for a long time and he wants to be happy. I want him to be happy. And . . . apparently, your mother makes him happy. He was smiling at me like a little kid, Carly.”
Carly twisted around and fell back against the couch with a groan. “Did he say when they are going to Vegas?”
“He didn’t say and I couldn’t bring myself to ask.” He pushed his arm behind her and pulled her into his side. “The one thing we agreed is that it’s probably time to get Jamie into a living situation where he can have his own space.” That’s how Max knew his dad was serious. He finally agreed that Jamie needed a place of his own.
Hazel and Baxter returned to the living room and lay down together in front of the fireplace. Baxter put his head on top of Hazel’s body and sighed contentedly. That simple canine gesture tugged at Max’s heart. That’s what he wanted—to curl up next to Carly and sigh with contentment. “Maybe we could just . . . continue on. Let what happens with them happen in a world outside of us,” he suggested. Like Hazel and Baxter.
“We’ll be stepsiblings, Max. Isn’t that weird?”
“We’ll be stepsiblings in name only.”
“But in real life,” she said. “I mean, think about it. We go out to family dinners and my mom says, and this is my daughter and her boyfriend, my stepson Max.”
He winced a little. “We’re adults. It’s not like we grew up together. It is completely doable.”
“It’s completely kinky.”
“If we tell people.”
“So we never mention our parents are married?”
He knew what she was saying. It was weird. It wasn’t exactly wrong, but it still left a bad taste in his mouth. “Okay. We just found out about this. Let’s . . . let’s just take it a day at a time for now. Who knows what will happen?”
“So true,” she agreed.
“It may be over as quickly as it started.”
“Or we may be over as quickly as we started,” she murmured.
“Hey,” he said, nudging her. “Be optimistic, for my sake.”
She smiled. “I will try and be optimistic. For your sake. And mine.” She turned in his arms so that she could see him. “What about Jamie? Is he going to be okay with this new reality?”
Max wondered the same. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Hey,” she said, brightening a little. “Here’s an idea. What if you told your dad about us?”
“I thought about it. But I know him, and I know what he’d do—he’d end things with Evelyn. He would never stand in the way of my happiness, no matter what sacrifice he has to make in his personal life.” He scratched his chin. “What if we told your mother?”
Carly snorted. “She would think it was just grand. She would not think of it as standing in the way of my happiness, she would think of it as a party.”
Max kissed Carly’s forehead. “It’s been a draining night. Maybe we don’t think about it at all right now.”
“I can’t stop thinking about it. Do you ever feel like the universe is conspiring against you?”
“What happened to your big girl panties?”
“Hazel has them, remember?”
He kissed her lips. “I have an idea how to cheer us up.”
“Really?” She kissed him back. “It better be good. It better involve sex because I don’t think anything else will work.”
“If it will make you stop thinking about it, I am willing to donate my body to the cause.”
“And I am willing to take it. You’re not my stepbrother yet.”
Max didn’t know what was going to happen in this strange weird universe they found themselves in, but suddenly, the only thing he cared about was making love to her. She pushed him down on the couch, and with every stroke of her hands, he floated a little further away from caring and a little closer to the edge of losing control. It was odd how the desire for her blazed in him each time they were together. Every touch of her lips, every caress of her fingers, stoked the flames. He couldn’t think of anything else, and he couldn’t lose this moment, not after tonight, because the little bird of intuition that fluttered around his gut was chirping that this could be the last time.
Carly suddenly gripped his head between her hands. “This is crazy!” she said breathlessly.
“No, no, not yet. It’s not crazy yet.”
“I mean, what are we doing on the couch with an audience of two when I