“What the hell, Tess? You want to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Why? What’s the point, Max? It wouldn’t matter anyway!”
“Because you just called me a moron? Because I need to know if you’re ending what we have? Because I deserve to know where your head is that? Name the fucking reason, Tess.”
“You are a moron!”
“Woman, I’m warning you!”
“Warning me of what, Max? What you should have warned me about is that you’re pigheaded, a male asshole through and through and I’m tired.”
“What is going on? Jesus, you were fine this morning when I left.”
“No Max, I was half comatose from three orgasms.”
“See, fine. I take care of you.”
“Ahhh! Seriously? That’s what you think makes a relationship work?”
“Tess. I don’t do relationships. Fuck, the most serious one I had, was with a borrowed club girl that made me sour on the whole damn deal and it fucked my life up so bad. I mean hell, I can’t even take you out on a damned date!”
“No Max, you fucked your life up. You make the decisions you make and to hell with what the rest of us think or feel.”
Her words hit me hard, and they taste bitter. I step back away from her as I take them in.
“Tess, you’re on dangerous ground here. We’ve only been together for a short time. You can’t start acting like you got my shit wrapped around your finger. I am not that man. I will never be that man.”
“We’ve been together almost a month! A very fucking intense month that for regular, normal people time, is like six months!”
“Normal people time? Bloody hell woman you aren’t even making sense!”
“You need to turn yourself in!”
My head goes back as though she slapped me.
“What the fuck are you talking about? We’ve been through this.”
“No, no we haven’t, Mighty Mad Max has been through it, and he just expects me to agree. He expects everyone to agree. But you see here’s the thing! I don’t agree. You need to turn yourself in! We need to start living and not hiding, because eventually they will find you, Max. They will find you, and when they do it will be bad. Like epic proportions, bad.”
“Tess, I told you. If I turn myself in, even if by some miracle I make it alive. That would be the end of us. The end of anything we could have.”
“We can’t have anything now! Turn yourself in, Max. You have to; there’s no other choice.”
“What do you think will happen to us, Tess? If I turn myself in?”
“I’ll visit you! I’d still be here, Max. I wouldn’t go anywhere. We could get married, they have conjugal visits and things. We’ll make do, just like everyone else, Max. We’ll make do until I can get you out of there.”
“You don’t even know if you could get me out of there. And no woman of mine is going to come into a jail to visit me through a glass window every week and have guards patting her down. That shit is not happening. Have you even thought this through, woman? What law firm would even let you work for them, knowing you were married to a felon serving time for murder? And shit, conjugal visits; do you know what shit is? That shit is a joke, and I doubt they’d even let a murderer have them. You’re living in a fucking dream world!”
“No, you are! We’ve been here for weeks, Max! Weeks! And you still haven’t tried to deal with any of it! It’s like you think we can just bury our head in the sand and live in this house and not worry about the outside world. It doesn’t work that way. Eventually someone will find you, and they’ll shoot first and ask questions later! Is that what you want, Max? Do you want me to stand here and watch the man I love, die in front of my very eyes?”
It takes me a minute to grasp what she is saying. She’s yelling at me, and her body is shaking from the depth of fear she has inside of her. There’s tears in her eyes and rolling down her face, and I really think this is it. It’s over. Then her words crash on me. She loves me? She has to be talking out of her head. She’s only known me for three weeks or so. Still. If she thinks she loves me, I need to encourage that. I need to wrap her up tight to me, so she doesn’t get away.
“You love me, Kitten?”
“I don’t want to talk about this with you, Max,” she says turning away to walk on into the house. The sky picks that moment to open up and hard, cool rain drenches us, and everything around us.