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To get someone to say something, I zero in on Aaron first. “What happened in your match with Maxen this morning? I just realized that I never heard.”
“A draw,” Aaron says. “Spatch called it after ten minutes.”
“Spatch didn’t have a reason to yell at them,” Brock reports. “In fact, they were so fully engaged that it almost looked like they wanted to kill each other. If Spatch had let them go any longer, they both would have had to be replaced for tomorrow.”
“I guess that’s why he didn’t have time to yell at me for being a one-thump chump.”
“Yeah, what was up with that?” Brock had asked the question casually, but his tight eyes betrayed him.
“She won’t tell you,” Aaron hisses. “Oh, she might feed you some bullshit about working out some new fight strategy, but it’s just that, bullshit. Maxen said something to piss her off, but she won’t say what. I know it had to be bad to get into Sadie “Fate” Phelps’s head.”
Brock doesn’t go all protective like I’ve seen him do before when I was slighted. He gets abnormally quiet. First Aaron, now Brock. What the hell is going on here? “What did he say, Sadie?”
“Nothing!” I slam my glass down onto the tabletop, not liking the lie on my tongue. Recanting, I say, “It’s none of your business. Anything going on between Maxen and me is none of anyone’s business.”
“Unless it gets someone killed,” Aaron challenges. He takes things a step further by asking, “So, is there something going on between you and Maxen?”
I meet his disapproving glare and return it with one of my own. “No. And there never has been. Can we now drop this? Please?”
Aaron sags in his seat, recovers quickly, and shrugs. “Sure. Just let us know if we need to kill him.”
Brock lifts his glass in agreement. “Yeah, I could do with another promotion.”
“You guys are impossible.”
An hour and just the one round later, the three of us split off, Aaron to his townhouse in Chic’s beach and Brock to his apartment in Broad Creek. I end up on a bench at Plum Point Park, staring out over the Elizabeth River.
I came out here for peace and quiet but will have no such luck, apparently. In an all-out assault on my sanity, bits and pieces of the last two days punch out at me from nowhere. More than Maxen’s words wreaking havoc in my head, my newfound paranoia has me overanalyzing the odd exchanges with Aaron and Brock this evening. Or were they strange because you’re now looking for ghosts?
Whether I’m paranoid or not, the day’s events have worn on me. “None of your business,” “Unless it gets someone killed.” Hot breath against my neck. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t take back the words. I meant them.”
That damned kiss.
Maxen’s kiss garnered more of a response from my body than the last man I went to bed with. So, it’s just been a while. If you need to get laid to re-center your focus, do it. Get it out of your system so you’ll have a clear head for the mission. It’s nothing you haven’t done before.
Then why does the thought of picking up some random guy make my skin crawl? Because you want Maxen. “But why?” I ask out loud. “Why am I attracted to a guy whose sole purpose in life seems to be to piss me off?”
A drunk on the next bench over answers my rhetorical question, “It’s because you’re a woman.”
Oh my god. Now I’m getting lectured by some drunk rando. This has got to be a new low for me. Groaning into the night, I push off the bench to find somewhere else to torture myself.
“If it bothers you that much, you could always start messing with him,” the drunk yells to my back as I walk away.
At my Camaro, I drop into the driver's seat and sigh. I start the engine on autopilot but don’t engage the reverse. As if the day hasn’t been ridiculous enough, I’m now considering the drunk’s stupid advice.
With the Camaro’s powerful engine idling, I ask myself why Maxen. I’ve already established that he’s built no different than the other male operatives at Knot Corp. Topping out at six feet, he’s not even among the tallest. Sure, his eyes are pretty fantastic, but I can find gorgeous eyes and hot bodies all up and down the coast. But Maxen sees you. To him, you’re not a woman who’s earned her place at the table. You’re an equal that happens to be a woman, a woman he doesn’t want to be buddies with but a woman he wants to fuck.
My breath hitches, and a shiver working through me leaves goosebumps in its wake. “You’re gonna do it, aren’t you, Sadie? You’re going to do something stupid.”
Before I can talk myself out of it, I’m driving toward Portsmouth to an address from my brain’s catalog of personnel files.
All the way from the park to Maxen’s apartment, I mutter curses over my decision but never instruct my feet to turn around and leave. “What the hell? What the hell? What the hell?” I chant as I walk into the lobby.
A minute later, I’m standing in front of the door to unit 505. “Oh shit, Sadie. Last chance to walk away.”
My finger jabs the doorbell before I even finish the self-warning. He could still just be playing you, rattles through my head. I’m about to walk away, but then I hear the lock disengage, and I suck in a quick breath. Too late now.
Maxen’s broad shoulders nearly span the door frame, and a grin fills his face upon seeing me outside his apartment. He’s shirtless and wearing light blue track pants with, apparently, nothing on underneath. Those striking eyes bore into mine as I struggle to say anything. My mouth opens, but my mind is blank, and nothing comes out.
