Page 62 of Maximus

Fuck, no, everything is not okay.

“Yep. Just want a face-to-face. Kyle mentioned everyone coming over tomorrow. Want to talk to you about that.”

“Give me five.”

“Copy that.”

I hung up the call and pocketed my phone just as Eva was walking back into the living room.

“Liam asleep already?” I asked.

“No, he’s thirsty. I was gonna check the kitchen.”

Those nine words were the most she’d said to me in hours. But they were said in a way that was devoid of emotion.

“Everything all right?”

“Just a lot on my mind.”

At least that was honest and she didn’t shut me out, lie and tell me she was fine when she damn well wasn’t.

“Listen, my team wants to come over here in the morning. I told them I needed to talk to you about that first.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want Liam and Eli to be scared. Brooks, Thad, Kyle, and Declan are…” Damn, how did I describe my team? “They can be, shit, Eva, I don’t know. They’re all big men. My size and bigger. Eli was freaked out when he met me, I don’t know how he’ll react to four strange men in the house. And Declan, he can be gruff, not to mention, he’s got a scar across his neck. One look at him and Liam might take you and his brother and try to make a run for it.”

Eva’s teeth scored her bottom lip, her brows creased, and her crazy-beautiful yellowish eyes held mine. But she remained silent.

“What are you thinking about?”

“They’re your friends.”

“Yeah, they are. They’re all good men—”

“They’re your friends,” she repeated. “So of course they’re good men. I trust you.”

I felt that statement in my gut, my chest, and for some unexplainable reason, in my dick.

“You trust me?”

“Well, yeah, of course I do.”

“What does that have to do with my team coming over?”

“It means I trust that you wouldn’t put my kids in danger. I’ll talk to Eli and Liam and explain that your friends are coming over. They’ll both be wary, because that’s how they are. But they’ll be okay. It will take time for them to warm up like it did with you, but if your friends are patient, it will happen.”

Yeah, I’d totally missed out on life, but I didn’t want to miss out on Eva. I wasn’t sure what that meant in the long run, but in the here and now, I wanted more of her.

“Tell me what happened in the car.”

“Huh?”

“The car, babe. After you rightfully laid me out about not talking to you before asking Anaya to buy shit for the boys.”

“I didn’t lay you out,” she argued. What she didn’t do was tell me why she’d grown quiet, then shut me out for seven hours.

“Yeah, Eva, you did. And you did it in a way that cut me to the quick. What you didn’t do was throw a shit hemorrhage or be a bitch. You laid it out for me and I want you to know, I heard you. And now, seeing all these bags and Liam’s expression when he saw them, I understand where you were coming from. It wasn’t cool of me to go around you and not ask. It won’t happen again. Anaya’s a good woman. Her heart was in the right place. I talked to Kyle and he said there’s clothes, shoes, and shower shit in there, too. But she’d worried she went overboard.”