Page 88

“I've been practicing.”

“I don't like reasonable Max as much as farm Max.”

His chest moved beneath my cheek with another quiet laugh. “Farm Max?”

“The one with the farm.”

“He likes you too.”

My throat tightened so abruptly that swallowing hurt.

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the steady movement of Max's chest beneath my cheek, but the medication seemed to have turned my emotions into something slippery and impossible to contain. Five minutes ago, I'd been laughing because he was too big for my apartment, and now the fact that he liked me felt unbearably sad. “I didn't want you to come here.”

“I know.”

“I mean, I did want you here. I just didn't want you to see it.”

Max's arm tightened slightly around me. “The apartment?”

“All of it, I think.” I wasn't entirely sure what all of it meant until I started speaking again. “There's nothing here because I don't buy things unless I need them. Every time I get paid, I think about how much I need to keep, and then I think about what happens if he asks for more.”

The change in Max was immediate.

His body went very still beneath mine, and although I noticed, the part of me that should've understood what I'd just admitted was apparently several seconds behind.

Max didn't ask who he was.

He didn't ask what the money was for, either.

That should've made it easier to stop talking.

Instead, the silence gave the truth somewhere to go.

“My dad takes my money. He's taken it for years, every month, and usually it's the same amount unless he decides he wants more. This time he wanted five times as much because he knows about you.”

Max's arm tightened around me before deliberately relaxing again. “Ash, you don't have to tell me anything else tonight.”

“He saw you at the arena, and then he saw us on television. He knows you matter now.” My voice had begun to shake, and the realization that I'd said too much should've frightened me into silence. Instead, it only made everything I'd been holding back crowd closer to the surface. “That's why I told you to stay away from me. It wasn't because of Vegas, and it wasn't because I regretted it. I thought if he believed you didn't matter, he'd leave you alone.”

For several seconds, Max said nothing.

When he finally spoke, his voice was rougher. “You pushed me away because you were trying to protect me?”

“I wasn't very good at it.”

“I think that's something we can discuss when you're not medicated enough to find my dimensions hilarious.”

I would've smiled earlier.

Now I couldn't.

“He'll hurt you if he thinks it'll make me pay.”

Max shifted enough that he could see my face. “Whatever your father is doing, you don't have to deal with it alone.”

“You don't know him.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I don't.”