To Have It All(65)

“According to Braxton, you do,” I snapped back. “You bought it almost two weeks ago and spent a fortune on the purchase and restoration. That doesn’t exactly fit in with your timeline.” I argued. “If you are Liam and you didn’t become Max until five days after the accident, why would Max have bought a bike? The Max I know, not one time, ever, mentioned motorcycles.”

He stared at me blankly. “Did Braxton mention what kind of bike it is?”

“Umm . . .” What did he say? It was a weird name. “A pan . . . something.” Then I felt stupid. I was telling him the name of the bike as if he didn’t know already.

“A Panhead?” His voice raised an octave in disbelief.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “That was it.”

“He sent it to Lenny?” he mumbled quietly in disbelief.

“What?”

With furrowed brows, he shook his head. “I wasn’t Max two weeks ago.” He paced the floor for a few moments, then stopped abruptly, turning to look at me. “He bought it after the accident, but before we switched?”

I closed my eyes and stopped myself from letting out a loud huff. Was he putting on an act for me now? Max bought the motorcycle, and now he doesn’t remember? “I don’t know, Max,” I sighed. “Did you?”

Suddenly, his head tilted up, and he let out an, “Ah-hah.”

“What?”

“My bag. He took my bag.”

“What bag?”

“I had a backpack. It carried everything I owned, which wasn’t much, but there was a . . .” he motioned his hand around as if it would conjure whatever he wanted to say, “I guess you could call it a journal.”

I didn’t say anything. I simply crossed my arms and waited for whatever nonsense he’d throw out next.

Max noticed this and rolled his eyes. “Just come with me,” he instructed as he went toward the bedroom and quietly opened the door.

After he vanished from my sight, I stared straight ahead. What are you doing, Waverly, I asked myself. If you go in there, you’re only fueling this. Standing, I shook my head. You have to leave tomorrow. First thing.

Creeping into the bedroom, a faint light leaked out from under the door of Max’s closet. Quietly, I opened it to find him on the floor sitting cross-legged, a ratty backpack opened beside him as he dug through it. Dirty socks, what appeared to be balled-up T-shirts, an empty water bottle, and two books were scattered around him. The sound of me closing the door behind me caused him to jerk his head up.

“This,” he said as he pulled out a composition notebook. Some kind of business sticker covered the front, Uncaged Mechanics. The covers and pages were frayed on the edges, the spine splitting, unraveling on one end. It had seen some use. Opening it, he thumbed through a few pages. “This page.” Reaching up, he handed the notebook to me. There was a magazine photo of a motorcycle glued to the page with handwriting surrounding it. At the top of the page, written in bold, was #1.

“The Panhead is my dream bike. Max must’ve read about it here.”

Peering down at him, then at the soiled items surrounding him, I frowned. “This was everything he had in his bag?” It was nothing and what there was, was filthy.

His head dropped. “It was everything I owned.” With a snort, he added, “Pretty pathetic, I know.”

Something in my chest ached as I watched him. He looked so . . . defeated. Broken. “Let’s say, hypothetically, what you’re saying is true, and you are this man Liam trapped in Max’s body, why would Max buy this bike?”

Raising his head, his eyes filled with something between desperation and anger, he met my gaze. “Why did he take my bag in the first place? Why did he leave me to die? Why did he . . .” he growled in frustration as he pushed up to his feet. “Why did I save his life just so he could end his own?”

Yanking a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, he unfolded it and handed it to me. “He tried to kill himself, I think. I think when he did it, that’s when we switched. It’s the only thing I can think of.”

Taking the creased paper, I read it, slanting my eyes in confusion. Handing it back to him, I pinched the bridge of my nose. He was throwing so much information at me, most of which was too crazy and impossible to believe, and it was giving me a headache.

“I just can’t imagine you killing yourself.” I couldn’t. Max was so many things, but suicidal? I just couldn’t see it.

“You can’t imagine him killing himself,” he countered. “I’m not Max, and the truth is, Waverly,” he huffed, “you didn’t know Max. No one did.”

Glancing up at him, I scowled. “I was married to him. I think I probably knew him better than anyone.”

Stepping toward me, his face was inches from mine. “Don’t you get it? He tossed you aside because you got too close. He wanted you, he wanted a family, but he knew if you ever got to know the real Max Porter, you’d leave him anyway. He thought he could be enough for you, but when you got pregnant . . . it was too much. He didn’t have enough in him.”

My eyes teared up, and I blinked a few times trying to hold the tears at bay. “And if you’re not Max, how do you know this?”

Dropping his head, he let out a long sigh, his shoulders sagging. He was growing tired of explaining; of trying to convince me. “I saw his therapist. That’s where I went the last two days. I wanted to know . . . Max . . . in case I got stuck as him.”