The rain lightened again like we were reaching the edge of the cloud, and my back pressed into the seat as Max picked up a little speed again.
“No.” I shook my head. “You don’t get to do that. I asked you?—”
“And if I told you the truth, you never would’ve accepted it, no matter how not big of a deal it was.”
Not big of a deal…
“I wouldn’t have accepted it because it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do—to kick you out of your own place so I wouldn’t have to deal with my reality,” I fired at him, the air in the truck cab suddenly charged as though all the nerves that had built all day, worried about how his family might react, now caught like gunpowder set on fire by the realization that…“You lied to me, Max.”
“No, I didn’t?—”
“You didn’t tell me the whole truth. It’s the same thing.”
“Dammit, Daze—Shit!”Max shouted, his arm swinging in front of me as he slammed on the brakes.
The tires screeched, his truck sliding on the freshly slicked fallen leaves on the road. I cried out when the back tires swung off the edge of the asphalt, bouncing the whole vehicle as they landed on the gravel shoulder, and we finally came to a halt.
My chest heaved, my arms locked around my middle. I stared out the front windshield at the doe and her baby, who’d darted into the road in front of Max.
They were the reason he’d slammed on the brakes.
“Daisy?”
I heard him, but it was at a distance. As though I were frozen in a block of ice and Max was calling to me outside it.
“Daisy, are you all right?”
Slowly,my gaze lowered, taking stock of myself. I willed my arms to move, but they wouldn’t. They refused to let go of the baby even though we were safe.
I started to shake, the surge of adrenaline now flooding my system.
“Shit.”I wanted to look at him, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t take my eyes off the doe in the middle of the wet, leaf-covered road, standing like the proverbialdeer in headlights.
She’d run into the road after her fawn. To protect it. She’d run right in front of the charging truck and now was just as paralyzed as I was.
You’re okay,I wanted to tell her.He’d never hurt you.
The passenger door opened, and the movement spurred the deer out of her trance.
“Daisy.” Max’s voice was on the other side of me now, and the deer jerked her gaze to him, and then bounded off the side of the road and into the woods, her baby close behind her.
“Daisy…” Max took my shoulder in his hand and rested the other on top of mine, where it lay over my stomach. I let out the exhale that had gone stale from sitting held in my lungs and slowly turned to him.
Rain dripped onto him, stringing my gaze along with each droplet. From the wet waves of his hair to the hard crease of his brow to the ridge of his cheekbones, I let myself look at him in the way I’d only stolen glances of before. I let myself linger on the warm amber of his eyes, the taut curve of his jaw, and the tight bow of his mouth…
I could only imagine what that mouth would do to a woman.I could only imagine what that mouth would do to me.
“Are you okay?”
Physically or psychologically?Physically, I was fine. But the way I wanted to kiss him right now…psychologically, that didn’t bode well.
“I think so…” The words were hardly out before my seatbelt was unclipped and strong hands shaped my waist, somehow making me feel small as he spun me like a doll in the seat.
If Max heard my gasp, he didn’t register it. Meanwhile, all I could register was how his characteristically calm face had turned to granite. His warm eyes were now the gradient of hot metal, cool and dark in the center and hot and glowing on the edges.
“Are you sure?” His molten gaze, and then his big hands, roamed over me. Well, not over the parts that ached for him.Unfortunately.But over my arms and shoulders. He framed my chin in the V between his thumb and forefinger, turning my head side to side. “The baby?”
“She’s fine.” My fingers grazed low on my stomach, feeling her move. “We’re fine. I promise.”
