Time suspended around them as he claimed her body, tasted the sweet recesses of her curves and memorized her inside and out. With a final thrust, he sent them both over the edge, plunging them into the abyss with no hope of surfacing; two souls that had been separated by fate, broken by life, finally became one.
***
With a cold beer in hand, Jack, Max, and Shane sat on the front porch at Jack’s house and watched the sunset. Jenn, Mia, and Sage were at the hospital fussing over Maxine while the men recovered from having to rescue their women once again. It had been less than twenty-four hours since their ordeal had begun with Heller, and all three were exhausted.
“I’m gettin’ too old for this shit,” Jack sighed, stretching his head from side to side. “I should have kept her barefoot and pregnant until she was too exhausted to gallivant around causing trouble.”
Max grunted. “Jenn’s like Maxine. You’d have had a houseful of kids to feed and still had a wife who got into trouble.”
Jack turned and grinned at Max. “Predictable is boring,” he finally admitted.
“True enough,” Max agreed, raising his beer in salute.
“I don’t know about you two, but I could use some boring for a day or two,” Shane threw in.
Leaning forward, Max looked at Shane and asked, “Speaking of predictable, now that your life is settled and you got a good woman at your side, does this mean you’re gonna head to medical school?”
Shane took a pull from his beer and thought for a moment. As a young boy, he was fascinated with medicine, was certain he wanted to become a doctor, so he’d joined the Army to accomplish just that through their GI bill. However, treating the wounded while overseas had stolen his passion. He had seen enough death for ten lifetimes and now knew that being a doctor wasn’t where his future lay. Surprisingly, he found his calling while avoiding life for the past year.
“Nope.”
“No?” Max questioned.
“You got a hearing problem?” Shane asked.
“Then what the fuck are you gonna do?”
“Well,” Shane said, stretching out his legs. “I was considering partnering with a certain lumberjack I know and building luxury cabins for all the slick city folk that seem to be coming in droves to our neck of the woods.”
Max turned and looked at Shane, raising a brow. “Stacked Log, Post and Beam, or Timber Frame?”
“Stacked Log. I’m not building anything but authentic cabins.”
A slow grin pulled across Max’s mouth.
“Works for me,” he stated, then reached out his bottle and clinked it to Shane’s. “We can start with yours and see how it goes.”
“You’re lucky you can go home at all,” Jack stated, looking at Max. “It’s hard to plead self-defense like you did with Stetson when you broke Heller’s neck without him even looking in your direction.”
Parker and Jack had to bend the truth in their report so Max could avoid prosecution. All witness statements, including Barry’s, said Heller turned and pointed his gun at Max before he broke his neck. It was a small lie; one Jack didn’t lose sleep over. Not after he found Jenn bleeding in the waiting room. He’d have shot Heller and killed him himself if he’d had a clear shot. The man would have been dead either way that night when the smoke had cleared.
A cab pulled into the drive and all three men turned and looked at it. When the passenger door opened, Max asked, “What the fuck is he doin’ here?”
Gregor waved as he pulled a bag from the backseat. After tossing money to the cab driver, he turned and headed in their direction with concern etched across his ruddy face.
“How’s Maxie?” he asked Max when he reached the front porch.
“Recovering,” Max bit out. “You wanna tell me how you knew about my mother and why you hauled your ass all the way down here?”
“Mia called me. As for why I’m here, that should be obvious.”
“Enlighten me.” Max ordered.
Gregor looked to Shane then back at Max. His spine straightened and his chin came up, then he looked Max straight in the eyes and announced, “Cause I’m in love with your mother.”
Jack stood immediately and put himself between Gregor and Max while Gregor’s announcement slowly sunk into Max’s exhausted brain.
“You wanna repeat that?” Max asked in an icy calm as he rose from his seat.
Shane stood as well and mumbled, “Easy, Max.”
“I’m in love with Maxine,” Gregor stated again. “I have been for a while, but I held back out of respect for your father. But no more. She could have died last night and it took almost losing her for me to realize I’m done being respectful when it’s what we both want.”