Max blinked, knowing he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was startled all the same. “Fuck.” He dropped his head, his chin tapping his chest.
“He’d gotten involved with some guys he’d met through work and started using heavily to cope with the stress after his promotion. He kept it a secret from me. He’d use it to keep awake so he could meet deadlines. Later I discovered he’d been a heavy user in college, too, before we met. Every night it became the same: he’d go out, get shitfaced, high, come home, and take it out on me.”
“Why did you stay with him?” Max asked, desperate to keep the incredulity from his voice, because who the fuck was he to judge about making bad decisions?
“I tried, but he would apologize,” Grace answered too matter-of-factly for Max’s taste. “He’d promise me he’d change, beg for another chance. He’d take me out; make love to me as I remembered. He’d go back to being like the man I fell in love with, the man I married, for a day or two and then . . .”
“And then he’d hit you.”
Grace’s face was all the answer he needed.
“I hope the fucker is rotting in a prison cell somewhere,” Max growled, running his hands through his hair.
“He’s on parole, living in the apartment we bought back in California.” The unspoken question must have been a beacon on Max’s face. “He served two years in state prison for assault and battery after he shattered my hip, collapsed my lung, and broke three of my ribs the night I told him I was leaving him.”
Revulsion heaved through Max. So much about Grace now made sense. Her aching injury when they ran, her abhorrent fear of Buck and his behavior, and the subsequent panic attack and nightmare. Her continuing wariness of Deputy Cock’s advances and flirting, her desperate need to be independent, to show that fucker ex-husband of hers she could be in control of her life, in the face of what he did to her.
In spite of what she’d suffered at the hands of a man who should have been worshipping her body and loving her, she was moving on, being strong, finding the good in shit Max didn’t even notice or pay attention to. His respect for the woman at his side multiplied exponentially.
What it didn’t explain, however, was why she wanted to be close to Max. Why did she want to be friends with a recovering drug addict when she’d suffered so much at the hands of another? Was it a test for her? Was it simply for her own recovery, or did she really want to know him?
“I know what you’re thinking,” Grace murmured. “And you’re wrong. You’re nothing like him. Nothing, believe me.”
Max scoffed and leaned his forearms on his bent knees. “We’re all the fucking same,” he answered despondently, his eyes on the floor between his feet. “Addicts. Our brains are wired identically. We want the same things and we don’t give a shit who we hurt to get it.”
“Did you beat up the woman you loved, rape her, abuse her with words so vile you’d pray for silence?”
“No,” Max replied firmly, offended by her question. “I’d never fucking— I loved her, I’d . . . Never.”
Grace smiled sadly. “See. Nothing alike.”
Max’s hands found his hair again. “It’s not that black and white, Grace. I may not have done those things, but I’ve done my fair share of fucked-up shit. Shit I’m not proud of, stuff that I’m still working through.” He exhaled heavily. “You shouldn’t want to have anything to do with me.”
“I’m a big girl,” she retorted. “I can make that decision for myself.”
Max wasn’t so sure. The urge to bolt, to save her from his past, his addiction, his mistakes, swelled in his stomach, but for the life of him, he couldn’t lift himself up off the floor.
“Do you know what I saw when I looked at my husband the last time in that courtroom?” Grace asked. “I saw hate. I saw violent anger and a monster unleashed by all the drugs and all the drinking. I saw secrets, threats. I saw a man who was seconds away from self-destruction, a man who, had the police not been called by a neighbor who heard my screaming, would have killed me. There wasn’t even a shadow of the man I married.” She nudged his shoulder. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
Max shook his head fervently. “I’d rather not know—”
“I see a man who wants so much to be better, who regrets the decisions he made, who wants to make amends and move on with his life. I see a man terrified to take a chance, to trust, but desperate to do so. I see a man who’s fractured, but trying. I see hope.”
He looked at her askance, too stunned to speak, too wary to believe her.
“You’re a good man, Max,” she said, standing with a groan and wiping the dust off her ass with her hands. “Now stop overthinking things and help me with these boxes.”