Mac eventually dropped his hands and Maggie pulled back to sit in the passenger seat. She clipped her own seatbelt, but kept her body angled towards Mac. There was something in his face, his eyes, that had Maggie’s heart pounding in her chest. The urge to ground him, the way he kept doing for her, was overwhelming.
This was what friends did for one another. They stepped in. They showed up. They supported each other without question. Mac was good at all three. Maggie could return the favor. Wanted to return the favor. She needed to give him back what he gave to her over and over and over again.
“I’m glad you were here tonight, Mac,” she said, her nerves making her breathless.
“Anyone would have done what I did.” Mac didn’t take his eyes off the road as he pulled out onto the empty street. “Anyone decent.”
“If you hadn’t been there—”
“If I’m not there, you call me. Or Cal.” Mac’s throat constricted as he swallowed. “Or Dean.”
“If you hadn’t been there,” Maggie repeated, “I would have called you.”
“But your boyfriend—” Mac shook his head, eyes pinging between her own and the quiet street. “You’d have called him first.”
Maggie thought of the time it took Dean to respond to her texts. Of the times he’d used his fists to defend her or Audrey in middle and high school. Then she thought of Mac’s hand slamming down on the counter at The Tattered Cover as he demanded that an angry customer treat her with respect. The way Mac’s fingers dug into the biceps of the creep in the bar, but how he’d ultimately let him go. It was one of her favorite things to read, men turning feral to protect the women they loved, but the reality was less lusty and more terrifying. She loved Dean, but…
“I’d have called you.”
Mac must have tapped the brakes because the car lurched sideways before he re-corrected. The street was empty, and Mac’s reflexes had kicked in before they had been in any danger, but she watched his hands clench around the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white under his tan skin. A thin sheen of sweat beaded along his forehead and a single drop rolled down his temple. She wanted to reach out and brush it away, but touching Mac could make everything worse.
“Talk to me,” Maggie said, leaning back against the passenger door so she could watch him as he drove. Mac’s eyes darted to hers.
“I’m driving, Maggie. I almost just—” His breath heaved in and out of his chest.
Maggie knew what this felt like. The panic eating away at the corners of Mac’s sanity. The thought of what could have been playing on an endless loop in his brain until it was no longer the worst-case scenario, but had bypassed it a million times over. How the deep breaths didn’t seem to get deep enough, how each limb locked until they ached.
“But you didn’t,” Maggie said, keeping her voice low and firm. The soothing bullshit never quite broke through when things started spiraling. “Do you know why?”
Mac shook his head. It was such a slight gesture that Maggie would have missed it if she hadn’t been staring right at him, cataloging his every move.
“Because you’d never hurt me, right Mac?” His shoulders dropped a fraction of an inch, and Maggie pushed on. “Your brain is playing tricks on you. I’m fine. You’re fine. But I think you could use the distraction, so talk to me. Tell me how you started making knives.”
“Blades, Maggie. I make blades. Not just knives.” His breathing had slowed down to a more normal pitch, and while Maggie could still see the skin pulled taut over the backs of his hands, his knuckles weren’t bone white anymore.
“How did you start making blades?” she parroted, grateful when he finally sank back against his seat.
“My gram had a collection,” Mac said, and Maggie bit her lip to stop the delighted laugh from seeping out of her.
“Your gram? The one who left you and Cal the house?”
Mac nodded, “My grandfather was a blacksmith, he worked mostly with horses,”
“So your grandfather made the weapons, but it was your gram who inspired you?” Maggie watched as Mac relaxed his arms enough to bend his elbows again.
“I didn’t know my grandfather, not really. He died when I was four. Cal hadn’t been born yet. There’s this old movie,Seven Samurai.It came out in the mid-fifties. Some of the best sword footage on film, even to this day. Gram and I used to watch it together.” Mac dropped one hand off of the wheel to rest on his thigh. “She loved the fight scenes and wanted to learn, but where was a housewife going to find anodachi? That’s the sword Kikuchiyo carried in the film. They were long swords with curved, single-edged blades. To qualify as anodachithey had to be almost 3 feet long. They were popular in the Kamakura period, about 1185 to 1333, and carried mostly by Samurai. The swords were so big and heavy that most Samurai carried them sheathed at their sides, and needed an assistant to help draw them for battle. Historians believe they were used to cut down charging cavalry.”
“He made her one,” Maggie said, a bubbly warmth starting somewhere behind her belly button and spreading out through her arteries to the farthest reaches of her body.
Mac looked at her now, an actual grin curving the corners of his mouth, and Maggie grinned right back at him. Mac was always magnetic, but right now, explaining something he was passionate about, his voice deep and strong, he was magnificent.
“It was awful.” Mac said, “I have it at the forge. Gram left it to me when she died.” His smile slipped, brows knitting together in his customary frown.
“Why was it awful?” Maggie wanted that smile back. “He made it with love.”
“Apart from the fact that he’d never made a sword before? He had no idea how to forge a traditional Japanese blade. They’re tough even for people who know what they’re doing. The length makes heat treatment more difficult too. It’s harder to bring the whole thing up to the same temperature in order for the metal to harden before quenching or rapidly cooling it back down. If you don’t quench the whole thing evenly, the blade can warp and twist. The first one my grandfather made was warped to hell and back. It had no edge and weighed close to thirty pounds. That’s a lot of steel. The first time she tried to swing it, she fell over.” Mac was smiling again as he slowed the car to take a left turn. “My grandfather got better. He made her a few more swords, some daggers, and an ax.”
“I bet she loved that firstodachi.” Maggie tested the word on her tongue, trying to recreate the syllables the way Mac had. “I bet it was her favorite. And now you make blades just like he did because they meant something very important to someone you love.”