His Holiday Crush - Cari Z. Page 0,69
park with moose and bear and cougars, at night, right?”
“Let’s hope not,” Hal said, which wasn’t as reassuring as I was looking for. “Look, I’m gonna see if Phee can watch the girls a little longer. I’ll come with you and—”
“That’s just going to make them nervous,” I pointed out. “I’ll go. If I can’t find him in half an hour, I’ll call you and we can get a search team mobilized.”
I was dead serious about that, too. If something had happened to Max, if he’d gone off into the woods and fallen down and broken a leg or something, if he was lying there in the snow right now, freezing to death…
“I’m going.”
It took fifteen minutes to drive to the trailhead—nothing really took more than fifteen minutes to drive to in any single direction in Edgewood. There was only one car there, a very familiar Jeep with nobody inside of it.
I got out of the truck, turned on my flashlight, and immediately started calling. “Max,” I shouted, heading for the trail. There was a single fresh set of footprints in the snow.
“Max!”
I used the flashlight to follow his path, calling his name and getting no response. My heart was racing, and I struggled to keep my breath under control. How far had he gone? Why wasn’t he answering? Did he not hear me or could he not respond?
“Max!” I roared.
“D-Dominic?”
I looked up from the ground, where I’d been focusing all my attention on footprints.
Max was standing a few yards away on top of a boulder at the edge of a clearing. His clothes were covered in snow, like he’d been there a while, not moving.
My heart leaped, and I bit my tongue for a long moment to keep myself from begging him to come down or, worse, shouting at him for scaring the shit out of me.
“Max,” I said raggedly once I had control of myself, more or less. “Are you okay?”
He looked like he was frowning under his hat. “Yeah, I’m fine. What’s wrong?” He got down off the boulder and walked over to me.
“What’s…Max, you’ve been gone all day.” I couldn’t help myself—I reached out and grabbed his arm, needing the contact. “I didn’t mean for you to leave like that,” I said, absolutely sincere. “I really didn’t. I was just upset, and I thought Hal was out back having a crisis, and I panicked, but I shouldn’t have made you feel like you needed to go.” I shivered, and I didn’t think it was from the cold. “You only did what you thought was right.”
“But it wasn’t right,” Max said, unduly gently. “It was presumptuous of me. I’m not a family member, and I wasn’t here for the worst of it, and—”
“Don’t say that—you are family,” I said, my whole chest aching like I’d just been kicked. “You are, and you deserve to be with us. We want you there, all of us, whether we’re arguing or not. The second you stepped out the door, I felt like—like I might—”
The words tangled on my tongue.
“Max,” I said softly, squeezing his arm. Please don’t walk away from me. “Please.”
Max’s nose and cheeks were bright red from too long out in the cold. His lips were chapped, his eyes were a little puffy, and his hair was probably as flat as a pancake under that hat of his. He was still the best thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to pull him into my arms and tell him that, hold him close and spill my soul out to him, tell him that I knew I’d made a mistake but I could learn from it, that I’d rather he never left again, not like this morning, not at all.
“Max,” I repeated, and when he licked his lips, I was filled with the urge to kiss him.
“Dominic, I—”
Suddenly, my phone began to ring. It was Hal. “Shit,” I muttered, pulling the phone out of my jacket pocket and taking the call. “Hey.”
“Did you fuckin’ find him or not?” Hal demanded. “I can’t call the cavalry until I know, and I’ve got three of my guys on hold ready to head out if he’s still missing.”
“I found him,” I said, looking up at Max, who hadn’t moved an inch yet still felt as though he’d pulled back somehow. Damn it. “We’re heading home.”
“Good. Tell him not to drive like a fucking maniac.”
I ended the call. “Hal says to drive safe.”
“Yeah, sure he does.” Max smiled, but it didn’t really reach his