How to Fall in Love (14 page)

I blink. “Dude, I was kidding.”

He studies my face. “I wasn’t.”

Right.

“Okay, I don’t want to know. You’re friends with Max, yet the two of you nearly killed each other out there, and now you’re saying you’re a mysterious criminal.”

He chuckles and lifts an alcohol wipe. “Max and I knew what we were doing. It would have never ended with death, and I’m not a bad criminal.”

“Aren’t all criminals bad?”

His eyes flash. “Do you truly believe that statement?”

I sigh. “No,” I mutter.

“Exactly. Now, sit still so I can wipe that little cut you’ve got above your eyebrow. Must have split the skin.”

He moves forward and starts wiping the wound. It stings and I grit my teeth, but suddenly find myself staring at his chest, feeling nervous.

“So, ah,” I say, trying to look away, but he’s just too big and right in my line of sight, “are you friends with Max so he can help you?”

“I’ve known Max a while, but yeah, right now he’s helping me. Max knows a lot of people. People I need to find.”

“I don’t even want to know,” I grumble. “And what was the fight all about then?”

He shrugs. “It’s always fun getting in the ring with him.”

“You put yourself in a ring to get beaten up, for fun?” I gasp.

“It’s a great stress-relief.”

“You’ve got issues.”

He laughs, throaty and deep. “I’m not denying that.”

He leans back and studies his handiwork, then cleans up the mess and stands. “You want some water?”

“Yes please,” I croak.

He goes over to the cooler and pours me a foam cup full, bringing it back. I sip it and he sits beside me, waiting . . . for what I don’t know? Maybe he’s waiting for Max to return.

“When will Max come back?”

“Once they’ve finished his face.”

I study his bruising, battered face. “Who did yours?”

“Max.”

I shake my head. “Right. Crazy.”

“So, you and him . . . you’re married.”

“We were,” I groan, shifting my aching body. Being thrown around a crowd of crazy people does not feel nice. “Well, we still are, but we’re not together.”

“That’s a fuckin’ shame. The man looks at you like you’re the reason he’s still living.”

I flinch. “I think you’re seeing it wrong.”

“No, lady, you are. I’ve seen men, a lot of them, in love, and none of them look at their women the way he was lookin’ at you. I think maybe the problem here is that you can’t see it anymore.”

I look away, hands trembling.

“I was a bad wife.”

He sits down beside me, stretching his long legs out. “How so?”

“I didn’t realize he was in pain. That he was suffering. I let him push me away and then I had a child he didn’t know about.”

He’s silent for so long, I sigh.

“Go ahead and say it. I’m a shit person.”

“I don’t judge anyone. I’ve seen bad shit, enough of it that I don’t ever pretend to understand why people do the things they do. All I know is that if you think it’s wrong, and it’s hurting him, then you fix it.”

“I would if I knew how to.”

“Dig deep. There’s always an answer.”

I look over at him, and smile weakly. “I guess you’re not a bad seed after all.”

He grins.

I think I like Raide.

~*~*~*~

M
ax returns ten minutes later, and the moment he steps through the door my heart squeezes and tears burn under my lids. He orders everyone out of the room, and Raide stands, flashing me a smile before shaking Max’s hand and walking out. Then we’re alone. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t even know where to begin. I look into his brown eyes, and I can see the pain there, and I wonder how the hell I ever missed it.

“You were protecting me,” I say softly, the first words that come to my lips.

I’ve had this thought countless times in the last hour, but hearing it out loud makes it so much more real.

“I wasn’t going to let some fucker hit you and just leave you there, Ana.”

“I didn’t mean then,” I say, trying to keep the pain from my voice. “I meant when we were married.”

He flinches, and I know I’m right.

I’m such a fool. He pushed me away to protect me. To keep the pain from entering my world. If I was paying attention, if I was giving him what I should have been giving him, I would have seen that. The night in the hospital, I would have seen that he wasn’t telling me the truth. I guess a part of me wanted to believe nothing had happened, because the very idea terrified me. How selfish.

“Why, Max?” I say, standing on trembling legs. “Why didn’t you lean on me?”

He looks down at his hands, jaw clenching, fists balled.

I step closer, reaching up and cupping his jaw. “Why?”

“Because if the light had been taken from your eyes, I wouldn’t have coped,” he says, his voice thick and slightly broken.

I don’t understand.

“You didn’t tell me so I wouldn’t get sad? So my eyes wouldn’t cry for you?”

He reaches up, taking my chin in his hands. “Your eyes are the only things I’ve had throughout all this. When you looked at me that day in the hospital, they were full of fear. Fear that whatever I had to tell you would destroy everything beautiful we’d ever created.”

“Max, no,” I say, feeling so hurt, so broken and so devastated that he’d think that.

“I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t look into your eyes and see pain that I’d created.”

“If that was the case, why did you push me away?” Tears are burning my eyes now, but I keep my eyes on his.

“Because what was inside me slowly ate me away until there was nothing fucking left. After that, I was numb. I thought I could handle it, thought I could keep it from you and go back to my life, but I couldn’t.”

“What happened out there?”

He lets me go and turns away, his whole body stiff. I step forward, putting my hand on his back. “Please.”

He keeps his back to me, but starts speaking in a cut-off voice, devoid of any emotion. That scares me, but I let him talk. I need him to talk, but most of all, he needs this.

“I was driving home, off in my own world. I heard the screeching of car tires and saw a car just launch off the road and down the side. I pulled over and got my flashlight, then ran over to help. I called for an ambulance when I saw the state of the car. It was wrapped around a tree, and so fucked . . .”

His voice trails off, but I say nothing. I just let him continue when he’s ready.

“I got into the driver’s side, and the person in there was . . . horrifically dead. I couldn’t see the person in the other side. I noticed blood on the hood, and followed it.”

My heart is so tight I can hardly breathe, but I let him speak.

“There was a child.” His voice hitches and pain tears through my body. “She was only about ten, maybe older. She had been . . . thrown from the car. She was in a bad way, but she was still alive.”

Oh no.

Please no.

“I lifted her into my arms and started talking to her, even though she was unconscious. She was a fucking mess.” He sounds angry now. “The parents hadn’t put her seatbelt on. They hadn’t . . .”

My heart breaks in two and the tears flow down my cheeks, as I realize the pain he had been living through.

“Why didn’t they put her fucking seatbelt on?” he roars, launching his fist out and hitting the wall.

I step closer and wrap an arm around him, feeling his panting. I press my cheek to his back. There’s not a damned thing I can do that would bring comfort right now, but I just want him to know I’m here for him. Always. That I’ll give him what I was too blind to see before.

“By the time the ambulance arrived, she had passed. They told me I did everything I could, but I didn’t, Blue Belle.”

His voice, God, the pain in his voice. I cry harder.

“I shouldn’t have touched her, should have called an ambulance sooner. I should have figured it out sooner . . .”

No. God no.

It wasn’t his fault.

“And she was dead, just like that. A life snuffed out by the careless act of her parents.”

“It’s not your fault,” I finally manage to say. “Max, you have to know it wasn’t your fault.”

“I shouldn’t have moved her.”

“It probably wouldn’t have mattered even if you didn’t. Honey, you did all you could.”

He shoves my hands off him and storms forward, pacing the room, his body shaking.

“Don’t try to make it better, Anabelle, because it can’t be made fucking better. I’ve lived with what I did. I’ve accepted it, but don’t try and make it better. You know now, so let it go.”

“I let you down,” I say, standing, unmoving.

He stops and turns, looking over at me with bloodshot eyes.

“I let you suffer alone because I didn’t see that you were hurting. I didn’t figure out that something horrible had gone wrong. I thought . . . I didn’t even link the two.”

“And why would you?” he says, his voice icy. “I told you I was fine.”

“But you weren’t!” I scream. “And I should have known, Max.”

Now I’m panting. “I should have known the man I loved was breaking to pieces. I should have—”

“Don’t,” he grates out. “Don’t beat yourself up over something you had no control over.”

I look down at my hands and tears drip off the end of my nose. “It’s why you walked away from her, isn’t it? When you saw us in the store.”

I don’t look up, but I hear his sharp intake of breath. I’ve thought about what happened with Imogen in the store that day, so many times. I’ve wondered why he walked away, why he looked at her with so much pain in his eyes. Now he’s told me his story, it makes so much sense. He saw the little girl, and the pain in his heart probably came rushing back. Hell, he probably thinks he can’t be what Immy needs, because of the tragedy that night brought upon his life.

“I didn’t know how to handle it . . .her hair . . .”

I look up and the pain in his eyes nearly rips me in two.

“It was exactly the same shade . . .”

Oh God.

“I can’t destroy another life, Anabelle. I can’t be a dad. I’m . . . not worthy.”

I take a step towards him. “You’re wrong about that. I know it, because what you did was heroic. You tried to save a life, Max, and that wasn’t easy, especially considering the damage already done. You’re more than worthy of being her dad.”

His eyes flash and he stares at me. “What if I don’t want to be?”

That hurts, but I understand why he’s saying it. He looks at the wall to his left, his face hard. I have to fix this. It’s up to me now, to push past this wall he’s built up around himself and let him know that he can be what she needs. I understand why he doesn’t believe it, but I believe it and that’s enough. So I start talking, without even thinking.

“She was only five pounds born,” I say softly, my voice warm for my daughter. “So tiny, and yet she came into this world screaming, letting everyone know she had a place.”

His body flinches, but he doesn’t look at me.

“By the time she was one, she had everyone wrapped around her little finger. She was strong, and determined, and so damned happy you couldn’t not love her.”

He starts panting.

“When she turned three, she beat up the neighbor’s kid because he called her ugly.” I laugh at the memory of her punching into the little boy. Of course she got into trouble for it, but I was so proud of her. “Do you know what she said to him?”

Max looks over to me now.

“She said ‘Only an ugly person would say something like that’.”

Max’s lip twitches.

“I’d told her, even from a young age, that people that are horrible are the true ugly of the world, and I never thought she got it until that day.”

His eyes study my face.

“She’s more like you than you could begin to imagine. She’s feisty, strong, frustrating, and so fucking beautiful it hurts.”

He swallows hard.

“And she deserves you in her life, Max. It was never my place to decide you couldn’t have that.”

“You made a choice, and it was probably a fucking smart one.”

I stare at him, really studying his face. “If you really don’t want to be in her life, I’ll leave, Max. I’ll see my mother out, and then I’ll go back to my life. But I want you to be sure about that, because while you’re living in pain, that little girl is wondering who you are. I’ll let you decide if she gets the chance to know you.”

With that, I turn and walk to the door.

“And Max?” I say when I get there.

He looks over to me, his eyes so full of pain.

“You never had to be scared of snuffing out the light in my eyes, because in case you didn’t know . . . you were the reason that light was there.”

I walk out to the sound of his pained groan.

He gets me.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THEN – MAX – AFTER THE ACCIDENT

It’s been two weeks.

Two weeks since that little girl was taken from this world in the cruelest way possible. Two weeks since her little life was cut short.

I went to the funeral and watched from behind the trees as they said goodbye to a family that seemed to have very little love. There were only five people there.
Five
. In all their lives, they only have five people that loved them. Nobody should live without that kind of love. No one. Not even the scum of the earth.

“Hey.”

I lift my head from the coffee mug I was staring at, and see Belle coming in. She smiles at me, and it takes everything inside for me to smile back, but I do. I’ve been smiling at her for weeks, trying to get on with life. We’ve been trying for a baby, and I can see the happiness in her eyes. I make her happy. I’m everything to her. I’m her husband – I swore I’d protect her and that’s what I’m doing.

“Morning, Blue Belle.”

“How’d you sleep?”

Shit. Horrible. I don’t sleep.

“Awesome. You?”

She beams. “Awesome. You want more coffee?”

“Nah, I gotta run. It’s time for work.”

She frowns, but walks over and tilts my head up, kissing me softly. “I packed lunch for you last night. Will you be home earlier?”

I look up into her eyes, trying to keep the pain out of mine. “Yeah, baby.”

“I miss you when you’re gone.”