Max Main ≡ Lois Lane (bylined) wrote in musingslogs, @ 2011-03-25 00:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, lois lane |
Who: Max and Thomas
What: A long time coming; Do you want me?
Where: Aubade
When: Mondayish
Warnings: There is enough crying in this log to drown an entire village
It was the first day Max had spent home with Amanda, and by five o’clock she was starting to feel pretty damn sure that she was never going to be able to fucking do this. The maids had helped throughout the day, thankfully, and she really had no fucking idea what she would have done if they hadn’t been there. She was still stressed about the argument with Audrey and how badly she’d fucked up with Luke, and no one had explained to her that her hormones would be all over the place while they sorted themselves out again. On top of it, she was pretty fucking sure Thomas had realized he wasn’t interested in her, at least based on the way she interpreted his reactions since the baby was born - all chastising and criticism and nothing like heat.
By the time the front door opened, she was ready to jump out of her own skin. Amanda was asleep, the afternoon maid having put her down before leaving, and Max was sitting on the edge of the bed in the master bedroom in a pair of jeans and a tank top, her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, the house completely silent.
Thomas had taken advantage of his returned sight as an opportunity to prove to his immediate underlings and associates that he was watching them. It had taken near three hours for him to actually force himself to leave Amanda and the apartment, and only the presence of a housekeeper, two maids, and Max convinced him that he could possibly leave her alone, and even then his short torturous tour of his offices lasted approximately two hours and thirteen minutes, not counting drive time there and back. He came through the door and ignored everything in his way until he made sure the house was secure with his own eyes, and then he took in a breath and sat heavily down next to Max as if she would be there whenever he needed her. He put two fingers into his closed eyelids. “I didn’t know leaving was going to be this stressful.”
“Staying wasn’t easy, either,” Max said, glancing over at him, then sighing quietly as she tapped her shoulder against his arm with a slow rock in his direction. “I may suck at this, Thomas, but I’m not going to let anything happen to her,” she assured him, assuming his worry was completely for the baby’s safety. “Would you feel better with someone else here to watch her?” she asked almost immediately, because that wouldn’t really surprise her, and it was evident in the flat tone of her voice that she was expecting him to reply affirmatively.
“Not any more than you,” he said, looking at her with a new concern. He gave a little under her sway and then pushed a little back, support for support. He tipped his head and looked unblinkingly into her eyes. “Why do you insist you’re not what she needs? It worries me.”
“I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing, Thomas,” she said, looking down when he looked at her. “I’m not even sure how to pick her up half the time. Luke is eighteen, and I manage to fuck things up with him at least once a week, and let’s not even talk about Audrey. My mother was- she never said a fucking thing, and the General- parents can really fuck a kid up, and I’m not good with kids like you are,” she said, jumping from one sentence to the next, while she looked down at her hands.
“I don’t know either.” He smiled and touched the very tip of her chin with one fingertip. “I don’t remember clearly exactly what kind of things my parents did to make me feel safe. I just have to make it up as I go along. There’s not a manual, remember?” Thomas had looked.
“Safe wasn’t something that happened in the Main household,” Max admitted. “I’m scared,” she said, looking over at him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yes.” He dropped his hand and then leaned his torso back over the bed, comfortable in a way that took him months to learn.
She looked back at him, the gaze more than warm, and then she forced herself to look away, in order to say what she had been thinking about since she’d been sitting there. “I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t gotten pregnant,” she started, stopping for a shaky breath after the first sentence. “I’m not pregnant anymore, and I can’t tell if you’re interested in me, or if you just respect me, or if you just like telling me when I’m doing shit wrong.” There was a touch of a laugh in that last comment, even if it was slightly hysterical and a little off-center. “You’re off the hook, you know, if you want to be.”
Thomas’ eyes came all the way open, and he sat up to look at her clear because he could, and the gaze was unforgiving. “You’re not pregnant anymore, but now we have Amanda,” he said, enunciating clearly.
“I know that,” she said, looking down at his words, even without seeing the unforgiving gaze, because it was an almost-answer, wasn’t it? “It’s not what I’m asking you. I’m asking if you’re interested in me as more than her mother,” she said, the words cracking all over the place, but still understandable.
Thomas looked at her for a few seconds. “I respect you. I care about you, and I did before Amanda. But you also ask me this question a lot. There is something you expect that you’re not getting. What is it?”
“You respect Luke. You care for Luke,” she said. “You respect Audrey. You care for Audrey.” She looked back at him. “I look at you, and I want you. I just need to know if you feel anything like that for me, or if it’s not like that for you, and you won’t ever answer the fucking question, Thomas,” she said, the honesty hard won.
“‘Want’,” he repeated. He was uncomfortable with this, just as much as she was, and he was making an effort to stay present in the conversation. “By that you mean sex?”
“I mean something more than you feel for Audrey or Luke,” she said, but her shoulders had gone tight and tense, and her arms had wrapped around her midriff as if she was already expecting the blow.
“I don’t feel the same for you as I feel for Luke,” he said, feeling as if he was echoing something, but it was true just the same. A slight smile. “Or Audrey.”
“How is it different?” she asked, retaining the defensive posture.
Thomas blinked, and sought some way to describe it. “The attraction isn’t there. The concern is different. I don’t know, Max. I can’t show you how it’s different.”
She did turn around to look at him, then. “Attraction to me or to her?” she asked, her heart very much in her throat.
Surprised amusement. “You, obviously.”
She turned back around, back to him and shoulders stiff and straight for almost a full minute before she moved or said anything. When she did move, it was to lower her hands to the hem of the tank top she wore, tugging it up and over her head. She’d actually lost weight while she was pregnant, and the past two weeks of training showed in the light layer of muscle under the skin of her bare back. Her hips curved a little more than they did before and her breasts were a little fuller, but it was a slight thing, barely noticeable as she stood and walked to the bedroom door, closing it, the baby monitor on the dresser on letting them hear any sound from across the hall.
She came back, and she tugged her hair loose of the ponytail as she stopped at the foot of the bed; she looked at him. “Show me,” she said, voice a little uncertain, a little husky.
Thomas had a lot of difficulty with people in general. He had never made a habit of interacting with others regularly, and since he'd taken on the momentous task of becoming a human weapon when he was eight years old, Thomas hadn't found a lot of time for people, and other than his teachers, no one had particularly liked him. He was too solemn, too controlled, and simply not emotional enough for normal relationships.
Thomas could think of two women from past meetings who had told him exactly that. He accepted it as truth.
Max, on the other hand, he found to be startlingly emotional, even more so than other women. He knew, consciously, about hormones and things, and he knew Max was aware as well, but it was one thing to hear about it and another thing to live with the strange mood swings and the inordinate amount of weeping he had no idea how to fix. The uncertainty in her voice reminded him intimately of that.
The conversation about being wanted came up repeatedly, he noticed. (If there was one thing about Thomas, it was that he noticed patterns, given enough evidence. He was, after all, something of a detective.) About every two months Max was upset, and they had a conversation not unlike this one, and she asked him about wanting her in some way or another--in the house, in the bed, all relational places he couldn't fathom the difference between given her context. Thomas didn't understand how sex would solve this conversation. It never had before. He knew that it would be normal to take advantage of the situation, but the fact remained that Thomas rarely had relationships that weren't founded on a great deal of trust, and in terms of sex life he was only a short step up from brown robes and a rope belt. Sex, to Thomas, was a rare form of self-indulgence, and being the kind of man he was he didn't give into it unless his other faculties were down or he was relaxed enough to enjoy it.
He wasn't either of those things at the moment.
He put an arm out to curve around where she'd been sitting a moment before, eyes familiar and focused on her face. He tipped his head a little in silent invitation.
Max had spent months waiting for Thomas to reject her after the baby was born. He’d never pretended to be in love with her, not before she became pregnant and not after, but he’d become more affectionate, more tactile during her pregnancy, and she’d let herself hope that maybe it was more than the pregnancy that kept him at her side, that maybe he felt something for her like she did for him. The weeks after the baby’s birth had done a lot to tear down that hope, though, and she was smart enough to realize the affection he’d given her had been transferred to the small thing asleep in the crib across the hall, the child she didn’t understand yet. No one had told her that motherhood wasn’t an instant thing, and she didn’t understand that it was normal not to feel instant attachment to a child, that it took time and there wasn’t a right way or a wrong way. She felt, at the heart of it all, like a failure.
When his gaze stayed on her face and didn’t go lower, she hugged her arms around herself, and she reached for the discarded tanktop, which she slid on with a great deal of awkwardness before sitting beside him on the bed again.
He put his arm around her. Thomas wasn’t very good at tenderness, but they were familiar with each other and his strong grip wasn’t as restraining or as heavy as it might have felt to someone unaccustomed to its weight. “I am not attracted to Audrey. You don’t need to worry about that anymore.” A short pause. “Unless you want to.” Another short pause. “What’s really bothering you?”
She didn’t say anything for a long time, the only sound in the room the baby’s occasional hitched breathing in the monitor. “I want the fucking ground to swallow me up for starters,” she finally said, gaze firmly down and ahead.
He, on the other hand, was looking right at her (after checking to make sure she wasn’t staring at anything in particular). “Why?” he asked, honestly surprised. “You’ve seen me without a shirt.”
She almost looked over at him when he said that, surprised, but her embarrassment kept her from it in the end. She took a very deep breath, and she tried to talk herself into just saying what she was feeling, which was hard, because emotions weren’t generally a part of things for her, not before Thomas and the baby. “Because it’s pretty fu-” she stopped herself before finishing the word, not wanting him to get caught up on her cursing. “It’s embarrassing to have someone not want you when you’re mostly naked in front of them,” she said, “especially after having a kid and not being sure they want you in the first place.” She fidgeted with her fingers, tugging at them. “I know you don’t love me, Thomas, but I convinced myself you wanted me, at least,” she said, gaze still fixed straight ahead. “I wanted to think the affection was for me, and not just because I was pregnant.”
He didn’t take his arm away, and unthinking he squeezed it a little before replying. “I do like you.” A line was deep between his brows, and he was looking at her with slight anxiety, disturbed by the way she was not looking at him.
“But that’s all?” she asked, finally looking at him then, embarrassment and hurt in her eyes.
He didn’t want to hurt her, quite the opposite, and looked taken aback, eyes clear. “No, that’s not all. You know more about me than anyone else I know.” To Thomas, that was no small thing.
Her fingers were gripped so tight that they were red from the lack of blood flowing to them, and she unwound them and pushing a lock of hair off his temple. “I meant as a woman, Thomas.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “I mean as someone you want in your bed, at your side, even if we didn’t have Amanda.”
His hand slid from her opposite arm, fingers trailing down her elbow before the contract retreated to the side nearest him. He hadn’t thought of it that way. “...I didn’t build my life with... with the intent to share it,” he said. “It seemed cruel and... rather pointless.” He pressed his lips together.
“I never planned to have children,” she said. “Sometimes things don’t go like we planned.” She looked forward again. “I’m asking what you want, not what you planned. Not for the baby, not for me - for you.” She stood, and she walked over to the baby monitor and ran shaky fingers over it as she spoke. “You said, once, that you wanted me in your bed. Is that just because of the baby? Is there anything more there for you than that?” She paused. “If I left, would it hurt?”
“I’d miss you,” he said, sure of that. He turned on the bed, palms on his knees, watching her.
The longer the conversation went, the harder it was for her to keep it together, and she knocked the monitor over with jerky fingers and straightened it. “Please,” she said, looking back at him. “Just be fucking honest with me. Please.”
“I am!” he said, honestly alarmed. He looked sideways at her with that deep frown. “You don’t think I’d lie to you?”
“I need to know if you want me here for me, Thomas. As more than a friend, or a colleague, or the mother of your child. I need to know that, and from where I’m standing you don’t,” she said, knocking the monitor to the floor in agitation and cursing as she knelt to pick it up. “I need to know, because it doesn’t seem that way right now, and it hurts like fucking hell, and if I need to get used to it, I need to know, so I can get used to it. Do you understand?” she asked, and dammit, she’d promised herself no more crying once the baby was born. “At least before you would touch me, hug me, kiss me, look at me. Now you don’t, not if you aren’t correcting my language.”
“I’m not good at any of those things,” he said, brow fully clouding over in dark clouds of confusion and frustration. “You knew that already.”
She gave him a look that was raw, and open and pleading. “I just need to know if you want me.” And she knew she sounded pathetic, she knew it, and she couldn’t fucking help it.
Thomas was moved, but not enough to lie. He looked abruptly sad. “Not... like the first time. No.”
Even though she’d been expecting it, it was impossibly hard to hear, and she almost lost her footing on a sob as she put the monitor back on the dresser. “I’ll go,” she said, her back to him, shoulders shaking in a way she was trying to control but couldn’t.
Thomas stood up and made an abortive move in her direction. There was some phrase about good intentions. “Do you have to?” he said, without really understanding that she meant anything deeper than the room. “But you’ll be back?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said, not turning. “See, Thomas, I do love you, and I know you don’t understand that, but hearing the person you’re in love with say they don’t even want you anymore-” She couldn’t finish the sentence, not with how fast the tears were falling, and she brushed them off her cheeks. “We both know I suck at this mother thing, and I have to go back to work, and I can’t- I can’t do what you can- I just - Just give me a chance to say goodbye,” she said, almost unintelligibly and already turning to leave the room.
“You don’t suck. You can’t leave.” Real panic started to find its way down Thomas’ spine, leaving him cold. “She doesn’t see me like she sees you. You’re just going to give up and leave?!” It wasn’t anger, he wasn’t processing enough to give it anger. Just fear, really. “Max, you don’t have to do anything. You can’t...”
She crossed to him, and she came close and cupped his face. After a second, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, slow, and damp, and then she stepped away. “Just give me a few minutes alone, please?” she asked, stepping away and opening the door to the hall, her step uneven and swaying as she crossed to the baby’s room.
“No. You’re upset.” He shadowed her at her heel, pushing his fingers over his cheek and into his hair, breath slightly uneven and body positioned to intercept hers if she fell.
She didn’t stop until she reached the crib, and she put two hands on the railing and looked down at the baby, who was awake and not screaming, tiny feet kicking in the air. When she was like that, when Max didn’t have to figure out how to make everything okay, she could watch her for hours, and she had in the NICU. A small, sad smile crossed her features, and she reached down and touched the baby’s soft, downy cheek with the back of one finger. Despite everything else, the expression on her face just then was unquestionable, unrestrained love. "I can't stay," she said in a quiet, mournful whisper, "and it would be selfish to take you." A small gasped hitch of breath. "I might not know what to do with you, but I- I do love you. Ever since that first minute in- in the hospital when I found out."
She walked back to him, to where he stood in the doorway, and she looked past him into the hall. “Take care of the kid,” she said, not even bothering to hide the tears anymore, and looking toward the stairs and Luke’s room - leaving him was almost as hard as leaving the baby. It was, for Max, like losing everything that mattered in one fell swoop, a year's worth of love and family she had never counted on but had come to think of as her own, and her knees almost buckled under the reality of it.
She tried to get it together, to remember her training, to shove all the feelings away somewhere they wouldn't hurt the mission, but she was too raw to manage. She raised fingers that refused to work right to the nape of her neck, to the clasp of the necklace she hadn't taken off since Christmas, and she cursed through her tears when she couldn't get it open.
Up until Max spoke, Thomas had been worried. Really worried. The kind of worry that came from watching Max helplessly try to cope with the separation from Amanda in the NICU, and the kind that came from watching her almost give up on interacting with her at all. Thomas didn't understand maternal binding any more than Max did, and the disadvantage, he felt, was all on his side, perhaps because he could barely remember his mother's face. But Max's sudden feeling, the tenderness, was reassuring in a way nothing else had been. For whatever reason, Thomas was sure that for Amanda, at least, it would all be alright.
Thomas understood the relevance of the necklace, but he was no longer hurt on his own behalf, and he stepped forward to wrap thick arms around her waist and give her an uncharacteristically strangling hug. "You can't leave," he said, not angry but fond. "Look how much you'll miss her."
The hug was surprising enough, and she was raw enough, that it made her knees buckle, and if it wasn’t for his hold on her, she wasn’t sure she would have managed to remain upright. She forgot to fight with the clasp for a moment, and her arms went around his neck and she clung, the grip strong and tight, and she didn’t bother to pretend she was okay, or that she wasn’t crying. It wasn’t like her to let him support her, and for the past few months, with his vision and the hospital, it had felt the other way around completely. In that moment, it was almost like backtracking before everything went to shit. “Are you saying you want me to take her?” she finally managed to ask against his shoulder, knowing she should let go and keep trying to get the necklace off, but not strong enough to do it yet.
He didn't mind; he had a strong hold on her, and he was so happy she really cared for the baby that the rest of it paled in comparison. Stronger, of course, than he looked, Thomas held her upright and then tipped his forehead into hers to smile into her face, all unpredictable pride. "No, take her where? You have to stay with her. She needs you. I can't do it alone. You're the only thing that keeps her quiet, remember?" It was a tease, audible because Thomas never teased and you could always hear it when he deviated. "She knows you. She'll be sad if you leave, and so will I."
If the hug was surprising, the smile was even more so, and Max was so shaken and raw that she didn’t think not to stare back for a minute, her heart in her eyes when she looked at him. “Bathos?” she asked, answering his first question before he continued on. The teasing put a hint of a smile on her lips through the tears, and she pressed her cheek to his shoulder a moment later, rubbing damply against the fabric of the suit jacket he was still wearing from the office. “I can stay with Audrey,” she said, but her voice wasn’t as strong when she said it as it had been. “I can take her, if you want me to. If I stay what-” she began, but she didn’t finish whatever she was trying to ask.
Thomas made a disdained sound for Bathos, or rather, the implied separation. "I understand if you... If you don't want to be around me, but you can't leave. You and Audrey would murder each other and then where would I be?" The grip tightened, and Thomas couldn't be brought out of his happy relief that Max's reluctance hadn't had anything to do with caring about Amanda. It must just take time. "You can't go," he repeated.
The idea of not wanting to be around him was so ludicrous, that she actually pulled back and looked at him like he might have gone insane. It was sheer exhaustion and fear and emotion that made her cup his cheeks without worrying about the contact. “You fucking idiot. I would want to be around you even if you didn’t want me there. Don’t you get that?” she asked, but it was a quiet question, something more emotional than the words intimated. Her hands slid to his shoulders, and she took in a shaky breath. “This feels like home,” she admitted, and for someone who had never really had one, it was a hard admission to make. “But if you don’t want me here, Thomas- how do you want me to stay?”
"I want you here," he said, giving her a strange look that said he didn't know where she was getting this from. "I keep telling you I don't want you to go."
“You said you didn’t want me,” she reminded him, and it was hard enough to say and remember that she looked away again, without leaving his embrace. “Do you want me to move into one of the guest rooms?” she asked, voice catching on the question, body tensing in anticipation of the response, almost like a blow.
"Is that the same as not wanting you here?" he asked, question surprised and honest. He loosened the embrace so be could see her face. "If... If it makes you feel better?"
His question about not wanting her was so simple, that it was pure ache, and she moved the rest of the way free of his arms and hugged her arms around herself so tightly that her arms turned red from the grip of her fingers. She moved back to the crib, and she looked down at the bay while she he responded, her voice quiet as she honestly tried to explain. “When you’re in a relationship with someone, and they don’t want you anymore, it means they don’t want you to stay, either,” she explained, trying to keep it as calm and simple as she could. “Why do you want me here, if you don’t find me- if you’re not attracted- Is it just that you want to keep her in the house?”
Thomas frowned at her, not disapproving, just working through comprehension. "No. I want you here because I value you and not just for sex." He had to be blunt about it but he didn't like it, being old fashioned about some things that he didn't have a great deal of personal experience in (relationships, not sex). "If you... Weren't interested one day, you think I'd kick you out for that?"
She looked back at him, and she would have kept the hope out of her eyes if she knew it was there. “Weren’t interested one day?” she asked, shaking her head. “I don’t mean not interested in having sex once, everyone has days like that. I mean not attracted to the other person in general, not wanting them at all anymore, not interested in a relationship.” The baby fussed, and she reached back without thinking and calmed her (something she wouldn’t have managed had she been thinking). “I’m really fucking terrible at relationships,” she admitted, just talking without thinking now. “This might be the only real one I’ve ever had. Everything else has just been sex, and those weren’t relationships.” She looked back at the crib, voice going thoughtful. “The General didn’t love my mother, and he didn't desire her. Eventually, he didn't even like her." She made a sad sound as she looked down at Amanda. "I remember her trying so hard to get him to notice her. Hair, makeup, clothes, she'd spend most of the day getting ready for him to come home, and then he wouldn't even really see her. I remember her crying all the fucking time when I was little, and then she just stopped one day, and that was worse somehow."
Thomas was discovering that all the strange emotional things that Max dealt with tended to be about this General, and he fervently hoped he never met the man--for his sake. "My track record is not good either. I've never lived with a woman and I certainly did not expect that to change. I can't tell you what I am going to be like 'eventually,' but I keep telling you I want you to stay with me, and if that's not enough, I don't know what else you want," he said, the frustration at having the same conversation over and over for months making it into his tone.
The frustration in his voice doused the hope in her eyes, and she didn’t know how to explain it any better than she just had. That need for one look, or word or glance that said he wanted her, not as a mother or a friend, but as a woman, was something she couldn’t articulate beyond what she’d just tried. She wasn’t immune, however, to him wanting her there in any capacity, and she nodded as she looked down at the crib. “I’ll pay my share,” she said, a statement, not a request. She’d get a better paying job, one with child care, and she’d close the paper, which had already run through her savings.
Thomas didn’t understand this hangup about money, either. He understood not having any, and wanting to earn it, even wanting to steal it, but he didn’t understand why it was so hard to take some support, especially since it hardly inconvenienced him. He sighed and kept his temper. “If you insist. But not hers. She’s mine too.”
The sigh made her smile a bittersweet smile. “Thank you for humoring me, Brandon,” she said, watching small kicking feet and shaking fists. She stepped away from the crib, then and she crossed to him, all guarded, wounded hurt, arms crossed over her stomach. “Can I take her to visit Audrey for a few hours? I want to see if I can fix things,” she said, which really meant she wanted to be alone for long enough to get this hurt out of her system.
Thomas didn’t know about that. He looked from her hurt face to the crib, doubtful. If they had not just talked about her leaving, he might not have worried, but on the other hand, she’d not asked about taking the baby anywhere, even into a different room, before. “You’ll call the driver?” he asked, all anxious father.
Max caught the doubt in his gaze, and she looked down a moment. “I’ll go by myself,” she told him, the pang of distrust resting heavy between her ribs. He’d never distrusted her, not even in the beginning, not that she could recall, and it stung almost as much as the rest. She moved to hug him, just once, and she uncrossed her arms, but the fear of rejection stopped her, and she just gave him a small nod instead.
Thomas hugged her anyway, the happiness that she felt for their daughter as much as he did overcoming the rest of it. “Take the car,” he said, speaking of car-and-driver that took him wherever he needed to go. “It’ll make me feel better just so that you’re together and not driving.” He didn’t seem to hear the strangeness of the request, and he gave her a last little squeeze before dropping his arms.
She realized she was pacing back and forth, stuck between staying and going, and she walked back up to him and looked into those impossibly grey eyes for a second, trying to understand. Then she stretched up and kissed him - one, simple, closed-mouth, tear-damp kiss; the only one since the baby was born - and she rocked back on her heels. “You asked what I want,” she said in one last effort, one last stretch to reach across whatever divided them. “I just want to know that something makes me different from everyone else you respect, that in your eyes I’m here because of something more than the fact that I got pregnant. I don’t need declarations of love from you, Brandon, and I don’t need you to want to sleep with me every day of your life. I just need to know I’m special somehow, that you want me somehow, in a way you don’t want someone else.” Pause. “All I need is a yes, and I’ll stay, and I won’t ask again. And if it’s no,” she said, having to stop to take a deep breath, one that would help her actually say it. “If it’s no, then you deserve someone you do feel that for. Because I know you, and you might not think you have it in you, but you do. I’ve felt it in your arms; I know it’s there.”
It was far past the point where Thomas could really differentiate his feelings about Max and his feelings about the strange pseudo-family she’d helped create. For Thomas, attraction was not a constant, and sex was when the adrenaline took over the constant logistical turn of thought. It wasn’t as if he had a history of relationships he could compare to this one. None had gone on so long, for one thing. Thomas didn’t have a point of comparison, and Max’s request to be special seemed to him to be obvious. If he hadn’t cared about her, he would not have let her into his home, or trusted her with his secrets. He would not be worried about her relationship with Amanda. His assurances thus far hadn’t made a difference, however. Max didn’t seem to see that he valued her over anyone else, and his explanations didn’t work either. He couldn’t think of what to say, and just looked at her with the beginnings of a frown lingering over his brows.
She watched the frown, and she watched for something more, for a yes or a no, some understanding of what was going on behind those grey eyes, and when he didn’t give her one, she touched her fingers to his cheeks, and then wrapped her arms around the nape of his neck tightly, not wanting to let go. She stepped back a second later, and she looked over her shoulder at the crib once more. “I’ll move my things into one of the guest rooms when I get back,” she said, pushing past him, unsteady but quick, and grabbing her keys. She didn’t look back as she took the stairs two, three at a time.