Maximum Commitment (Sin City #13) - Tricia Owens Page 0,65

that your mother and I are here?” his father snapped.

Max subsided. Why were they fighting? He didn’t know what had gotten into him. “You’re right. You’re here. However, I can’t pretend I’m not astonished that you are.”

“How rude, Maxmillian,” Marcela said with a wave of her hand. Despite the dismissive action, every inch of her strained with tension as though a taut spring in her spine stretched back to Barcelona. “Parents are supposed to be concerned when their only child is grievously injured.”

“I wasn’t grievously injured.”

But something bright and manic flared in her eyes and suddenly, he understood. He wished at once that his initial reflex hadn’t been to question their presence here.

“I’m sorry to worry you,” he said with more care. “My injuries sounded worse than they are. A few sutures only. I’ll be discharged shortly without lingering issues.”

“You could have died,” his mother said in a weirdly monotone voice while her eyes continued to burn.

“No, Mother,” he said quietly. “I was never in that danger. Ethan acted quickly and ensured I received immediate medical attention.”

“You could have died,” she repeated before she collapsed upon his chest. Her shoulders shook with sobs that rang out loudly and raggedly in the small room. “Don’t die, Maxmillian. You can’t die!”

God, Max thought. Horrified, he raised his eyes above his mother’s head as Philip drew nearer. The older man rested a hand on Marcela’s shoulder.

“She wouldn’t relent,” he told Max with the remnants of old grief darkening his eyes. “Once she learned that you’d been hurt—she would have stolen and piloted a jet by herself if that had been required of her.”

Max hesitantly closed his arms around his mother’s shaking form. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when either of them offered each other physical comfort. A part of him expected her to fling him off.

“Someone stabbed my son,” she sobbed against his chest. “He stabbed my only child. My only child!”

Her reaction was so intense that for an awful second Max doubted that it was genuine. But he quickly banished his cynicism. His mother was good at hiding her feelings, not projecting them. Her behavior now was too raw and visceral to be faked.

And it shocked him. It was one thing to learn in Barcelona how traumatized she’d been by his childhood mishap on the train tracks. To actually experience the depths of her feelings was something else. A great sadness welled in him. What a terrible waste all these years have been, Mother. You’ve denied us this for too long.

He curled around his mother as much as he could with his injury. She no longer felt like a cold thing he didn’t know. She trembled against him, vulnerable and hurting. For the first time in his life, Max felt protective of her.

“I’m alright,” he assured her. “I’m going to be just fine. You have nothing to fear. We will be alright.”

“My Maxmillian,” she choked out. “I love you so much.”

A warm hand settled on Max’s shoulder. “Son...we both do.”

He forced the cynical walls down. It wasn’t easy to let his parents inside. Mistrust came easier. He was comfortable with it. But he didn’t want to continue living with it. He wanted to watch his husband hugging his parents and be warmed by it. He wanted his parents to hug him and be comforted by it.

“Thank you,” he murmured, holding his father’s gaze. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

~~~~~

He explained how his injury had occurred, finding some satisfaction in the surprise and admiration that Philip couldn’t completely hide. Though his parents were aware of the function of The Elite Poole Worldwide, Max could tell they’d not fully comprehended the reality of it and the potential dangers inherent in such work. Max being in the hospital made the danger tangible, and so, too, his commitment to his clients.

“You should assign those jobs to your agents,” his mother stated for the second time after Max finished talking. “You’re the agent-in-charge. You manage the danger, you don’t partake in it, Maxmillian!”

“Ordinarily I don’t, but as I told you, it was a unique situation.”

Marcela smoothed the blanket along the mattress, her gaze averted. “How has Ethan handled this?”

“Barely better than you did,” Max said with a small, fond smile.

She glanced up with a quick smile of her own, clearly pleased that she wasn’t the only one with such a reaction. “See? That’s two of the most important people in your life telling you not to take such risks.”

The words circled in his