Page 32 of Max

“What was I supposed to do?” Max spread his hands. “I couldn’t very well call her out on her lie and potentially cause irreparable harm to her father. He needs calm when he goes under the knife.”

“Fuck, this is a mess.” Jasper ran a hand through his hair. “You have to tell Vik.”

“Yeah, I was gonna call him once everyone settled down for the night.” Jasper rubbed his forehead. A headache was blooming right behind his eyes.

“He’s not going to be happy, man.”

“I know.”

Jasper sighed and leaned against the truck beside him, his shoulder touching his. “You okay?”

Jasper was one of the few people who knew about his mother’s struggle with cancer and how hard it affected Max. Seeing Shay’s father in a hospital bed—hell, just being in a hospital affected him.

“No.”

“What do you need?”

“Not to go back to the hospital.”

“We can do that. I’ll go with Shay tomorrow…”

Max was already shaking his head. “No. Part of the terms of the agreement was that I was with her twenty-four seven. She’s not going to agree to me staying here.”

“Maybe we can come up with an excuse…”

“I appreciate it, Jasper, but we both have a job to do, and we’ll do it. I’ll get through it the same way we got through our time overseas.”

“Mason cooked.” Jasper not so subtly changed the subject, understanding Max didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Jasper might not be his brother by blood, but he was his brotherthroughblood. When you went through what they did together in the military, you came out the other side family, sometimes closer than the family you had waiting for you at home.

Max made a face. “Is it edible?”

“Scarily enough, yes. He made spaghetti.”

“From the can?”

Jasper laughed. “Nope. He even made a homemade sauce. Said it was Jo’s recipe.”

“Then maybe he won’t give us all food poisoning.”

“He burned the garlic bread.”

“Sounds about right.” Max pushed off the truck and headed for the house, suddenly more tired than he’d ever been. “The kid still here?”

“No, he headed to the airport about an hour ago. He wanted to get home to Jo.”

“Cole?”

“He’s sound asleep in one of the bedrooms upstairs. I’ll wake him up in about an hour for the night shift. What time are we heading to the hospital?”

“Surgery’s scheduled for six, so we’ll probably get there at five.”

“Will they let us in that early?”

“Yeah, Shay cleared it before she left.”

The inside of the house was just as homey as the outside. The walls were all done in a soft whitish gray color, and tones of blue and yellow were scattered throughout as Jasper led him to the kitchen. He’d expected Shay there, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“She’s probably upstairs in her bedroom. She looked pretty embarrassed.”

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