“Oh Jesus, do it, Witt, please, you’re driving me crazy.” She grabbed hold of his arms and pushed off the wall, impaling herself on his thick flesh. “That’s better, that’s so much better.” She panted and chanted in his ear.
He pounded her into the wall, the padded down jacket saving her spine. She wrapped her legs high and took every stroke. He held her butt and angled her for the deepest penetration. Her orgasm hit like a fireball, so fast she didn’t even have time to see the stars before she went mindless.
He was holding her tight when she came back to earth, his head on her shoulder. Still harsh of breath, he clutched her close and throbbed inside her.
“Trust me, Max. I’ll take care of Bud for you.”
She traced a finger around the shell of his ear. “I will.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
Rather than deny it, she made a request. “Take me with you.”
He tipped his head, and his eyes traveled from the tussle of her hair to her chin. “No.”
He didn’t offer an explanation, and his tone didn’t broach an alternative other than the one he’d given. He let her slide to the floor. While he took care of the condom, she pulled on her undies and pants. Flipping the light off behind him, he stood in the bathroom doorway longer than necessary. His command of stay put echoed as if he’d repeated it. Then, after one more quick punch of his lips against hers, he sprinted down her stairs.
If she was the kind of girl who needed long, gooey minutes of post coital afterglow, she was shit out of luck. Witt had given her something more. He’d given her his promise.
She had to trust him. She did trust him. But she didn’t trust Bud, and that knowledge had her pacing a hole in the flooring. Buzzard the Cat sat on the bed, watching her, his yellow eyes tracking her agitated movements. So close to Thanksgiving, silence cocooned her. No sound rose from the rooms below. Desertion scented the house around her.
Except for Cameron. She smelled his peppermints in the air. Had he watched her with Witt?
“No.” Utter weariness laced his voice in her head.
Max realized she hadn’t given his feelings a thought since she’d seen Bud in the yearbook. Her own rage had blinded her. “I shouldn’t have called your mother a murderer.”
“She was a good woman. Despite what she did to those pictures in the album.”
“You remember her now?”
“I ... remember ... now.” A wealth of emotion parsed his words.
“Do you want to talk about her and Cordelia?” She’d listen. She should have asked years ago.
“I loved them. I missed them. But they’re both gone now.”
She wished she could have put her arms around him. “It must seem as if you only just lost them.”
“It’s not as if I’m alive to feel grief. I lost them long ago.”
Alive or dead, Cameron was full of emotion, no matter what he said. Max didn’t know how to reach him. Except by going back to what they both already knew.
“I should have looked at that picture in the yearbook carefully before we left,” she said aloud. Cameron should have told her about meeting Bud Traynor before he ever went into that 7-11. Water under the bridge. Secrecy had been an integral part of their lives back then. “I would have seen him if I’d looked.”
He didn’t apologize for the secrets they’d kept from each other. “You wouldn’t have known how Cordelia fit into it all. We still had to go back to Lines.”
Two years ago, even if she’d known about Bud or BJ or whoever he really was, she wouldn’t have known how to save Cameron. “Do you remember Walter Spring?”
With that bizarre trick of Death, the details came back to Cameron now, but only after the event had received her independent verification. His voice grew weaker, tired, pained. “I remember Walter’s case. I remember the moment I saw BJ.”
Like Cameron, Max was now free to remember the time, shortly before his death, when he’d cried in her arms. About a case. Now she knew it had been the Spring case. He’d cried, something she’d never seen him do before. He hadn’t shared the why of it with her. He wouldn’t. He’d never talked about any of his cases. But neither had he told her about BJ Tyler. Yet she’d never been closer to him than when she’d wiped the tears from his face, her arms around him, giving him succor and comfort.
He’d died only a few days later. After the mother of all fights. They’d had their best moments and their worst so close together. All because of Bud.
“He didn’t recognize me, not at all.”
“You knew him, though.”
“His hair had turned.” The silence lasted five beats of her heart. “But he hadn’t changed much. I gave him my card.”
“He saw your name.”
“Not a flicker in his eyes, but I knew he recognized it.”
“Had you figured out that he killed Cordelia before—” Before Bud had him murdered.
“She might have died in childbirth.”
“No, she didn’t. She was alive to hold her baby.” Max closed her eyes, the weight of motherhood in her arms as if the child had been her own, love, tenderness, the miracle of it. “I think I’m feeling Cordelia again.”