Page 129 of Last Shot

Max stepped closer, that Christmas paper scent she’d tried to ignore, to cast away, wrapping her up in its headiness.

She didn’t know if he was talking about the man he’d thought was his real father, or Giovanni, or Sophie, or if he meant the life he’d thought he’d planned and analysed and curated so meticulously – only to discover a lot of it had been shadow puppets against a bedsheet.

But now the sheet was on the floor, the lights were on, and they were both standing in front of their lives, looking at everything from a new angle.

‘Max ...’ His voice was weak. ‘I swear to god if you get any closer ...’

‘What?’ she whispered in his ear. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘You don’t ... I’m not ... You should go, you’re upset.’

‘So are you.’

‘But I’m ... I can’t—’ He closed his eyes, his hands falling from her shoulders. ‘I’m exhausted. I have no willpower around you right now. And I know I’m not who you thought I was, I know—’

‘You know nothing, you ginormous idiot,’ she said. ‘Haven’t I shown that I want you? Only you? How many times do you realistically expect me to save your goddamn life before you realise that I ...’

She stopped herself, suddenly shy. She’d almost said what she’d said in the passageway, holding the gun up to Frankie. She’d almost said she was in love with him. And she’d only been brave enough to say it back then because she thought she was about to die.

But that had almost been easier than what she hadn’t asked yet.

‘Did you wish it had been real?’ she asked. ‘With Sophie?’

‘It was never real,’ he said. ‘It was never this. You’re not Plan B, Max. You’re not aplan,you’re a goddamn lightning strike in a clear sky. You burned down my life. My pretend, grey lie of a life.’

‘But you love plans.’

‘I loveyou.’ It slipped out in that grizzly, frustrated way he’d spoken to her that first night, back when they were strangers.

Her breath caught, the point of the glass shard edging out of her heart, slowly, painlessly.

‘And I trust you.’ His brown, forest-floor eyes locked on hers. ‘I trust you more than I trust myself.’

And only he could know those were the words she needed. Only he knew that was the last piece, the last key, the last shot left in the gun.

She brought his mouth down to hers and fired.

45

Max

This was different to the mud room; Max felt it in her bones. Now there was nothing between them – these were their rawest, truest forms, crawling out of the exoskeletons they’d built around themselves to defend against the rest of the world.

Now it was just the two of them.

Grey knew where to kiss her as though the parts of her skin glowed, ready for his lips. They’d somehow fallen to the couch, her straddling him in her (Nella’s) pyjama shorts. His hands moved seamlessly from her back up under the flimsy lace of the top, brushing over her nipples and stroking the warm underside of her breasts. She shuddered, but it wasn’t because she was cold.

‘You drive me crazy,’ he whispered in between kisses as his mouth tracked down her middle. ‘You’re so beautiful, it’s hurt me every day.’ His journey brought him to the soft part of her stomach above her underwear, his lips pausing over the thin white scar on the right side of her abdomen. ‘Knife fight?’ He grinned up at her.

‘Appendicitis, age six.’ She pushed him back so he was lying flat across the couch. Together they shucked off his shirt and she started mapping her new territory. Running and fixing the odd vine pole surely did not sculpt this kind of ridiculous form on its own. Every part of Grey was perfectly curated and controlled, down to the angle of his abdominals.

‘Ridiculous.’ She shook her head as she traced the dips and planes of his golden brown skin.

‘What’s ridiculous,’ he said, although his mouth was curving in satisfaction of her approval, ‘is that you’re not kissing me anymore.’

‘I need a minute,’ she growled, hands pawing and cataloguing. ‘You’ve kept me away fromthis’—she traced her fingers over the ridges of his stomach, up to the plateaus of his chest, a landscape she’d never dreamed she could visit, let alone return to—‘for too long.’

He dipped his head, shy or humble or just plain ignorant of the effect his meticulously sculpted body had on her. She didn’t care.

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