Magic Hour

But you are. She put down her wineglass and stood. She needed some distance between them. “Thanks for all of this, Max. You really saved me tonight. I need to get back to Alice, though. I can’t be gone long.”

Slowly, he got to his feet and walked her to the door. Without saying a word, he led her to the garage. They got onto the motorcycle and drove home.

FOURTEEN

THE MOTORCYCLE’S ENGINE ROARED THROUGH THE QUIET night, loud enough to rattle the nearby trees. In Los Angeles, the noise would have set off a dozen car alarms; here, it fought with the endless quiet of the dark road. Max came to the end of the driveway and slowed down, then stopped and glanced back.

Deep in the trees, the small house was made smaller by the night. All that darkness reduced it to a few lit windows.

I only know one way to love.

All or nothing.

How was it that a few quietly spoken words could hit him so hard?

He took off his helmet and jammed it onto the sissy bar behind him.

Air. Freedom. That was what he needed now. Something to clear his head and erase that moment.

He hit the gas, went faster and faster, until he was rocketing down the road.

Everything was a blur of shadows. He knew he was going too fast—there were deer and elk out here that could kill him in the blink of an eye, and potholes that would bite his tire and send him flying through the air—but he didn’t care. As long as he was moving at this speed he couldn’t think about her.

The minute he turned onto his road and slowed down, though, it all came back.

He parked the bike in the garage and went into his dark, quiet house, immediately turning on every light and the stereo.

Noise and light aren’t life, Max.

It was Susi’s voice. Though she wasn’t here, had never been here, sometimes he saw his life through her eyes. Old habits were hard to break.

No dining room chairs, Max? No pictures on the wall. You can’t call this a home.

He’d kept it bare on purpose. Furniture didn’t matter to him; neither did decorations or comfort. He wanted a place where he could forget about all the things that made a house a home. Here, he could drink his drinks, watch sports on the big screen, and work in his woodshop.

All or nothing.

He should never have gone to her tonight, and he’d known it. After the press conference, he’d left the station as quickly as he could, intending to get on his bike and go home. Yet he’d waited outside, milled around in the darkness like a lovestruck kid.

The trouble was, he knew how hot the glare of that spotlight could be. When he’d looked at her there, behind all those microphones, trying so hard to be strong, he’d made a dangerous turn. He’d noticed her trembling lower lip and pale, pale face, her teary eyes, and his first thought had been that he wanted to kiss those tears away.

For the first time in seven years he’d been truly afraid, and not from misplacing his foot on a rock ledge or free-falling too far before pulling the rip cord. All those moments of feeling he’d accumulated in the past years were facsimiles of an emotion. He’d thought—honestly believed—that he couldn’t feel anymore unless his life was at risk. That was what had driven him to climb rock faces and jagged mountains: the need to feel again, even if it lasted only a moment.

Now he’d felt something again. All he’d had to do was look in Julia’s sad eyes.

JULIA WENT INTO THE HOUSE.

Ellie was in the living room, sitting on the sofa with the dogs spread across her lap. “It’s about time,” she said in a voice that held some irritation.

“I wasn’t gone that long.”

“I was worried about you. The press conference was brutal.”

Julia sat on the overstuffed cushion and put her feet on the coffee table. She felt Ellie’s gaze on her face, but she didn’t turn to meet it. “Yeah.”

There was a long pause. Julia knew that her sister was trying to figure out what to say next.

“Don’t bother,” Julia said. “I just have to get through it. Again. At least this time I have Alice.”