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He shrugged, trying to build a wall between them. His insides curled in on themselves. “Well, now you know. Not only am I an idiot who couldn’t finish school, but I also can’t clean up after myself without an instruction manual. I’m just a child after all. I need constant supervision. Are you satisfied now?”
“Dave, it’s not as bad as it looks,” she protested.
And that was it. That’s all it took. The way she said his name with pity. Like he was something broken.
But she didn’t know.
She couldn’t know because it was his head and not hers.
No one understood that this was how it had to be.
He finally met her eyes. “That’s because you can’t see it the way I do. And you never will.”
She jerked her chin back. “That’s not fair,” she protested on a whisper.
“Leave,” he said, directing his eyes at the floor.
Several quiet moments passed before he felt her step around him and leave. Max stopped at his shoulder and heaved a sigh.
“Think about this,” Max tried, voice low. “Really think.”
But Dave didn’t want to hear all the reasons he didn’t understand how other people saw things.
“Don’t,” Dave said, so soft he wasn’t sure Max actually heard it.
He must’ve though because a minute later and they were both gone.
* * *
SABINE
She drove to the airport on autopilot. Her mind a tangle of regret and confusion.
So this was what it felt like to instantly regret something.
“He’ll get over it,” Max said into the silence. But he didn’t sound convinced.
“I think we both did a bad thing,” she said, focusing on the traffic without really seeing it.
She cast a glance at Max and his jaw was tense.
“Did you know?” he asked.
“Did you?” she countered.
Because it had become abundantly clear that both Max and Sabine had overstepped. Not only that, but they had taken advantage of Dave’s trust and had put him in a position that Sabine never wanted to see him in again.
“Do you think differently of him?” Max asked accusingly.
“Of course not,” Sabine scoffed. “Was this some kind of a test?” she almost yelled at Max.
He didn’t answer, and if she hadn’t been driving, she would have shaken him by the shoulders.
“Were you testing me?” she asked again. Demanded, more like.
She kept glancing over at Max who looked more and more guilty.
“I needed to know!” Max confessed. “I needed to know if you could love him the way he deserves. He wasn’t supposed to catch us.”
