Worth the Fall (29 page)

“Don’t be dense.”

Right. I’d been dense too long. I nodded, still afraid to say it.
 

“Okay, so,” Jayne slipped back into business mode that easily, dragging me with her. “Here’s the deal. I need to focus more on my art. You need to focus more on the creative end of your business. I need someone to create a site and brand to sell me that’s so kickass people don’t even notice how quasi-talented I am. You need to stop wasting time tracking mailing lists. Also, someone who creates original art for you wouldn’t hurt. Together, we can take over the world.”

Okay, when put like that it didn’t sound so bad.
 

“But,” she raised a hand as I started to drift into planning mode. “You first. It’s a favor. It’s me having your back. It’s you learning to trust people to not let you down or take over. I mean, I could
totally
take over and make your business whatever I want it to be while you’re off being creative. But I’m your friend,
sooo…”

I felt the churn of panic deep in my gut. Could I hand over a significant part of my business structure to someone I hadn’t really talked to in a year? Could I believe that she had my best interests at heart and wasn’t just looking to see what she could get from this?

I took a deep breath, realizing I was going to have to either plunge in or isolate myself from Jayne for good. She’d pushed me out on a limb and I had no idea how thick it was. Would it hold?

I glanced at Jayne and thought,
Yeah. It’ll hold.
 

Or she’ll catch me.

THIRTY-TWO

I dreamt of Max…of course I did. But, this time, not kittens. Just Max standing on the far side of the road dressed in everyday clothes looking at me as if I’d betrayed him.
 

He glanced down the street, both ways, but every time he went to step out into the road, a car raced by, forcing him back onto the sidewalk.

Okay, subconscious. I got it.

~~*~~

“So, this is great.” Jayne smiled at me over the counter as I spooned her out an omelet. “You, me, a condo built for one extremely small person with very few belongings.”
 

I laughed. Jayne had been there two nights and was already ready to move on. I knew she wouldn’t last much longer when she’d had to go to her car four times to get dressed this morning.
 

“You’re saying that the free rent of a couch in the most beautiful part of town is too expensive?”
 

“I’m saying, I need a closet that’s bigger than a dumbwaiter. Since you don’t have that for me to commandeer this is going to have to come to an end sooner rather than later. But”—she grinned over her mug as she pulled up Craigslist on her laptop—“we’ll always have The Village.”

And, let’s be honest. The Village was as close to Paris as either of us was going to get in the next few years.
 

“Right, so I’m going to look at some places today.” She noted a couple things on her phone while I scrubbed the skillet, trying not to panic again.
 

I was, perhaps, the most emotional-swingy person I knew lately. Leave me alone! Don’t leave me!

“Today?” I focused on a tiny spot of burnt egg, attacking it with my nearly worn out sponge. “But you just got here.”

“Right, but it’s the middle of the month. If I want to find something for next month, I have to find it now.”

“So, you’ll be here a few weeks then, huh?” Yeah, subtle Kasey.

Jayne glanced up, her gaze narrowing. “I’m not deserting you.”

“Right. I know.”

“I’m not taking over and I’m not deserting you.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Dude, you’re nuts. You know that right?”

Oh yeah, I totally knew that.

“So, where do you think you’ll move?”

Jayne shut the laptop down, and gave me her full attention. “I don’t know. Somewhere in town. Hopefully on the transit line by The Brew. Maybe the other side of The Brew, but there’s no way I’ll find another deal like this in The Village.”

I nodded, it was unfortunately true. But… “We should ask John. He knows everything. And if there’s not, maybe Abby can scare someone out of house and home for you to sublet.”

“Right. Because I want to be beholden to Abby. That sounds safe.” Jayne shoved more of her omelet in her mouth before going on. “But, I’m going to need to rely on you to help me. I want something clean, safe, and not filled with college students, in a place that I can afford.”

Finally. Something I could do for someone else. We got out the transit neighborhood map and started marking off areas she should look. After a few calls, she had an appointment to meet with a girl who needed to let a room in her apartment.
 

“It’s too bad you didn’t get here a month ago. We could have lived together.” I closed my eyes and pictured myself borrowing her artist cliché clothing. Then shook that off when I looked like a little kid playing dress up in my head.

“Yeah, except for that guy you were moving in with and all that.”

“Oh. Yeah. I totally forgot about him.”

We laughed, knowing that forgetting a guy was as easy as not thinking about him for a few hours at a time until hours were days and days were months and months were,
Oh, guess who I ran into the other day.
 

Jayne being Jayne was going to go alone. I think she was afraid I’d flip out on the girl and question her about her entire life. Which was probably true, so I didn’t fight her too hard.
 

I settled in for a day making lists of everything that needed to be done for my business and every idea I could think of for Jayne’s marketing.
 

THIRTY-THREE

The knock at my door surprised me as I sat shoving Ben & Jerry’s down my throat, not even bothering to taste it, just hoping for the emotional fulfillment it was supposed to bring.

I glanced around for a napkin but gave up and wiped my hand across my mouth. Not that it mattered. I was pretty much a mess anyway. I’d gotten chocolate syrup on my shirt when I’d given up trying to open the top and had sawed through the plastic nozzle with a bread knife.

Don’t judge me.

I patted my hair with my cleaner hand, hoping I’d managed to get the knots to at least lay smooth, then opened the door.

“You’re supposed to ask who it is.” Max stood there, looking tired and rumpled and annoyed again.

“It didn’t seem to matter.”

“Damn it, Tuesday. Of course it matters.” He took my arm, pulling me back into the apartment and slamming the door behind us. “You think I don’t worry about this crap? You want me to let you just skip along through life opening doors to strangers and letting men think you’re a hooker?”

“Um, no?”

Even though I was ninety-nine percent sure that was the right answer, he still glared at me.

“I don’t want to be the boss of you. I don’t want to be the guy telling you how to live your life. I get that you’re a capable grown woman. I’m not looking to babysit someone. No grown man is. We’re looking for an equal, someone to take care of when she
needs
us to. And someone who takes care of us when we need it. Courtesy is not the same thing as controlling.”

He slammed his keys down on the counter and paced back and forth looking utterly capable and more masculine than any man had a right to. It wasn’t even the uniform and gun. It was just Max.
 

“I don’t want this.” He waved a hand around in what seemed to include my apartment, me, and anything within four hundred feet of him. “I don’t want this chaos, but damn it all if I don’t want you.”

I’d begun to hope when he’d shown up angry. That shriveled and died as he stormed around the little space. “You don’t want me?”

“No,” he said, and my heart dropped. “No, that’s the
problem
. I do want you. I wanted you when you were sitting there reading that paper upside down after attacking your ex’s car. And climbing in a window backward in your underwear. And maiming trees. And lying about what you liked because you didn’t know. And being sweet to Jenna and giving the gym a try because Hailey wanted you to. I liked you arguing with me at game night and smiling at me over dinner. And that is exactly the problem.”

“The problem is that you like me?”

He stopped pacing and ran his hand over the short cropped hair at the back of his neck. “Yes.”

I felt the anger building up in me, rising over the bad night and the absurd almost-arrest and everything else.

“
You’re
mad because you’re interested in
me?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes…” he sounded less sure this time.

“I was ready to just be on my own. To find my own way. I didn’t do anything except try to keep my distance from you. But, no!” I tried to use my inside voice, but I was already way past that. I blame being drunk on ice cream. “But, no! You had to be all Mr. Charming. Mr. Let’s Go to a French Film and let me make you dinner and how about going dancing and have you seen the X-men and let me rescue you from prison. I’m trying, here! I’m trying! And the harder I tried to stay away from you, the more you chased me. So, no! No you don’t get to be mad and lecture guy now. You don’t get to tell me you’re walking away and just leaving me standing here after knocking down every wall I have.”

Max paced away and came back at me so fast I backed up into the counter behind me until he was barely a breath away.

His voice dropped, pulling me even closer. “Every wall?”
 

I nodded.

“Every wall has to mean just that, Kasey. I don’t have it in me to keep trying to break through to you.”
 

I nodded again, afraid anything I might say would be the wrong thing, the thing that would ramp this all back up again. I’d just put my heart way—
way
—out there and was desperately afraid.

Max’s hand slid around my waist and pulled me the last distance between us. “No going back. This is your last chance.”

As he looked down at me I realized he was right, this was my last chance. So, instead of letting him change his mind, I went up on my toes and kissed him.

He went still, the muscles in his arms tightening where I hung on to him, as if at any moment he’d change his mind. He’d shove me away.

And then, as I was starting to fear I’d read that wrong, that somehow all his talk had meant my last chance to get my act together, not to get my man, his arms came around me, banding me to him. His mouth took over the tentative kiss I’d begun and nearly annihilated me in the heat of him.

Years with Jason hadn’t felt like this.
Nothing
had ever felt like this. Max was, and probably would always be, a man who needed to be in control. But, let’s just say that when it came to kissing Max, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

THIRTY-FOUR

“Tuesday, I’m coming to get you for breakfast. You’re going to wait in your apartment and ask me who I am when I knock on the door and then you’re going to hold my hand as we walk to The Brew where I’ll buy you a muffin.”

The same heat I’d felt the night before when I’d walked Max to the door to say goodnight and instead he’d pushed me against the door and kissed me everythingless again, rushed over me.

“Okay,” I breathed, feeling ridiculous and attempting not to giggle.

“I’m serious.”

“I know.”

I got it now. I got that Max needed to do things he thought the guy should do. Stupid little things that, yes, I could do on my own. But, it made him absurdly happy to walk me to my door. It didn’t mean he didn’t think I could find my way home on my own.
 

“Okay, then.” He sounded disappointed as if he’d expected a fight. “I’ll see you in ten.”

“I’ll meet you downstairs if you’re late,” I challenged, just to keep him on his toes.

“That’s my girl.”
 

The phone went dead before I could figure out if I liked that or not.

Which was probably for the best because I really,
really
liked it—not that I’d ever admit that to him.
 

I sat in my window like an idiot watching him walk down the street, looking both ways twice before crossing the nearly dead street. Exactly nine minutes later, Max knocked on my door.
 

I opened it.

“Tuesday.” The exasperation was clear. I’d gotten to know him so well, that I could even read this specific formerly-inscrutable look.

“I knew it was you.” I grinned and let him deal with that. Grabbing a sweater and my keys, I locked the door and headed down the stairs, expecting him to follow.
 

On the sidewalk, I waited as he jogged down the last few steps and turned toward The Brew, stopping when he realized I wasn’t with him.

“What?”

“You promised there’d be hand-holding.”

Max shook his head before wrapping my hand in his big mitt. “Right. Hand-holding. Look out. I’ll be opening the door on the other end.”

“Okay.”