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“Much?”
“Fine. At all,” he admits, then sighs. “I know I haven’t made it easy for you.”
“With your game of chicken?”
“Our game,” he tosses back as we exit the bridge, heading into the city now.
“Fine. It’s our game.”
“And you play it too, sunshine.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “I do.”
He slows at a light, then looks my way. “What I’m trying to say is I know this is extra work for you…I wanted you to know I’m not just a jerk.”
I cup my ear. “What did you just say?”
“I’m not just a jerk,” he repeats in a grumble.
“What are you then?”
He’s quiet, refusing to speak.
I lean a little closer, stage-whispering, “A nice guy?”
He flashes his gaze to me, his eyes smoldering as he stares me down. “You don’t want me to be nice.”
My breath catches. My thighs clench. Maybe I don’t. But I’m not telling him that. “It was nice of you to let me in though.”
The light changes, and he drives, saying nothing for several blocks. As we near my home in Russian Hill, he clears his throat, like he’s gearing up for something hard. “Letting people in isn’t my strong suit. Especially after…Lyra.”
My heart lurches toward him. “Do you still love her?”
He scoffs. “Fuck no.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Not one bit,” he says, resolute. “But everything we did was so public. It was all out there. Bane knew where I had taken her on dates. He knew what we were up to. When I was visiting her, when I left. She was the one who cheated, but he was the one who used what he knew about me to seize an opportunity. That’s why I don’t want to put my real self out there.”
Fletcher Bane. A forward on the Los Angeles team. The guy he got in that fight with. The guy who threw the first punch that night. The guy who was then seen dating Lyra a few days later.
Bane and Max go way back. They were drafted the same year. They were top prospects in the league together—the best goalie in years, the best forward in years. They were rivals for media attention even though they played different positions.
While I knew about Lyra and Bane’s relationship, this is the first time Max has said out loud that his ex-girlfriend cheated on him with his longtime rival. I understand him more now. His retreat from the public eye makes even more sense than it did before, and pisses me off on his behalf too.
“That’s terrible,” I say, anger rising up in me over what must have happened.
Max doesn’t sound angry though. As he pulls up outside my building and cuts the engine, he sounds remarkably fine as he says, “It is but I’m over it. I learned my lesson though.”
And I’m pushing him to be public. Yes, I have to. Yes, he needs to be more accessible. But I can see now why he resists so hard. “I understand why you want to keep some things private. Most things, actually,” I say, but a thought tugs on my brain. “No one really knows she was unfaithful. Everyone thinks you were a jerk because of that song—‘Surprise Me.’ You never corrected that notion. Why?”
He shrugs, likewhat can you do.“The song came out three months after she cheated. I wasn’t going to get online and say,hey world, she banged another dude. There was no winning in that situation.”
I nod, my heart heavy. “I get that.” I set a hand on his arm. “I’ve got your back.”
He swallows roughly, nodding. “I know you do.”
Then his gaze drifts to my hand curled around his biceps, then back up to my face. He looks at my mouth, his breath ghosting across his lips, it seems. When he meets my eyes, something flickers across his.
