Max was Harris’s nephew.

I couldn’t tell if this feeling, thick and slimy and crawling through my veins, was shock at the revelation, or the complete and utter despair of being unsurprised. Of course Max was related to the boss—showed up late, had a bad attitude, always somehow getting ahead.

I’d thought I was getting to know the real Max over this trip. I had only been falling for a lie.

This whole trip was nothing more than a joke. I had never stood a chance at promotion against the boss’s own family.

I was probably going to get fired or demoted. I’d been fucking with the boss’s nephew, and, fuck, did we even have policies in place at work for having a relationship with a coworker? I had never bothered looking into it before.

Max probably knew; he’d probably tell everyone that I had seduced him, the dumb gay idiot, and now I’d be fired, and everyone would know why.

I wanted to curl in onto myself. Wanted to be asleep in my own bed, weeks before this trip had ever happened. I wished I had never met Max Stephens.

We were nearing my neighborhood when he spoke. “I’m sorry,” Max said lowly. “I knew this would look bad. I know what it looks like, but—I didn’t get this job because Harris is my uncle, and it makes no difference, but I know what it looks like, and that’s why I never said anything.”

I glanced at him, then looked away without speaking.

Max slapped his hands on the steering wheel. I jumped, but kept my gaze focused on the blurry scenery outside of the window.

We were only ten minutes out. After forty hours in the car with Max in the past week, ten minutes should have felt like nothing.

Instead, it hurt.

I thought about waking up that last day in the motel, Max still asleep. We had been pressed together, legs intertwined, his breathing deep and heavy and relaxed.

A few times during this trip, I had thought that maybe this something between us—this maybe, this hopeful, this could be—would grow into something bigger.

I didn’t know how it would work, logically. I didn’t know if it could work, logically. But for a few times during the trip, I’d really, truly wanted it to work.

He had lied to me. He had lied to me again and again, and he had wasted my time, sabotaged my career. He had pulled me out of my shell, just to make sure that I’d be stepped on.

My throat felt itchy and full, my eyes burning. I hadn’t meant to, but I had trusted Max. And now—

He pulled the car up to my road. The apartment looked exactly the same as it had when I left. My old truck was parked across the street.

I swallowed heavily. Then I did it again when the first time really didn’t help.

I wanted to throw myself across the car and kiss Max. I could still taste him on my lips from earlier, could feel the bright ache of the bruises he’d sucked into my neck, could still feel the phantom pulse of his warm body wriggling against mine. I wanted to kiss him, wanted to forgive him. I wanted him to come to the hospital with me.

I looked away. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Luke—”

I slid from the car and got my bag out of the backseat. I hesitated before closing the door.

Max’s eyes were bloodshot. His beard was straggly now, in desperate need of a shave. He looked—sad.

He’d always looked like he was one step ahead, like he was telling a joke no one else knew. He didn’t look like that now.

I wanted to kiss him.

I looked away. “Goodnight.”

He called after me; I ignored him. I walked straight to my truck, digging in my bag for the keys. I drove away before Max had pulled his car from the curb.

The route to the hospital was unfamiliar, but that wasn’t the problem—the problem was every mile I drove was a mile I had put between Max and me, a mile that I had left him behind.

I had thought something could become real between us, but now I knew that that could never happen. It stung.

It wasn’t just that he’d lied; it wasn’t just that Harris was his uncle. The problem was that Max was right.

How could I ever commit to anyone, how could anything be real, when I wasn’t able to actually be me?

This whole thing had been a pipe dream.

For the first time since all this had started happening, since I’d heard that Grandpa was in the hospital, since Max had kissed me, I felt myself give in to the overwhelming feelings pressing at my every limb.

I made it to the hospital fifteen minutes later with shaking hands and a red, puffy face.

There was too much to do, too many things to fix, to live in some fantasy world. I was here now. I needed to focus on what really mattered, and pipe dreams, and boys with pretty faces, weren’t what mattered.

At least not for me.