Rush (33 page)

Chapter 29

Caroline

Max’s apartment was so cold it felt like
winter. We’d both kept our jackets on. But as I stroked his back, trying to
bring him a little comfort, the air became even icier.

My breath appeared in a little white
cloud in front of my face. Max still had his hands over his eyes, so he couldn’t
see it. He trembled all over, seemingly fighting not to cry, his big body
shaking beneath my hand.

He’d been made to bear something too
heavy for him. Too heavy for any child. My guilt over Aunt Jo’s departure had
haunted me, and that was trivial compared to the burden Max had borne for so
long. I suddenly wanted to rage at Peter Kincaid for leaving his son alone with
his guilt and grief. What kind of father would do that to his child?

If Peter Kincaid had been here in the
room, I would have told him exactly what I thought of him. The awful things he’d
said about Max when I’d visited the house in Billings...had he ever loved his
son? Had anyone ever really loved Max?

“Max.”

It was a high-pitched child’s voice, and
it came from behind us, from the direction of the living room.

Both of us jumped several inches. We
turned simultaneously toward the sound. A little boy with tousled blond hair
stood in the archway between the kitchen and living room. He wore a pair of
jeans and a small sweatshirt with a picture of a truck on it. He was smiling at
Max, his round, blue eyes full of happy innocence.

“Carter?” Max said in a rough whisper.

“It’s me.” Carter came closer. “I’ve
been trying to talk to you for a long time.”

“I know.” Max’s voice broke. “I heard.”

“You’re not easy to get hold of.” He
really didn’t sound like a three year old.

“Sharon told us to contact you, but we
haven’t even started the ritual yet,” I said. “How can you be here?”

“You were talking about me and thinking
about me. It was enough of a connection to let me pass through the veil.” He
looked from me to Max. “Why did you ignore me for so long?”

“I’m sorry,” Max said. “I was...I was
afraid, Carter.”

The little-boy ghost cocked his head. “Why
were you afraid? I’d never hurt you.”

“Because of what I did. I didn’t think I
could stand it, seeing you again and knowing...knowing you’ll never forgive me.”

Carter frowned. “Of course I forgive
you. That’s why I came. Because you thought there weren’t any bullets in the
gun.”

“Yeah. But I was wrong.”

“Trent told you the gun wasn’t loaded,”
Carter said.

Max stilled, his gaze becoming hazy and
far-away. Then he frowned. “Yeah, that’s right. I remember that.”

“But it was. It was loaded.” Carter took
another step forward, coming right up to Max. He looked so real, so alive. “It was
loaded because he put the bullets in it.”

Max and I both stared at him blankly. He
stood looking at Max with an expectant expression, but Max just stared, like he
couldn’t make sense of what Carter had said.

“Are you telling us that Trent loaded
the gun?” I said. “That he lied to Max about it not being loaded?”

Carter looked at me soberly. “Yes, that’s
what I’m telling you. He wanted to hurt Max.”

I closed my eyes. “Oh, my God.”

“I can’t...I don’t...” Max said. “Why? I
don’t understand. Did he want me to shoot you?”

“I don’t know,” Carter said. “But I saw
him put the bullets in the gun. I didn’t really know what he was doing or how
dangerous it was. Until after. You know. When I got to the other side, it all
became clear to me.”

Max rubbed his eyes with a trembling
hand. I wanted to take him in my arms and make all the pain and confusion
disappear, but it wasn’t the right time. Not yet.

“I wanted you to know, Max,” Carter
said. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know. You were only a kid when it
happened and you need to stop blaming yourself. I don’t blame you. I never did.”

Max covered his face again. His
shoulders began to shake and a wheezing sound escaped him. I glanced at Carter,
who looked back at me sadly. I put my arms around Max.

“Thank you,” I said to the ghost.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m glad you came
back to him. He deserves someone to love him.”

Now my eyes were stinging. “Yes, he
does.”

“I loved you, Max,” Carter said. “I
still do. Please remember that. I don’t know if I’ll see you again, so I need
you to remember that I love you.”

A strangled sound came from Max’s
throat. His face was hidden against my shoulder. I smiled tremulously at
Carter.

“He loves you, too,” I said hoarsely.

“I know,” Carter said. “I have to go
now. I’ll always remember you, Max.”

He winked out, like a snuffed candle
flame. I blinked rapidly at the startling sight, but he was gone. We were alone
again, and the kitchen was merely chilly instead of arctic-cold.

I kept my arms around Max for a long
time, long after he’d stopped sobbing and his body had calmed. He clung to me
with a desperation I never thought I’d see in him. I wasn’t sure what to say,
so I stayed quiet and simply kept petting him, stroking his back and playing
with his hair, hoping that touch would give him the comfort he needed.

Maybe he could stop hating himself now.
I wouldn’t expect him to get over all the blame instantly, but at least he’d
had Carter’s assurance he was forgiven. I hoped it was enough for him to start
over.

He lifted his head. “I’m a fucking mess,”
he muttered.

“That’s all right.”

Max reached for a cloth napkin left on
the table and used it to wipe his eyes. “Sorry about all this.”

“You don’t need to apologize. I don’t
mind.”

He couldn’t seem to look at me. “I can’t
understand why not.”

“Oh, Max.” I caressed the side of his
face. He looked so tired. “It’s normal to feel sad and cry when someone you
love dies. Or comes back from the grave.”

His mouth quirked upward at one corner. “Is
it?”

“Yes. So don’t feel bad about it. Plus,
I love you. If you can’t cry in front of me, who can you cry in front of?”

He gave me a dry glance. “I’m not going
to answer that.”

I just smiled at him. After a moment, he
took my face in his hands and bent his head to mine. His kiss began with
infinite tenderness, an expression of love and gratitude that turned hot and
demanding as I wrapped my arms around him. He pulled me against him until I had
to straddle him so I could get close enough.

“I need you,” he murmured before tugging
on my earlobe with his teeth.

“Yes,” I whimpered. “Please.”

Max grabbed my butt and stood up with me
wrapped around him. He carried me that way into the bedroom and sank to the
bed.

Chapter 30

Max

I must have dozed off after we finished
making love. The next thing I knew, someone was pounding on my door so loud I
thought they were trying to break it down. Caro lifted her head from my chest
and frowned in the general direction of my living room.

“What’s going on out there?”

“I dunno,” I muttered. “But it’s pissing
me off.”

She sat up and reached for her clothes. “We’d
better get dressed.”

“You stay here, in case it’s something
bad. I’ll answer.” I grabbed my jeans and yanked them on.

“Be careful.”

I smiled at her. “It’s probably nothing.”

The pounding continued as I walked
barefoot and shirtless into my living room. Whoever it was needed to chill out.
And I couldn’t imagine who it could be. I’d paid all my bills, on time and in
full, and I didn’t have any enemies.

Except Trent.

I opened the door and there he was,
glaring at me with more venom than I’d ever seen in his eyes before. He reeked
of hard liquor. And my dad was with him.

Seeing my dad after so many years was
like taking a baseball bat to my solar plexus. I almost lost the ability to
breathe for a second. He looked pretty much the way I remembered, except a
little thinner and grayer.

My hand tightened on the edge of the
door. “What do you want?”

“I want my woman back.”

I snorted. “Your woman? She broke up
with you. Move on.”

“She only did it because of you.”

“Dude, I believe she told you it was
over.”

Trent growled, lunging toward me. My dad
grabbed his arm to prevent him from jumping on me. “She told you it was over,
too. But she’s back with you now. What the fuck did you do to her, you creepy
piece of shit?”

I leaned against the doorjamb and
crossed my arms over my chest, knowing my nonchalant pose would drive him
insane. “We made up. Did you come all the way here just to hear me say that?
And you had to bring Stepdaddy, too, I see.” There was no way I was going to
acknowledge my father as mine. We’d gone beyond that years and years ago.

“What’s going on, Max?” Caroline said
softly behind him.

“It’s nothing, baby. You don’t need to
be part of this.”

“He’s put a spell on you, Caroline,”
Trent shouted. “You need help.”

I laughed. “I thought you didn’t believe
in magic.”

Throughout this whole exchange, my dad
had been staring at me like he couldn’t believe his eyes. I looked right at him
and smirked. “Trent’s lucky to have such a supportive stepfather.”

“You were always jealous of him,” my dad
said.

I laughed again. “Jealous. Right.”

Caroline inserted herself between me and
the space on the other side of the doorjamb. Damn it, she was supposed to stay
in the bedroom. I glared at her, but she ignored me.

“I’m not coming back to you,” she said
to Trent.

“Caroline—” he said.

She pointed at him. “We know what you
did.”

I stared at her. So did the other two.
What the hell was she doing? This wasn’t the time for a confrontation, not when
Trent was drunk. He might do anything in this state. What if I couldn’t protect
her from him? After all, there were two of them and only one of me.

I grounded my inner energy, centering
myself in case I needed to take action.

Trent shook his head. “I have no idea
what you’re talking about.”

“The bullets,” she said. “We know you
put them in the gun.”

“What gun? I’m telling you, Caroline, he’s
put some kind of spell on you. You know he’s capable of it.”

She put her arm around my bare waist in
a show of support that made me want to kiss her. “The gun that killed Carter.”

He went so pale, his eyes so round, I
knew instantly it was true. “No! I’d never do that.”

“Carter told us,” Caroline said.

“A ghost? Give me a break.” Trent gave a
painfully artificial laugh.

“Trent, is this true?” my dad said,
staring at him.

“No! It’s not true...I didn’t...I
thought Max would play with it by himself.”

My dad’s eyes narrowed. “You thought he’d
play with it by himself? So you did have something to do with the gun being
loaded?”

“Yeah. No!” Trent glared at me with an
expression of loathing. “You were supposed to shoot yourself, not Carter.”

My jaw dropped. My dad’s mouth opened,
but no sound came out.

Trent’s eyes bugged out even further as
he realized what he’d said. “That’s not what I meant. I just—I didn’t
understand what I was doing. I was just a kid! I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“You were trying to kill me,” I said
softly. “Weren’t you?”

He shook his head with an air of utter
desperation. “No. I wasn’t. I didn’t mean for anyone to die. I only wanted you
to get hurt.”

I snorted again. “You’ll forgive me if I
have a hard time believing that.”

“Trent,” my dad said hoarsely. “Why didn’t
you ever tell me this?”

Trent just stared at him blankly. In his
eyes, I could see his world falling apart. He’d always been the good brother,
the one I was supposed to emulate. Oops. Guess that position had just been
vacated.

“Why are you here, anyway?” I said to my
dad.

He glowered at me. “I came for Dad’s
weekend, obviously.”

“Obviously.” ‘Cause I would know that,
seeing as how I had such a great dad and all.

His lip curled in a sneer. “You drove
him to it, you know. He wouldn’t have wanted you to shoot yourself if you weren’t
such a complete fucking failure.”

My jaw went rigid and so did my spine. “Excuse
me?”

Caroline took a step toward him, her
eyes narrow with rage. I snagged her waist and tried to pull her back.

“You have no business talking to him
that way,” she said. “He’s your son. What is wrong with you?”

He looked at her like she’d grown a
second head. Then he laughed. “I think Trent has it right. He really has put a
spell on you.”

With her free hand, she made a slashing
gesture. “He doesn’t need a spell. He’s lovable the way he is.”

“Caro—” I said, embarrassed. She didn’t
have to fight for me like this. It—I—wasn’t worth it.

“You do know he dabbles in the occult?”
my dad continued, contempt in his voice and his eyes, fury in the clenching of
his fists. “My
son
is a freak. He was always weird, always making
trouble, especially after his mother died.”

“He was only five at the time,” Caroline
said. “How can you say he was always making trouble when he was just a little
kid? Didn’t it occur to you he was in pain?”

“You know, when you visited us,” my dad
said, “I thought you were a nice girl. Just right for our Trent. Now I’m
looking at you differently, Caroline. I don’t like what I see.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to give a
damn,” she said.

“Baby, don’t bother fighting him,” I
said, tugging on her waist. “He’s not worth it.”

She glanced up at me, pain in her big,
brown eyes. She was hurting on my behalf. I didn’t want that, didn’t want her
to hurt because of me, but at the same time it warmed me beyond measure that
she would continue to stick up for me. Especially to my dad. Grown men were
intimidated by him.

I tucked her into my side, her body warm
against my bare skin, and faced down my father and stepbrother. “You two need
to leave now.”

“Not without Caroline,” Trent said,
swaying where he stood.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she
said. “I’m in love with Max. I love him. Can you get that through your thick
skull?”

Trent swallowed hard. “How can you love
him and not me?”

“He doesn’t make fun of me. He doesn’t
cheat on me. He doesn’t put bullets in a gun hoping his brother will shoot
himself. Would you like me to continue?”

Trent’s mouth opened and closed over and
over, like a fish gasping in the air and begging for someone to throw it back
in the water.

“You—” he finally said. “You’re a
fucking bitch.”

“Thank you. Now get out.”

I smiled at him. “You heard the lady,
Trent. Get out.”

Trent broke away from my dad and lunged
at me, his beefy hands outstretched for my throat. My fist shot out so fast I
didn’t realize I was punching him until I’d already clobbered him in the jaw.
He staggered to the side, knocking into my dad and forcing him against the wall
of the landing. Both of them let out grunts as they hit.

Trent slipped to the floor. My dad bent
over him and shook him. “Trent? Are you okay?”

Stepbro’s eyes were closed. A huge
bruise already spread across his jaw where I’d clocked him.

My dad looked at me. “Jesus. What did
you do to him?”

“KO’d him, obviously. You want to fight
me too?”

My dad just shook his head. “I didn’t
know you could do that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
I’d had endless fights in middle and high school, courtesy of Trent and his
buddies and all the people they influenced. And then there was life on the
streets. I’d learned, eventually, how to handle myself.

“Always thought of you as a gutless
wonder,” my dad said.

“Because I wouldn’t fight you.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

“You were my dad. I couldn’t fight you.”

My father’s gaze traveled over me. “Maybe
you’re not quite as worthless as I thought.”

Caroline was staring at him with an
expression I couldn’t read. I wasn’t sure if she was amazed, horrified, furious...I
just couldn’t tell.

My dad bent and picked up Trent by his
armpits. “Help me get him downstairs, will you?”

I sighed.

“Don’t do it,” Caroline said. “He doesn’t
deserve it.”

My dad shot her a glare. “Trent was
right about you, when he said you were a b—”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “Don’t even say it.”

He gave me another one of those looks
that said he wasn’t sure who I was anymore. “Son—”

“No. You lost the right to call me that
years ago. Caroline’s right. You can take care of him yourself. If you need help,
call an ambulance.”

Caroline and I retreated back into the
apartment. I shut the door and locked it, throwing the deadbolt for good
measure. My hands were shaking and so were hers. She put her hands up to her
face.

“Are you okay?” I murmured, bending down
in an attempt to see her better.

“Yeah, I’m fine. No. I’m not fine. I can’t
believe I said those things. I never fight with parents. Never.”

I took her into my arms. “You were
incredible. A warrior woman.”

Caroline gave a shaky laugh against my
chest. I could feel her breath gusting warm and damp against my skin. She
pressed her lips to the valley between my pecs as her arms came around my
waist.

“I’m awfully shaken up for a warrior
woman.”

“It was your first battle. Everyone’s
shaken up after their first battle.”

She tilted her head up and smiled at me,
her eyes glistening. “You know he’s full of shit, right? You’re not a failure
or a freak. You’re smart, talented, determined, sexy—”

I put my fingers across her sweet lips. “Yeah,
I’m a paragon.”

She kissed my fingers. “You are.” Her
voice was muffled behind my hand.

I laughed. “You only think that because
you’re infatuated with me. Just wait until you learn the truth.”

Caroline shook her head. “No, I’m not
infatuated. Maybe I was before, but I know you’re not all sweetness and light.
Or darkness and spooky sexuality, either. You’re you, Max, and you almost used
me to hurt your stepbrother.”

I hung my head, suddenly ashamed for
real. There was a serious possibility I’d spend the rest of my life apologizing
for that one stupid fucking mistake.

“Hey, I’m not saying it to make you feel
bad,” she said. “I just mean I know you’re not perfect. I love you anyway. God
knows I’m not perfect either.”

I scooped her up in my arms. “Yes, you
are. In fact, from now on, you shall be known as Caroline the Perfect. Or
should it be Caroline the Peerless?”

She giggled. “Caroline the Magnificent.”

“I like that.” I carried her back into
the bedroom. “Caroline the Magnificent.”

We collapsed onto the bed together and
her fingers found the smooth, raised welt of scar tissue from the time my ribs
had been broken. She caressed the mark.

“What’s this?”

“Just an old scar. I broke my ribs a
long time ago.”