Came Back Haunted (Experiment in Terror #10) - Karina Halle Page 0,82
door as Dex tries the handle.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. What if Max isn’t here? What if Victor comes after us?
“What do we do?” I ask Dex.
“What I do best,” he says, and with that canned remark I know he’s about to kick the door down.
But before he can do that, the door swings open.
“Max!” I cry out as he appears—same red hair, same flannel.
“How long have you been out there?” he asks us as we push past him into the room.
Dex waves his finger at the door. “Long enough. You might want to lock that. We ran into Victor. The rest of him this time.”
“Ah,” he says, running his hand over his jaw. “He’s a terrifying fucker, ain’t he?” He closes the door and locks it.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Dex says, sitting down on a leather armchair and trying to catch his breath.
“I’m so sorry we weren’t by sooner,” I tell Max. “How are you holding up? You look good.”
Maximus chuckles. “Pretty fly for a dead guy? I’m doing as good as I can be. Have to keep reminding myself that it’s better than Hell. And it is. I can just sit here and…exist. Or not exist. It’s hard to figure that out. Either way, it feels like you were only gone a day if that helps.”
“It does,” I tell him, perching my butt on the arm of Dex’s chair. “It’s been a week. I hate knowing that you’re in here.”
“Better than the alternative, sweetheart.”
“What do you even do to pass the time in here?” Dex asks. Then he looks disgusted. “Wait. Don’t answer that.”
Maximus chuckles at that. “As I said, time doesn’t have much relevance here. It passes with ease. And anyway, I still have my memories that I can live in. The good memories. Of my life before. I just skip over the last…how many years was it that I was gone again?”
“Three,” I tell him.
“That’s a lot,” he says with a sigh. “So what’s changed in three years? Anything I should know?”
Dex snorts. “Well, Donald Trump is now the President, and a lot of crazy fuckers worship this incel named Q who lives in his parents’ basement.” He grins at him. “I bet Hell isn’t looking so bad, is it now?”
Max’s eyes go wide and he looks to me for confirmation. I nod.
“Guess I’ll have to take my chances,” Maximus says, shaking his head in disbelief. Then he clears his throat. “Speaking of things changing…did you manage to talk to Rose?”
My heart sinks. “No,” I say softly. “I’m sorry. I called her and texted but no reply. I don’t even know if it’s her number and I can’t reach her on Facebook. She unfriended me years ago.”
He frowns. “Why would she do that?”
I swallow uneasily. “Because I had to be the one to call her and tell her that you died. And after that…she blamed me. Blamed us. Said that if I hadn’t contacted you, if you hadn’t gone to New York you wouldn’t have died. That you’d still be with her.”
His face falls. “Shit. I’m sorry, Perry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him.
“Technically it is,” he says, walking across the room and staring up at the golden windows that line the top of the wall facing the street. The light causes his hair to glow like a flame. “I knew what I was doing, though.”
He folds his hands behind his back and closes his eyes, keeping his face tipped up to the light. “That’s the funny thing about death. Even when you come back from it, you’re still left behind. Everyone else has moved on. The world keeps going. I have no idea what the heck I’m going to do when I get out of here. Makes me think that there’s really nothing for me to go back to. Or no one.”
I look down at Dex who is watching his friend with sorrow in his eyes.
“You can go back to Rose. Find her,” Dex says. “Just because she’s mad at us, doesn’t mean she will be with you. I assume it would be the opposite.”
Maximus glances at us. “And if she’s moved on? People move on.”
“They don’t,” I find myself saying. “Not really.” I feel tears burning behind my eyes. “My mother died just a few days after you did, Max. And I haven’t moved on. None of us have. You try but…when you really love someone, it remains, like a chain. And it’s a chain you don’t want to remove, no matter how heavy, no matter