Okay, so I was really meaning to thank you individually. But it's like 10.30 p.m. and it's really really hot and I'm really really warm and really really tired since I only slept two hours this night, since it's really really hot outside. Well, you get the picture
Anyway... I have a new chapter for you... The big talk is coming up...or not? Well...
Thank you all so very much for your feedback! A big "Hi" to all new readers!!
Here's the next part!
Chapter 21
“Hi Max.”
Max turned around towards the voice. “Oh, hi Madison.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Max answered guardedly. Everyone had asked him that today. Did he have a sign on his forehead saying that he needed their pity?
The dark-haired woman bit her lip and looked at him worriedly. “Did something happen, Max?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“You seem different.”
He could always expect honesty from Madison. She didn’t know the concept of sugar-coating.
“I’m just a little tired,” Max answered.
She observed him through squinted eyes. “You look tired,” she confirmed. “Why don’t you skip the conference this afternoon and go home?”
“I can’t do that,” Max objected. Then he would be home too early. Then he would have even less time to avoid confrontation with Liz. It was weird in a way, because he feared facing Liz again just as much as he wanted to see her. He longed to look into those dark eyes of hers and lose himself in the emotions there. But he also knew that when he met her again he could easily accidentally reveal something to her, something that could destroy her image of him and scare her away. The thought of her disappearing from his life terrified him.
“I’ll cover for you,” Madison said. He jumped when she put a hand on his arm and she looked at him with surprise. “Max, you need to sleep. You cannot push yourself this hard. You have to rest.”
“I know,” Max answered. “There is just so much I have to do.”
”Like what?” Madison inquired. He could tell from the tone of her voice that she knew just as well as he that there really wasn’t that much he needed to do. When he didn’t answer, Madison continued for him. “You have already done everything you need to do, Max. I know, because no one can work that hard without having finished everything.”
“I still have some planning to do,” Max said, trying to sneak out of the trap Madison was setting up for him.
“You have already planned everything six months ahead. Max, listen to me. This is serious. You’re going to have a breakdown soon if you don’t rest.”
Her compassionate eyes tried to capture his, but he looked away. Her compassion was smothering him and he felt the sudden need for air.
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “I need to…”
And before Madison had the chance to stop him, he had disappeared out through the door. She sighed and turned into the direction of her room, knowing that there wasn’t anything else she could do for him right now.
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Max’s steps were heavy when he walked up the graveled path to his front door. All day he had thought about what Liz wanted to tell him. Everything he could think about ended with the same ending. That she would say that she couldn’t see him anymore and she would leave. His mind had tried to convince him that he should be relieved about her reaching that decision, so that he didn’t have to, but his heart was being louder. He didn’t want her to leave, which made it so much harder because he knew that he eventually needed to break the bonds.
He hauled up his key from the pocket and unlocked the door. Slowly pushing the door open, the sound of the TV reached him. He untied his shoes and with a heavy heart walked towards the sound. He found her on the couch. Asleep.
He stopped dead at the sight, his breath catching in his throat and his heart starting to beat erratically. The sight was disturbing but at the same time beautiful. She was curled up in one of the big armchairs, her knees resting against one side of the armrest and her head hanging resting loosely against the back of the armchair. He was immediately catapulted back to last night, when he had found her in his bed, with only a vague memory of what she was really doing there. The feeling of her soft skin under his cheek was forever imprinted in his mind as he had woken up with his head resting against her chest. Her arms had been wrapped around him and he had been filled with a strange feeling of safety. As if she would protect him against anything. It had been the image of his late wife flashing before his eyes, making him nauseous with guilt and shame, which had forced him to move her. She couldn’t stay there, not in the same bed that he had shared with his wife. So he had cradled her in his arms and carried her back into the guestroom. In the two years he had slept alone in his bed, had he never felt as lonely as he did when he returned after moving her. The warmth of her still lingered in the bed and the soft fragrance of vanilla hung in the air.
He shook the memories out of his mind by a shake of his head and quietly moved to pick up a blanket from the couch. He stopped in front of her, his eyes moving over her and the pain in him intensified. He didn’t want to let go of Tess. He didn’t want to forget. But when he looked at her, when he looked at Liz, he so desperately wanted to move on with his life. He unfolded the blanket and spread it out over her. Her sleepy voice startled him.
“Max?”
Her eyes blinked a couple of times before she opened them and lifted her head and focused on him. His heart skipped a beat and his breath got lost in his throat.
“Hi.”
“You’re home early.”
He swallowed. It sounded so right to hear her say ‘home’ like that. And that frightened him. “I skipped the conference.”
“Oh,” she said and gave him a weak smile, which didn’t meet her eyes. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was just as nervous as he was. But what could she be nervous about? She was only going to tell him that she couldn’t see him anymore, that she didn’t want any strings attached to him and that she wished that she had never met him.
Suddenly, the room felt suffocating and he looked away. He just realized that he couldn’t do this. He couldn’t hear what she was going to say. How had he ended up here, in the midst of the reality he had been so careful to avoid the last couple of years? He felt a sudden longing to return to the cocoon where he normally spent his life, separated from the rest of the world.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” His voice sounded deflated, even to his ears, and he could tell by the worried shift of emotions in Liz’s eyes that she had noticed it too.
“That’s okay,” she whispered and slowly straightened up into a sitting position.
“Can I get you anything?” Max asked. For some reason, he felt the need to get out of there while he still had the chance. As if an impending disaster was waiting for one little false move to strike.
She smiled softly. “You can sit down for a second.”
He could feel her eyes move over him as he was being torn between letting go and moving on.
“Please.”
The soft plea was his undoing and he nodded, slowly lowering himself on the couch. He looked up to see Liz wet her lips. His heart was throbbing in his chest, the fear of what her fidgeting fingers meant. He met her eyes and forcefully willed every thought of resistance to the back of his head. He needed to listen to her now. She needed to tell him something and she had already helped him so much. He wanted to listen to her. He wanted to taste her words, feel them vibrate in the air against his lips. He wanted her soft velvet voice to grace his ears. He wanted the emotions in her voice to become absorbed by his body. He wanted them to drift into his system, into his blood. He wanted her every thought to nestle in every cell of his body. He wanted her essence to blossom in his heart.
But his mind was strong. The memories of a life lived and killed in one heartbeat too vivid and too close. He wanted to push her away just as much as he wanted her closer.
“Do you remember Disneyland?” Liz asked.
Max could feel himself relaxing a little, but apprehension was still holding his mind and heart hostage, and he was still looking at how she was twirling the small ring around her pinkie with suspicion.
Round and round. Back and forward.
“Of course,” Max answered, his voice betraying nothing of the mess of emotions inside of him. His mouth shifted into a half-smile as he thought about what the conversation about Disneyland truly had meant to him. “We went there sometimes.”
She smiled weakly, her fingers fidgeting nervously, and she let her eyes drop to the carpet. But not before Max was able to see the raw fear in her eyes.
“Liz, what is it?”
Suddenly he had this feeling that she wasn’t about to tell him that she didn’t want them to see each other ever again. That she wasn’t nervous because she intended to tell him that she wasn’t willing to invest anything with a man who was still living in the past. This was about something else.
“Max,” she looked up at him and her eyes met him one intense second, before she moved them to look at some point behind his head. “I need to tell you something.”
“Okay,” his voice was barely a whisper when he answered her.
“I want to be honest with you.”
He nodded mutely. She looked down at the ring she was turning around her pinkie, but she wasn’t seeing the ring. She was seeing a past she hated as much as it was impossible for her to escape it.
“I realize that this might be a little stupid, but I feel like…like… “ she looked up to look him straight into his eyes, “We have only known each other for a couple of days. We have only met on three occasions before I came here. You should be a mere stranger to me.” She paused and searched his face. He was waiting for what she was about to say. Would she confirm what his heart had already told him, or would she refute it all in a couple of words? “But you’re not.”
Still, her reply surprised him. And he could do nothing but wordlessly stare at her when she continued to speak.
“I feel things, Max. Things I’ve never felt before…” she rolled her eyes heavenwards “God, I sound ridiculous.” But Max could see the veil of tears in her eyes, which strongly emphasized the sincerity of her words.
Still too bruised with raw emotions to speak, Max speechlessly shook his head.
“You have shared so much of yourself with me. About your wife and your child…”
Max closed his eyes, feeling a blackness fall over him. This was it. This was when she would leave.
“That’s what makes this so much harder. The last thing I want to do is to cause you any harm. I already… I already care so much for you, Max. I don’t want to lose you, but I have to tell you… I’ve been lying to you.”
Max nodded, still staring at her, memorizing her every word and putting it on replay over and over again in his head.
“I told you that I couldn’t go on any attractions when I was on Disneyland, because I was a sick child.”
Max nodded.
“That’s not the whole truth.” Liz swallowed, not realizing that the sound of her heart beating erratically in her chest matched the throbbing of Max’s.
Liz took a deep breath, realizing that there was no turning back now. “I was born with a heart block. This basically means that I had a very sick heart.” She inhaled shakily when she saw Max’s face pale, but she just brushed a tear away from the corner of her eye before continuing. “Electrical impulses were unable to travel between the top and bottom chambers. I’ve had three heart attacks and had a pacemaker when I was twelve.”
She brushed another tear away. It was his expression that was making her cry. Somehow she knew that the shock and fear that was written all over his whitish face meant something really bad. He wasn’t taking this well at all, which was confirming all the fears she’d had from the beginning about telling him.
She didn’t know what else to do but to continue talking. She needed to tell him everything now. The damage was already done. There was no way she could’ve known that the worst damage was still to be done.
“The pacemaker worked perfectly, but I still needed to be careful and I didn’t have the strength to do all the things others kids did. About four years ago, I started to feel sick when I ate and I started to lose weight. It took some time for the doctors to understand that it was connected with my heart, which they had believed they had solved with the pacemaker. My body was gradually shutting down. I couldn’t walk, and doctors couldn’t access my veins to give medication because the veins were narrowing.”
Max looked like he was about to be sick, but Liz couldn’t stop. It was like a tidal wave of words had been released and there was nothing to stop it.
“My boyfriend found me on the floor one day when he got home from work. I was unconscious. If he had arrived two minutes later I would’ve been dead. My heart, liver and kidney had failed. The clinical term was acute heart failure.” Liz took a deep breath, her voice shaking some when she continued, “I was ready to die. I had been preparing for it all my life. Death has always walked beside me, so I was familiar with it. It didn’t scare me. What hurt the most were all the things I would never be able to do. And then… Then the most amazing thing happened.” She paused to search his face. But it wasn’t telling him anything different than it had been from the second she’d told him that she had a sick heart.
“I have a very rare composition of tissues and a rare blood type, which meant that finding me a heart transplant was considered close to impossible.” She didn’t notice how Max’s hand tightened around the armrest of the couch, her face was locked on his face, which remained inscrutable.
“Two years ago, when I was fighting for my life in the Intensive Care Unit, my doctor got the message that there was a heart that matched my heart tissues and had the same blood type.”
Max inhaled sharply, so sharply that an anguished whimper formed in his throat. Liz heart almost stopped as she witnessed tears pool in Max’s eyes and the harsh sound of his erratic breathing filled her ears.
“Max?” she whispered worriedly.
He was still staring at her, tears slowly starting to roll down his deathly pale cheeks. Liz felt a chill go through her. It was like he wasn’t looking at her, but through her.
“Max?” her voice was broken by a sob.
Max’s breath was coming in short inhaled gasps and Liz, terrified, wondered if he was hyperventilating.
“Max, please say something…. Are you okay? Are you alright?”
His mouth opened, and his lips twitched and moved as if he was trying to form words, but the words were as lost as the look in his eyes. Liz rose from the armchair with the intention of calming him down, holding him, just anything to stop him from getting any worse.
“Leave.”
His voice froze her legs to the spot. Before she had a chance to utter a single syllable, he spoke again, his voice a mixture of uncensored feelings. “Leave.”
“Max, please…”
She didn’t want to leave him alone. She didn’t trust him to deal with himself on his own.
“Leave.” His voice was monotonous; still he was clearly ordering her.
It felt as if time was standing still. If she hadn’t been so focused on Max’s reaction, she would have heard the harsh ticking of the old clock on the wall as it was slowly moving time forward, ticking off the seconds of the first real experience she had ever had. And it was slowly ticking towards the end. Barely controlling her feelings, she nodded and left.
She turned in the hallway, and saw him slump back into the couch, burying his head in his hands. With tears streaming down her face, she left. But she only left the room, she couldn’t leave the house. She couldn’t leave him.
TBC...
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Okay, I'm crawling into the freezer...
See ya!
I’m very relieved that you liked the Michael and Maria part. I’m a dreamer and thus I specialize in Max and Liz, and since I’m myself not the type of person who starts arguments (I often tend to go out of my way to avoid them 
About Max loving Liz just because she a part of his late wife inside of her… Well, I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. Partly because I don’t know myself what’s going to happen, but even if I did, I wouldn’t want to reveal everything to you in advance. But I’m just going to say this. Max might be ruled by sorrow and denial. He has had a rough couple of years. But he’s not irrational. He can think rationally, even though in the heat of the moment, the emotions have a tendency to rule his behavior. Thank you so much for the insightful feedback!! 
We both know that it’s never that simple when it comes to Max and Liz. Thank you so much for your engaged reading and analysis!! And for leaving feedback of course! 
, nothing could make me any happier! I loved your feedback, because you really nailed what I’m trying to say with this story. Thank you so much for that!!