“Max, you can’t leave. It’s not safe,” Ed said, trying hard to sound calm when panic was already gripping him by the throat.
“Oh, I know it’s not safe! My sister and my mother have made it extremely obvious that it’s not safe for me. Or for anyone associated with me, for that matter.” Max balled up a pale-gray T-shirt and shoved it into the bag. He started to reach for a notebook lying on the bed and stopped, clenching his fingers into a fist. With a small shake of his head, he turned toward Ed and stared at him. There was this feeling that he’d made a decision, and it put a lead weight in the pit of Ed’s stomach.
“But this whole mess has changed from when we first met up,” Max continued in a low, hard voice. “This has gone from just protecting Egypt and the archeologists trying to do good work here to needing to deal with my family. I’ve ignored them and, maybe in a sense, hidden from them because I didn’t want them ruining this life I’ve built for myself. But this running and hiding means that I’ve let them ruin the lives of so many other people. And right now, they’ve got Hudson.” Max stopped and cleared his throat twice. “He’s one of my oldest friends. He’s known me since I was this scrawny, annoying undergrad desperate to prove to the world that he was smarter than all of them. But now, I feel like…I feel like I’ve betrayed him by letting this happen.” Max’s voice broke at the end.
Ed stepped forward and engulfed him in a tight hug. If he could, he’d pull this amazing man deep into his chest and hide him behind his heart to keep him safe.
“No. This isn’t your fault. This is Rive and Katona. Not you.” Ed bent his head and placed a kiss on the top of Max’s messy hair. “I know when we got into this mess together it was about protecting Egypt’s culture, protecting you, and even protecting Kairo’s mom, but it got bigger along the way, and I don’t have any fucking regrets about that.”
Max lifted his head to stare up at Ed, his large green eyes seeming to dominate his thin, narrow face so that Ed was almost swallowed whole by those glittering gems.
“Baby, I want to be involved in your life. I want to be part of the private stuff.” Ed winced. This was such bad timing, but it needed to be said before Max ran out the door into whatever chaos and destruction waited for him. “I know we haven’t known each other long, but I want more.”
With a huff that Ed wasn’t sure how to interpret, Max stepped out of his arms. He paced to the other side of the small bedroom and then back, his adorable face scrunched up with puckered lips and a wrinkled brow. Not adorable. He couldn’t think he was adorable. This was serious.
“How?” Max demanded at last.
“What?”
“No. How? As in, how do we even make something work? I’m not saying that I’m opposed to it, but how would that even work? You’re off traveling around the world, doing your crazy mercenary stuff, and I’m…I’m…” He waved one hand in front of him in a circle as if trying to generate the next words until he just gave up and threw his arms into the air. “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing anymore. This is all such a mess. What if we go through all this and we discover that I’m totally wrong about the location of the tomb? All of this for nothing!”
Max spun on his heel and paced to the far side of the room, still muttering under his breath. “Or I’m right, and I’ve found the elusive Tomb of Kazemde. Then what? Papers. Lectures. More papers. But the rush of searching for that next discovery is over. I’ve caught my white whale.” He whirled on Ed and tapped his chest several times, hard enough that Ed could hear the thump. “This Captain Ahab is way too young to go in the rest home for useless archeologists.”
Max was mixing his metaphors but was way too worked up to even notice. It only made him more adorable, and it was too heartbreaking.
Closing the distance between them, Ed gently laid his hands on Max’s slender shoulders and squeezed. “You don’t have to know any of that now. You’ve got plenty of time to plan out your future and what you want. Once we figure out what to do about Rive and Katona, you need to take some time to savor what’s happening in the present—namely your potentially huge discovery. The future can wait.”
“But it can’t! Once we take care of my family, I won’t need your protection any longer. What if I can’t figure out how to fit in your life before my time is up?”