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His hand slides away from me, leaving me feeling cold, just like his reaction to my words.
I’m momentarily stunned, swallowing hard, my mind spinning from my thoughts and worries.
He must be hiding something huge to elicit this type of reaction.
But I really hope my instincts are wrong.
Chapter twenty-three
Max
August27,2018,11:20a.m.
Irelynn’s words echo through my head as we inch closer to the register to place our coffee orders. ”I plan to learn your weaknesses, Max Devlin.”
Swallowing hard, I turn my head away to regain my composure before turning back to her. She doesn’t realize it, but she’s my biggest weakness. In part, because all my family members are dead, which means that Darin, and now her, are the only people in my life.
But mostly it’s because ofher. Who she is. Everything that I learn about her just makes me like her more.
And that scares me.
I push the fear away. I’ve deliberately cut myself off from people, especially women since Brianna crushed me. But if I’m honest, I cut myself off with her, too. Every time she got angry about me rushing home to deal with a family emergency, it hurt me more. When Matthew started attending Florida State University and I became my brother’s keeper, Brianna’s selfish, narcissistic side reared its ugly head and wounded me deeply.
The dissolution of our engagement was the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. The betrayal cut deeper since she did it after my entire world imploded. While I was frantically losing my mind, trying to hold it all together, she was fucking one of my friends and teammates on the football team.
When she came to my hospital room, she was practically a stranger. While I clung to her, begging her to give us another chance, she dropped a bombshell on me. She told me she was pregnant.
I never thought I’d be so excited to be a father, considering what had just happened to my family, but I saw this as a new beginning for us. I would give that child all the love I’d never gotten from my parents.
But she yanked it all away, handing me her engagement ring and telling me the baby wasn’t mine.
Pain seared through me like she had just struck a match and stuck it through my heart, igniting it on fire. Leaving me to burn from the inside out, until the smoky ashes of my heart were all that was left inside my chest.
At the time, I was furious at her for ripping the last bit of love away in my life.
Until I realized, I never had it.
She never loved me.
I believed the lie, the illusion, of her. Convincing myself we had something we never did.
And that’s what hurt so damned much.
Irelynn’s brow furrows as she worries her bottom lip with her teeth. I hate that I’m upsetting her. I don’t care that we are in the coffee shop line. I pull her against my chest and hug her. Breathing her in, my face is buried in her mass of curls.
When I pull back, relief fills her eyes as she gives me a soft smile.
“Good luck, beautiful.” I wink at her, humor dancing in my eyes. “I look forward to you trying to wrangle my middle name out of me.”
Happiness and determination dance through her chocolate eyes. “Challenge accepted. I can’t wait to win this bet.”
My lips lower to her ear. “What do I get if you lose?”
She shocks the hell out of me when she turns to me, eyes full of promise and heat. “Whatever you want.”
Jesus Christ.My dick is instantly erect from her words and the fucking look on her face. And she knows it because she gives me a coy grin and tries to turn away, but I grip her hips, stopping her. There are two people in front of us, and I need to figure out how to get my erection to go away before we get to the cashier.
She knows the effect she has on me. Looking up at me with wide, innocent doe-eyes, she asks, “Do you have a slight problem, Max?” Then the little minx wiggles against me. It’s enough to ensure my hard-on isn’t going anywhere yet subtle enough that it’s unlikely anyone but me noticed.
