Page 59 of Yo Ho Ho
"I can't take this." She held the box out in front of her. "You have to take it back."
He vigorously shook his head. "No, I'm not taking it."
"You have to take it back, Logan."
"No!"
Her eyes went wide and perhaps his did as well. He didn't expect to be that loud in responding to her, and he figured she didn't suspect that either. She stared at him for several seconds, too startled to move or say anything. But then she snapped out of her daze and stomped over to the large gift bag sitting on her kitchen table, carelessly dropping the red box inside.
"Logan, you have to take all of this back. I can't accept it."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Company policy."
Logan rolled his eyes. "Oh, here we go again. Company policy." He put his hands on his hips and stared at her. "What does it matter if they don't know about it? They don't know about me, but you seem fine breaking that company policy."
Max quickly averted her eyes, staring into the emptiness of her apartment so she didn't have to look at him. He was starting to worry about what she wasn't saying. This wasn't just about the gift he brought over.
"What aren't you saying, Max?"
She took a deep breath and turned back to him. He finally realized that her eyes were a bit puffy, that they glistened with moisture. She seemed determined to keep her composure and not let her emotions break free, but he could tell she was emotional.
"This was a mistake," she said quietly.
"What was a mistake?"
"Us. This. It was just a bad idea from the beginning."
Logan rubbed his hands over the scruff on his cheeks, taking a deep breath to try and calm himself down. What the hell was going on? Standing in front of him was a woman who had affected him in a way that no one else ever had, and she was telling him it was all a mistake. She was lying. She had to be lying. At the very least, he wasn't going to agree to that. The two of them together was not a bad idea. It wasn't a mistake. It was two people who cared about each other, and there was nothing she could say to convince him otherwise.
"Why would you say this is a bad idea?" he asked her. "Is this about your job?"
"It's just—"
"I mean, I don't want to have this fight with you again. I sounded like an idiot when we talked about this in the parking lot. I hurt you that day, and I don't want to do that again, Max."
She ducked her head. "I know."
"So what's going on?" he asked. "I mean, I can stay away for a few more days. I would do that for you, Max, if that's what you want."
She shook her head and looked back up at him. "It can't be for just a few days. It has to be more than that."
Logan felt like he had been punched in the gut. He felt like he was going to be swallowed by a big hole in the floor. His legs almost started to give way and he had to take a deep breath to clear his head from the craziness going on in his brain.
"I don't understand. What do you mean by 'more than that'?"
"We can't see each other anymore, Logan." She took a deep breath and stuffed her hands in pockets of her hoodie. "I've been thinking about what I'm going to do next and I don't know what that will be. But I know if I want to keep writing about hockey, I can't be with you."
"So just because you can't take a bottle of champagne that we bought for you, that means you can never be with me?"
"Kind of, yeah." Max took a few steps into her apartment, putting more distance between them. "If I want to get any kind of journalism job, that will always be hanging over my head. They'll always say, 'Well, she's a great writer, but remember when she dated Logan Moore?'"
"And that's a bad thing?"
She threw her hands up. "Yeah, that's a bad thing. It shows I don't know how to separate my professional life from my personal life, that I lack judgment."
"You lack judgment because you're with me?" he asked incredulously.
