As soon as the door is shut, I drop Max’s hand and throw the deadbolt. A full minute passes before I hear Clive moving on the porch. In that time, I imagine him glaring at the closed door trying to Jedi mind-trick his way inside.
“Fuck off,” Iago says miserably as he plucks out another feather.
When I hear Clive’s footsteps head across the porch and down the steps, I whirl around to face Max.
“What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That.” I jab a finger in the direction of the porch. “That weirdness that happened out there. What were you doing?”
Max’s expression hardens. “I wasn’t doing anything. What about Clive? What was he doing? Why was he here?”
“I have no idea.”
“Does he usually come over late on a Friday night?”
“No. Not that it’s any of your business.”
Pained surprise flickers across Max’s face. “Why wouldn’t it be my business?”
Something about his expression makes a knot of panic unfurl inside my chest. This has all happened so quickly. One domino tumbling into the next so fast I haven’t had a chance to even breathe since I got the call from the social worker.
I’ve spent the past two hours trying to get in front of the dominos, to stop the cascade, but now that I’m in front of it, I see my mistake. The dominos have too much momentum. I didn’t get in front of it soon enough to stop them falling. I got in front of them just in time for them to land on top of me and squash me flat.
I sink to the sofa and scrub my hands down my face trying to buy myself a few seconds to think.
When that doesn’t help, I hop up and move. I nearly trip over Tinky, so I scoop up nearly twenty-five pounds of giant rabbit into my arms, stroking his dense fur like he’s my lovey.
“Why wouldn’t it be my business?” Max repeats. When I turn to look at him, he recoils back a step. “And what the hell is that thing?”
“He’s not a thing. He’s a Flemish giant.”
“I think you meant ‘fucking giant.’”
I let out a bark of laughter—hysterical, of course, and befitting my mood. Sitting back down, I cradle Tinky in my arms. I’m tempted to bury my face in his fur, but somehow I think a mouth full of bunny fur is not the solution.
“Tinky is a rescued Flemish giant rabbit.”
Ignoring my words, Max asks a third time, “Why wouldn’t it be my business?”
“Why would it be?”
“Because you’re my fiancée.”
My hands clench, and I inadvertently squeeze Tinky, who jumps down in protest. Which is for the best, since I also leap to my feet. “I’m your what?”
“My fiancée.”
“Your what?” I repeat. “We’re not . . . We just . . . Why would … Why would you think that?”
Max’s normal frown has deepened into a scowl. “I offered to marry you. Then you kissed me. And then we had sex.”
I can’t look at Max. Not because he looks mad—I mean, he almost always looks somewhere on the spectrum from grumpy to furious—but because he doesn’t look mad. He looks genuinely confused. And maybe even a little hurt.
And—okay, if I’m honest, he still looks so damn handsome it makes my heart feel too big for my chest. And, if I’m really honest, because when I look at him, I can’t help but remember the expression on his face when I took off my shirt. He looked at me like I was a goddess. And when I think about that, I remember what he felt like inside me. Huge and hot and perfect in every way.
The combination—all of that together is just all too much to process. So I don’t look at him. I pace because every cell in my body is screaming at me to move. If I can’t run for the hills, the least I can do is pace in circles.
