“How are you doing?” Maximus asked, turning around in the passenger seat, his warm voice slinking off the walls.
I shut the book and put on a brave face. “I’m OK.”
He had such a sexy energy at times that I couldn’t help but want to put up a front around him. Me, scared of skinwalkers? Nonsense.
He pursed his lips for a second and then grinned in his aw shucks way. “You’re braver than I am.”
I leaned in closer and made sure to speak a bit breathier, “I have a hard time believing you’d buy into this skinwalker business, let alone be scared of it. You look like you could take on a grizzly bear with your own hands.”
Yes, that’s right. I was flirting with him. I couldn’t help it. I think my nerves needed a pleasant diversion. So, I flashed him a smile that made the cut on my cheek sting. I could see Dex’s eyes float up to the rear view mirror and glance at me curiously. I remembered what he said about Maximus wanting to get in my pants. I wanted to test that theory and part of me wanted to do it to see if Dex would care. Why he would, I don’t know, but I was going to do it anyway.
Maximus actually blushed. Or at least the tops of his forehead were starting to match his hair.
“I am not about to wrestle no bears, but I did used to catch baby gators for my cousin back in Louisiana,” he said. “They were easy once you got their mouths clamped shut.”
“Just like Perry,” Dex chimed in cheerfully.
“Shut up.” I glared at him. He gave me a skeezy look in the mirror and laughed.
I shook my head and looked back at Maximus who was trying not to laugh himself. I rolled my eyes. “Anyway…”
“Anyway,” Maximus repeated, still grinning at me, “just because I’m 6’4” doesn’t mean I can’t get scared every once in a while.”
I cocked my head. “Do you ever get scared on the job. You know, doing a reading?”
He nodded, his green eyes sobering. “Oh, of course. How can you not? The most terrifying moment is the one right before I do it. I don’t know how these people died. I mean, I know to some extent but to feel what people feel when they go…it is God awful. It hits you like brick. Every time. I can’t even prepare for it. I reckon I never will. You think you know death, you think you have some idea of what happens, of how you’ll feel but you don’t know. And I only feel, probably, fifty per cent of what they went through. The terror. The… questions they had. It’s always, why? Why now? Why me? It is so powerful, it leaves a f**king imprint that some hillbilly like me can pick up on. And each time I do it…”
He trailed off, his eyes leaving mine and stared out the back window, watching the dusty road disappear behind us. His blush was gone and he had turned a wicked shade of alabaster. This big, burly man with his sexy snarl looked like a freckled little boy, sleeping with the nightlight on.
Instinctively, I reached over and brushed his hair back lightly. He had nice, thick hair.
He gave me a quick smile. “Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t wish death upon my greatest enemy.”
“Jesus. Can we shut up with the death talk, please?” Dex grumbled, eyeing us in the mirror, anger sparking.
Maximus looked sheepish. “Sorry man, I forgot.”
Dex shot him a sharp look but Maximus was turning around in his seat and didn’t notice. I did though. What did that mean…“I forgot?” Forgot what? I know Dex’s family was dead…I guess that had to be it. But it felt like something much deeper and rawer than that.
And being me, I couldn’t let it rest. I wanted to know and if I brought it up later, I wouldn’t have Maximus there for support and whatnot.
“Well you picked an ironic profession if you didn’t want to talk about death,” I challenged. I meant to say that a bit nicer.
Maximus turned his head to look at Dex. Dex didn’t move or say anything but his grip on the steering wheel tightened.
“Skinwalkers aren’t technically dead though,” Maximus said.
“I’m not talking about skinwalkers, which by the way, I am not totally sold on yet. I just mean with Dex. You, Dex, what’s with the ‘shut up with the death talk’ all of a sudden?”
Dex slowly moved his eyes up to the mirror to meet mine. I hadn’t seen him glare that good for a long time. He was the king of glares. Sometimes they were sexy (probably by accident) but they were always effective. When his black, arched brow lowered and connected with those dark eyes and his lips set in a snake-like twist, he just radiated intensity. The depths always surprised me. It was like looking into a cave and thinking you could see the back of it, but it just ended up being a trick of the eye. There was always more, another twist, another turn.
This was the best exampled I had seen yet; I thought the glass in the mirror might shatter.
It made me sit back in my seat just a bit, but I wasn’t going to back off.
“What?” I shrugged, playing the ignorant card. I tapped Maximus on the shoulder. “Tell me more about what people feel when they die.”
“Uh,” he glanced warily at Dex. Dex looked right back at him.
“Don’t let me stop you,” he sneered. “If she wants to know, she wants to know.”
Maximus looked back at me, his voice a bit shaky, “Okay then. Well, it depends.”
“What was the scariest reading you’ve done?”
“I reckon it would have to be this woman who was murdered. By her own daughter.”
I grimaced. “Ugh.”
Maximus quickly glanced at Dex and continued, “Yeah. She was sick. No one could figure out what was wrong with her. Her daughter was taking care of her and I guess it got to be too much. She smothered her with a pillow. You can’t… imagine what that woman felt as her own child killed her. To raise someone and love someone that much and then for them to turn around and take your life, like it all meant nothing, was-”
SCREEE!
Dex suddenly slammed on the brakes and the Jeep was careening off to the side of the road. We stopped on the shoulder in a mist of red dust.
“What is it?” I cried, thinking we had almost hit something.
Dex got out of the car and slammed the door. I looked at Maximus, mouth agape. He looked uneasy.
“You stay here, please,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“No!” I protested but it was too late. He was out of the car.