Raging Heart On (Lucas Brothers #2)(121)

“See, fine. I take care of you.”

“Ahhh! Seriously? That’s what you think makes a relationship work?”

“Tess. I don’t do relationships. Fuck, the most serious one I had, was with a borrowed club girl that made me sour on the whole damn deal and it f*cked my life up so bad. I mean hell, I can’t even take you out on a damned date!”

“No Max, you f*cked your life up. You make the decisions you make and to hell with what the rest of us think or feel.”

Her words hit me hard, and they taste bitter. I step back away from her as I take them in.

“Tess, you’re on dangerous ground here. We’ve only been together for a short time. You can’t start acting like you got my shit wrapped around your finger. I am not that man. I will never be that man.”

“We’ve been together almost a month! A very f*cking intense month that for regular, normal people time, is like six months!”

“Normal people time? Bloody hell woman you aren’t even making sense!”

“You need to turn yourself in!”

My head goes back as though she slapped me.

“What the f*ck are you talking about? We’ve been through this.”

“No, no we haven’t, Mighty Mad Max has been through it, and he just expects me to agree. He expects everyone to agree. But you see here’s the thing! I don’t agree. You need to turn yourself in! We need to start living and not hiding, because eventually they will find you, Max. They will find you, and when they do it will be bad. Like epic proportions, bad.”

“Tess, I told you. If I turn myself in, even if by some miracle I make it alive. That would be the end of us. The end of anything we could have.”

“We can’t have anything now! Turn yourself in, Max. You have to; there’s no other choice.”

“What do you think will happen to us, Tess? If I turn myself in?”

“I’ll visit you! I’d still be here, Max. I wouldn’t go anywhere. We could get married, they have conjugal visits and things. We’ll make do, just like everyone else, Max. We’ll make do until I can get you out of there.”

“You don’t even know if you could get me out of there. And no woman of mine is going to come into a jail to visit me through a glass window every week and have guards patting her down. That shit is not happening. Have you even thought this through, woman? What law firm would even let you work for them, knowing you were married to a felon serving time for murder? And shit, conjugal visits; do you know what shit is? That shit is a joke, and I doubt they’d even let a murderer have them. You’re living in a f*cking dream world!”

“No, you are! We’ve been here for weeks, Max! Weeks! And you still haven’t tried to deal with any of it! It’s like you think we can just bury our head in the sand and live in this house and not worry about the outside world. It doesn’t work that way. Eventually someone will find you, and they’ll shoot first and ask questions later! Is that what you want, Max? Do you want me to stand here and watch the man I love, die in front of my very eyes?”

It takes me a minute to grasp what she is saying. She’s yelling at me, and her body is shaking from the depth of fear she has inside of her. There’s tears in her eyes and rolling down her face, and I really think this is it. It’s over. Then her words crash on me. She loves me? She has to be talking out of her head. She’s only known me for three weeks or so. Still. If she thinks she loves me, I need to encourage that. I need to wrap her up tight to me, so she doesn’t get away.

“You love me, Kitten?”

“I don’t want to talk about this with you, Max,” she says turning away to walk on into the house. The sky picks that moment to open up and hard, cool rain drenches us, and everything around us.

“Answer the f*cking question, Tess. Do you love me?” I yell over the hard falling rain and booming of thunder in the distance.

“No, Max! Of course not! I don’t love you! How on Earth could I love you?” she asks, and my chest hurts. I don’t know why it was important, but the thought that she loved me…mattered. Her answer just adds salt to the wound she’s already opened. “I studied you for a solid month, reading everything I could about you. I spent weeks pouring over the laws and precedents to make sure you had every shot of getting parole. Then you take me hostage and wow, look, weeks later and I’m still here! I threw my life away to go on the run with you. I only give you my body every damn night! How could that equal to love right? See, Max? This is why you are a moron! Of course I f*cking love you! Because the truth is I’m a moron too! I’m a freaking lunatic!”

The rain has plastered her shirt and hair to her body. She’s breathing hard, and she’s so soaked I can’t tell where her tears start, and the rain begins. But hope blooms in my heart. It’s a strange feeling for a man who has never had a heart, to suddenly feel.

“Then go away with me, Tess.”

“I am…what did you say?”

“Marcum got us new ID’s and papers. Go with me Tess we’ll cross the border and start a new life. One together.”

“I…Max…”

“What do you have here, Tess? There’s nothing here for either of us.”

“I…Max, this doesn’t solve our problems, it’s just running away.”