“Look,” he offered, sensing the odd curve their friendship was about to take. “I wanna be straight with you: I’m nowhere near in a position to offer any woman a relationship. I’m fucked up. I have serious attachment and trust issues. I’m a drug addict. I’m fighting every day to stay in recovery, and getting involved with someone wouldn’t be fair to either of us.”
A small V punctuated Grace’s brow. “Who said anything about a relationship? I was talking about sex.”
Max laughed and clutched the bridge of his nose. “Fair enough.” He leveled her with a stare. “But I still wouldn’t have sex with you.” The red-blooded male in him immediately smacked him upside the head with a what-the-fuck-dude? Before Grace could look even more despondent, he admitted, “I find you very, very attractive.”
“You do?”
“You own a mirror, right?”
She smiled faintly. “But you still wouldn’t—”
“Because you deserve better than that,” he interrupted. “You deserve more than some asshole like me who can offer you nothing but an emotionless fuck. You deserve someone who’ll take you out and treat you right.” He shook his head. “I can’t do that. I’m not capable of that right now.” He swallowed down the regret. “I don’t think I’ll ever be capable of that again.”
Grace stared at him for a moment, searching his face for answers to fill in the blanks of his past. Her gaze did funny things to Max’s chest. “Okay. Thank you for being honest with me,” she murmured. “I appreciate it.”
He dipped his chin. “Sure.”
She rubbed her hands together and set off toward the direction of her house. “But now at least I know who to come to for an emotionless fuck, right?”
Max grinned at the exaggerated sway of her ass and hips.
Fucking woman.
Whiskey’s was busier than Max had seen since he’d arrived in town. Ruby’s coworker Buck was celebrating his thirtieth birthday, and she’d invited Max to join them. It had been a few weeks since he’d shattered his sober streak, and he’d avoided the bar and the careful invitations that his friends and family offered him ever since, but, besides being a stubborn son of a bitch, he knew he couldn’t delay the inevitable any longer. As it was, he liked the atmosphere of the place, he liked the people who frequented it, and he enjoyed spending downtime with his uncle. The banter with him and the awesome food undoubtedly took his mind off the temptations behind the bar.
His gaze slid over to Grace, who was popping the cap off a bottle of beer for a customer, and he cleared his throat.
Too fucking tempting.
Eager to distract himself, Max sat with his cousin, her husband, and their friends and listened to them reminisce about Buck as a kid, his less than stellar behavior at school, and his obsession with Star Wars.
Max listened, adding anecdotes about Ruby as a teenager and receiving smacks of embarrassment from her, much to the delight of Uncle Vince, who elaborated with gusto. Max sipped his orange juice, smiled at the stories he heard, and tried not to wonder why his gaze continually kept traveling back to the bar, where Grace was working hard, smiling as she served beer and food, and generally looking lovely.
It had been two days since she’d asked him about whether he found her attractive, and for two days he’d been chewing it over. It sure came out of left field, although, in hindsight, it shouldn’t have been surprising after he’d left the bar with Fay draped all over him.
He hated that he’d done that.
He hated that Grace believed she was less attractive than Fay—who was watching him predatorily from her seat near the pool table—and he was truly perplexed that Grace wasn’t aware of how hot she was. As much as he maintained his sexual distance, keeping their relationship as platonic as possible, Max wasn’t immune to the way Grace looked.
Jesus.
A year ago, he wouldn’t have given a shit about her feelings, his feelings, or anything else for a chance to get her into bed, against a wall, in the backseat of his car, on his desk in the body shop office, but now things were different.
Since rehab, he had feelings about this shit. He knew Grace had feelings and, as much as she assured him that all she wanted from him was sex, he knew that no woman was that black and white. There were always areas of gray where someone got hurt; someone was left disappointed. Max had been that guy, moving from one piece of ass to the next with no regard for how they felt or who he was hurting. He fucked to forget and in doing so, he forgot what his bed partners felt or wanted. He was an asshole.
But he wasn’t that man anymore.
Grace was good people. Optimism glowed from her and he couldn’t mess with that. Like he’d told her, she deserved more. She deserved to be treated like a queen by a guy who wasn’t fucked up, who wasn’t always thinking about his next score. She deserved a man to be thinking about her 24/7, who made her laugh and smile.
She leaned on the bar as she chatted to Deputy Yates, who, as always, looked like he wanted to ravage her senseless. Prick.
Max pondered. If he could go back two days and answer Grace’s question again, would he sleep with her?
Hell yes.