Maxim (Carolina Reapers 10)

Mila grinned, shaking the small packages in her hands. “Graduation presents!” She sank onto the couch next to me, handing me mine.

There wasn’t a card on the outside, so I simply popped the lid on the cardboard box, only to reveal another box inside, this one made from black leather with gold script scrawled across it. I fingered the lid, prying the small box open to reveal…

I gasped, tears instantly springing to my eyes as I looked at the contents. It was a necklace—a thin rose gold chain holding a single charm. An emerald-encrusted four-leaf clover with diamond accents. I flipped it over, my heart clenching in my chest as I read the engraving on the back. My Evangeline was engraved in the tiniest script imaginable.

My Evangeline. That phrase dug up Maxim’s voice, playing it in crystal clear sound in my mind.

“You’re my Evangeline. You’re my first thought in the morning and the last before I fall asleep. You’re the woman who sees me for me—not a paycheck or a status. You’re the only one who can tempt me into eating sweets during the season or convince me to skate in nothing more than my boxer briefs.”

A small note lay beneath the necklace, reading:

You were the only one.

Mila leaned closer to me to examine the box, and covered a gasp with her hand. “That’s stunning,” she said, her eyes full of sympathy.

“What did he send you?” I asked instead of commenting on the necklace.

It was stunning and perfect and the engraving had my soul all kinds of aching. And the note made me want things I know I shouldn’t. Maxim had tried calling and texting recently, but they all came after the fact. After I’d poured my heart and soul out to him and he’d given me nothing but silence in return.

He hadn’t even tried to deny that he didn’t love me back, and that was fair, but damn, he could’ve just put me out of my misery. Tell me that I wasn’t the one and never would be the one so I could stop falling for him harder every single day. And this necklace? That phrase? That made me think we still had a chance, when there was no way.

Did he really expect me to continue with our relationship when he’d given me no signs that he ever could love me back? I mean, ouch. Shredding my heart was one thing, but destroying it completely, staying with him until he found the actual woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with would absolutely ruin me. I couldn’t do that to myself, no matter how much I loved him. I couldn’t sacrifice myself for his happiness. That wasn’t what love was. It was a constant growing, aching, compromising, learning, and consuming effort on both sides. And as much as I wished I could love us enough for both of us, it just didn’t work that way.

His gifts and texts and calls were only giving me hope of a future I knew was impossible. Because if Maxim really, truly loved me, or if he saw himself capable of loving me in the future, he would’ve said as much. He rarely kept anything back, so his silence on that subject was loud enough for me. Maxim could never give me what I truly wanted—his whole heart—and I couldn’t be the lucky charm he needed, waiting around to help him win games by kissing him until he stole my breath…

Heat zipped up my spine, the aftereffects that would never dull from what Maxim had done to me. What he’d awakened in me. There would never be anyone else who could do that to me, I was sure of it.

“Tennis bracelet,” Mila said, holding up her box to show me the sparkling length of diamonds laying on the silk interior.

“Wow,” I said, grinning at her. “You must be his favorite sister,” I joked.

Mila smiled at me. “An attempt at humor,” she said, nodding. “My best friend is alive in there somewhere.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, glancing down at the emerald charm. I ran my thumb over it, the texture sending chills over my skin, as if Maxim had done the same thing to the charm before boxing it up and sending it my way. “It’s hard.”

“I know,” she said. “Maybe it would be easier if you talked to him.”

My heart screamed she was right.

My mind presented me with images of him in that hotel room—throwing our physical relationship in my face, remaining stone silent as I told him all the reasons I loved him.

But to be fair, I had accused him of using me regardless of me knowing full well we’d entered into that relationship under those conditions. And yet, somewhere between using me for a lucky charm and me using him to feel loved by the man I’d pined over for years, something real had happened between us. Real and raw and unforgiving.