Off Limits (20 page)

B
y the time
I make it to Travis’s house, there’s already an ambulance parked out front. I race up the steps two at a time and meet Travis by the door, just as they’re carrying his mother out on a stretcher. Her eyes are open, thank goodness, and she looks simultaneously embarrassed and relieved to see me jogging toward them.

“Max, thank you so much for coming. I’m sorry about this, Travis panicked—”

“I’m glad he called. I’ll come with you both,” I say, in a voice that leaves no room for her to politely protest her way out of it. Travis can’t handle the hospital trip alone, with her sick, and I think she knows it.

Her eyes find mine, and they’re distant, a little hazy, as the stretcher bumps down her front steps. I jog alongside her to keep up. “Thank you,” she murmurs.

“She’s diabetic,” one of the EMTs explains as the other one loads her into the truck. “Her blood sugar crashed and she fainted. She should be fine, but we want to stabilize her blood sugar, make sure she didn’t get a concussion or anything when she fell, all that.”

Travis jogs up beside me, shivering a little in the evening air.

“Grab a coat, buddy,” I tell him. We take a minute to collect ourselves, and then I trail the ambulance to the hospital, with Travis riding shotgun beside me.

“Sorry I called you,” he mumbles again.

I shake my head hard. “I’m glad you did. You needed help, and you reached out. That’s what friends are here for.”

Travis chews on his lower lip in silence, eyes locked on the back of the ambulance. Finally, he swallows hard. “Last time I didn’t call anyone,” he mumbles.

“Last time?” I ask, one eyebrow raised.

He nods at the ambulance again. “When . . . my stepdad . . . they were fighting, and. . .” He frowns at his lap and shakes his head.

I reach over to squeeze his shoulder. “I’m glad you called me,” I repeat, softer this time. “You always can, bud. Anytime, day or night.”

He nods at his lap, then turns to look out his window, and I pretend not to notice the tears that are swimming in his eyes.

At the hospital, we hang in the waiting room for what feels like eternity. They must be backed up, because we get there at 4:30 in the morning, but nobody calls us in to see her until 11am. By that point my eyes are bleary, and I’ve dozed off at least a dozen times in the uncomfortable waiting room lounge seats. Beside me, Travis’s head droops all the way onto the back of his seat, and he’s snoring softly.

I hate to do it, but when the nurse summons us back to see her, I nudge him awake, knowing he won’t want to miss the chance to see that she’s okay with his own eyes. We trudge into her room and she’s already propped up on pillows, beaming at us as we walk in. She extends her arms, and Travis crosses the room to hug her tightly, sniffling a little.

“Thank you so much for waiting with him,” she says over his head, smiling at me. Her eyes are teary too, but she doesn’t seem to mind if I see that. “They’re still running some tests, but they think I’ll be out of here by later this afternoon.” She says this to both Travis and I, patting Travis’s back reassuringly while she speaks, but then her eyes seek out mine again. “You don’t have to wait—I hate to put you through any more trouble than we already have.”

I shake my head. “It’s no trouble at all. It’s just what friends do. I’ll stick around, give him a ride home,” I add, and then I slip out of the hospital room before she has a chance to order me not to, which I’m sure she’d try.

Back in the waiting room, I fall asleep with my head on the back of the chair, my legs splayed. At first I keep startling awake at every sound in the room, people shuffling in and out, doctors calling patients or family into the back. But eventually I lose all track of the world around me, and drift off into real sleep.

I startle awake to the feeling of Travis shaking my elbow. “Do you want lunch?” he’s asking me. “I’m going to get something from the caf.”

I squint into the harsh hospital lights and blink hard, rubbing sleep from my eyes. What time is it? I peer at my phone and swallow a groan. 3pm already. Wow. I type out a quick text to Chloe, then shove my phone back into my pocket. “Lunch sounds great.” Or breakfast, I guess, technically.

We split yogurt cups and fruit salads, which were the only even vaguely edible looking things available in the hospital’s dimly lit cafeteria. Then we eat them out on the lawn, in a little courtyard in the center of the hospital. Travis is relaxing now that he knows his mom is going to be okay. We’re back to chatting about school and summer programs he wants to apply to, all the normal stuff.

By the time they announce they’re ready to discharge her, closer to 5pm, he’s his usual chatty, vibrant self again, telling me animatedly about some movie he watched last weekend, which he wants to reenact with his friends if they can find a camera to rent so they can film it.

I’m nodding along when a buzz in my pocket distracts me. A spark of excitement kindles in my stomach as I reach for the phone. I haven’t talked to Chloe all day, and already I miss the sound of her voice, the feeling of her hand wrapped in mine, the sight of those huge hazel eyes of hers, fixed on me.

But when I tap my phone open and scan the screen, that spark of excitement curdles into a piercing ache.

I’m sorry, Max. I hope that you figure everything from last night out. But I can’t do this anymore.

“Are you okay?” Travis is asking, but I hold up a finger to him and tap Chloe’s name, already stepping out into the hospital aisle to call her.

The call goes straight to voicemail. Even though her text came through a second ago. Which means she’s either shut off the phone, or screening her calls.

The ache in my stomach worsens, reminding me of the time I ate bad oysters and got food poisoning for two days straight. I feel sick. What could possibly have gone wrong between last night and this morning?

I can’t help myself. I know I shouldn’t press her right now, I should give her a bit to cool off before I ask what’s wrong, but I’m already typing out the questions firing through my skull.

What’s going on, Chloe? Don’t shut me out.

When she doesn’t reply for a strained five-minute period during which I wash my face at least three times in the bathroom, I text again.
Is this about me leaving last night?

I scroll back up through our conversation. I didn’t give her many details about last night, but I didn’t think she’d want me to dump anything stressful on her this soon. We’ve only had sex twice at this point.

Well, exactly, Davis,
my brain interrupts.
You’ve only fucked twice. You weren’t in a relationship with her.

Never mind that it felt like one, or at least the start of one, to me. Never mind that I thought it was really going somewhere, somewhere beyond just an office hookup and some quickies. Never mind that I thought Chloe felt the same way, too.

Fuck was I wrong. Clearly this had just been a fling for her all along, and I probably sound like an idiot right now, trying to frantically text her and ask why she’s breaking it off, when really, there was nothing to break off in the first place.

She had her fun and now she’s over it.

I swallow hard and stuff my phone back into my pocket. No more texting her. No more freaking out. I’ve embarrassed myself enough already.
Way to man up, Davis.

My stomach cramps again, throwing memories of last night in my face. The restaurant, our conversation. The sight of her beneath me, the way she gasped my name when she came, and fell asleep curled in my arms.
It didn’t mean anything,
I tell myself, but the protest sounds weak even to me.

I force a straight face as I leave the bathroom, for Travis’s sake.

It must not be very convincing, though, because the second I enter the waiting room, he’s staring at me and frowning. “What’s up, man?” he asks as he offers me a Coke from the vending machine.

I shake my head. “Nothing. Just some work stuff.”

“Upsetting work stuff?” He raises an eyebrow.

I blink at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well you look, like . . . the way I felt last night when I found Mom on the kitchen floor, to be honest.”

I groan and rub my forehead. “I’m fine, really.”

“You helped me out. All day long. Mom too. So let me help you. What’s up?”

I half-sigh, half-laugh in response to that. Can’t fault the kid for using my own logic against me, really. “It’s about a girl at work, actually.”

“Ooooooo,” he whoops, then sobers immediately when an older woman across the waiting room glares at him. Travis clears his throat. “Sorry. But. You like her?”

“Yes. A lot.”

“So are you gonna ask her out?” He bounces in his seat, before he takes another look at my expression and deflates a little. “Did you already ask her out? Did she say no?”

“She said yes. And I thought it was going well. But. . .” I shrug my shoulders and slump in my seat. “She just said she doesn’t want to see me anymore. So I guess it wasn’t going as well as I thought it was.”

“Bummer.” Travis’s frown deepens. “Did she say why?”

I shake my head. “Nothing. Just said she can’t do this anymore.”

“So, she said she can’t, not that she doesn’t want to?”

I cast a sideways glance at him. “Since when did you get so detail-oriented?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

He elbows me. “Since I started hanging out with this old lawyer guy all the time.”

I laugh a little louder at that. “Well, yes. She said she can’t do it anymore. But that implies that she doesn’t want to.”

Travis wobbles his head from side-to-side like he’s deliberating. “Welllll, I dunno. Or it could mean there’s some reason she can’t. Like, besides just if she wants to or not.”

This kid will make a great litigator someday. I lean back in my seat even further, until it’s balanced on two legs. “She is worried about us working together and dating,” I say. “She keeps talking about that, saying that it isn’t a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Well, technically we aren’t supposed to date our coworkers. But it’s kind of like not drinking in college before you turn twenty-one—er. . .” I glance around the waiting room, then at the doors to the main hospital. “Don’t tell your mom I said that.”

He laughs. “I know what you mean, though. Everyone does it, and it’s not that huge a deal unless you get crazy?”

I nod. “Exactly.”

“So why is she so worried about it, then?”

“Well. . .” I grimace at the ceiling, my head bent back. How do I explain this to a fourteen-year-old? “There are a lot of rumors about me at work, I guess. Bad rumors. About me being a . . . well, a not really nice guy. Rumors that I play with girls’ hearts.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.” Travis tilts in his chair to imitate me.

“It’s not. But it’s what people think about me. And she’s been hearing that about me for years, so she probably believes the rumors at this point. I wouldn’t blame her. I think most people do.”

“Sounds like the answer is pretty simple then,” Travis tells me, and I stifle a laugh as I drop my chair back onto all four legs to face him.

“Oh, yeah? Okay, buddy, I’m all ears then. Shoot.”

Travis clunks his chair back onto the floor as well and stares at me. “You just need to convince her you’re not the bad guy.”

Like I said. This kid will be a great lawyer someday.

M
onday morning could not have come
at a worse time. Bags sag under my eyes, and I’ve got a breakout that even my best cover-up can’t completely conceal. I’m pretty sure I’m running on about four hours of sleep total, and at least ten hours of lying restless in my bed all night Sunday trying to force my brain to shut down and my eyes to stop staring blankly at my ceiling in dread of the office today.

I arrive fifteen minutes later than usual in the hopes of being able to run straight to my office and bypass any possibility of running into Max out on the floor. Of course, I know I’ll need to see him eventually, we still have this case to work together, after all. But I’m just hoping I can avoid him for a little bit longer, until I pull myself together and get past the stupid emotions that won’t stop eating away at my insides.

Get it together, Chloe
. You’re a grown woman, not a teenager.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if all adults aren’t just teenagers in disguise, who have learned how to pay bills and maybe also picked up a marketable skill or two. At any rate, the past couple of weeks with Max have definitely brought out my teenage side.

And the stress of being with him has apparently awoken my teenage breakouts, too. Ugh.

But it turns out I have bigger problems to worry about. I reach my office, and I’ve barely had a chance to start booting up my laptop, when Martha appears in my doorway. “Did you hear?” she asks, and my stomach clenches hard.

Here it comes. The gossip about us has already started. It doesn’t matter that I did the right thing and broke it off; the damage has already been done. I won’t be seen as Chloe MacIntyre, brilliant litigator and potential partner, anymore. I’ll just be Chloe MacIntyre, that lawyer who slept with Max Davis right after the secretary he banged in the supply closet.

The secretary he probably didn’t even ‘bang’ to begin with.

“Hear what?” I ask, though it’s hard to force words out over the sensation of my insides rioting.

“Paul is in the hospital.”

I freeze halfway across my office. “What?” Wind seems to rush in my ears. Or something, anyway. A buzzing sound.

“They’re saying it’s serious. From the sound of it, his whole family are flying in from out of town, just in case. They’re not sure exactly what’s wrong, or at least, I haven’t heard if they did find out yet, but. . .”

As Martha rambles on, I sit down on top of my desk, too dazed to bother walking around it to find my chair.

I know Paul hasn’t been doing great in the past few months, but I never imagined it was something serious. He just looked like he needed a good night’s sleep and maybe a really big breakfast or something. What could it be? Cancer? Heart attack? Brain tumor?

I force myself to take deep breaths. Martha pauses in her ramble to peer at me, concern written across her face.

“Do you need something?”

“Do you know which hospital he’s in? Can we visit?”

She lists the name of a hospital I don’t recognize, but a quick search shows it’s not too far away. Less than half an hour drive, if I leave and catch a cab now before rush hour. I grab my purse from my chair.

“Let us know what you can find out,” Martha is saying as I hurry out of the office. I give her a backwards wave slash thumbs-up, though to be honest, I’m not sure what I’ll tell her when I get back. Depends what I find out, and whether or not Paul says he wants the whole office to know or not.

My throat tightens as another thought hits me. That’s if Paul is even able to say what he wants. What if he’s already dying? What if I’m too late?

Martha said his family was flying in. They wouldn’t do that unless it was really serious.

The whole cab ride to the hospital, I’m practically bouncing in my seat. The moment we pull up front, I throw cash at the driver and race inside. The front desk tells me it’s visiting hours now, and give me his room number, though they warn me that he’s already got a few visitors here.

That has to be a good sign, right? If they’re allowing visitors in, maybe it’s not so bad.

At his floor, I hurry down the hall. But I pause just outside the room number they gave me, frozen in place by the sight of a younger, leaner Paul, one hand wrapped around a woman’s shoulders. That has to be John, Paul’s son.

“Hi, um . . .” I falter, and they both look up at me, their eyebrows drawn, expressions worried. “Are you John Greaves?” I hazard a guess.

“That’s me,” he replies.

“I work with him. You probably don’t know my name, but, Chloe MacIntyre.” I offer my hand, but to my surprise, John’s wife breaks away to pull me into a hug instead. I blink, confused, but hug her back lightly.

“Chloe, Paul talks about you all the time. It’s a pleasure, really.”

I kick myself for not being able to remember her name. “I’ve heard loads about you both,” I say instead, because I really have. “Your wedding sounded amazing. Up in the Catskills?”

She blushes and waves a hand. “Oh, it was just a little DIY thing. We’re crafty people, wanted to put on our own kind of party. But Paul was gaga for it.”

We both sober up at once, remembering where we are now. “What’s happening?” I ask, with a glance toward his room window. They’ve drawn the shades, so I can’t see inside, but from the way John and his wife are lingering out here, I doubt I’d want to see Paul right now.

“The doctors are with him at the moment,” John says. “He’s been in and out of consciousness all day. Coronary event, they’re calling it. I think that means heart attack in hospital speak, but god knows I can’t get a straight answer from anyone here. They’re . . . it’s not looking good, Chloe .”

I swallow hard again, past the huge lump developing in my throat. I can’t believe this. I knew Paul was older, I knew he didn’t take great care of himself, but he’s always been here for me, like a father to me at work. He
is
a father, to John and his wife, and he always talked about wanting to be a grandfather someday, and how excited he was about their wedding because now he has a chance for grandkids soon.

My stomach hurts. My heart hurts. My everything hurts.

“Do you know . . .” I clear my throat softly, and try to blink back tears. It feels selfish to cry in front of his actual family, when I’m just a colleague. But John smiles reassuringly at me, and his wife reaches out to pat my shoulder.

“Stay,” she says, her husband nodding beside her. “They’re letting visitors in on and off throughout the day. You should be here. Say hi to him next time he’s awake.”

I suck in a deep breath through my nose, and nod. “Thank you.”

As it turns out, I don’t have to wait long. The doctors finish examining him, and announce that Paul is feeling a bit stronger now. “Not out of the woods just yet,” they warn us, “but he could use a little distraction at the moment.”

I follow John and his wife inside, and my aching heart nearly snaps in two at the sight of Paul on the hospital bed.

He looks so thin. Like he’s lost fifty pounds since I last saw him, which of course is impossible, since I only saw him a few days ago. On Friday. Before everything with Max imploded.

My aching heart gives yet another painful twist.

“Dad, your friend Chloe came to see you,” John is saying, and Paul’s eyes light up when they meet mine, but he just looks so feeble lying here, all twisted and bent, his skin washed sallow in the fluorescent lighting. He looks a hundred years old, and not his real age, which can’t be more than 62.

“Chloe, trust you to make a fuss,” he says. Or tries to say. He coughs hard in the middle of the sentence, finishes it out in such a feeble voice that we all lean closer to the bed to hear him finish.

I force myself to smile down at him, even though I want to cry instead. I have to be strong for him right now. “I heard you were the one making the fuss,” I tell him, my own voice cracking slightly. “Wanted to come tell you to quit being a big baby, you hear?”

John and his wife laugh, thankfully. Paul does too, though it sounds more like a wheeze.

We chat for a little while, until eventually John’s wife suggests that he might want a coffee, and she was a bit puckish, should they go to the cafeteria? He looks like he’s about to protest, until she catches his eye and shoots a meaningful glance at me and Paul.

She wants to give us some alone time.

I smile at her, grateful. It should be John having alone time with his father, I know. But hopefully they’ll have plenty more time for that still.

Hopefully we’ll all have plenty more time with him.

“You really need to pull through this,” I tell him, sternly, like I’m scolding him. It comes out sounding more like a desperate plea instead.

Paul sighs and closes his eyes, wincing slightly before he forces a smile onto his face again. “I’m trying, believe me. But Chloe . . . listen, you—are you listening?” He glares up at me, and I nod, blinking back another round of tears. “Good. I want to tell you something.”

“I swear to God, if you start making a deathbed speech, I am going to storm out of here,” I warn him with my best courtroom glare.

He cracks his teeth in a wide grin. “If I’m dying, then you need to be quiet and respect your elder for once.”

I roll my eyes playfully, and he reaches for my arm, wrapping his thin hand around my wrist.

“Don’t be like me, Chloe.”

My eyes glisten with real tears now. I can’t stop one of them spilling over and inching down my cheek. “Why not?” I pat his hand gently. “You’re a great man, Paul. A great father, a great mentor. I’ve always wanted to be like you.”

He sighs. “Not great. Decent, maybe. I don’t know. I tried. But I could’ve been a much better father to John. A much better person all around. I could have
lived
, Chloe. But I wanted to be safe. I wanted to pick the secure option, every time. I love John, and I loved his mother, but she left me after I abandoned her for the office, and I see now that I never needed to do that. I never needed to pick work over her. It never had to be one or the other. The office doesn’t need every ounce of our lives, Chloe. It doesn’t need to be the only thing we have.”

His grip tightens, along with my throat. I can’t reply—if I try to say anything now, I know I’ll start crying hysterically, and that won’t help anyone. So I nod at him through the hazy swim of salt water in my vision. I keep nodding until the door opens again, John and his wife back with their coffees, and then I sniffle once, hard, and wipe my hand across my eyes.

“I should get going,” I say as I rise, patting Paul’s wrist one last time. “You guys should chat, and you need to heal,” I add, pointing sternly at Paul.

“Aye, aye, captain,” he replies with a weak grin.

I hug John and his wife both goodbye, then duck out of the room. Only when I’m safely outside of the hospital do I really let go. I let myself cry for him, the man who taught me everything I know about the place that I work and the job that I do. The man who has raised me up through the ranks, made me a better lawyer, and a better person just for knowing him.

The man who just told me his greatest regrets, and who sounds terrifyingly similar to me in more ways than I ever imagined right now.

My phone buzzes, and I wipe away my tears for long enough to squint at the screen.

Just heard about Paul. I’m so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.

Max.

Of course he would know. Of course, of anyone in my world, he would understand exactly how I feel about my boss, and why he’s so much more than just a boss to me. And why this is so terrifying to watch.

A fresh wave of tears trickle down my cheeks, though whether it’s in response to Paul’s situation or the sudden realization that maybe I judged Max too harshly, I’m not sure. Probably both. I mean, asking how he can help right now is not the response of the asshole I’ve been building him up to be in my head.

I tap out a response.

Can we meet? I’m sorry about earlier. There’s something I’d like to tell you.

His response takes a few minutes to come, but when it does, some of the weight that’s been pressing down on my chest for the past two days straight begins to ease.
Of course. Not at my place, though. I’ll text you the address.

An address follows right after that message, and without bothering to google the place, I hail a cab and read the location to the driver.

Paul is right. Work doesn’t need to be the only thing we have. And if I need to take a gamble to make sure it isn’t?

Well, for a man like Max, it’s a gamble worth taking.