“You didn’t even have an orgasm.”
It took a moment for his answer. “You don’t really know what I need, do you?”
Never were truer words spoken. She was afraid to know. She made a move, maybe to get out of bed, maybe to put a little distance between them.
He clamped his arm around her waist and held her to him. “Don’t go. Stay.” His breath fanned her nape. “Sleep with me.”
She held her breath, closed her eyes, opened her mouth to say yes, yes, and yes.
“Sleep with me ‘cause I’m so fucking tired right now I can’t think straight.”
Just like that, he was out.
She lay awake another half hour, the clean scent of him in her nostrils, the rhythm of his breath against her hair, and the fear in her chest that one day soon he’d get tired of playing the game her way.
When he did, he’d leave.
*
Witt had been gone when Max woke at seven, though God only knew how he’d managed to get out of the twin bed without waking her. The man seemed to thrive on two-hour cat naps.
There’d been a note on her desk, a choppy scrawl that emulated his speech. “Call me when you find that rolling pin.” When, as if he had no doubt she’d find it. He’d signed with three X’s and three O’s, no name. It was endearing. She’d felt herself sink an inch deeper in the quicksand she’d fallen into the day she met him.
Now here she was once again on Garden Street. Dinner time. Bud Traynor’s sleek white Cadillac sat curbside. She’d been watching it for ten minutes. As if she expected it to turn into a pumpkin she could squash with the wheels of her car. A snake that would slither down the drain. As if he might walk out of that house and drive away.
Her feelings about him were ambivalent, to say the least. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t absolutely, positively terrified of the guy. Going into that house, with Traynor inside, was akin to giving your first speech in a filled-to-capacity eighteen-hundred-seat auditorium. You knew you had to do it, that you would do it, that nothing really bad could possibly happen to you in there, that it was all in your head because this wasn’t a viper pit, and yet you were so scared, you knew you’d choke on the first word that came out of your mouth. With Traynor, she might indeed choke on every word.
“Why are you so afraid?” Cameron whispered inside her head. She ignored him because she didn’t have an answer. Because she knew he did, and he’d force her to see it, too. She really hated it when he shoved her face in things she didn’t want to see.
She also knew Bud Traynor was in that house to have dinner, and he wasn’t going to leave.
Which meant at some point she’d have to face her fear head on. Tonight, tomorrow, next week. Some day. One day. She’d have to face him.
Ladybird Long’s front door opened as Max climbed from her car.
“Oh my dear, you look lovely,” the little lady called.
Max wore another new outfit. She was getting downright high-maintenance after two years wearing black slacks and blazers. This get-up had a split skirt and reached to mid-calf, olive green with small leaves and tropical flowers. She wasn’t the flower type, but the small white buds had appealed to her when she saw the ensemble in a shop window.
“Thank you, Ladybird.” She walked through the open gate and down the path. Okay, so a few minutes with Witt’s mom was another way to avoid the inevitable.
Ladybird stepped off the porch and reached for Max’s arm. “Now, my dear, I must tell you, DeWitt’s on the war path about our little impromptu visit to the Springs.” Max opened her mouth, but couldn’t get a word in edgewise with Ladybird. “I talked to him yesterday and told him it was all my idea. That way he can’t be mad at you. I’m used to his crankiness, so I can take it. Now you remember to follow along.”
“I already saw him. I told him it was my idea. We’ve got him perfectly off balance. We should leave him that way, don’t you think?”
Ladybird’s eyes twinkled and her hair glistened in the last of the afternoon light. “Oh my, he has met his match.” She patted Max’s arm. “Now off with you to your dinner.”
Max smiled, did a half turn, gave Ladybird Long a quick wave, and stopped dead in the path. “What did you say?”
“Have a nice dinner.”
“I thought you said you hadn’t talked to Witt today?” Not in so many words. Yet Witt must have told her.
“I haven’t talked to him.”
Okay, so ... “How did you know about dinner?” Goodness, it was Jada, of course, or Virginia.
“Horace told me.”
Then again, Ladybird’s dead husband was a likely candidate. “Ah, Horace.”
The tiny woman’s perpetual smile faded. “You say that just like Witt does. I would have expected more from you, Max.”
“I’m sorry. I always look for the logical answer first and forget sometimes it’s not the simplest one.”