Rescued by the Bad Boy (Bad Boys on Holiday Book 4) (8 page)

“
G
o
,” Max said, kissing Haley quickly on the mouth. “I gotta make sure everything gets buttoned up down here. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

All around them, wedding guests were scampering to collect their purses and shawls and cameras, while the caterers packed up the remaining food, dishes, chairs, and tables. They’d made it through the first course of dinner before the first raindrops hit, but now the bride and her entourage were running for cover.

“Okay,” Haley said, “but just so you know, I can’t wait to get out of this dress.”

“I can’t wait to get you out of this dress. Just so
you
know.”

Tonight, they’d promised. Tonight was the night they’d finally make it back to his cottage alone. A perfect way to spend their last night together.

“I’m right behind you,” he said.

Haley leaned in close to kiss him again. He felt her tuck something into his breast pocket. “Don’t be too long,” she said. “I’ll save you a seat.”

She scooped up an armload of bouquets, then ran after her sister, leaving Max with a pair of black lace panties in his pocket—more than enough motivation to help him get this beach cleaned up, pronto.

He and the other lifeguards helped the caterers get it all packed away, including all the random crap the guests had left behind in their haste to escape the rain.

While Luke and the rest of the lifeguards loaded up the last batch of folding chairs, Max did a final sweep of the area on the other side of the fire pit, making sure nothing else had been forgotten. He was just about to turn back when he heard a sound that made the hairs on his arms stand on end—a high-pitched whine. A scream?

Then he saw it.

A kid, so fast he was only a blur in Max’s peripheral vision. The boy was charging toward the water, chasing the waves…

Tumbling. Screaming. Can’t breathe. Dragged in. Going under. Twisting and sinking, gasping for air. Help me…

Max bolted after him, kicking up sand as he raced forward, his training taking over. He didn’t know where Luke and the others were, didn’t care that he was breaking the rules of his probation, didn’t care about anything but rescuing that kid.

Ten more feet. Five. Two.
Gotcha.

He scooped him up in one arm and pulled him to safety, just in time.

Winded, his body trembling with leftover adrenaline, Max set the kid down on the sand and knelt in front of him, checking him over. “You okay, buddy?”

The kid—no more than five years old—was wailing, his face red with the effort.

Max hadn’t even seen the woman, but suddenly she was there, kneeling in the sand before the boy. Satisfied he was unharmed, she turned to Max. “What the hell was that all about?”

“I don’t… I’m sorry,” Max said, blinking slowly. The kid, he realized now, was totally fine.

He’d
been
totally fine. The whole time.

Jesus Christ.
The kid was never in danger, never tumbling into the surf, never sinking and gasping for air. He hadn’t been screaming for help—he’d been laughing, splashing along the shoreline, his mother close behind while he squealed and played.

Max—a professional lifeguard with years of training—had been too screwed up to know the difference.

He stood up from the sand, dusting off his hands.

“Storm’s coming,” he barked at the woman. “Not a good idea to let him near the water. Can’t you see how dangerous it is out there?”

Max didn’t give her a chance to respond. He needed to get away from these people—from all of them. Clear his head. And then go meet Haley, his favorite distraction, so he could get on with the rest of his night. Get on with forgetting, for as long as he could.

But as soon as he reached the fire pit, Max was assaulted by the last fucking person he wanted to see.

Brian crossed his arms, jerking his head toward the water. “You trying to show off there, or do you make a habit of scaring little kids?”

Max held up his hands. “Not the time to fuck with me, bro. Trust me on that.”

“Oh, really?” Brian looked incredulous. “So I can’t fuck with you, but it’s cool for you to fuck with my girlfriend? To
fuck
my girlfriend like she’s your personal escort?”

Red. Max saw red, and that was that. There was no rational thought, no logic, just his hand balling into a fist, his arm cocking back, a look of sheer terror on that asshole’s face right before Max—

“Not gonna happen, dude.” Luke was there in a heartbeat, grabbing Max’s arm and dragging him back. “Come on. Walk it off.”

Max jerked out of Luke’s grip, but he’d already lost interest in Brian. As quickly as it had come, the fight in him was gone, just like that.

Brian high-tailed it out of there.

“Max.” Luke put an arm over his shoulder, looking him dead in the eye. “You gotta get square with this, man.”

“The dude’s an asshole.”

“You know damn well I’m not talking about him.”

Yeah, he fucking knew. He just didn’t want to think about it.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Luke said. How many times had Max heard the words now? A hundred? A million? They didn’t help then, and they sure as hell didn’t help now. Unless they could bring a boy back from the dead, they never would. “No one blames you but you. And that’s the reason you’re on the bench right now. Christ, look at you! You’re like the damn walking dead. We can’t have you out there like that, doubting yourself. Second-guessing everything. That’s how people get hurt.”

Max opened his mouth, ready to argue. To unleash every last excuse he had. But they were all dried up.

Something in him broke, cracked right the fuck in half. In a voice laced with agony, he made his last confession.

“Luke. I can’t… I can’t get him out of my head.”

“None of us can, and none of us should. You just have to stop blaming yourself.” Luke shook his head, tightening his grip on Max’s shoulder. “You saved four lives that day. Four fucking people are alive because of you.”

Yeah, yeah. Max knew the stats. He’d heard it all before. But four, four hundred, four thousand—didn’t matter. No amount of lives saved could ever make up for the one he lost.

“Do me a favor,” he said to Luke. “You see Haley, tell her I said sorry. Then tell her I said goodbye.”

Much as he hated to admit it, that asshole Brian was right. Max was not the man for Haley Scott. He wasn’t the man for anyone, and the sooner he got away from people, the better off they’d all be.

“Where the fuck you going?” Luke asked.

“Home. Alone.”

Lightning flashed, the sky cracked open.

And Max closed his eyes, stepping out into the darkness.

H
is cottage was
musty and dark, empty as an abandoned ship.

There was nothing more lonely than leaving a party—one where a beautiful, amazing woman was saving him a seat—and coming back to his depressing place, but that’s how it had to be. Just Max and his guilt, the sounds of the storm and the ocean like an endless waking nightmare, taunting him no matter where he went.

The taunting shit was nothing new, but tonight he had the added bonus of feeling like a world class prick about Haley. He couldn’t believe he’d nearly hauled off on her ex, then bailed on her without saying goodbye.

What a fucking pussy.

Yeah, well. Fuck it. Letting people down seemed to be his thing this summer.

At least you didn’t kill
this
one.

Ignoring the familiar jab from his conscience, Max yanked open the cupboard above the fridge, fishing around for the bottle of Jack he’d stashed for emergencies.

If he got busted with this, it’d be game over for sure. But Max didn’t give a fuck. It was emergency booze, and if his current state of mind didn’t qualify as an emergency, he didn’t know what the fuck would.

He uncapped the bottle and took a slug, then another, until he lost count. He waited for the familiar burn, followed by the blissful numbness.

Right now, that’s all he wanted to feel.

P
ounding
… someone was pounding on his head.

Incessantly.

Max opened his eyes, waiting for the blazing sun to shake him out of his stupor, but it was still dark. He squinted at the clock on the wall. Ten-thirty at night. Half a bottle of Jack, and he’d only been out a few hours.

The pounding started up again.

It wasn’t, in fact, coming from his head. Someone was at the damn door.

“Beat it, Luke,” he snapped.

Bam bam bam
.

“I’m still alive, asshole, which is more than I can say for you if you don’t leave me the fuck alone.”

Bam bam bam
.

Fuck. Max hauled himself off the couch, shuffling his ass to the door. Luke must’ve sent over one of the recruits to check on him. He felt like an old man, gearing up to lay into this kid for waking his ass up.

But when he jerked open the door, there was no kid. No Luke. Only a girl in a big-ass purple dress, her hair soaked with rain, her eyes blazing with fire.

“You were supposed to leave that unlocked for me,” Haley said, pushing her way inside. “What happened, Max?”

Well sure, come on in, make yourself at home.

He kicked the door shut behind her and resumed his spot on the couch. “Wasn’t feeling well. Sorry—hope it didn’t ruin your night.”

Haley frowned. Anyone else would’ve left his ass to cry alone in his bottle of Jack. But she was giving him a chance here, a real fucking chance to explain.

Still, he couldn’t talk. Didn’t even know where to start.

Haley took a deep breath, let it out slow. “I was… I heard about the drowning.”

Drowning.
The word was like a hot knife in his gut. It was ugly and harsh, and hearing it from those sweet lips only made it seem more cruel, more fucking surreal.

“Your friend told me,” she continued. “Well, actually, he was super vague, but then Brian said he’d read about it in the newspaper. I… Max, I had no idea.”

“Yeah? Guess you’re all caught up now. Thanks for stopping by.”

You are such a fucking schmuck.

He regretted it immediately, but then his logic kicked in, reminding him that this is how it had to be. Max, alone. Haley, back to her normal life.

He had to keep things short with her. Just this side of rude. Anything less, and he’d be vulnerable. Already he felt the pull of her, those green eyes like calm, deep pools calling him closer, inviting him to fall right in. If he let himself, he could. Forever.

Wake the fuck up, man. You’re no good for her.

He looked away, focusing on a gouge in the wood floor. He and Luke had put it there ten years ago, moving furniture around to make room for a pool table they ended up trashing a year later.

“Go be with your family, Haley. You don’t need to deal with my shit.”

“Say it to my face.”

Max sighed, everything in him aching and raw.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Not unless you can look me in the eye and tell me honestly that you don’t want me here.”

Still, he said nothing.

“Max. Look at me.”

He finally looked up, his heart hammering in his chest. She looked ridiculous—dripping all over his floor, her purple dress dark with wet splotches, hair matted down, makeup running under her eyes. But fuck, she was beautiful. Stunning. And yeah, fierce as fuck.

“You don’t owe me a thing,” she said evenly. “Not an apology. Not an explanation. Not even a goodbye. This was all fake, right? So if you tell me to go, I’ll walk right back out that door, never bother you again.”

God, how he hated the sound of that. No, he wanted her to stay. More than anything. But fuck, she wasn’t his girlfriend. Wasn’t even his friend, even though it had sure started to feel like it.

“I don’t need pity, Haley. So if that’s why you’re here—”

“I’m here because I want to be here.”

Max shoved his hands through his hair, trying to stop the throbbing pain in his head. He wanted to believe her, but he wasn’t sure that
she
even knew what she wanted—not really. Maybe she was just going through the motions, avoiding drama, just like he’d seen her do with her family. Max understood—he really did. Sometimes, you take the path of least resistance because you just can’t deal with the rest.

The path of least resistance? She came out in the middle of a damn storm to track you down, douchebag.

“You don’t have to check up on me,” he said. “I was fine before you showed up, and I’ll be just fine when you’re gone.”

Lies. All of it. He wasn’t fine, and that shit wasn’t about to get any better once she was gone. He liked her, and the fact that their relationship had a built-in expiration date was bullshit.

“But I’m
not
gone. Not yet.” She crossed the room and sat her wet, purple ass down on the couch next to him, tucking her legs up underneath. She looked like a big, bright flower blooming on his ugly-ass couch. “Not unless you tell me to go.”

“We’re going in circles.”

“Because you can’t admit that you want me to stay.” She smiled then, sliding her hand over his thigh. He didn’t have a shirt on, just a pair of thin sweatpants. The heat of her touch was almost more than he could bear.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the rain hammer the roof. Outside the front windows, the beach looked like a war zone, the ocean black and frothy, the sky flashing.

“Max, I—”

“I still hear it,” he finally said. “Every fucking night. Every time I fall asleep, I hear them screaming.
Help us.
”

Max closed his eyes, the pain of it slicing right through him.

He wasn’t on duty that day, just keeping his buddies company while they ran the spring break rookies through some drills with the WaveRunners. Max was sitting on the tailgate of Luke’s Jeep, tossing back a few beers and smiling at the women who passed by while Luke did his drill sergeant routine.

To this day, he didn’t know how the fuck he heard the call when the other guys didn’t. The sound was unmistakable. As a career lifeguard, you learn to tell the difference between the squeals and screeches of people having fun in the water from the desperate screams of someone in trouble, and the sound he heard that day pierced his fucking heart.

“They were in trouble,” he said. “Serious fucking trouble.”

Haley took his hand, but Max didn’t chance looking at her. If he looked at her, he’d lose it completely.

And right now, he needed to put a voice to the ghosts that had haunted him for months. To get it out of his fucking head. Despite the early therapy, despite countless meetings with his boss, despite dozens of late nights with Luke, he still hadn’t been able to say it all out loud.

Until now.

She’d unleashed something in him, and as much as it hurt to let it out, he couldn’t put it back in.

“I didn’t think,” he explained. “Just reacted.”

He told Haley that it hadn’t even occurred to him not to help. Hadn’t occurred to him to stop and round up Luke and the other guys first. For a swimmer in trouble, even a five-second delay could mean the difference between coming out of the ocean with a good story, and coming out for your own funeral. He grabbed a couple of buoys, hopped on an open WaveRunner, and powered through the water.

It felt like hours, but he’d gotten to them in less than a minute. His immediate assessment told him there were four people—two adults and two teenagers, and their small rowboat had overturned.

That section of water was known as The Vortex, and it was completely off-limits, even to boaters. It was even more dangerous than the rough waters out past the cliffs, because unlike the choppy sea out there, The Vortex gave no warning.

“The water there looks so calm and smooth, but the undertow is killer,” he said. “You get caught up in that shit, it’ll suck you in, spit you out ten miles down shore before anyone even knows you’re gone.”

Max pinched the bridge of his nose. “This family… I don’t know how they got in past the ropes and buoys, but they did. None of them had lifejackets. I learned later they’d been out there about twenty minutes by the time I arrived.”

“Oh my God,” Haley said. “In March? They must’ve been practically hypothermic.”

Max remembered their blue lips, the pruned skin. Chattering teeth. The man was treading water, his arm looped around one of the kids, but they were tiring fast. The woman was clinging to the side of the boat, the other kid holding onto her shoulders, all of them pale as death.

“I tossed the buoys to the parents, then took the kids, got them propped up on the WaveRunner. It was this huge relief, like, okay, they’re all safe for now. A little cold, a little shocked, but they’ll survive. But then I swam back to the mother, and the look she gave me… it was pure fear. Desperate, horrible fear.”

Haley gasped, and Max shivered beside her, the memory of the woman’s words still chilling him to the core.

“‘My nephew,’ she said, pointing to a spot in the water about ten, fifteen feet away. ‘He’s only ten.’ There was another fucking kid in the water somewhere. Luke—he’d just arrived. He was getting the father out. I didn’t wait another second, just dove under, swimming toward where the woman had pointed.”

That current was killer. Max had felt like he was swimming in wet cement, with both hands tied behind his back, weights strapped to his chest. He fought it, though. Fought until his muscles burned and his heart threatened to bang out of his chest. There was a moment—a half a second, really—where he thought he saw the kid. Thought he felt the touch of soft hair, cold fingers. Max reached out, pushing himself to his absolute limit, but there was nothing there but seaweed and salt. The water churned endlessly, pushing and pulling, spinning Max in a dozen directions. Soon he couldn’t tell up from down, and his lungs burned for oxygen. He thought he saw the way out, and kicked hard toward the surface, only to come up inside the overturned boat. It was submerged by then, full of water. Max was trapped, confused, desperate for breath.

“There was a moment when I thought, well, this is it. This was your whole life, and now it’s… it’s over. But Luke… fucking Luke. He dove under that boat, yanked my ass out of there just before I blacked out.”

By then, the other lifeguards had arrived on scene, and the family had been taken to shore, where the ambulances were waiting. Max didn’t get to tell them he’d failed; they were already en route to the hospital by the time he got to shore.

“We had teams out there all night. Divers, Coast Guard.” Max shook his head, emotion choking his voice. “The boy… Andy Folson… his body washed up a few miles down the shore. They found him the next day.”

Thunder crashed through the night, rattling the windows, and Max fought off a shiver.

He wasn’t present when they’d told the family the news, when Andy’s parents were flown in from their home in San Francisco—the kid had been vacationing with his aunt and uncle, something they did together every summer for years. He didn’t know how anyone had found the words to tell them that their child had died. That Max had been first on the scene, but hadn’t been able to save him. That he wasn’t on duty at the time. That he’d been drinking.

Now, there was a lawsuit pending. Max couldn’t blame them. They were right—he should’ve been able to save him. And maybe he would have, if anything about that day—those few hours leading up to that crucial moment—had been different.

That was the ghost he carried. The thing that would haunt him until his death.

He closed his eyes, all out of words. He’d told her the story, beginning to end. He’d gotten it all out, and now he had to brace for the pity. The platitudes. The well-meaning apologies.

Max opened his eyes, chanced a look at Haley. Tears streaked her face, her eyes wide with shock.

But she didn’t say anything. Didn’t play the “yeah, but” broken record: yeah, but look how many lives you saved. Yeah, but you didn’t have that much to drink. Yeah, but if you’d waited to get Luke first, the whole family could’ve died. Yeah but yeah but yeah but… it was all bullshit, that game, and Max was grateful that she seemed to realize it, too.

No, Haley Scott had listened to that whole terrible story, all his demons, and in the end, she didn’t say a word.

She just slid her arms around him, pulled him to her chest, and held him.

The storm still raged outside, the tide surging forward, rain slamming into the house, but inside they were warm. Together. Untouched by all of it. Haley pressed her palm to his heart. Max covered her fingers with his hand, holding her in place. She was so much smaller than him, but in so many ways, a hell of a lot stronger, even if she didn’t realize it.

Fierce as fuck.

She tilted her face up to look at him, and then, without warning, she pressed her mouth to his, her lips warm and soft, and god
damn
that kiss was like being resuscitated, his soul brought back from the bottom of the blackest fucking ocean imaginable.