Carter smiled. “Well, the offer’s there, bud. You let me know.”
Max nodded and stepped back as Carter opened his car door and got in. The V-8 engine thundered to life, making the two men sigh with appreciation and lust.
“I’ll be driving this baby when I get back,” Max taunted as Carter shut the car door and rolled down the window.
“In your wettest and wildest, my friend,” Carter retorted, pressing his foot to the gas, making the car purr. Max’s laugh was halted by Carter’s next words: “I know you can do this, Max.” His face was honest and hopeful. “I know it’s been strange today and I’m sorry. You have a long way to go, shit to get through about Lizzie and . . . but I know you’ll do it. I fucking know it.”
Max gripped Carter’s shoulder through the car window and squeezed. “Thank you, brother.”
The apartment was dark when Max staggered through the front door, cursing as his shin smacked into the fucking coffee table that Lizzie had been more than insistent on buying when they first moved in. It was the feature of the room, apparently. Now it just created bruises.
He mumbled to himself about being quiet, chuckling as the buzz of his last few lines lit his veins, making his skin warm and his brain pulse. It had been a crazy night filled with strobe lights, powder, and dancing. The scent of sweat permeated his shirt while the hair on the nape of his neck clung to his skin in soaked clumps. The side of his face throbbed from his chin to his eye socket where some asshole had punched him at the bar. Max had made a jibe about the dude’s jacket, and then, when the guy didn’t retaliate, Max had commented on the prick’s girlfriend. And then—because it was a day ending in y, and Max wanted a fight and a rush of adrenaline to combat the emptiness that spread through his body like the cancer that killed his father—he’d brought up the guy’s mother, whom Max didn’t know but didn’t hesitate to call a complete whore.
There was dried blood on Max’s shirtsleeve. Oh, yeah. His nose got busted, too, before his friend Paul had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him into a waiting cab just as the night was filled with police sirens and blue flashing lights.
Max sniffed and wiped at his nostrils drunkenly. His nose hurt but as long as he could still breathe through it, he’d lose himself in as much blow as he could if it meant the pain of living would disappear. Fuck, he just wanted to be numb. He wanted to forget. He wanted to pretend that instead of the broken woman he knew he would find in his bed, he’d find the feisty, sparkling creature he’d fallen in love with. Instead of the shut door that concealed all the baby shit they’d bought that neither of them could bear to look at, he wanted to find it wide open, his son healthy and asleep in the white crib . . .
He snorted the back of his hand, desperate for any trace of powder before he pushed the bedroom door open.
Lizzie was exactly where he’d left her, curled up in a ball, unwashed, silent, and fractured by her grief. Max could barely look at her. He wanted to. God, how he wanted to. He wanted to take her in his arms, cleanse her of her pain, and lose himself inside her. He’d make love to her, kiss her fiercely, because kissing her was his favorite thing in the world, and make her forget; make himself forget. But she wouldn’t let him near her. She wouldn’t speak to him.
And he missed her. He missed her so fucking much.
Stumbling around the room, he managed to undress himself and slide into the bed next to her, desperate to take her into his arms and press himself into the warmth of her skin. Despite the mere inches between their bodies, they’d never been more apart. Max stretched out his fingers, the tips of them dancing lightly over the bare skin of Lizzie’s arm. He knew what that part of her body tasted like. He knew what every part of her body tasted like even though it had been months since they’d been together that way. Max understood. At least he tried to, but if she wouldn’t listen to his words of love, maybe he could show her what she meant to him with his body.
Before he had the chance to consider her reaction, if he were to roll her over, kiss her, taste her mouth, and thrive off the intimacy he craved from her lips, she pulled her arm away.
“Don’t,” she croaked. “You stink of beer and you’re high again.”
He snapped, the buzz loosening his tongue and shortening his temper. “Yeah. Well, shit, I have to get my kicks somehow, right? At least one of us is living.”
She sighed, her shoulders rounding away from him even more. “This isn’t living, Max. This isn’t living.”