Page 40

CHAPTER 40

A fter midnight, we walked the two blocks home from the Wok Inn hand in hand, something I was ridiculously happy about because Max Reddy had never struck me as the kind of guy who held hands. If he was holding mine, he really wanted it in his. He had this whole aloof persona, the grim, silent Man in Black, but every now and then, the facade cracked and he did things like glare at Rowan Masters for flirting with me, or announce to anybody interrupting us that he was on a date, and the adult part of me wanted to say, “Hey, I’m not your property, Mister,” but the immature part of me just loved it. I might not be his property, and we were going to have a lot more arguments ahead because we were both stubborn and sure we were right, but I was still his and he was mine.

It was weird, and it was wonderful, to belong to something like that, to be part of something like that. I didn’t think I’d ever have that and then love had come into town and thrown a rat named Junior into the street for me, and now here we were, walking down the street under a light romantic snowfall, holding hands, belonging to each other.

“Rosalie,” he said as we got close to Oddities. “We should go out to the cottage tomorrow night.”

I thought about saying no for a moment because of Poppy, but Marley was staying close, and maybe with Junior really dead—I’d looked to make sure when Max and Luke had put him in the freezer (replacing Sid) at Melissa’s, and it was Junior and he was really dead—maybe we could go out there and just be us. Out at the cottage, we weren’t the new Ozzie or Herc’s minions or anything but us. This was all so new that we needed practice being us.

“There is no bear rug out there,” I reminded him. “But I suppose we could make do.”

“They must make fake bear rugs,” Max said, and I laughed.

“You really want sex on a bear.”

“Not on a real one.” He looked shocked. “She might have been a mother.”

So when we got inside, I googled and, sure enough, the internet was full of fake bear rugs. But they all had heads and tails which I told him was just too gross.

“So we’ll cut the head and the tail off,” he said and then we negotiated until he admitted that the bear part wasn’t as crucial to his fantasy as the furry part—“You’re into furries?” I said, and he said, “I’m into whatever you’re naked on top of”—and we ended up ordering a Faux Sheepskin Shag Performance White Rug—“Shag Performance,” Max said, “no pressure there”—that was six feet long for $119, rated 4.7 by discerning buyers. Bonus: no head or tail.

“It’ll take five days to get here,” I told him, and he said we’d just have to make do with a bed until then.

So I shimmied out of my red dress and we did.

Then I woke up in the middle of the night because Max had rolled over and taken the covers with him and I was freezing. I put my ice-cold hand on his side, and he came awake with a shudder.

“What the hell?” he said to me, half asleep.

“You took the covers and I’m cold,” I told him. “See?”

I started to move my hand south, and he caught it and yanked it off his body.

“Don’t even think about it, Malone,” he said and threw my half of the covers back over me. Then he rubbed my hands together between his warm ones until they weren’t icy, and I put my arms around him and listened to him sigh in resignation.

“Yeah, you put up with a lot,” I said and kissed his neck, and he pulled me closer.

“That was a terrible way to wake up,” he said in my ear.

So I ran my hand down his stomach until I got to the good stuff, and he drew in a breath and said, “Yeah, that’s better.”

“You know, you’re easy,” I said, and he kissed me and then we just fell into our rhythm, warm and safe and laughing and then not laughing, intense and shuddering and holding onto each other, chasing that big finish we both knew how to get to now.

That was one of the many things I loved about Max, that we made love together. He’d said once that he loved the way I moved when we had sex, and I was surprised because I thought that was what I was supposed to do, but then I realized I didn’t know a damn thing about sex, twelve years with the same guy and then three one-night stands that had not been good. And then Max showed up and I realized that a good lover did more than show up and put it in. We were still getting the hang of it, still missing on some things, but we made up for it, laughing and trying again, nothing was a tragedy, nobody to blame, nobody’s ego hurt, just us fumbling toward ecstasy like teenagers.

Which is where we were when I finally came, shuddering in his arms while he held me tight, safer than I’d ever been with anybody, and then he let himself go and I held him, thinking, We’re together. This is how it’s supposed to be.

I was also thinking, Please don’t leave again, when he whispered, “I love you,” in my ear, like a promise. “I love you so much,” I said. “I know this is really fast but I love you.”

“It’s not fast,” he said. “It took us fifty years to find each other. We’re slow.”

I laughed then and held onto him, and we fell asleep in each other’s arms until he woke up at six because he was trained to do that or something. It’s his only flaw in bed.

“Don’t go,” I said, snuggling into him, still half asleep, and he said, “Wasn’t going to,” and kissed me, and I woke up some more and moved my hands over him, and he did the same to me and one thing led to another, and things were going really well, I could feel myself getting close, and Max knew it and was going into high gear, and I gasped as the first spasm hit?—

And the earth moved.

No, really, the whole building shook, a brilliant flash of light and a boom, all in a second.

We both stopped.

“Okay, I’m good, but I’m not that good.” Max pulled away from me and got up and went over to the window. After a minute he said, “Are you sure Lian and Mei and Rowan left?”

“Positive.” I sat up, really alarmed now. “I went over before dinner to see how many boxes I’d be shipping to New York. Mei had already left with Darius. I watched Lian and Rowan drive away down the back alley where Herc couldn’t see. Lian texted me when they hit Virginia, heading north. They’re gone.”

“Good,” Max said. “Because her building just blew up.”