The Forgotten One (The Heirs #2)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The press was waiting. Not as many as he’d seen when the news of his existence was announced, but it was Christmas Day.

Max felt the walls that were knocked down slowly build back up during the flight home. Somewhere in the back of his heart, doubt that Sarah was responsible for the article lived. But his brain wasn’t listening to his heart. He needed time. And space.

How much time and how much space was the question.

Ms. Kelly met him on the tarmac and walked with him to the front of the private air terminal where the press was waiting.

“Is there anything you want to add to what I’m going to say?” Max asked her.

She shook her head. “It’s a solid plan. If there’s a question you’re not sure you should answer, I’ll interrupt.”

Max didn’t care how he looked to the people out there who cared about his past. But he needed to make things right for Alex and Chase. As right as he could anyway.

He straightened his shoulders and put on the biggest, fakest smile he could dream up.

“Merry Christmas.”

Reporters rushed forward to put a microphone in his face and yelled questions.

He lifted his hands in the air.

“I’ll take your questions, but first I’d like to say something. So, if you can refrain from breathing on me, I’d appreciate it.”

A few chuckles followed as the crowd backed up.

He took a moment and drew a fortifying breath. “First thing I have to say is ... I’m disappointed ... in all of you. It’s Christmas Day, and your priority seems to be chasing gossip instead of spending it with your family and loved ones. That is coming from a man who hasn’t had a family or loved ones until this year. Let that sink in a minute.”

He paused.

“Someone out there wants to make my life hard. But what they fail to understand is this article, this breaking news ... that isn’t hard. It’s liberating, actually. Because some of it’s true, and worrying about when the world found out about it and what effect that would have on me or Stone Enterprises was a stress. But now I can put that behind me.

“Did I spend eight months in juvenile hall as a teenager? Yes. I celebrated my eighteenth birthday there. No family came to visit. No family welcomed me home once I was out.” Max pointed at a camera. “That’s hard. But that’s not what any of you want to hear. You want to know what my crime was to get me there in the first place.” Max shook his head. “Here ya go. Make sure your microphone is on. You want to get this.” He looked at the reporters closest to him. “I hate bullies. I especially hate men who think they can overpower women and cause them harm. Physically, sexually ... mentally. And when I walked in and found one of the young men in the group home doing just that to a helpless thirteen-year-old girl, I poured that hate into him. Did I go too far? Absolutely. Did the kid I beat up survive? Yes. Would I do it again? I think the question really needs to be, Would you? Clearly, I’m capable. I have a brand-new family. If someone tried to hurt Alexandrea and I was there ... you bet your ass I’d stand up for her. And Hailey ...?” He shook his head and let that one go unsaid.

Max glanced at his watch as if he had somewhere to be. “I’ll take your questions for the next fifteen minutes.”

“Did you have a drug addiction?”

Max looked at the reporter with a tilt of the head. “If I did, I would have no reason to hide it from you now. Was I exposed to drugs while growing up with the ‘court’ being my legal guardian? Yes. Did I try some? Again, yes. Was I addicted? No. I like control better than feeling high.”

“Is it true that Sarah McNeilly is your girlfriend?”

Max swallowed. “Yes.”

“How do you feel about her writing this article about you?” another reporter shouted out.

“If she did write it, I’d be disappointed.” He looked around for another question.

“Have you spoken with her since the news broke?”

“No.”

“If Miss McNeilly—”

Max stopped the question. “I’m done with questions about Sarah.”

“Mr. Smith?”

He glanced to his left. A reporter from a local station asked the question he was expecting. “How do you think this will affect Stone Enterprises’ stocks when the market opens after the holiday?”

Max smiled. “You know I was a heavy machine operator before I woke up a billionaire, right?”

That got a few laughs.

“Alex and Chase expect a ripple, but I don’t really think so.”

“Why?”

Max pointed a thumb behind him, toward the plane he’d just stepped off. “Because news of my getting into a fight when I was seventeen is going to be grossly overshadowed in the coming week. Gaylord Morrison proposed to Vivian Stone last night. The entire family is still in Texas, celebrating the holiday and their engagement. While Morrison and Stone aren’t merging their companies, they are certainly merging their families.”

A murmur went through them, just as Max expected.

“Which is the best news Stone Enterprises can hear. Who better to mentor Alex and Chase, when their own father didn’t, than a family that has been running a hotel giant for decades? But what do I know, right? My steel-toe shoes are still warm from me wearing them.”

Max answered a few more questions until they turned to rumors and speculation, and then he cut it off.

He and Ms. Kelly walked to a waiting SUV and climbed in the back.

“You were brilliant,” she told him. “I suspect the ‘woke up a billionaire’ comment to run for weeks.”

“Thanks for being here. I’m sorry to drag you away from your family on Christmas.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t. I’m Jewish.”

“That makes me feel a little better.”

Sarah sat in the living room at the mansion, tapping her toes, pacing the room ... and sitting again.

She’d seen the footage of Max when he’d gotten off the plane. The way he literally winced when her name was said killed her. He couldn’t possibly think she was responsible for the leak ... could he?

She kept an eye on her watch and kept moving back the time frame in which she would expect Max to arrive home.

Seconds away from giving in and calling him, she heard a car in the driveway.

Standing grounded in one spot, she waited for him in the center of the foyer.

Her car was parked to the side of the driveway, so there was zero chance of surprising him.

The rattling of keys was followed by the front door opening and Max walking in.

Their eyes met but didn’t hold.

Max diverted his amber gaze away and closed the door behind him without saying a word.

“Hi” was all she could muster.

He dropped his duffel bag to the side of the door and tossed his coat on top of it.

His silence was killing her.

Max walked past her and into the living room.

“Max?” She followed him.

He stopped in front of the massive windows looking over the back of the property. “I’m listening,” he said to the pane of glass.

She stopped a few feet from him, felt the cold radiating in the room. “You think I did this.”

“Your name was on the article.”

“Max ... you have to know I would never, ever jeopardize you, us, or your family for a story.”

He turned and met her eyes. “How long have you known about my adolescent indiscretions?”

“Less than a week.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it doesn’t matter.”

“You, of all people, know that trust is not easy for me. Why did I have to read that my girlfriend had uncovered a buried past in a gossip magazine?”

“I don’t care what you did when you were seventeen. If you wanted me to know about it, you would have told me.”

“Well, you told someone about it,” he said, his voice rising.

She could see how he came to that conclusion, but it hurt to hear him say it out loud.

“I didn’t. My contact that was helping me track down your mother found your record and sent me a fax. I didn’t want anything in an inbox that could possibly be dug out of the virtual trash and used against you. I saw the record, barely glanced at it, and immediately put it in a shredder. I don’t know if Patrick saw me and somehow managed to reprint the fax or the machine malfunctioned and spit a second one out. But I didn’t tell a single person.”

His expression had softened, but there was still doubt looming in his eyes.

“Patrick wrote the article or had someone do it and put my name on it. I would never do anything to hurt you, Max. I love you, don’t you know that?” Sarah felt her heart starting to crack.

He looked at her, clearly struggling with what to say and do.

“I have watched your life turn completely around, money, family ... influence, and you haven’t changed who you are at the core, not even a little. You’ve helped me realize that I don’t have to compromise my own moral code to do a job, that the zeros on my paycheck mean nothing if I can’t look at myself in the mirror at night. Does that sound like someone who would write that article?”

He blinked, opened his mouth ... shut it.

“Don’t shut me out, Max. Please. You mean too much to me ...” She recoiled. “Oh, God.” Tears started to well in her eyes, and the back of her throat was stifling her breath. “I’m the one that’s in ... I’m in this relationship ... and you’re not.” Her relationship rule waved a big red flag in front of her face.

She stumbled back a few steps and turned toward the door.

The need to escape overwhelmed every cell in her body. She needed her purse. Where was her purse?

Sarah looked around, saw it on a table across the room, and hurried toward it.

An envelope with the information about Max’s grandparents sat inside.

She pulled it out, left it on the table, and turned to leave.

Tears started to fall before she reached the door.

“Sarah?”

She yanked the door open, stepped outside.

“Sarah!”

Max ran to her and jumped in front of her on the steps to the house.

“Don’t leave.”

She swallowed, hard. “I can’t risk falling deeper. I won’t survive it.”

He took one step up and closer. “I’m sorry. I should have never doubted you. I saw your name and felt a familiar slap of betrayal and couldn’t see past it.”

“I would never.”

Max placed a hand on his chest. “I know that here. But my brain fucks with me. It tells me to trust no one, to only believe in what I can do. To expect the worst of people and I’ll keep the pain away.”

“You can’t live your life that way forever or you’re going to be alone.”

His eyes searched hers.

“I do trust you. I don’t know how to trust myself. I’m terrified that I’m going to screw us up sooner or later.”

She stared him down. “Then don’t!”

Fear swam in his eyes. “I have so much to unpack, Sarah. How can I ask you to stand by me when I do that?”

Was he crazy? “You don’t have to ask. I love you for who you are. Baggage and all. My eyes have been wide open from day one.”

He paused.

Sarah saw his mind twisting.

“I can’t give you children.”

“I haven’t asked you to give me children.”

“You might want them someday.”

“Then someday we’ll talk about it. When you told me you’d had a vasectomy, did I run in the other direction? No. Because much like your criminal record ... I. Don’t. Care. Babies and a misspent youth do not define you, Max. This house and your new family do not define you. Your past does not define you.” She dropped her purse to the porch and poked her index finger at his chest. “The man you’ve become, the one who hesitated to accept his family but who has come to love them, that defines you. The man who just stood in front of a bunch of cutthroat reporters and scolded them for working today and not spending it with their families ... that is the man you are. And you wouldn’t be that way if you’d grown up here.” Sarah raised her arms to the house around them. “You have to learn to trust yourself in order to love yourself. And until you learn to do that, you can lean on me. Trust me. Love me. I want to give that to you.”

Max reached for her hands, held them both.

She looked at their intertwined fingers and forced the next words out of her mouth, knowing there was no going back once they were out. “If it’s love you’re afraid of ... I get that. We can work with that. But if it’s loving me you’re uncertain about ...” She choked on her words and shook her head.

Max released one of her hands, brought it to her chin, and made her look at him.

“Watching you turn your back on me just now paralyzed me. That doesn’t happen for someone you don’t love. You caught me with your first pair of broken glasses. I was pissed at you but couldn’t let you walk away. I followed the Uber that drove you home and then to the bar.”

Sarah cocked her head to the side. “I figured that out,” she told him.

“It worked, didn’t it? The point is,” he said, redirecting her attention, “I knew you were a reporter and could have been completely wrong for me, but I still dove in. I do love you. I’ve never loved anyone, Sarah. Only you.”

The grip on her throat came out as a cry.

She reached for him as Max reached for her.

Their kiss became a vow and testament to what they were starting from that day on.

When they broke away, Max enveloped her in his arms and held on like she was his life preserver.

“I’m unemployed,” she whispered into his shoulder.

His laughter filled them both. “Perfect. Now you’ll have a good excuse to move in with me.”

“You want me to move in?”

He leaned back. Pushed a lock of hair to the side. “I just told you I love you. I don’t want you living across town. I’ve lived too many years alone, and now that I have you, I want you here. I never want to be alone again.”

“Are you asking or telling?”

He blinked. “Which one will bode the best results?”

She tried not to smile. Then spelled out what she needed to hear. “Sarah ... I love you and want you to move in with me.”

He cleared his throat. “Sarah, my love, I can’t stand the thought of waking up in the morning and not seeing your groggy non–morning person smile on the pillow next to me. Please give me the best Christmas present of my entire life and move in with me.”

Her heart melted like snow on a fifty-degree day. “When you put it like that ... how’s a girl going to say no?”

Max smiled, then lifted her completely off her feet until she was practically draped over his shoulder.

“Max!”

He slapped her butt. “Shush.”

“What are you doing?” She had to grab her glasses to keep them from tumbling to the ground.

“I asked nicely. Now I can go full-on caveman.”

Sarah relaxed and tried to make herself comfortable as he walked them up the stairs.