Make It Right (9 page)

“Well . . .”

She wasn’t pissed. Or at least, she didn’t look pissed. But he knew a lesson was coming.

“What do you think
weak
means? You think a skinny guy, like, five-five, weighing a hundred and thirty pounds, is weak?”

Max shrugged. “I don’t know, I met a lot of little guys that are pretty strong.”

She shook her head. “You look at me and you think I’m physically weak, right? I mean, I weigh a little over a hundred pounds and have a permanently disfigured leg that is painful every single day.”

He opened his mouth but she kept talking.

“And you think you’re strong because you can bench a lot of weight and can hypothetically take on three guys at once if they attack you?”

Is that what he thought? Because now that she said it, it sounded pretty fucking stupid.

She shook her head. “It’s not all about physical strength, Max. You know that. I know you do. It’s about technique. It’s about courage. And most of all”—she tapped her temple—“it’s about what’s up here.”

Max mulled that over, his mind flipping between his father’s words and Lea’s. “Wouldn’t it be courage to fight back? Hurt them? Make them pay for what they’ve done to others and to Nick?”

She took a deep breath and shrugged, then let her eyes roam the room. “Sure, I guess. But there’s also something to be said for being smart. Knowing you’re outnumbered. To have the courage to ditch all the pressure society puts on men to fight back, to man up, and protect yourself, get out and call the authorities.”

Pressure of society? His dad was a whole fucking society of pressure on his own. Fuck everyone else. Max had been raised with “an eye for an eye.”

But Lea had a point, too. Because how much would he be called a hero when three attackers overpowered him and kicked his head in? Who would care that’d he’d bloodied a nose or blackened an eye? Who would visit him in the hospital like Lea did with Nick?

“Hadn’t thought about it that way,” he mumbled.

Those all-knowing eyes again. They bored into him as he stared at the floor. “I know,” her musical voice said.

Chapter 9

M
AX SLAMMED THE
drawer of the register shut as the last customer of the day left the tiny shop office.

He looked down at his nails, caked with dirt and grease, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. A loud metal clang rang out in the attached garage, followed by his dad’s husky curse and a mumbled apology from one of his brothers. Probably Brent.

Cal walked into the office and flopped down on the couch, propping his booted feet on top of the coffee table covered in outdated and coffee-stained magazines.

Another clang. Another curse.

“What’s going on out there?” Max asked.

“They’re cleaning up and Brent keeps putting the tools in the wrong place. I think he’s doing it on purpose because he’s pissed Dad made us stay late today.”

“I hate when Brent does that.”

Cal laced his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Why do you think I’m out here?”

Max turned off the Open sign and locked the door, then returned to the register to begin running the reports and closing it out for the night.

“What’s with the . . .” Cal pointed to his eye and twirled his finger in a circle.

Max reached up and prodded the bruised area. “Oh, uh, I was in self-defense class.”

Cal frowned. “I thought you wore pads and shit so you don’t get hurt. And what are you doing in a self-defense class?”

Max concentrated on counting the bills in the drawer before turning to his brother. “I was the . . . volunteer attacker. The instructor performed the self-defense skills on me.”

Cal smirked. “Big bad fighter dude hurt little Max?”

Max grabbed the credit-card slips and shoved them into a file folder. “More like a five-foot doll,” he muttered.

Cal dropped his boots to the floor with a thunk. “What’d you say?”

Max sighed and rested his fists on the counter. “It was a girl. A . . . friend of mine. She’s a black belt and she hits hard. Now don’t tell Dad.”

Cal threw back his head and howled. “A girl beat you up?”

“Well it’s not like I was allowed to hit back.” Max didn’t explain that he probably couldn’t have hurt her too badly. Her techniques were effective as hell.

“So who is this badass chick?”

Max felt the heat rise into his cheeks. “None of your business.”

Cal stood up and leaned on the other side of the counter. “You like her?”

Max didn’t answer, checking off the spreadsheet with the cash register totals.

Cal slapped his hand on top of the clipboard. “You haven’t dated since Kat. You gonna change that anytime soon?”

Max glared at him. “Since when do we do this?”

“Do what?”

“This heart-to-heart bullshit. You really give a fuck if I date?”

Cal winced, a barely discernible wrinkle between his brows. “Hey, calm down. We all noticed you’ve been a little miserable. You got all flushed when you talked about her and acted like I was stealing your toy when I asked about her.” Cal took his hand away and shrugged. “I figure you should ask her out.”

A date? Max hadn’t really dated in . . . well, ever. He’d picked up Kat at a party. He didn’t think they ever actually saw a movie together or something date-like.

But that’s what Lea deserved. A date. But not from Max.

“Nah,” he waved it off. “She’s a nice girl.”

Cal didn’t answer and when the silence stretched on, Max looked up. Cal stood with his arms crossed over his chest. “This pity party getting old yet?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“You fucked up with Carrie and you fucked up with Kat. That doesn’t mean that’s who you are. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a nice girl.”

Max didn’t answer. The Max of the last three years didn’t deserve a nice girl. But maybe . . . well, maybe he could be a different Max.

Cal unfolded his arms and rolled his shoulders. Truth time was over. “Whatever, just think about what I said.”

Another clang. Another curse.

“I better get out there to help. Finish the register.”

Max watched Cal’s retreating back and then returned his eyes to the spreadsheet in front of him. But he didn’t see numbers. None at all. He saw Lea’s hair and her smile. The determination on her face when she had to face her hospitalized cousin.

Lea was the real deal. And Max didn’t know if he knew what to do with something real.

L
EA STOOD OFF
to the side of the class, listening to grunts and thuds as the students practiced the self-defense moves they’d learned today.

There’d been another assault and theft the previous day. So the class had almost doubled in size.

Max stood with a man and woman, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses in their technique. He met her eyes over the tops of their heads and then dropped them quickly, like he was embarrassed at having been caught. Lea smiled, watching her students again. But her gaze returned to Max like a magnet. And this time, those warm brown eyes of his met hers. He held her stare for a moment and as her smile began to drop, he tilted his chin up so she could see his grin. She returned it and then looked away with a blush.

This was only the second self defense class and Max had taken to it with vigor. He said he enjoyed coaching the students because it gave him a total high when they completed something correctly.

He moved away from the couple and looked up, meeting her eyes. A grin split his face and Lea couldn’t help but return it, flashing a small wave. He walked toward her, his handsome face full of brightness and charm. He only wore a pair of wide-leg sweatpants and a tight T-shirt and she wanted to reach into the elastic waistband to see if he was commando.

Oh God, what was happening to her?

“Hey doll,” he said, removing the padded helmet she’d made him wear today. Without thinking, she reached up and fingered the fading bruise she’d left on his face last class.

He didn’t flinch. Instead, she could have sworn he leaned in to her hand. His thick lashes fluttered and she thought, not for the first time, how he had the prettiest eyes of any man she’d ever seen.

“Hey Coach,” she said.

He cocked his head. “Coach?”

She waved her hand to the students, who had just begun to scatter as class ended. “Yeah, you seem to fit right into this. Coaching people through something physical.”

He watched the trickle of students walk out the door. His mouth worked, like he chewed the inside of his cheek. That charming, easy mask he wore had slipped just a little.

He turned back to her. “Kind of always wanted to be a coach.”

Lea grabbed a mat and began folding it. “Of what?”

His movements faltered. “Hockey.”

“Yeah? Why don’t you, then?”

The mask rose when Max shrugged and didn’t answer.

Before Lea could prod, Jackie called her name and she spoke to her for a couple of minutes while Max continued to fold the mats.

After Jackie left, Lea returned to his side. “You don’t have to help me clean up.”

“I want to,” he said, then glanced at the clock on the wall. “Shit, I have to get to class though—“

Lea waved him on. “It’s fine, I got this.”

“You sure?”

Lea nodded. “Of course.”

Max hesitated, then grabbed his coat and left.

Lea continued to clean up the room. That was one of the agreements for her to host the class, she had to clean up afterward. She didn’t mind. Jackie usually needed to run to get back to her studio and Lea liked the peacefulness of being alone, doing something physical.

Although, today, her leg was killing her.

She hauled the mats into the supply closet and stacked them up in the corner. Then she placed the pads Jackie had loaned them on the metal shelving for next class. The room was lined with metal shelves, full of wrestling gear, jump ropes and other exercise equipment.

Lea glanced up and saw that someone had placed a footpad on one of the topmost shelves, separated from the rest of the loaned gear. Not wanting it to get lost in the shuffle, she grabbed a chair, dragged it in front of the shelves and stood on it.

The chair, however, had other plans. As she hoisted herself up and reached for the pad, a front leg of the chair buckled, sending her careening into the shelf. The chair leaned precariously forward as she gripped the top shelf with one hand and braced herself on the shelf below, a knee on the same shelf and her other foot on the worthless chair. It had seemed sturdy but on second thought, that was probably why this chair was stuck in a supply closet. It was broken.

“Um, this is not good,” she muttered to herself, while contemplating how to get out of the situation without killing herself or knocking down a whole four-shelf cabinet full of jump ropes. She imagined getting twisted in them, doomed to spend days trapped in this supply closet, bound in rope and probably contracting cauliflower ear.

She examined her predicament as she clung to the shelf. She could jump, but that would be painful and a slight shift of her weight made the chair threaten to completely collapse. She had visions of smacking her face or chin into the shelf in front of her so she would have to walk around campus with a bloody nose and chipped tooth.

As she thought about risking a nighttime of alternating between ice and a heating pad for her leg caused by a jump to the floor, an arm wrapped around her lower back. Another arm slipped under her legs and she was hauled up and off the chair, then turned and pressed against a strong chest.

Legs dangling in the air, hands flat on his collarbones, Lea looked into Max’s face from beneath her fringe of bangs. His eyes squinted and his lips tipped up in a wicked grin.

“That was neat trick there, doll, getting yourself tied up so I had to come save you.”

Lea squinted her eyes back. “I could have gotten down myself.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“And how did you plan to do that?”

She pursed her lips. “I was going to climb down.”

“You were going to climb down.”

“Yep.”

He looked pointedly around her at the broken chair, which had collapsed completely forward, its back resting on the lowest shelf.

“Right, that looked safe.”

“Well, thank you for being the white knight to my damsel in distress but you can put me down now.”

His eyes glinted. Definitely
glinted
with amusement. “I’m your white knight?”

The hollow of his throat dipped as he swallowed, that small bit of skin beckoning to her to touch. Kiss. Lick. She curled her fingers to keep them where they were.

“What are you doing here? I thought you had class?”

“Forgot my water bottle. My Camelbak is my best friend.”

She smiled. She felt the same way about hers. She carried it around everywhere.

“Well, fine, I guess I can admit I’m glad you came back.”

Max beamed at her.

She rolled her eyes. “All right, now put me down, Coach.”

And then, Max honest-to-God started swaying, his eyes closed, lips pushed out, while singing in a high-pitched falsetto, “Put me down, Coach. nah nah. I’m ready to stand . . . bop bop bop . . . todaaaay.”

She couldn’t help it, he looked so hilarious and he sounded so awful, that she burst into laughter and clapped her hand on his shoulder. “Please! Please stop singing. I’ll do anything!”

Max stopped singing, and he slowed the swaying so that he gently rotated his hips from side to side, still holding her tightly with both arms wrapped around the bottom of her butt. Those eyes, so warm and playful focused on her face. There was a little bit of wickedness in them too, which filled her with an anxious dread.

“Anything?”

She didn’t like this look in his eye. “Wait—”

“Go out with me,” he blurted.

She snapped her jaw shut, then licked her lips. “What?”

His gaze darted back and forth between hers.
He was nervous.
“Lea Travers, will you go on a date with me?”

“I—”

You said anything—”

“Okay, but I might have some caveats.”

His dark eyebrows dipped. “I don’t know what caveats are but they sound fancy.”

She giggled. “I mean, I might have some stipulations . . . or . . . amendments to my blanket
anything
.”

He finally stopped swaying. “State these caveats and maybe I’ll agree.”

She tapped her fingers on his shoulders, enjoying the feel of his muscles on her palms. “No wine.”

“What?”

“I don’t like wine. The smell makes me gag. So no wine. I’ll drink beer. Preferably IPAs.”

He blinked. “I agree.”

“And no movie theaters because those chairs are really uncomfortable.” The
for my leg
went unsaid.

Max nodded immediately.

“And—”

“Geez, more?” he rolled his eyes dramatically and sighed.

She wanted him to keep saying yes, but she wanted to see how far she could push him. How many demands would he put up with? “Aaand,” she continued, “I want to do something I haven’t ever done.”

Max’s muscles stilled under her hands. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes roamed her face, as if he could look through hers and see inside.

“Are you going to ask me how you’ll know I haven’t done something before?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, but his arms tightened around her. She couldn’t stop herself anymore and ran her hands down his shoulders to rest on his biceps. He’d taken off his coat, so he only wore his thin T-shirt, and that vein along the top of his bicep bulged as he held her. She took her right index finger and ran it over the pulsing skin.

There was something about this moment. He was so alive against her, so real. She didn’t want it to end.

Out of the corner of her eye, his chest moved with deep, rapid breaths. And she felt something against her thigh. Something hard and getting harder. When she raised her eyes back to his, he shook his head, the movement a little jerky. “No,” he said.

What were they talking about? “No what?”

“No, I’m not going to ask how I’ll know.”

She smiled. “Confident?”

He huffed out a breath and said softly. “Not at all.”

She sucked in a breath. “You still want a date with me?”