Will I always feel this torturous ache of concern when it comes to Max Holden?
I rest my palm on his cheek. “Max? Are you hearing me?”
He blinks, leaning into my touch. “Yeah. I’m hearing you.”
“Are you okay?”
“Fuck no.” He looks dazed and doleful, so very out of it. He’s definitely still drunk—I see it in the sleepiness of his eyes, the sluggishness of his movements—but he’s no longer cross. Now he’s justsad.
“Things will get better,” I say, hoping it’s the truth.
He shakes his head. “Dick move back there, right? Verbally assaulting the girl who’s saving my ass? You’re right to hate me. You should’ve left me on the side of the road, Jilly.”
Jilly.God. He knows exactly how to play me. I pull my hand away. What was I thinking, touching him? Too impulsive, too intimate, totally inappropriate.
“I would never leave you on the side of the road. You know I wouldn’t.”
“Yeah… I’m sorry I keep screwing up.” To his credit, he sounds sincere.
“What happened? Why the whisky?”
He grimaces. “The last few days… shitty.”
“You’re going to have to pull it together, Max. Like, soon.”
“Yeah. Probably hard to believe right now, but I’m working on it.”
“Well, work harder. Because I can’t keep reliving this same experience. You mess up and somehow I get involved, and we both end up suffering.”
“I get it,” he says. “It’s hard on me, too.”
“Thenfixit.”
He gazes at me for a long, pensive moment. Finally, quietly, he says, “Thanks for coming to get me.”
He climbs out of the car and makes a slow, stutter-step trek to his front door. When he’s safely inside, I back down the Holdens’ driveway and into my own, blinking back tears.
20
WHEN I WALK IN THE FRONT DOOR,Meredith’s in the living room, and for a half second, I assume she’s been exercising—she’s perspiring and she’s flushed, grimacing under the strain of whatever she’s put her body through. Then I notice that she’s holding her phone and,oh my God, her trusty contraction timer is open on its screen.
With a rush of terror, I comprehend what’sactuallygoing on, and my bag slips off my shoulder. It lands with a thump as I stand, gaping.
Meredith’s head snaps up. She grits her teeth—she’s biting back a curse or a groan or a scream—and pinches her eyes closed so tight she’s nearly unrecognizable. For a long minute, she breathes shallowly, in and out, in and out. Then she opens her eyes.
I haven’t moved a step.
She grunts, “Baby.”
Meredith is a woman of beauty and poise and control. This sweating, snarling beast before me… she’s petrifying.
“Jill,” she says, jerking me back to reality.“Baby.”
My stomach flip-flops with a bizarre combination of bewilderment and trepidation and… excitement? I hurl into action, dashing across the living room. “Why are you just sitting here?!” And then I realize: I’ve had her car all afternoon. “Meredith! Why didn’t you call me?”
“I was planning to, but I was trying to reach your dad first.”
“We have to go to the hospital,” I say, trying frantically to catalog what we need to take with us.
