An Ounce of Hope (A Pound of Flesh #2)(46)

He looked from her eyes to her hand and back again, before he took it and squeezed gently. “Deal.”





“You seem tense,” Elliot noted as he wrote on his legal pad.

Max shifted under his shrink’s all-knowing stare.

“You wanna tell me about it?”

“Not really.”

The truth was, since Max had decided to help Grace with her . . . intimacy problem, he’d been feeling all sorts of chaotic. The day after the deal was agreed to, Grace left for DC. Following her panic attack, she’d arranged an emergency appointment with her therapist. She also wanted to spend a little time with her brother, which suited Max just fine.

A bit of space before the inevitable could only be a good idea, right?

He exhaled heavily and clasped the bridge of his nose. Seriously, he was losing his damned mind if he thought he needed space from Grace. If anything, he’d missed seeing her the two days she was away. His run wasn’t nearly as fun on his own. It wasn’t space he needed. It was the chance to contemplate what their agreement meant. And after he’d contemplated, ruminated, and brooded like the motherf*cker he was for forty-eight hours, he conceded that the mere thought of f*cking Grace left him in a cold sweat.

It was crazy. He’d had sex before, for Christ’s sake. A lot of sex before, and he’d never analyzed it as much as he had for the last seven days. He’d had women of all ages, sizes, and races, and enjoyed them, but Grace was different. Things with Grace were different. She wasn’t some broad he’d picked up in a bar and never thought about seeing again. She was a friend.

Once Grace had returned from DC, looking and sounding more relaxed, they’d fallen back into their old routine. They ran, talked, and hung out at her house, even when Max wasn’t working. He helped her paint, hung more pictures, and even took her to the local garden center to look at plants she wanted for the place. Things were just as they’d been before she left, except, they weren’t. Because, in all the time they’d spent together since they’d shaken hands, neither one of them had made a move.

Not one.

Not a light touch, a lingering glance, or even a f*ck it, let’s get down to it.

Nothing.

Max had thought about it. Jesus, how he’d thought about it. He’d watched her work behind the bar, and he’d watched her run, but now he imagined what it would be like to touch her under that skirt she wore at Whiskey’s, or even taste the sweat that trickled down the sides of her face as they ran. He listened to her laugh, watched her throw her head back, and wondered if she’d do the same when she came.

Yeah, “tense” was a great word for it. It’d been a long time since his cock had taken such an active role in his day-to-day life. Ever since his body recognized Grace as no longer off-limits, it had been more than willing to “help” her out whenever she needed.

“Are your meds working? Any more terrors?”

Max began nibbling the corner of his thumbnail. He shook his head in answer to Elliot’s question, pondering whether he should simply tell all about Grace. He knew what the doctor’s first instinct would be. He’d think Max was getting involved in a relationship, which he wasn’t, and he’d explain how it was a bad idea.

Maybe it was a bad idea. But seeing Grace’s face as she told him about what she’d been through and the struggles she still dealt with daily was all the push he needed to help her. She wanted to win, to reclaim herself from that f*cker who beat her, and who was Max to deny her?

“I have a question,” he blurted around his hand. “A hypothetical.”

Elliot’s brows jumped. “I’m all ears.”

“Okay, so,” Max began, sitting forward. “Relationships for recovering addicts are a bad thing, right?”

“Not an altogether bad thing, no, but we try to dissuade patients from engaging in any new romantic attachments. The emotions can be too overwhelming at the beginning of a relationship and have been known to trigger a relapse.”

Max clasped his hands together and let them fall between his knees. “And what about sex? Do you dissuade your patients from that, too?”

Elliot paused, his hand by his face, the pen between his fingers motionless. “As long as you’re safe and honest with your partner, I don’t see anything wrong with your having sex.”

“Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ comin’?” Max asked wryly.

Elliot placed his legal pad on the arm of his chair. Uh-oh. “I simply want to make sure you’re not substituting one need for another, Max.”

“It’s not like that, Doc,” he said vaguely. “She’s . . . we’re not— It’s complicated.”

Elliot nodded but didn’t push. “And she knows about your past, your addiction?”

“Some. She knows about my rehab, you, Tate. I’ve mentioned Lizzie.”

“That’s good, Max.” His smile was proud. “That’s a good start. Honesty in any relationship, platonic or otherwise, is vitally important.”

Yeah, that much Max knew. He sat back in his seat, feeling somewhat calmer with Elliot’s affirmation that sex was okay—not that Max wouldn’t have done it anyway if he’d said no. He was the biggest rule breaker and * there was, after all. But his therapist’s words eased an anxious part of him that had been griping for more than a week.