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I smile sadly because that’s exactly what I thought he would say to me. “Not this time.”
“She did not put him there.” My mum defends because contextual clues and satire are always lost when she feels her name is being defamed.
Or maybe she’s protective of me?
“That’s good to know,” he says.
The rest of the trip runs in silence that may have been comfortable if not for my mother’s nervous fumes mingling with her Chanel No. 9.
Mac takes us right to the doors. The hospital is a vast beige five-storey building stretching around us now.
We climb out at the drop zone, ambulances parked beside us, a gurney at the ready, but I lean in to say, “Thanks, Mac.”
He doesn’t look at me. “You’re not yourself.” He nods slowly, making his mind up about something. “I’ll wait ‘ere.”
“What?”
“For your mother.” He gazes out farther, like he can see the ocean beyond the city scape. “You’ll want to stay. I can tell.” He tilts his chin to my mum who hovers behind me. “When she’s ready,” he says loud enough for her to hear, but still directs the words to me. “I’ll drive her home. I won’t make her wait. Won’t feel right if someone else picks her up, either. Get the feelin’ this whole thing makes her nervous.”
My brows draw in, suspicious. People aren’t nice for no reason. “Why would you do that?”
“Same as the picket.”
I grin at him, half-heartedly taunting, “Don’t hit on my mum, Mac. She’s a married woman.”
He laughs in a husky, addictive way that makes me want to smile. If I could, I would. “Not the husband that’ll keep ‘em away,” he advises, “but the four ofyous.”
Nodding in agreement, I close the door and my mum and I push into the hospital side by side.
There is a queue at the reception desk, but sticking out like a sore thumb, a tower of large muscles, is the last Butcher Boy I want to encounter first.
My fingers twitch as I clutch my necklace, touching the chain. I’d prefer Clay, who’s outwardly calm and reasonable, or Bronson, who is renowned for his teddy-bear-like approach to women and children, but his grim-reaper demeanour towards everyone else.
But… no.
It had to behim.
It had to be Max Butcher.
Pulling something from the vending machine, Max is leaning down when I approach him. My mum is quiet behind me. It’s nice having support; though, my stomach is unsettled in preparation for what she may say. And to Max Butcher, of all people.Shit.
Max straightens and I swallow. When he turns to face me, almost walking straight through me, which isn’t a surprise, as he’s a fucking road train and does not give two fucks about swerving for oncoming traffic, I stiffen.
He frowns at me, and I realise I’m staring up at him, seeing so much of Xander, only Max is broader, with less warmth and charm.
“Max?” I ask, even though I know it’s him, but if I feign uncertainty, he might not take me for a stalker.
“Do I know you?”
I nod slowly, my eyes catching on the juice box appearing so tiny in his large grasp, and then I shake my head, returning my gaze to his crushing stare. “No. You don’t know me at all.”
“Her name is Kaya Lov—”
“Mum, please,” I say, holding my hand up to her prattling off our last name as though it would mean something to Max Butcher. To a few people, maybe, once upon a time, it may have. But even if I was Mother Teressa, Max Butcher would still be glaring down his lashes at me.
I force the words over the lump expanding in my throat. “I’m Xander’s friend.” It’s such a trivial thing, really.
A friend.
