Phoebe stays quiet for a while, and I figure she’s had enough of stories and maybe of hot water for one day too.
“And what about your brother?” she finally asks. “Is he ever gonna be part of your family again?”
“I guess that’s up to him, but I’m not in any hurry to see him if that’s what you mean. Real family is blood, but it’s here too,” I tell her, tapping my chest. “I’ve never known it, except for my adopted dad. But if I ever have it, when I have it, it’ll be different. I know it will be.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Phoebe says, surprising me with her answer. Her anger.
“Just because someone’s blood family, doesn’t automatically mean they’re any good,” is all she has to say.
Again, I feel like asking her so many things but I just know not to. Not now.
She will tell me in her own time when she’s ready.
No matter how bad it is, I need her to know I’ll always be there for her, and the best way for me to let her know that is by showing her. By proving it.
Chapter Seventeen
Phoebe
I’m not sure which has taken it out of me more, losing my virginity to Max, the huge steak dinner, or the hot tub with all the talk about the past.
Either way, I’m relieved when Max suggests we hit the hay, and with Trixie curled up between us, I sleep like a log as soon as my head hits the pillow, waking early the next morning.
Never getting used to one place in a single night, I’ve slept well but feel disoriented for a time until Trixie signals me she wants out and I find my way back down the stairs, the whole magical story of the day before replaying in my mind and making me smile.
I’m still wobbly on my feet too, I wonder if it’s permanent, and make a mental note to ask Max if it’s normal to be this shaky after what we did.
I’m sure it’s completely normal, but everything about the man just seems so… otherworldly when I think about him sometimes.
I leave the door open a little so Trixie can come back in when she’s ready, and make my way back to bed and to Max quickly, craving the warmth of his body again already.
Glancing at the time I see we’ve both slept late anyway, but Max seems dead to the world, sleeping with a half-smile of satisfaction still on his chiseled jaw.
My feet catch on his clothes from yesterday as I cross the floor and bending down to pick up his pants and put them over the chair, I see something that stops my heart.
Something that makes my whole body freeze with terror all over again.
Another yellow envelope, folded in half flutters from Max’s pocket onto the floor in front of me.
Instead of getting back into bed or even waking Max up to ask, I just stand there, staring at it until I finally sit on the chair in his room, not daring to move.
Max does wake up eventually, and turning over once he feels I’m not in the bed next to him anymore, he wishes me good morning as he rubs the sleep from his eyes, sitting up once he sees the look on my face.
“Baby, what is it?” he asks me, following my line of sight until he sees it too.
“I’m not mad,” I hear myself telling him calmly. “I guess...I just need to know if it’s you sending all these or did you really find another one when I wasn’t looking and just decided to keep it in your pocket?” I hear myself asking him.
Wondering if this is the moment when I finally get to solve the puzzle after all. Wondering if it’ll be anywhere near as bad as I’ve feared it would be if I ever met whoever’s doing this to me.
Max groans, throwing himself back onto the pillows, covering his face with one and groaning even louder into it.
He’s not the stalker, I know he isn’t
He can’t be.
Could he?
As if on cue, Trixie comes bounding in and leaps up onto the bed, licking Max’s face once he removes the pillow as he forces a smile for her. Telling her she’s a good girl.
“When you were in your apartment yesterday,” Max starts to explain. “At about the same moment you got that picture sent to you on your phone. That’s when I noticed it on your floor,” he tells me.
“I pocketed it, meaning to keep you from seeing it until I got to the bottom of all this,” he explains.
“I’m sorry,” he adds and twisting my mouth as I take in what he’s said I know he’s not only telling the truth, again, but he’s also doing everything he can to help solve the mystery without worrying me about it.