Page 58 of Maximus

That wasn’t the stupid part. That came later, when I continued to lie under Max after we’d finished. After he’d slowed his strokes, slowed the kiss, and started nibbling on my lips, then moved lower to my neck. After he’d gone soft but didn’t move from between my legs.

I’d kept my legs wrapped around him, my hands continued to roam his back, memorizing the puckered scar on the lower left side, feeling the rough edges of skin glue holding together the gash he’d earned saving my life. All of that was just dumb. But it was when I lay there and allowed myself to pretend Max was someone he wasn’t, that I’d crossed into stupid.

In this imaginary world I was make-believing, Max was just Max—not my bodyguard. And I was just Eva—not a single mother on the run with a boatload of baggage and a past full of lies and felonies.

The hardest part was Max let me have it. He didn’t rush me out of his room, he didn’t roll off me severing our connection, he let me savor it.

It was a nice thing for him to do, maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever done. He hadn’t treated me like the stupid bitch I was, coming to him in the middle of the night to have sex. He gave me something sweet and tender. Something no one had ever done for me—not even Jay in the beginning when he was playing me, pretending he was a decent human being and not a low-life, drug-dealing, piece of shit. The only awkward part was when I’d touched his scar, something I’d wanted to do since I caught sight of it. Obviously, it was a sore subject, one I would avoid in the future. I knew a lot about sore subjects. I’d show him the same respect, he’d shown me last night and never bring it up again.

So, to bring my musing full circle back to Max sitting across from me, he had a lot to be smug about, and his smile told me he knew it. Last night I had indeed been stuffed full in a variety of ways. He’d made sure I’d eaten a big, healthy meal. One I would’ve never ordered for myself, mostly because it was a fifty dollar steak, and I hadn’t ever been to a restaurant that offered one of those. The other part of that was, I wouldn’t have ordered it so that I could give my kids what they wanted off the menu. Max had done both, given me the best steak I’d ever eaten and the boys whatever they wanted, including two Shirley Temples each.

Then throughout dinner, he’d given me more by being kind to my boys. He asked them about all sorts of stuff, he listened when they talked, and Max had done the impossible and won my shy, quiet Elijah over. Part of it was watching how comfortable Liam was when talking to Max so he mimicked his older brother. But the rest was Max asking Eli about the cartoon he’d been watching at the safehouse the day before. I didn’t even realize Max had been paying that close of attention. By the end of the night, Eli was talking as much as Liam was.

So, me going to Max last night with a full belly, a full heart, emotions raw and at the surface, was the dumbest thing I’d ever done.

I was setting myself up for heartbreak and strife.

I knew it and I still went to him.

“Mom,” Liam called.

“Yeah?”

“Eli asked you when we were leaving,” he informed me.

“Sorry, I was woolgathering.” I focused on Elijah, then I looked at Max. “Are we ready?”

At some point during my musings, Max had stopped smiling and had switched to his favorite expression. And since I was sitting across from him, I couldn’t avoid the spear of his icy blues. I wasn’t sure how ice could burn, but those eyes aimed in my direction studying me close, pinning me in place, blistered.

“Yeah, we should hit the road.” I was staring right at Max so I didn’t miss it, though I didn’t think he tried to hide it when he softened his features and looked to the boys. “Would either of you like anything else before we leave?”

His question should’ve felt patronizing—him asking my boys if they needed something—like their mother couldn’t provide it but he could. But instead, it felt a whole lot like he was asking because he cared. Another stupid thing I’d pretended last night, and apparently that notion had carried over to breakfast.

Max didn’t care in the way I’d hopefully imagined. He was simply being nice, because as I was learning, under all that rough fire and ice he was a nice guy and he did care about us in the sense he didn’t want us dead, so he would protect us the best he could.

But when this was over, he’d be gone. I couldn’t let my boys get attached to him. In the not-so-distant future, he’d just be another person we kept in our prayers and were thankful for.

Max received two ‘no thank yous’ to his question. And after watching Liam and Elijah for a beat, he turned back to me.

“We’ll check out and hit the road.”

Ten minutes later, we were in a new fully kitted-out SUV, complete with individual TVs in the headrests and headphones so the boys could each watch what they wanted but we didn’t have to hear.

I kept quiet about this and didn’t disturb Max as he guided the beast of a vehicle onto the interstate. I also kept silent after the boys had donned the headphones and were into their shows and Max called a man named Declan. He made this call and kept it on speakerphone so I could hear it, too.

It was weirdly personal, me listening to Max speak on the phone. It felt like he almost trusted me with the details of the conversation. Though the men were talking about me, so I guess I had a right to listen in, yet it still felt strange.

The call was short and to the point. Declan reported that Tex hadn’t found anything new and the house that the boys and I would be staying in was ready and stocked. Declan also said that Anaya had picked up the stuff that Max requested for the boys and had already dropped it all at the house.

I didn’t know who Anaya was but Max’s face gentled when Declan mentioned her name. I didn’t think that Max was the kind of man who would’ve had sex with me twice if he had a woman, but he’d been clear he wasn’t relationship material so maybe he just had friends. The kind he had sex with without the hassle of the relationship part. That thought didn’t sit well—as a matter of fact, it churned my stomach. Couple that with Max asking this woman to buy stuff for my kids and I felt a little nauseous.

“What’s wrong?” Max asked after a few minutes of silence.

Instead of asking him the real question, the one burning my stomach, I decided to touch on the topic that was somewhat safe, or at least the issue that needed to be settled that didn’t make me sound like a crazy-jealous woman who didn’t understand the difference between stress-driven sex and feelings.

“You shouldn’t’ve bought the boys anything.”

“What?”