Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,90

“You’re doing the right thing.”

“I know.”

“Is Max meeting you there?” Fern asked.

“No,” I said, past the hard awful lump in my throat. “He’s gone.”

“I’m sorry, Olivia.”

Finally, I shook my head, gathered myself, found a few more lies to keep me going.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Can you please just call me Joan?”

She didn’t say anything more about it and that seemed enough like agreement to me.

—

Seriously. I wasn’t expecting him. I wasn’t holding out hope, or telling myself some kind of lie, thinking he wasn’t going to be here, but then silently sending up prayers that he wouldn’t listen to me and would be there anyway.

I wanted him to be gone because it was what was best for him.

But there he was.

Talking to Nancy with a beer in his hand.

He wore a pair of dark jeans and a white T-shirt that made the most of his tan now that his sunburn had faded. He’d trimmed his beard so he looked a little less lumberjack and more stylish thug. He had his jewelry on, too. I’d forgotten his big rings and the chains and leather he wore, like little bits of flash and glitter. The sunlight coming through the big plateglass windows caught the silver on his fingers and wrists. He looked like some kind of magpie king. A deadly assassin in some alternate universe.

And it made my heart stop.

“He didn’t leave,” Fern said over my shoulder.

“I guess not.”

It took some serious work on my part to chain down my heart. It was already light and unpredictable from telling Eric all my sins, but the sight of Max clean and bright made it crazy. It pounded in my throat like it was trying to climb out of my body. Like it had some message to send to him.

“Hello, honey!” One of the women bearing gifts from the other day approached with a tray full of little punch glasses. “Would you like—?”

I grabbed one, tiny and ridiculous in my fingers. Not enough booze to douse the fire in my belly. It would only make things worse.

“Careful, it’s real strong. Cecilia’s—”

I downed it and then gasped as it burned. The woman, kind and wrinkled, smiled at me. “Family recipe. It’s all bourbon and brandy, I’m afraid.”

“It’s delicious,” I gasped.

She moved on with her tray and suddenly Max was there in front of me.

I’d thought he was hot before. At the club, surrounded by all that danger and all those walls, I’d been head over heels in lust with him. But here, in this sun-splashed lobby with his sunburn and his fragile smile, I was a mess from him. I was destroyed in secret and hidden places.

“The punch is brutal,” he said and handed me a cold beer.

I didn’t take it.

That’s how dangerous this felt.

“Joan,” he whispered, the beer still held out.

“I don’t want you here.” There I said it. As true a thing as I had in my life. And also the most false. This truth was a knife I held in my hand so hard, I was cut and bleeding but there was no way to drop it or change it. It was simply a thing I had to get used to.

He nodded. “I get that,” he said. “I’ll leave when I know you’re going to be okay.”

“Oh, I’m going to be okay. I’m going to get a lawyer and cut the most ridiculous deal ever seen by a woman who set off bombs that hurt people. And you’re going to be pulled in on that. You get that right? Me going to the cops and getting clear of all the shit I did so I can save Jennifer, it means you’ll go down.”

He simply watched me, his blue eyes steady, turning up the heat on me until all my molecules bounced and scattered.

“You need to get away from me!” I yelled.

Please, I almost said. Please, don’t let me hurt you. I can’t keep hurting people. It’s killing me. Tears were burning behind my eyes and I blinked hard to keep them from falling.

“Let me tell you what I’m going to do,” he said, stepping a little closer until I felt the heat of his chest against the bare skin of my arm and neck. My breath came out in one long, slow sigh. “I’m not going to go anywhere. I’m not leaving you to do this shit on your own. And I do not want you to worry about me.”

“I already worry about you,” I confessed. “And someone should. You deserve