It was weird to see my mother’s apartment so empty. After she sold our home in Louisiana, she’d been living modestly off that money while renting a one-bedroom apartment. It felt so much like her, even with most of her things gone. Even after she sold and donated most of the furniture and artifacts from the home we shared with my father, the things she kept screamed of her. Like the bone china set they got as a wedding gift. And the childhood art she had framed of mine when I decided to do a fifth-grade expose on paint splatters. Even her DVD collection was stereotypically her. A mixture of Patrick Swayze, Tom Hanks, and Meryl Streep.

My mother always did have wonderful taste in movies.

Although the only smell in the air was the coffee Maximus bought us after the funeral, when I sat on the couch I was taken back. The smell of her perfume ejected from the cushions and filled my nostrils as I closed my eyes. I gripped my coffee in my palms and sat there, relishing the scent of my mother one last time.

“Can I get you anything?” Maximus asked.

“You didn’t have to pay for the funeral, you know.”

“Of course I did,” he said plainly. “She raised an amazing daughter. The least I could do was make sure her daughter wasn’t saddled with the expense.”

I opened my eyes and turned my head towards him, watching him as he patiently sipped his coffee. He stood in the corner, looking over framed pictures I’d already boxed up. That was the most painful part. Boxing up my mother’s life in her one-bedroom apartment after boxing up her body and putting it in the ground.

I stood up from the couch and joined Maximus’ side, taking in the pictures he studied.

“That was me in seventh grade, the day I joined the volleyball team,” I said.

“You were very blonde as a child.”

“It darkened in my teen years. I actually broke a girl’s nose after spiking the ball a little too hard, so I had to quit.”

“You had to quit?”

“It was strongly urged I quit,” I said.

Maximus stuck his hand into the box and pushed the picture off to the side, revealing one that clenched my heart.

“That’s my father,” I said.

“Is he still around?”

My throat choked off my voice as I studied the picture. It was of my dad proudly smiling with me as a baby sitting on the table in front of him. I didn’t look more than six months old. He was such a happy man, even if he started fights he didn’t need to. Even if he told unnecessary lies he didn’t need to. Those were the moments I wanted to remember of him. The moments when I was gleefully unaware of the poison that seeped through his words.

I looked up at Maximus and watched him study me as a thought crossed my mind. Why had I been so wanton for him to open up to me when I hadn’t told the man anything about myself?

“No,” I said. “He passed a while back. Ironically, he was hit by a truck as well,” I said.

I watched Maximus shake his head, and I couldn’t blame him. There were no words for an admission like that.

“He was a good man. He lived a good life. And he loved my mother more than anything on this planet, despite his faults.”

“What faults did he have?” Maximus asked.

I drew in a deep breath before I ripped my gaze away from his face.

“My father was a chronic liar. About anything and everything. You could ask him what color the wall in front of him was, and he’d tell you it was blue when it was really yellow. As loving as my father was, he had his faults. And they led to the eventual divorce of my parents.”

“When did they divorce?”

“Mom kicked him out when I was fifteen, and once I graduated high school she sold the house and moved back here to be near her sister. I found out my sophomore year of college that she still kept up with him. Something I never understood. I chastised her for it.”

Tears welled in my eyes as I picked up the picture and flipped it over.

“My father was a good man,” I said. “But he wasn’t an honest one.”

I heard Maximus draw in a deep, thoughtful breath.

“What about your parents?” I asked.

“My mom is still around. She lives a handful of miles from the office,” he said.

He closed the box of pictures and taped it up while he continued to talk.

“My dad is a different story. I don’t know if he’s still alive, but he left our family for his secretary and I haven’t spoken to him since.”

“I’m sorry, Maximus.”

“It’s fine. It happened, and we all got over it. I have her over to the office sometimes for lunch. I’m surprised she hasn’t popped in since you started working there.”

There was a warmth in his voice when he talked about her, and it soothed my heart a little.

“Christie, I understand if you can’t stay,” he said. “I understand if you can’t continue to work. But your job, it’s still there. You were made for it, and I’m not giving it to anyone else unless you tell me explicitly you aren’t coming back.”

He finished taping the box and looked down at me with wondering eyes.

“I haven’t given it much thought since I left,” I said. “Honestly? I assumed I was fired for vanishing without giving notice and being cross with you for being a drug lord.”

I giggled and shook my head as a grin slid across Maximus’ cheeks.

Colorado was a different place from the city, it felt as if time moved differently there. Even though it had only been a week since I flew out, it felt like years had passed. I looked into the sparkling eyes of a man that had done so much for me, and I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to repay him.

“You are an asset to the company, Christie. I do appreciate your skills and would be happy to keep you as an employee.”

“Is that it?” I asked. “You’d like to keep me as an employee?”

We hadn’t shared another moment since that kiss in the hospital. And quite frankly, I was glad for it. But the funeral was behind us and we were standing in my mother’s apartment packing up her things. I’d just admitted to the first person in the world the type of man my father had really been, and he’d opened up to me about more than just his brother. If we were really going to proceed forward, then we had to start a new trend.

Both of us.

We had to start being honest.

In the last week, Maximus had taken on the task of helping me mourn, plan and set up a funeral, contacting my mother’s friends in her phone, and single-handedly shouldered the financial issues that came up with losing her. He even helped set up shipping to take the things of my mother’s I wanted to keep back home with me. He’d done so much, and showed he cared in such a multitude of ways. And though all of that, to hear that I was still just an employee made me grimace. I didn’t know what I wanted from him, but I knew a working relationship wasn’t enough.

I had made the mistake of storming off at the party because I had pictured him as some hardened drug lord. A violent criminal who wanted nothing more than profit. But that wasn’t the case with Maximus. I’d gotten to see so much more from him, and the image I had of him in my mind changed on a dime.

I couldn’t see him now as anything other than a kind, caring man, regardless of his business.

“Come on,” he said as he walked past me, “I think we’re done here. I’ll get you back to your hotel room.”

“You don’t have to be good, Maximus.”

He stopped walking towards the front door and turned his ear to my voice.

“But you do have to be honest,” I said.

I could look past him being a drug runner. I could look past the fact that he’d hired me in on a lie. I could look past the fact that he was closed off to the personal aspects of his life he didn’t want to touch. I could deal with all of that.

If he was honest with me from now on.

“If you want me to work with you—if you want me to have any part of your life—you have to always be honest with me,” I said.

He turned his head back and continued for the door, opening it and waiting for me to walk through. I sighed through my nose and shook my head, then grabbed my coffee and headed for the exit. One step forward, two steps back.

What the hell was wrong with men?

The ride to the hotel was quiet. I stared out the window and away from him, trying to figure out if I had misread all the signals. Nothing he did screamed platonic to me. Nothing felt like he was simply trying to be a good boss. I didn’t think I was wrong about him. But he wouldn’t give me straight answers. He wouldn’t simply come out and say it.

The first night he stayed in Boulder, he balked when I told him I didn’t have a room anywhere. Why would I? I’d spent every night alongside my mother in the hospital. He immediately set me up in a lavish room, complete with room service and a jetted tub. I tried to tell him it was too much, but he had been insistent. And I was glad.

That jetted tub had caught a lot of tears over the past week.

The room was decadent, but I didn’t look forward to being in it alone. I glanced over at Maximus, wondering what was going on behind those brooding eyes. I wished he would share it with me. I wished he would open up to me. He wasn’t lying to me. He wasn’t speaking anything into the air that was false. But he wasn’t answering my questions, either.

We made it to the hotel and he walked me up to my room. We paused in front of my door in silence and I dug around for my room key in my purse. I’d long since finished my coffee and discarded it, bracing myself for the lonely, sleepless night I’d have several times before. But when I pulled the key card out and stuck it into the door, I heard him turn on his heels to head down the hallway.

I wasn’t going to let it all end like this.

If he was able to leave whatever spark happened between us behind in Colorado when we left, that was on him. But I knew I wasn’t going to be able to. I’d regret it for the rest of my life, not knowing what the truth about him. I knew if I walked away without trying anything and everything to get him to speak his truth to me, he would forever be the one that got away.

The man I’d always wonder about had I tried just one last time.

I took a breath and tried to be brace. Tried to reach down into the pit of my gut and harness whatever energy I had left. I bumped my hotel room door open with my hip and dropped my purse, blocking it from closing. I reached out for his arm and gripped it, then ripped him back to me like he had that night.

That night on the balcony when he finally nodded his truth to me.

Again, not speaking. But still owning up.

He turned into me and I slid my hands up his stomach. My hands rippled over the strength underneath his clothes as my palms flattened out against his chest. Maximus stilled, his eyes piercing the top of my head as I took a step closer to him. Closing the gap between us before I tilted my head up to meet his eyes. I didn’t know if he was frozen in surprise or self-control. I couldn’t read his stoic gaze. I curled my fingertips into his muscles, feeling the unassuming strength encased behind his button-front shirt.

“No man ever made me feel beautiful until you came along,” I said. “Until you, I had to dig down for my beauty. I had to settle for men who wanted me despite my looks. Never because of them.”

I slid my hand behind his neck, tangling my fingers in his hair. He still didn’t move, but he didn’t pull away. The moment felt personal. Vulnerable. Like no one had ever touched him this way before. My eyes danced between his as I pressed my hips against his body. Against the strength of his pelvis and the throb of his thighs. His hair was soft, and I slid my hands through it slowly. Tenderly. Effortlessly.

Then, something in him changed. Like a switch being activated. He pulled me close, his eyes hungry in a way I’d only seen in my office daydreams. His arms pulsed around me, flexing and pulling me close until our lips were mere centimeters apart.

“Such a sin, that nobody’s ever let you know,” he said.

“For once, Maximus,” I said with a whisper, “tell me your truth.”

My eyes locked onto his as his hands splayed across my back.

“A war’s been raging within me ever since you walked into my office,” he said.

No, not said.

Growled.

And the sound shook me to my core.

So, without further pretense and without further questions, I took his hand and led him into my hotel room. I no longer waited for his truth. I no longer waited for him to speak. Because something told me his actions would match the words that had finally fallen from his tongue.

Just like his hand. Just like his head nod. And just like his kiss.