Kristen Ashley - The Gamble

I turned and ran to the stairs but didn’t get there. Max’s hand wrapped firm around my wrist, I came to a jerking halt and then he yanked on my hand, twisting it around my back, effectively twirling me so my front slammed into his. Then he released my hand but his arms came around me like vices.

“Don’t run away from me, Nina,” he clipped.

“Let me go,” I whispered.

“Answer the fucking question.”

I shook my head but answered, “Arlene told me at The Dog that night when Damon hit me.”

“Christ, you’ve known a week,” he bit this off as if it infuriated him even further.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Please, let me go.”

“You’ve known a week,” he repeated.

“Yes, Max. Now please, let me go.”

“You didn’t say a word.”

I blinked and tried to focus through my fear on his enraged face. “Sorry?”

“You didn’t say a fucking word,” he repeated, squeezing me with his arms on the word “fucking”.

He wasn’t making sense and I decided to attempt to calm him down so I could get my head sorted, plan the steps to leaving him, take them one at a time and then get out of there, out of Colorado, go home and find some way to pick up the tattered threads of my life.

“I know this upsets you,” I said softly.

“Yeah, you do?” he clipped back sarcastically.

“I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“That I know.”

His brows knit over narrowed eyes. “You’re sorry you know about Anna?”

“I know you didn’t want me to.”

His body jerked then he barked in my face, “What the fuck?”

“I know you were very –”

His face was still in mine when he growled, “You don’t know shit.”

I clamped my mouth shut and swallowed. Calming him wasn’t working and his intense fury was scaring the hell out of me. I could feel my heart beating in my neck, in my wrists and even against his chest.

I finally pulled up the courage to whisper, “Max, please let me go.”

“Explain,” he demanded instead of letting me go.

I shook my head, short, confused shakes. “Sorry?”

“Explain how you know I didn’t want you to know about Anna,” he ordered.

“I –”

He cut me off. “When I’ve been wrackin’ my brain since you curled up to me in order to get in Shauna’s face because you thought she’d humiliated me and you wanted to get mine back for me and I knew, I knew a woman who’d stand by me, especially one I barely knew who’d do that for me, thinkin’ what you mighta been thinkin’ after Shauna ran her fuckin’ mouth, I knew what that woman would mean to me, so, once it came clear how your crazy, fucked up head works, I’ve been wrackin’ my brain how I’d tell you about my dead wife.”

I blinked then breathed, “What?”

“You get a hangnail, Nina, you’d use it to drive a wedge between us.”

“I –”

“Don’t deny it.”

“But –”

“And all this time, you knew.”

“Max –” he suddenly let me go and stepped away, glaring at me and I stopped speaking.

“So, you knew the shit’s been goin’ on in my head this past week.”

I shook my head again, those short, sharp, confused shakes. “No.”

“You know how she died?”

“I… I know Curt killed her.”

“So you knew the shit’s been goin’ on in my head this past week.”

“Max –”

“Curt killed her and the week he dies, the week that shit comes back up after years of it stayin’ buried is the week I fall in love with another woman.”

A jolt of electricity bolted through me and all I could do was stare.

Max didn’t seem to notice. “When Mick came to my door that night to tell me about the accident, to tell me Bitsy had to be cut clear and would probably never walk again, to tell me Curt walked away without even a fuckin’ scratch, to tell me Anna was dead at the scene, I knew never again, I’d never let it happen to me again. Then you drove up to my house in a goddamned snowstorm.”

“Max –” I whispered, my breath coming fast, almost in pants but he talked over me.

“Then Curt gets murdered while I’m fallin’ for you and this week it’s been like lettin’ her go again but I could deal with that, long’s I had you, your body in my bed, you bein’ so cute all the time, you sparrin’ with me, all that remindin’ me life could be good. And I had your shit to occupy my mind, sort you out, get you to take a gamble on me and you fuckin’ knew and you let me deal with your shit and you didn’t ask that first fuckin’ question. You didn’t think once what I might be goin’ through.”

He was right, so right and I hated when he was right.

Especially this time.

I didn’t think, I even figured it out but I never thought of him. I was so wrapped up in my own drama, my neuroses, I didn’t give it a single thought. Not once, not even when Curt wrote whatever he wrote in his letter to the man whose wife he killed obviously in a car wreck and Max went so strange. Bitsy had even told me to take care of Max but did I?

No. I just thought about me.

I took a step forward but this time Max moved back and I stopped, actually feeling the blood draining from my face.

“Max, darling –”

“Nope, Nina, no way. Don’t give me that fuckin’ ‘darling’ shit now.” He shook his head. “You were so busy worryin’ about yourself, you didn’t think to worry about me. So that shit with Shauna that first night at The Mark, you cuddlin’ up to me, havin’ my back… fuck.” He ended on a snarl, so overcome with fury and mountain man betrayal he couldn’t go on.

“Max, let me –”

He cut me off again. “You know where I been this morning, babe?”

“I…” I shook my head, “no, I… where have you been?”

“Talkin’ to Bitsy,” he replied, his voice terse. “See yesterday, durin’ our conversation, I realized I was askin’ you to give up everything for me, slot into my life. And I thought, you movin’ all the way out here only to have me be gone, seein’ you on weekends or not for months, you make your sacrifice and what? That’s what you get? So I told Bitsy I’d take the job, I’d take over Curt’s business, I’d stay in town, I’d do that shit for you.”

I felt my chest moving rapidly, the tears welling in my eyes, I couldn’t believe it. Max didn’t want anything to do with that job. He hated Curt’s business. He hated Curt. Curt had killed his wife.

“Please, Max, let me explain.”

He shook his head and started to the door. “Figure this’ll be good, babe, but too fuckin’ late.”

I followed him, calling, “Max.”

He turned to me with his hand on the handle of the door and I stopped at the coldness I saw in his eyes, a coldness I’d only seen once before. Coldness he’d aimed at Shauna.

“Told you, somethin’s good, it’s worth fightin’ for but not if you’re the only one fightin’.”

Then he opened the door, slamming it behind him and stalked out.

My feet were bare so I ran up the stairs, pulled on boots then ran down, threw open the door, jumped down the steps but when I got to the drive I saw his Cherokee disappear behind the green pine and white aspen of his mountain.

It was starting to get dark, I was frozen nearly stiff but I sat watching and listening to the rushing river by my cabin.

After Max left that morning, his parting shot so final, I knew I only had one choice and having only that choice, in my head I broke down the problems facing me then I tackled them one by one.

I called Thrifty’s and luckily got someone other than Arlene who answered the phone. This person had clearly not been informed of the ban on taxis to Max’s house therefore when I ordered a taxi he told me they’d send one and it’d be there in half an hour.

While I waited for the taxi, I made the bed and packed. Then I went downstairs, booted up Max’s computer and changed the password.

Then I wrote a note to Max. I wrote it longhand on a sheet of paper I took from his printer. I didn’t edit it or proofread it, just wrote it and left it on the kitchen counter. There wasn’t much to it anyway.

All it said was:

Max,

You’re right. You deserve better.

Thank you for all you did and for being you.

Nina

PS: Your computer password is Beautifulbluff

Then I got in the taxi and paid a fortune for him to take me to the closest rental car agency which was three towns over. I rented a car asking the clerk where I could book a few nights somewhere quiet, somewhere secluded. He told me he knew just the place, made a call, wrote out the directions, I followed them and I checked into my own little cabin amongst a bunch of other little cabins in a little wood by the river.

Then I texted my Mom to tell her I was all right, not to worry about me, I’d explain later, ignoring the fact that I’d had twelve calls and not even looking to see who they were from. Then I turned the ringer on my phone to silent and put it in the nightstand.

Then I drove to the market I saw on my way to the cabins and bought myself enough food to last a few days, drove it back to my cabin and unpacked it.

I made myself lunch, ate it but didn’t taste it.

Then I took the chair that was on the tiny back porch of the cabin and moved it down to the river and sat staring at the water rushing by, my mind weirdly blank, my body totally numb.

What could have been minutes or hours later, I heard, “Nice view.”

I looked to see an elderly man with a cane making his way to me over the snow, intermittent exposed rocks and dead tufts of grass.

I smothered the desire to get up and aid his journey, biting my lip as I watched his cautious approach, wielding his cane, thinking (what I didn’t know was correctly) from my experience with Charlie, he probably didn’t want some strange woman helping him and reminding him of a weakness he wasn’t likely to forget.

Then I looked back at the river rushing across its rocks, the snow shrouded banks, the green pine trees dotting all around.

It was a nice view and I hadn’t even noticed. I hadn’t really even seen it.

I looked back at the man and tried to smile as I agreed, “It’s lovely.”

He made it to my side and stared at the view.

After awhile, not looking at me, he asked, “You all right, missy?”

“Sorry?” I asked back.

I started when he replied perceptively, “Been on this earth awhile, know heartache when I see it. You been sittin’ in the sun even though it’s bitter cold, starin’ at that river for yonks. You all right?”

I pulled in a ragged breath then I lied, “Yes, I’m fine.”

He nodded and continued his study of the river. Again, he did this for awhile.

Then, after another while, he informed me, “I’m Norm. I’m in cabin number three with my wife, Gladys. You want company, she’s a good cook.”

Before I could say anything, he turned and picked his way back over the snow, rock and dead grass. I went back to my silent contemplation of the river and I stayed that way until now.

I got up slowly, my body creaky with cold and inactivity. I dragged my chair back to my porch and went inside. Instead of going to the tiny kitchen to make dinner, I went to the window, pulled the curtain back and looked out.

There were seven cabins along the river, four across from them, dotted up an incline in the wood. There were two cabins with cars in front. Mine, number seven, was at the far end on the riverside, and Norm and Gladys’s, all the way down on the riverside, number three.

I grabbed my cabin key, walked out the front door, locked up behind me and headed to cabin number three.

***

“I’ll see you at breakfast,” I said to Norm and Gladys as I stood on their tiny front porch, illuminated by their blindingly strong porch light.

“We’ll see you at eight thirty, Nina, dear,” Gladys smiled at me. “Cabin number seven?” she asked.

I looked into the drive area of the cabin complex and saw not much as the porch light was the only thing lighting the large, dark space. Then I looked back at Gladys and Norm.

“Yes, number seven. The silver rental car in front, can’t miss it,” I told her.

“’Night, Nina, thanks for the company,” Norm smiled at me, his eyes searching but gentle.

I hadn’t shared and they hadn’t pried. They’d just given me pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy and green beans and finished it with homemade apple pie and ice cream, all of which probably tasted good if I could taste anything. They’d also told me about their three kids, seven grandkids and one great-grandkid, all of whom where spread across the continental United States, all of whom they loved dearly and all of whom I could probably recognize on the street after they were done talking about them. And this was even before they showed me pictures.