"It was what it was," he answered finally, his voice flat. He shrugged belligerently. "A fuck is a fuck, you know?"
Grace's heart stammered as his words hit like bullets. She knew he was lashing out because he was afraid, but they crippled her all the same.
"You don't mean that," she said, her voice wavering.
"I don't?" He shook his head in a way that could only be described as patronizing. "Shit. I knew this was a mistake."
"This?" Grace asked, hating the shake in her knees. She gripped the doorframe.
"You!" Max bit out. "I told you all I wanted was sex," he continued, his voice frustrated, as though he were explaining something simple to a child. "I was straight with you from the beginning, but you chose not to hear me."
"I hear you now," she said firmly, shifting the door, ready to close it on him so that he wouldn't see her shatter. "I hear you loud and clear."
"Thank fuck!" he exclaimed, slapping his palms to his thighs.
Grace blinked, hating the tear that escaped her eye when she did. She didn't recognize the man standing on her porch. The gentle, caring, patient man she'd fallen in love with was nowhere in the stranger before her.
She pressed her lips together. "I'm so sorry that all I did was care for you and try to help you see that you're so much more than drugs and bad memories." She swallowed. "But, I get it; that's all you've known and anything else, anything new, frightens you to death."
Max glared at her, his gaze like pinpricks on her skin.
She lifted her chin toward Carter's car. "So go. If I truly was a mistake, and you feel nothing for me at all, it'll be easy as pie for you to leave. Right?"
Max huffed, his eyes flashing. "Right," he spat. He lips twitched as though he had more to say, but he simply exhaled and waved a dismissive hand. "Seriously, I don't need this shit."
He spun on his heel, thumped down the porch steps, and strode toward Carter's car, nearly pulling the door from the chassis. He threw himself down into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Grace watched the car reverse and disappear down the driveway before she stepped back into the house and closed the door gently. She put her back to it, and slid down until she met the floor.
It was only then that she broke apart into a million pieces.
Max was quiet. He was too quiet and, frankly, it was scaring the shit out of Carter.
Since leaving Grace's place he'd been silent, his deep breaths and tremoring hands obvious signs of the fury coursing through him. Carter hadn't asked what or why. He'd watched him talk to Grace, heard the raised voices through the windows of the Lexus, the hurt and fear plain as day on the two of them.
Carter sighed. What the hell was Max thinking? Carter had seen it on Grace's face. She was head over heels and, whether Max admitted it or not, he was more than a little fond of her in return. It broke Carter's heart seeing his friend deny himself happiness because of his fear, because of his past, because of a woman he still had on a pedestal. But what choice did he have? He had to support Max. Carter always had and that would never change.
Seeing Max so animated through the car windshield, however, regardless of the cause, was strangely comforting. It'd been too long since Carter had seen him passionate about something that was neither alcoholic or came in a small, see-through plastic bag. Grace seemed to have woken a part of Max that Carter had worried was lost. It was just cruel irony that Lizzie would decide to write to Max now, right when he was beginning to warm to the idea of moving forward.
But shit was never easy.
Carter turned the key in the lock of the Tribeca loft apartment he shared with Kat and opened the door, standing to the side to let Max through. Carter shut the door behind them, his eyes immediately finding Kat sitting at the breakfast bar, wedding invitations covering almost all of it, amid envelopes, ribbon, and fancy calligraphy pens that she had insisted on buying. She looked up and smiled widely.
"Peaches," he whispered before he walked toward her. He leaned over the breakfast bar, placing a soft kiss on her mouth.
"Hey." She smiled against his lips. She looked over to Max, who was shuffling on his spot by the sofa. "It's good to see you, Max," she said softly. "You look well."
"You, too."
Carter had called Kat when Max had made his decision to return to New York, the sound of her voice in his ear the antidote he needed for the worry gripping his insides. Seriously, if Max stumbled back into his drugs and drinking because of Lizzie and her bullshit, Carter knew he'd scour the earth looking for her and make her pay dearly. At Carter's insistence, Max had called Tate on the plane, not that he'd said much, but it eased a part of Carter knowing that his best friend had people ready to rally around should shit go south.