Code Blue

Lexi vs. Honesty

I woke up alone in a strange bed. At least, it was strange until I wearily lifted my head from the pillow and squeezed my eyes closed and opened them again to adjust to the light and realized I was still at the beach house. I didn’t remember actually climbing into bed, so Max must have carried me here after I fell asleep with my head in his lap last night.

After the Dreaded Conversation, we’d changed the topic. He’d given me a change of clothes at the mansion before we’d hit the road – a pair of his sister’s jeans and one of his old shirts – but I was in desperate need of new underwear and the beach house had no food, so we hit the closest superstore. We’d stocked up on ingredients to make dinner and I’d bought another change of clothes and when we returned to the beach house, we began working our way slowly but surely through the Stafford family DVD collection, only pausing to cook a pasta dinner before returning to our comfortable positions on the couch.

It was the most relaxed I’d ever been in my life. We turned off our phones and disconnected ourselves from the outside world – a decision I would surely get reprimanded for later – and it was amazing. It was just the two of us, spending time together, laughing, and telling stories, and just enjoying being together and for just a few hours, I got to experience what a relationship was actually like and hoped that at some point in the future, I’d get to be in one again. And maybe the next time, everything would be out in the open from the beginning.

But for now, the real world called. I had to face the consequences for dropping out of contact with my handler for almost twenty-four hours without any prior explanation, so I braced myself once I located my phone on the bedside table and was unsurprised to find I had about twenty text messages, ten missed calls, and one voice message from Evan. I could tell just from looking at the screen that all the text messages were a variation of ‘where are you and why aren’t you answering your phone’, so I started with the voicemail, propping myself up on my elbows to listen.

I expected it to be an audio version of every text he’d sent me, but instead, the voicemail consisted of two words: curtain’s up.

It took a moment, but I froze when I realized the implication. Through the pictures I’d sent in of the documents on Daniel’s desk, the agency’s analysts had been able to narrow down the locations of the various active shipments, but because they hadn’t yet matched the locations to the dates when the shipments were being moved, they were monitoring all the locations around the clock. The voicemail was Evan’s way of telling me that there was activity at one of the locations and the tactical team was ready to move in.

Which meant that because he had a habit of being present when shipments were moved, it wouldn’t be long before Daniel Stafford was in government custody. This also meant that it wouldn’t be long before Max discovered his father had been arrested and my mission officially came to a close.

So I needed to tell Max the truth about me. As soon as possible. Otherwise Max would find out over the course of the investigation into Daniel’s known associates that followed the arrest and he didn’t deserve that. I had to be the one to tell him; I owed him that much.

Sighing, I set my phone to the side and turned to my back to push off the covers and swing my feet to the floor, noting that I was still dressed in yesterday’s clothes. I couldn’t help but smile as I rubbed the hem of the shirt between my fingers. It was a baseball tee with navy sleeves that Max insisted was old and he didn’t like very much to begin with, but I knew he was lying, because the fabric was incredible soft from having been washed probably hundreds of times. Plus, it smelled like sunshine and ocean breeze. Just like Max.

I made my way to the bathroom, washing my face and brushing my teeth with the supplies Max had set out and deciding not to linger to give myself a pump up speech, because I’d most definitely end up chickening out if I put this off any longer.

So I marched out of the bedroom and followed the sound of something sizzling on the stove to find Max in the kitchen, in the midst of flipping an omelet when I entered. It was kind of a surreal sight. He stood with his side to me, shirtless, his jeans from the day before riding low on his hips, his tongue poking between his lips in concentration as he caught the omelet expertly and smiled to himself triumphantly.

I took a picture of the moment in mind, knowing it was one I’d remember for years to come, before inhaling deeply and speaking. “Morning.”

He looked to the side at the sound of my voice, a wide smile stretching his lips. “Good morning, gorgeous. I was gonna bring you breakfast in bed.”

“That’s sweet,” I whispered, feeling my heart begin to crack, “You’re sweet.”

“I have my moments,” he laughed, turning off the stove and shaking the omelet onto a nearby plate, “Hey, while we’re here, we should go down to the beach.”

“Sure, I’d like that,” I replied, knowing full well that we would never make it there, “Hey, Max? Can you sit down? I wanna tell you something.”

Nodding, he left the plate on the counter and gestured for me to slide into a chair at the kitchen table, taking a seat beside me. His eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Is everything alright?”

That was a complicated question. I couldn’t just blurt it out. I knew I shouldn’t beat around the bush, but I felt like there had to be some sort of buildup. This was big news, after all. “The thing is, you were so honest with me yesterday and I haven’t been completely honest with you.”

“That’s okay,” he shrugged, reaching out to grab my hand, “Everybody has secrets.”

“I know, but not like this,” I insisted. He’d been so completely open and vulnerable with me yesterday and he deserved the same respect from me. “And I can’t keep lying to you when I feel this way about you.”

Now he could definitely tell something was wrong. “What are you talking about?”

This was it; my chance to blurt it out and hope that when everything was out in the open, it wouldn’t be as bad as I made it seem in my mind. But instead, what came out, was, “God, Evan’s gonna kill me.”

“Evan?” Max looked understandably confused. “What does your brother have to do with this?”

“I guess that’s a good place to start,” I realized, taking a deep breath before I continued. “Evan’s not my brother. He’s my handler.”

“Your handler?” he repeated, his face expressionless. “What does that mean?”

I wondered if he could hear my heart pounding in my chest. I paused before I responded, soaking myself in the last few moments of happiness in our relationship before the truth finally came out. “It means that Lowry was right about me. Sort of. I’m not a cop, but I am an undercover agent who works for the NIA.”

There was silence and I waited. I stared at him, watching his every move as I watched for the moment when it all clicked, when he finally processed everything I had just said. It happened over the course of about thirty seconds. At first, he didn’t have a reaction at all, just sitting there with a completely neutral expression. And then his eyebrow furrowed in confusion and his lips parted as though he wanted to ask me a question before his eyes got wide with horror and all the color drained from his face and he whispered, “You work for the government?”

“Yes,” I breathed out. “My mission is to get close to you so that I can get intel on your father.”

He let go of my hand and retracted his arm into his body and I immediately felt as though the temperature in the room dropped by twenty degrees. He spoke again in the same mortified whisper. “So that you can take him down.”

I nodded, bringing my hands into my lap and lacing my fingers together to give them something to do. “Yes.”

Next came the anger. I knew it was inevitable, but I still felt as though someone was wringing out my insides like they were a slightly damp cloth.

“s**t,” he muttered, scooting back his chair and pushing himself to his feet as he began to pace the length of the kitchen. He tugged his fingers through his hair in frustration and scratched his top teeth against his lower lip and spoke in a mixture of agitation and fury and to be honest, I couldn’t tell if he was talking to himself or to me. “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe that I was this stupid. I should have known it was all too good to be true.”

“I’m sorry.” I knew it didn’t mean anything, but I didn’t know what else to say.

He froze in his path, turning to face me, his eyes lighting with fire and his fingers curling and uncurling into fists at his side. “You’re sorry? For what? For lying to me for the past few months? For allowing me to think that we were in this super honest relationship? For f**k’s sake, Evie. Last night I told you that I’m falling in love with you.”

And that was exactly why I had to tell him. Because falling meant that he wasn’t quite there yet and maybe it would be cruel of me to let it get to the point where he had completely crash landed. Or at least, that’s what I told myself to make myself feel better.

“I never lied to you about how I feel about you,” I said quietly. That was the truth, too. Unless I counted lies of omission. Because although I’d never lied to Max about how I felt about him, I’d never told him the whole truth either.

He crossed his arms over his chest and glared at me. “I don’t believe you.”

I didn’t blame him. Why should he believe anything I said from this point forward? “Max…”

I said his name as though I had some sort of defense, but I didn’t. I had nothing more to say. And it wasn’t like there were cute greeting cards to apologize to someone for pretending to be in a relationship with them in order to get information out of them.

This time, the tension in the silence was palpable and I gulped and stayed quiet, knowing he should be the one to have control of the conversation. It took a few minutes before he was able to speak again.

“How do you expect me to feel, Evie?” he sighed. His tone had shifted from aggravated to hurt, the volume of his voice lowering until I practically had to lean forward to hear him. “I don’t know what was real and what was just you playing the part.”

That was fair. I wouldn’t trust me either if I was him. And it sucked because he still didn’t know the whole truth; he still didn’t know how I truly felt about him. But I couldn’t say anything because that would be truly unfair. Besides, it wouldn’t make a difference now.

He paused again, lifting his shoulders in a shrug as though this entire conversation was completely casual. “Was it successful? Your mission? Did you find out what you wanted to find out about my dad?”

I guess I could have lied. But I’d done so much lying to Max already that it seemed about time for full disclosure. So I told him the truth, even though I knew it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “I found his schedule of shipments and there’s a team of agents waiting to move in for the arrest when he tries to move the next one.”

He froze; his face was completely expressionless as he processed the information before muttering, “Shit.” I thought he was upset about the fact that his father was on the verge of facing some serious jail time, but instead, Max continued with, “So that’s why you’re confessing now. It’s not because you care about me, it’s because I would have found out soon enough anyway.”

It was strange that he didn’t seem at all concerned about his father. Maybe Max’s disapproval of the Stafford family business ran so deep that he figured his father would get caught eventually, so he wasn’t so caught off guard.

“I wanted you to hear it from me,” I replied, as if that somehow made it better. But at least it was true. If I had the guts to deceive him, then I had to have the guts to be honest with him too.

“How considerate of you,” he scoffed, his tone now laced with an edge of bitterness. “What do you want from me, Evie?”

I furrowed my brow in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, my father getting arrested doesn’t change anything,” he replied tersely, crossing his arms over his chest. “All it does is make me the number one sooner and you know that’s not what I wanted. I was looking for a way out and you just sealed my fate.” His voice was getting louder and louder with each word he spoke, and then he paused, inhaling deeply before continuing, his voice now soft and emotionless. “It’s not like everything’s going to come to a halt just because my father is behind bars. Why do you think he publically made me his successor?”

So that’s why Max didn’t react to the news of his father’s pending arrest. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, it was that he figured it was bound to happen eventually. It was disheartening to see him so resigned to his bleak future, so I brought up an idea I’d suggested to Evan.

“There’s still a way out,” I said quietly, scratching my nails nervously against the table top, “We have enough to keep your father in prison for the rest of his life, which means that we can protect you if you help us dismantle the syndicate once and for all.”

He blinked, his expression showing no hint of how he felt. “You want me to betray my entire family?”

That sounded shitty. But I had to at least try to give him a way out. “We’ll keep you safe.”

Apparently that only made him angrier, because his eyes flashed with rage. “And who’s gonna keep them safe? My mother and my sisters, what’s going to happen to them when I decide to turn my back on everyone I love?”

“I won’t let anything happen to your family, Max,” I said evenly, not wanting the fire to turn into a full on inferno. “I promise.”

That was a promise I could keep. If what Evan said about Max’s sisters was true and they were generally kept away from their father’s criminal activities, then keeping them protected would be a piece of cake. Claudia was a little harder because the agency would find it hard to believe that she knew nothing about her husband’s business, but considering there was probably no tangible proof to tie her to anything, she wouldn’t get any jail time. I couldn’t promise that Krista and Anabelle’s husbands wouldn’t be arrested as members of the syndicate, but seeing as Max hadn’t specifically mentioned them, I assumed he wasn’t too worried about them either.

But apparently my insistence that I could protect him wasn’t enough. He glared at me pointedly. “Your promises don’t mean anything to me anymore, Evie. You just broke my heart.”

“I know,” I whispered, wondering if he realized that in the process of breaking his heart, I broke my own as well. “And for the rest of my life, that will be my biggest regret.”

I hadn’t really meant to say that last part out loud, it was more part of my internal monologue, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was unaffected. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I just hope you understand. The reason I confessed isn’t because I knew you were going to find out soon enough anyway. It’s because…” For more than a second, I thought about telling him how I really felt; about telling him that I was falling for him too. But then I realized that wasn’t fair. His entire world was about to be turned upside down. The last thing he needed was more complication. So instead, I said, “I figured I owed you that much.”

“I don’t know what else to say,” he replied, and I took that as an indication that he appreciated the gesture, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

“Look,” I sighed, flattening my hands against the table and standing up, “we’re obviously at a crossroads and you have a lot of decisions to make, so I’m gonna leave you alone.”

I wanted him to tell me that I should stay, to say that just because he didn’t know what to say didn’t mean this had to be the end. That he just needed some time. That maybe, despite all odds, the two of us weren’t as star-crossed as we seemed and we just needed to figure it out. But he didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all. And when he still hadn’t said anything what felt like hours later, I decided I could no longer take the feeling of my heart crumbling within my chest, and I blinked back tears and walked out of the kitchen.

Back in the bedroom, I collected my things, packing as much as I could into my purse and tossing the anniversary dress that I was sure I’d never wear again over my arm. And I took Max’s shirt too; the baseball tee he secretly loved. He’d probably notice it was gone, but he wouldn’t ask for it back. Which meant I’d get to keep a small part of him, and maybe one day, the reminder of everything that happened between us wouldn’t be so painful.

I knew I should have just walked out the front door and down the road a couple miles before calling Evan to come pick me up, but I hated this ending. So I paused when I reached the kitchen again to see that Max was still standing in exactly the same spot, frozen and stony faced, and decided that if this was the last moment we’d ever have together, I didn’t want it to be exclusively filled with sadness and anger and regret. I wanted there to be a little bit of hope.

“You know, I never really believed in fate,” I said quietly, keeping my gaze on him direct, even though I was shaking as I held in my tears and he was doing his best to avoid making eye contact, “I think we choose our destinies. I think it’s the decisions we make that shape our futures. I think you can decide who you want to be, Max. It’s making up your mind to do it that’s the hard part.”

He didn’t say anything and I honestly didn’t expect him to. He didn’t look at me either. He just kept staring out the glass doors leading to the beach, as though the ocean might give him the answers to all his problems. And maybe they would. I hoped they did. He deserved some sort of happy ending.

Taking in a shaky breath, I shot him one last longing look, willing him to just glance in my direction, but when he didn’t, I took it as my cue to leave, calling out to him softly as I made the long walk to the door, knowing that I was leaving behind a good chunk of my heart.

“Goodbye, Max.”