Thursday Nights (The Charistown Series) (16 page)

Janie didn’t seem to notice the eyes watching her as she got out of her car and walked across the parking lot to her apartment. Janie’s complex was a three-story walk-up with all of the front doors opening to the outside. Max often commented to both Janie and Lyla that he didn’t think women should live in places with such little security, but tonight it worked to his advantage. He was able to watch her as she took the stairs up to her second-floor apartment unseen.

When he saw her enter her place and close the door behind her, he let out a deep sigh. He had been waiting for hours for her to come home. He couldn’t deny he was worried about her.
But not worried enough to knock on her door, huh, DeLucca? You’re such a jerk.
He gripped the wheel of his Jeep with white knuckles and tried to refocus.

He knew she went to see Lyla, and her step seemed lighter as she walked. He was grateful that the women reconnected. His stomach finally unclenched after days of worrying about Lyla’s safety and Janie’s heart.

“Fucking Kyle,” he mumbled to himself. Max had called the little bastard the day before, and judging by their brief conversation, Danny had been right in not letting Ryan kill him. Kyle was doing a bang-up job keeping himself in a perpetual state of fucked-up. Max knew he would have to speak with Ryan and Danny about some kind of intervention eventually, but tonight he felt like sticking with the jerk theme and maybe throwing in a little narcissism for good measure. He scrolled through his cell until he found the number he was looking for and pushed send.

“DeLucca, my friend,” the rough voice sounded. Max could hear the man’s smile through the phone.

“Hey, Gage…”

Sebastian Gage chuckled when Max didn’t continue to speak. “So, it’s like that, huh?”

“Yeah, man,” Max answered, “it’s like that. I have nothing to say.”

“I’ll tell you what, DeLucca…I just closed the shop, and I got nowhere else to be. Why don’t you and your sweet-ass ride come and meet me at my track. It’s late, so everyone else should be gone by the time I get there. I’ll turn the on the lights down at the oval so you can
think
.’’

Max heard Gage laughing at how well he knew his friend. “I’ll give you about an hour while I do some paperwork. If you’re interested afterward, maybe we can grab a bite and a beer. You can tell me what the hell has you so fucked up. As if I don’t already know.”

Equal parts fear, frustration, confusion, and something else he refused to consider, weighed on Max’s shoulders as he pulled out of his watching spot and headed home to get his Ferrari. In thirty minutes he would be doing the one thing that makes him bone-deep happy—well, the second thing…the first thing just turned off the lights in her apartment.

Janie sat by the window and watched the jeep pull out of the parking lot.
I thought we were friends, Max
, the small voice in her head said as his taillights faded into the dark. The voice cheered at the fact that he had waited to make sure she got home safely, while another voice sharply reminded her that he didn’t have the balls to face her…again!

After fighting an internal battle, one that she wasn’t certain if she had won or lost, she shot Max a quick text.

Saw Lyla. She is doing Ok. Thought you’d want to know. Chat soon. J

Strapped in tight with nothing but asphalt in front of him, Max pulled in a deep breath and pushed down the gas. The engine roared, and his body thrummed as he held onto the wheel of his Ferrari. It wasn’t often that he got to open up his baby like this to see what she could do. He made a mental note to send Gage a bottle of his favorite scotch as a thank you for the extra “thinking time.” The benefit of driving the oval was that Max could do it on autopilot. That’s probably why Gage offered it as often as he did. He understood.

Max and Gage had been best friends for their entire lives. “Almost our entire lives,” Max snarled out loud as he pressed down harder on the gas. The three years they didn’t speak because Chloe made him choose between his best friend and his wife were the worst years of his life.

“Obviously, I chose wrong…again,” he continued with his monologue.

Max looped the track, going as fast as his car would take him. The pace lulled his mind, allowing his body to unwind and ease. However, as relaxation came so did the memories he’d spent the last seven years trying to forget.

His years with Chloe filtered through his mind. All of her lies. All of her cheating. The feeling of hurt and betrayal still burned like acid on his skin. But the day she told him she was pregnant with another man’s baby—the same day she casually called out “How many men do I need to fuck before you let me go?” as she got into her lover’s car and left him standing in the driveway—was the day he finally broke.

The gas pedal hit the pad as the loops melded into each other.

That Went Well . . . No?

“Sorry about last night, man.” Gage stared into his glass. “Family drama…you know how it is.”

By the time Max was done with his drive, Gage had already left the track. His reasoning didn’t come as a surprise though—Gage had been dealing with family “drama” since they were little boys, courtesy of his nasty, drug-addled, alcoholic excuse of a mother. This time she was causing grief to his terminally ill grandmother. Max spent all of his childhood and most of his adult life working at Gage’s family business, the Gage Garage, so he knew the havoc his mother could wreck.

“No problem, Gage. I probably would have been shit company last night anyway,” Max admitted, placing his beer on the wooden tabletop that had been etched with names of hundreds of people who had sat there before them.

Chopper’s was a local bar that drew a large biker clientele, but they were just as well known for their burgers, drinks, and pool—the latter being the reason why the men had decided to meet there. While the natural vibe was chill, it could change in an instant if the wrong thing was said or the wrong woman was poached. Chopper’s was known for the ink on the skin of its patrons and the leather hugging the curves of its women.

“Women,” Max declared, “all sorts of drama. Are they even worth it?”

Gage stared, a deadpan expression on his face, at Max’s ridiculous question and set down his glass. “Hell yes,” he answered with a laugh.

Gage eyed his next shot, trying to get the striped eleven in the corner pocket. “So, are you gonna talk or do I have to go all Matt Lauer on your ass?” With a click, the ball went in the pocket, and Gage grinned, calling his next shot. “Fifteen in the side pocket.”

Max hesitated. “I don’t know…”
Click
—the ball went in.

Gage looked up at Max. “Dude, how many years is it gonna take before you realize that I know your bullshit face? I, too, sit in that bar, not every Thursday but a lot of them. While my sights are set on a different woman, she just so happens to be sitting next to the one that has you all tied up. Do you think I’m blind?”

Max knew he couldn’t lie to his friend. He had already shared more of the intimate details over shots the night after he and Janie first slept together.

“You said the sex was hot—‘smoking fucking hot’ were the exact words I think you used. So, what’s your problem?”

“My problem, douche bag, if you remember correctly, is that I didn’t call.” Max took his shot and sunk the first ball but missed the second.

“So what?” Gage shrugged. “You apologize, ask for forgiveness, and move on. I’ve seen her, Max. She’s into you. She’s like a light, and when you’re around her you glow too—Fuck!” Max looked at Gage with concern. “I’m starting to sound more like Oprah than Matt Lauer. I need to get into a fight tonight. Must have more testosterone,” Gage said in a robot voice.

Max laughed a deep, hearty laugh for the first time in ages as Gage proceeded to kick his ass at pool…again. But then he got serious. “I already apologized.” Max filled Gage in on what happen at Sunday dinner, and he watched as Gage’s face went tense and red.

Max didn’t realize his mistake until he saw Gage’s reaction. Now he feared for Kyle’s life even more. “Oh shit, Gage. I’m sorry—I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch,” Gage seethed. Max knew that Gage’s interest in Lyla went much deeper than the surface, but he also knew that he wouldn’t get involved with any woman on more than a physical level until he squared away his family issues. And for Gage, Lyla was much more than just physical.

It sucked to see his best friend alone for so many years, but he totally understood his desire to keep a potential loved one away from the craziness that was his mother. That being said, he knew Gage was protective of Lyla even if he couldn’t have her. Max saw firsthand that Gage wouldn’t stop Lyla from sharing her bed with other men—he had watched the way Gage would quietly breathe while white-knuckling his drink every time Lyla left Danny’s with her man
du jour
—but he also knew that Sebastian Gage
would
go out of his way to harm anyone that hurt her. Kyle was in deep shit.

“Sebastian, I know you’re upset—”

Gage cut Max off at the start. “Do
not
emotionally manage me, Max,” he said, blue eyes flaring and voice strained. “I don’t fucking need it. I know you still feel some sort of loyalty to Kyle or…whatever. But Lyla…goddamn it.” His nostrils flared. “She is
mine
.”

Max put his hands up in resignation. He knew the look Gage was giving him meant that the conversation was over…at least for now. So he dropped it while Gage practiced what he liked to call his “zen breathing.”

Max
did
feel a sense of loyalty to Kyle. No matter how much of an ass-hat he had been lately, Kyle was the one who clued Max in to Chloe’s cheating. At the time, Kyle and Max had just met, and Kyle recognized a picture of Chloe that Max had taped to the bar. A stunned Kyle explained that his friend was dating her. Had it not been for Kyle, who knows what would have happened. In hindsight, Chloe probably would have tried to pass the baby off as his if he hadn’t found out. Kyle stood by and supported Max when his life went to hell and had been by his side ever since. And Max wasn’t going to give up on Kyle if he was going through a hard time now, either.

“Okay,” a more relaxed Gage continued. “What happened after Kyle”—he actually snarled Kyle’s name—“fucked with Lyla to the point where she left her own damn house?”

Max relayed every detail he could from going to Janie’s house to Janie having had no communication with Lyla—which, again, he mentally kicked himself for when he saw the murderous look reappear in Gage’s eyes—and how broken and lost Janie had looked.

“I told her I wanted to be there for her…as a friend. But she looked at me with those eyes…” He could feel a physical reaction from just the mental picture he was drawing. He didn’t verbalize the rest of the story. He didn’t say that his instinct was to support and comfort her, and that is what he did. Multiple times. Those were secrets he didn’t want to share even with his best friend. As his memory began to clear, his focus shifted back to a now-smiling Gage.

“So…again, I seem to be missing the problem,” Gage said, genuinely confused.

Max looked at Gage, annoyed. Was he being purposely obtuse? “Gage,” Max said, raising his voice. “I can’t do that again. I can’t fall in love with her. I refuse.”

Gage looked soberly at his best friend and said with such simplicity, “Look in the mirror, brother. It’s too late. You already have.”

Max grabbed his glass and downed his drink in one swallow. He was pissed at the truth Gage spoke, and anger took over reason as he glared at his friend with as heartless a grin as he could muster. “That’s where you’re wrong. Janie Silver and I are
just friends
, Gage. Friends who fucked. We had our time together, and it was great, but when it was done, I left. If she can’t deal, that’s her problem. I haven’t called her, and I haven’t seen her. It was fun, and now it’s over. Case closed.”

“Thanks for the bulletin, Max.” The sweet, sexy voice that haunted his dreams and starred in his fantasies sounded from behind him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He didn’t have to turn around to know exactly who it was, and after what he’d just said, he didn’t want to, but he did.