***Beware, guys. This is unedited, so please disregard the mistakes, as there may be a few!***
Chapter 24
You Hold My Heart In Your Hands...So Don't Clap
I ran.
I ran back across the street, past all of the police cars with their lights flashing, through the front doors of our hotel room, through the crowd that had formed in the lobby, and up the stairs to our floor. I swore I was getting my workout in through it.
So when I made it to our room and into the sitting room area, my heart was pounding. But when I saw Max sitting there with Brielle knelt down in front of him, wiping something across his forehead, I couldn’t help it when a choked out sob passed my lips. His head immediately swiveled toward the sound and he stood, passing by everyone else who had been around him. The next thing I knew, I was in his arms and he was holding me so close to him that I felt complete again, unlike just a little while before when I thought that he was still dead.
“Are you okay?” Max asked. I was still holding him as tightly as possible, so he couldn’t move to look at me. “Callie, he didn’t do anything to you, did he? Are you okay? Did Turner and Hudson get in there before…?”
I didn’t hear anything else that he asked because, unlike what my heart was telling me to do, which was just hug and kiss him and thank God that he was still with me, I didn’t. Instead, like the girl I was for thinking that her boyfriend was dead but was just lying to her for who knows how long, I pushed him away from him and slapped him.
That’s right. I slapped my amazing boyfriend, who I’d thought had been dead for the last few days, across that pretty face of his.
But he deserved it. Yes, he totally did.
“I hate you!” I cried, shoving him again his chest. “Why did you have to do that to me? Make me think that you were dead, that you were never going to come back to me? I love you, but why did you keep secrets from me, huh?”
“Callie…”
“Come on, you guys. Let’s let these two go at it and get everything out in the open,” Dad said. I was too busy glaring at Max to even watch as they all left and went to their respective rooms. No doubt Ben and Drew were going to be listening from behind their door, though.
“Go on, love,” Max said, holding out his arms to his side. “Let me have it. Tell me how much you hate me.”
“I hate that you lied to me.”
“I know.”
“I hate that you went behind my back and created elaborate schemes with both Vince and Agents Turner and Hudson.”
“Yes.”
“I hate that you made me think that you were dead when you really weren’t, that you didn’t even try and contact me in any way to at least let me know you were still alive.”
“I couldn’t.”
I took a few steps toward him, closing the gap between us, and wrapped my arms around him again, pulling his face down to mine. “And I hate that, after all of this, I’ve already forgiven you. Because I love you more than anything.”
“Good,” he said, smiling, too, as he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer. “Because I love you, too.”
I kissed him then, instead of hitting him again. That seemed a suitable thing at the moment since I got everything off of my chest and threw it in his face…including my fist. But he didn’t seem to mind that I hit him. From the smile I could feel forming as I kissed him, I think he kind of found it funny.
And it was, in a weird way.
“Do you want me to tell you everything? I will, and I won’t leave anything out.”
I nodded and he moved so that we were sitting on the couch. I curled up next to him and wrapped my arms around him, wanting to be as close to him as I could.
“So I’m going to start with that phone call I got when we were in India at the Ravana Phadi cave,” Max said.
“That’s one thing I wanted to know about,” I said, nodding.
“That was Vince. He’d called, saying that he wanted to make a deal. He made me think that he needed help with the clues and that I needed to help him. It was either that, or he promised that he would hurt you, possibly even kill you. He said it just ‘depended on what he was feeling at the moment.’ I knew that I had to do anything just so I could keep you safe.
“But that night when you and I went out, it wasn’t Vince that pulled me into that shop. It was Agents Hudson and Turner. They wanted me to help them take Vince down. That was when they put that recording software on my phone. It was programed so that if it detected Vince’s voice since they had it on record, it would automatically start recording, even if the phone was off.”
“Is that why you asked me if I’d brought your phone earlier?”
He nodded, kissing my forehead. “Exactly,” he said.
“And what about that picture of the first golden box?” I asked. “If it wasn’t the agents who’d gave it to you like you said, how did you get it?”
“It was Vince,” he said. “That’s the thing. When I’d left to find you, he caught up with me. He thought that we’d just gotten separated when we were trying to get away from him and his men. He was the one who gave me the picture, told me where the box was. He called again, right before the gala in Florence, to tell me the next part of his scheme, though I didn’t like where it was going to go.”
Max was quiet for a few moments then. I looked up at him and saw that his eyes were kind of glazed over as he looked forward.
“He told me the plan. He wanted me to go down the road that went parallel with the river and drive until he called.”
“So that was it? That call?”
He nodded, looking down at me then. He reached up and brushed his finger across my cheek. “We had it planned. He would hit the car and send it into the water. I was prepared to lose everything just so you would be able to live. That’s what he told me. He said that he would make sure I was the one who got out and that I wasn’t. He promised.”
“And I did.”
He nodded again. “And you did. I saw Ben and Drew with you after they pulled you and Ben from the water.”
Wait…what? “What are you talking about?”
Max shook his head, sighing. “Apparently, Vince wasn’t going to let me die either way, even though he told me that I wasn’t going to make it our alive. After I watched you be pulled away from me, I thought that was it. That everything was just going to go away and it would be like falling asleep. Only it wasn’t. Vince had another plan.
“There was someone on the other side of the car who opened the door. They were in a diving suit and had an extra oxygen mask and put it in my mouth before I could even understand what was happening. Vince had his own boat out there on the water. And once his guys pulled me up, they moved so that none of the police could have seen us.”
“And after? Did he hurt you at all?”
Max shook his head before laying it on top of mine. “No, he didn’t. All these bruises and cuts…they’re from the crash. It wasn’t until tonight that he had his men do anything to hurt me.
“But after they’d dragged me through the back door, I was able to get them off of me. That was when the police and Agents Turner and Hudson got there, too. They’d been following us for the past few days, keeping track of Vince’s every movement. They wanted me to come back here and they promised that they would make sure you got out unharmed. And they did.”
“Anything else I need to know about?” I asked, sitting up slightly so that I could look at him. “Anything at all?”
His smile was tired, but he still leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my lips, only he didn’t stop leaning into me, not until we were lying side by side on the couch, wrapped up in each other.
“Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow,” he said, leaning close to me again. “Because I’ve got some serious make up kissing to do right now, something I’d like to get started on...right…now…”
***Alright, my lovely readers! MLOE is almost finished, though it's going to have to be tomorrow. I'm about to fall asleep right now. But the good thing is, I've only got one chapter left to write because I wrote the last two this morning when I was writing the chapters in reverse order. Weird, right? I'm going to start the last chapter now and write as much as I can before I fall asleep, but I can't promise any uploads tonight.
So in true fashion...30 votes and 14 comments please! :D
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