Page 44 of Property of Max
“Foster found it for me,” I admit.
“Oh, the man we’re supposed to just accept knows everything and move on?” she asks with a smirk.
“I see Skip’s been talking,” I chuckle. “Yes, that’s the one. You ready?”
“Just need to tell my brother I’m leaving,” she says.
“Mind if I come say hi?” I ask.
She leads me through her small apartment into what I assume is the main bedroom. It’s big in comparison to the size of the apartment and filled with the evidence of the lived-in life of a teenage boy: medical equipment, wrestling posters, and a smattering of horror-movie art. In the center sits a hospital bed with multiple attachments. One is a larger version of the communication tablet Micah uses on his chair.
“He’s in the living room, ma’am,” a woman in scrubs says from the doorway, smiling. “He wants a word with Mr. Max.”
“Oh, for the love of…come on. Let’s get this over with.” Lila rolls her eyes, irritation and affection tangled together. “Just so you know, Micah’s a character. He’s probably been planning this since last night when he found out we were having lunch.”
“He has an entire speech prepped and ready to go,” the nurse chuckles from behind us.
“Lovely,” Lila sighs.
I grin at the frustration in her voice and follow her out. She stops dead in the living room, and I have to fight a smirk at what we see. Micah sits in his chair, his tablet angled toward us. On the screen: a shotgun, carefully propped across a set of denim knees.
“What in the world are you doing?” Lila asks, her face red.
The seconds tick by before the synthetic voice comes through the tablet.
“I don’t much care what your intentions are with my sister,”he says.“But know this: I have watched multiple videos on how to take apart and clean a gun. If I could move, I’d get it done in seconds flat. Just remember that when you take my sister to lunch. I might not be able to shoot you, but by golly, I can think about it.”
“By golly?” Lila snorts, the sound part amusement, part disbelief. “What are you, ninety?”
The synthetic voice hums again, it feels softer this time, but every word lands like a weight.
“But in all honesty,”Micah says,“I can’t play the actual part of protector. I don’t have the body that would allow that. What I do have is my voice. So let me be clear: don’t hurt her. Don’t make her pay for someone else’s cowardice.”
There’s a pause, the kind that makes you lean in. The tone of the machine almost pleading.
“Her jackass of an ex isn’t here because of me. He walked away. He couldn’t carry the responsibility. I know she tries to hide that from me, but I see it…and I feel it. I remember you from the park, the day you helped us. You didn’t look away. You carried something in your face that made me think you’d stand when others ran.”
The tablet’s voice shuffles, like Micah is rearranging the words in his head.
“I have days when I don’t want to fight anymore. The world keeps hitting back, and it gets easier to let go. But Bree and my sister make me keep going. They are my reason. My ride or die. I want to see my sister marry a man who deserves her. I want to watch my niece graduate and fall in love with life, not men who leave. That’s why I’m telling you now: protect her. If you mean what you say…if you want to be with her…then be the kind of man who makes a promise and keeps it.”
“Oh, Micah,” Lila whispers.
I step around her, kneel by his chair, and meet him eye to eye.
“Are you sure you’re only sixteen?” I ask softly. “Those are words from someone who’s seen a hell of a lot of life.”
The nurse tilts his tablet back toward him, and after a long pause, the voice speaks again.
“I’ve only lived sixteen years, but I’ve experienced more life than most my age ever should. So has my sister. She deserves to be happy.”
“Iamhappy,” Lila says quickly, moving to the other side of his chair. “I can’t believe you’ve never told me any of this. I’m so sorry if I ever made you think I wasn’t happy with our life.”
The nurse chuckles. “Oh, he knew you’d say that. He already has his response queued up.”
Sure enough, the tablet speaks again, only seconds later.
“I know you love me. You show me and Bree every single day how much. But you need love, too. Not the kind we can give you. Not the kind Bree’s dad pretended to give. I mean true, unrelenting, fairy-tale-ending kind of love.”
