Thursday Nights (The Charistown Series) (33 page)

“Seriously, Lyla,” Max said with a laugh. “If I didn’t know better, I would swear you worked for the mob. Rein it in. I’m doing the best I can. I love her, but I can’t rush this. She wanted to know my past, and there is a lot to tell. Besides, have you finished your part?”

Lyla cleared her throat. “It will be ready for you tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Ly. I owe you big.”

“Yeah,” she said. “You definitely do.”

When they disconnected the call. Max looked at the blank screen.
Yeah, he was gonna have to work on that situation once he got his own life squared away
. In the meantime, he had another letter to write.

The last piece of his history made him sick, though. Those final days were like living purgatory. His disgust for Chloe ran deep, and had she not died in that accident he would have finally left her. The fact that her death took away his chance to choose to let her go made him angry, and that anger filled him with shame.

“DeLucca. You okay, brother?” Gage’s face was mapped with worry. “Your jaw is squeezed so tight I can see your muscles clenching. Look at your hands, man. They are balled into fists. Only one person does that to you…and she’s dead. Let it go. Move on.”

“I plan to, Sebastian. After today she’ll be where she belongs—in the past. I just need to get through today.”

With freshly painted toes and a hot cup of coffee, Janie climbed the last few stairs to the second floor of her complex. The quiet solitude of the afternoon helped to calm her nervous stomach and ease her cluttered mind. Like powdered sugar in front of a fan, her tranquility wisped away when she saw the grocery bag sitting at her door. As if her mind had already trained her eyes to look for his breadcrumbs, she noticed the bounty from the moment she entered the hallway. Trepidation mixed with excitement pulsed through her blood as she moved toward her apartment.

She walked directly from the entrance to her bedroom, kicking off her flip-flops and climbing into her bed. The heaviness she had felt in her limbs that morning had begun to settle back in.

His warning reverberated in her mind’s eye.
The worst is yet to come
, the previous letter said. Swaddling herself in the pink blanket, she finally reached for the bag.

Her shoulders shook then in uncontrollable delight as she lifted the items out until they were lined up on her mattress. “Max!” His name escaped her lips in a loud laugh. Bags of Circus Peanuts, boxes of fruit snacks, and a large container of Greek yogurt cajoled her out of her sadness and into a happier place. It didn’t matter that the yogurt wasn’t cold anymore because there was no way she was going to eat that stuff. She smiled. That was the Max she knew—he always knew how to make her not only smile, but laugh—and laugh hard.

The letter was the last item in the bag.
If he can write it, I can read it
, she thought, fingering the envelope. With a handful of Circus Peanuts, she opened up more of Max’s past.

Dear Janie,

This is the last of it, the final letter you will receive. I’m sure reading these have not been easy; the man in these letters is hardly the man you know. Trust me when I tell you that writing them, while painful, has brought me to a place I never thought I would get. So, here is the rest of it. My past is officially in your hands…

Sometimes I think Danny’s on Main was my life preserver. I had been drifting for so long I thought I would drown. Had it not been for Danny, Julie, and the rest of the group…well, I don’t know what would have happened to me. I started working there not long after Gage and I (for lack of a better term) broke up. Things with Chloe and I were okay—she worked days, and I worked nights. We were surviving, but I wasn’t happy anymore. Although, to be honest, I would have denied it at the time.

After a while, Kyle was hired, and we worked some day shifts together. One day he saw a picture of Chloe hanging behind the bar
 
and recognized her. To make an extremely long and horribly disgusting story short, Chloe was having an affair with Kyle’s friend. While I was working nights, she was out with him. On top of that, Kyle had the horrific experience of having to explain to me that he had seen my wife engaged in a ménage a trois with his friend and another man. Apparently, the whole thing had been videotaped and posted online.

After breaking what was probably a case of glassware and a few bottles of whatever I could get my hands on, I went home to confront Chloe. She wasn’t there, and she never came home that night. As the sun came up the next morning, though, a car pulled up to our house. I watched as my wife cheerfully slipped out of the passenger side and headed toward the front door.

When I came out to meet her, I saw him. Her boyfriend. That was the day she told me that
she
had had enough. Janie, my head couldn’t process the things she was saying, but it had no problem understanding when she informed me that she was pregnant with the other guy’s baby. I’ll never forget the look she tossed me over her shoulder as she got back in his car. Then she smiled and waved as they drove away.

Janie put the unfinished letter down on her lap. The orange marshmallows felt like lead in her stomach.
How could anyone be so cruel?
Thoughts of her own parents struck her like lightening. Rubbing her hands over her face, the wetness of her tears coated her fingers. After taking a few cleansing breaths, she picked up his letter and continued to read:

I don’t remember going back into the house. I don’t remember the hours that passed. But later that day I received a call from the hospital telling me that Chloe had been in a car accident, and I needed to come in. Apparently, her boyfriend’s car was hit by a truck. He walked away virtually unharmed, but Chloe and her unborn baby died on the operating table.

It was amazing, Janie, how blind I was. I sat at her funeral looking around at those in attendance; there were so many mourners to support me and her parents, but not one person who actually missed the deceased. How could I have allowed myself to stay so ignorant? How could I have given up on everyone and everything that meant so much to me for the love of the one person who had nothing to offer me but pain? Gage came to me after the funeral. After three years of silence, he took me back without hesitation.

Six months later, Chloe’s parents tracked me down, too. They apologized for the hell I lived at the hands of their daughter, and then they informed me that they had been sending Chloe and I money for years...

Chloe and I had lived small—comfortable, but small. We both worked long hours, yet there was never extra money. So to say I was surprised by her parents’ revelation would be an understatement. Their visit opened my eyes to another truth about the woman I had pledged my life to: she was hiding the money from me. She had almost a million dollars saved. Her parents told me and gave me the money, and I haven’t seen them since.

It’s been seven years since Chloe died. Seven years since I shut down.

Please know that my intentions were never to deceive you. They were never about hiding anything at all. I buried my past the day I buried Chloe, and a part of me that I was ashamed of, disappointed in, and disgusted with went into the ground with her. I needed it gone. I wanted it forgotten. The problem? In order to bury that much bad, I had to get rid of some good parts as well. That hadn’t been a problem…until you.

And now I’m coming for you…one step at a time.

Love always,

Max

I’m Done Pretending

Janie’s trembling fingers sent a text to Lyla and Ashley first thing the next morning.

Meet me at Starbucks @ 10. Don’t be late!

After another fitful night’s sleep, Janie wasn’t sure if she should blame the anxious, queasy, jittery feelings on the sleep deprivation or the decision she’d made, one that now sat heavily on her chest. Forcing herself into a scalding shower, she hoped the burn of the hot water would take her mind off the man who was singed into her every thought. After quickly throwing on tattered Pitt sweats and sweeping her long, brown hair into a messy ponytail, she arrived at Starbucks an hour early.

She gulped down her third coffee. The copious amounts of caffeine coursing through her veins had her fidgety, and she waited impatiently at a table for her friends to arrive.

“Are you sure you need more caffeine, Miss Bouncy? Look at you, you can’t sit still.” Ashley reached over Janie’s head and grabbed her iced coffee, swallowing a huge gulp before sitting down.

“Orange, huh?” Janie nodded to Ashley’s newly streaked hair. “Where the hell is Lyla? The girl works from home—how is she always late?”

“I’m right behind you, Twitchy,” Lyla said. “What did you put in your coffee? Crack?”

Lyla and Ashley giggled, and Janie continued to jerk her ankle around and tap her fingernails on the table. “Seriously, Jane, what gives? You look…horrible.”

Janie heard the sincerity in Lyla’s voice and saw the concern in her eyes.

“I don’t know what to do about Max. The man is killing me. Physically killing me. I’ve been trying so hard to keep a lid on my tears”—her eyes welled up, as if on cue—“but I just don’t know what to do.”

“Aw honey…” Ashley placed Janie’s hand in her own. “What happened?”

With that one question, the flood gates opened.

Large teardrops left Janie’s tired eyes. “So you know about the packages he’s been sending me. The gifts and the letters…” It wasn’t a question; both women had read the first letter and knew about the first two gifts. But after reading Max’s second letter, Janie decided to keep its details to herself. They just seemed too personal to share, even with her best friends. But now she needed advice, so as much as it would pain her to do so, she would need to divulge some of Max’s secrets with her friends. “They are…tearing me up,” she continued. “The gifts are so thoughtful and personal…” She sent an evil eye to Lyla then. “Don’t think I don’t know you had a part in some of that.” Lyla looked away and let out a whistle. “But obviously, it isn’t the gifts that are the problem…”

“Well, that’s good because, honestly, Jane—”

“Shut it, Lyla!” Janie and Ashley said in unison.

Janie took a deep breath. “It’s the letters,” she said, wiping fruitlessly at her steady stream of tears. “His letters gutted me. What he went through was horrible, and that crazy bitch he was married to was…terrible. I want to help him. Every instinct I have screams for me to figure out a way to fix it for him. And I know this is gonna make me sound cold…but I don’t know if I can be with him. I mean, I love him. I really love him. I’ve been falling in love with Max DeLucca for months. But being with him now that I know what I know? I’m not sure I can do it.”

Two pairs of very confused, very angry eyes bore into Janie.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lyla snapped. Janie could see the sheer act of will it took for Lyla to not say more.

“Look, he loved his wife.” Janie let her gaze move from between her friends. “I mean, he
loved
her. He stuck by her as she took everything from him. She cheated on him, she made him choose between her and his family, his best friend, college…hell,
life
, and he chose her over everyone and everything else that mattered to him. She broke him, and he never left her.” She looked at the perplexed faces of her closest friends. “Don’t you see the problem with that?”

“No, Jane,” Lyla said slowly. “I think I need you to explain more.”

Ashley nodded in agreement.

After wiping her hands over her tear streaked face, Janie looked back up at her girls. “If she were still alive, I think he would
still
be with her.” She paused. Admitting it to herself was hard ,but saying it out loud stung like tiny pieces of shrapnel piercing her skin. “And what if they weren’t together, and he was with me instead? What if I made him unhappy? I don’t think he would ever leave. His letters proved he would rather be miserable than walk away.” Pushing away the last of her tears, she sucked in a deep breath. “I could never live with that kind of pressure. I can’t be the cause of any more hurt and unhappiness for him. I refuse to be. I watched the way it tore my mom apart when my dad finally left, and I watched her let every other man step on the pieces. She would let them stick around until she had nothing left to give, and then they left her behind smaller and weaker than before.” She met Lyla’s sad, knowing glance. “I never realized it before, but up until now, I think I was following her path.”