to realize I didn’t encourage him. I gave him some advice. Name of a lawyer he can’t afford. A couple of websites detailing the process. He needed to know that getting divorced is a pain in the ass and should not be entered into lightly. It costs money and time and emotional capital that you’d better be ready to invest.
I thought to scare him back to his marriage.
“…Finster’s old lady won’t let m
e stay, so here I am.”
I snap back to the problem standing in my kitchen, realizing I’ve missed an important piece.
“You want to stay here?”
“Christ, Max, aren’t we buddies?”
“I’ll be honest and say my intentions toward you have been largely dishonorable, Sully. I like you, but you’re the means to an end.”
Sully grins, the old scoundrel. “I knew you had a thing for my Charlie.”
“Right. I do. And this is going to do squat for my case. I can’t be seen taking sides.” I think about all the advice I gave him and wonder how much of it he’s told Donna. And how much of that she’s now telling Charlie.
Time for some preemptive damage control. I wave my phone. “I’m calling her right now. She’s going to talk some sense into you.”
A noise behind me makes me turn. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Fuck, I’m already too late.
Charlie
I had just stepped into the lobby of the Gloucester when Donna called me. I thought she was being overdramatic. I actually laughed. My parents love each other dearly. Sure, I’ve witnessed arguing and nagging and tears. I’ve seen Sully laid out in a hospital bed, tubes down his throat, his skin as pale as paper, and Donna never leaving his side. The foundation of affection is there.
Apparently it’s not enough. According to a hysterical Donna, Sully brought up the D-word—divorce—and I know that idea would never have been entertained seriously a couple of months ago. Admittedly they’ve been under stress with Sully’s health and retirement changing the parameters of their marriage. But I don’t think that’s it.
I think this is a Max Henderson problem.
I look at them both, standing there in Max’s all mod-cons kitchen without a care in the world. Neither one of them has answered my question, so I repeat it.
“What the hell are you doing here, Sully? I just talked to Donna. She’s a mess.”
My dad has the decency to look uncomfortable at the mention of his wife’s name. Good. I haven’t even started.
“It’s a shock to her, I know,” he says. “But it had to be said.”
“What? That you haven’t been happy for a long time? That Donna is the reason?”
“I never said that! I told her I’m not happy, but I didn’t blame her. This is a personal thing.” He shrugs helplessly, and for a moment I feel nothing but love for him and what he’s endured this last year. He’s been questioning his purpose, but when you’re married as long as he and Donna, purposes become joint and intertwined. Lives and hearts do. He might say he doesn’t blame her, but it’s hard not to take personally the act of leaving a marriage.
I can’t be mad at him, especially when I have a handy scapegoat standing before me. “Why are you here, Sully?”
He slides a glance at Max, one that tells me there’s some sort of bro code at work.
“I was planning to trespass on Max’s hospitality. This has nothing to do with him, though, in case you’re wondering.”
“Oh, I’m wondering all right.” I address Max, who has remained quiet this whole time. “How long has this been going on?”
“What?”
“This!” I gesture between them with a jerky motion. “How long have you been planting ideas in his head about divorce?”
“Charlie…” He trails off as if saying my name should be enough to stop me from going one-hundred-percent Kylo Ren on his ass.
“You gave him the name of a lawyer.”
“Only because he can’t afford me.”
I shake my head, my fury a building surge in my chest. I can’t do this, here, with these idiots who are incapable of recognizing the pain their careless and selfish actions are causing.
“Fine. Enjoy playing The Odd Couple or whatever ridiculous sit-com playact you’ve got going on here. Don’t for a moment think of the people you’re hurting while you live out your balls-scratching, beer-swilling, poker-playing bachelor fantasy.”
Sully steps forward. “Now, Charlie—”
“Don’t, Sully. Just don’t.”
I pivot on shaky stems and head out the door, my blood rushing to my head.
Max catches up with me at the elevator. “Charlie, stop, let’s talk about this.”
I twist to face him. “About what? Max Henderson, wrecking ball?”
“Listen, he showed up a few minutes ago, and I was about to call you. Was I supposed to turn him away?”
“You were supposed to not interfere in the first place. I thought you’d changed. But you can’t resist widening a fissure when you see it, applying the tools of your trade to fix what didn’t need fixing.”
“Now wait a second, Charlie. Your father’s not happy. That’s not invented or a figment of his imagination. I advised him to talk to Donna, to counselors, to you. But he’s a grown man who’s perfectly capable of making his own decisions. If he’s not happy, he can’t force it.”
“Of course he can! That’s what marriage is about. When it’s hard, you soldier through. You don’t give up at the first sign of trouble.”
His look is pitying. “They’ve been married for thirty-six years, Charlie. They know what works and what doesn’t. This isn’t a whim.”
“How the hell do you know? He hasn’t been the same since he became ill.”
“Sometimes it takes a life-changing event to recognize you should make other changes.”
I know that. When Sully had his heart attack, it propelled me off my sorry ass and into the dating pool again. Life-changing events are exactly that—gifts we should take and embrace. Sully’s lucky to be alive, and I know his retirement hit him hard, but it shouldn’t have hit him this hard. It should have made him cherish the moments with the woman who held his hand and cooked his (albeit terrible) meals and nursed him back to health.
This isn’t supposed to be happening. And it wouldn’t be without Max planting the seeds of discord.
“And there you are, jumping right into the fray. Freakin’ ambulance chaser! A little trouble and you and your kind can only see how to make it worse. How to take something pure and special and solid, and smash it to pieces. You don’t see my parents. You only see a puzzle to be solved—or dissolved! You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
He looks like I’m a crazy person. Maybe I am. “No. Of course not. To be honest, I think you’re overreacting. This is not the end of the world.”
“Oh, you’d say that, wouldn’t you? What if it was your parents, Max? Would you be so blasé about it?”
He has no answer. He’d be crushed—and he knows it.
“Come back inside. Talk to him, but maybe calm down and stow the judgment.”
“Yeah, what every woman wants to hear from a man. I thought you’d changed, Max. I thought you were coming around to—”
“To what, Charlie? Your fantasy of what marriage looks like? This unrealistic vision that demands people suck it up and become shadows of themselves?”
“If that’s what you think I mean when I talk about marriage, about two people working to make a relationship, then we couldn’t be more different.”
“You’ve got that right.”
His agreement clobbers me. I’m not a counselor but I’ve seen plenty of couples engage in productive arguments. Marriage is work, and to call that a fantasy—to consider the work that goes into it unrealistic—flies in the face of all I hold dear. To expect it to be perfect all the time is a fool’s game.
Max’s game.
An hour ago, I felt closer to this man than anyone in my life to date. We could rise above the roles we’d self-assigned and assigned to each other, take what we’ve learned about life and love and weave it into something real. There would be bumps along the way, ditches we’d need to climb out of. But we’d hold ea
ch other’s hand and do it together.
It seems I was mistaken. The man before me is too hardened by his past, too calcified by his job, to see the possibilities.
“I’d hate for you to become a shadow of yourself, Max.”
“Charlie, that’s not what I meant. I’m talking about—”
“My parents?”
He looks uncomfortable. “You can’t will this to be fixed, Charlie.”
Just as I can’t will Max to change. I need someone who won’t bail at the first sign of trouble, who’ll take my crazy and roll with it. I can’t choose wrong. It would kill me.
Looking at this man I fell for hard, I realize that it already has.
Chapter 22
“Each divorce is the death of a small civilization.”
—Pat Conroy
Charlie
I turn over the slice of overdone meatloaf on the off chance it might be moister on the other side. No such luck. I take a bite anyway.
“I suppose she’s cooking for him,” Donna spits out.
“Who?”
“That blond floozy.”
I’ve told Donna that the floozy in question is a cockapoo, but she refuses to hear it.
“Dogs can’t cook, Donna.” Max can, though. I hope they’re choking on Hello Fresh peppercorn steak together.
“Remember the night he had his heart attack.” Her skin is tired and gray, her hair lank and lifeless. She looks around. “Right here.”
I wasn’t here but I nod all the same.
“I didn’t think he’d make it. He couldn’t get any air and his face”—she stands quickly and grips the counter beside the sink—“his face was ashen. That’s the right word, isn’t it? Like ash. And I thought, this is it. I never gave him a child and this is it. Not that you’re…”
“It’s okay, Donna. I know what you mean.”
“And when he woke up in the hospital, you weren’t there yet.”
“I was stuck in traffic.”
