Melinda Metz - The Outsider

Liz decided to keep going. It would be a lot harder to start this conversation all over again later. "Anyway, I knew all these things about you, but I never thought about how I'd feel if you weren't around. I'd feel bad. Well, of course I would feel bad. Why is this so hard?" Liz stopped and closed her eyes a moment. "Let me just get to the point. I love you, Max."

Enough talking, she thought. She leaned toward him. It felt like forever since their last kiss. She needed to feel his arms around her.

Max stood up and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Michael's plan worked," he said, repeating himself. "But I'm always going to be in danger. There's always going to be someone out there hunting for me-Valenti or somebody else."

Liz shivered in the cold night air. She wrapped her arms around herself. She knew Max loved her, too. She'd seen it in his thoughts, felt it in the way he touched her. What was wrong? Why was he acting so strangely?

"If you get too close to me, you're going to be in danger, too," Max said in a rush. "I think… I think we should stay friends. Just friends."

Liz jumped up. "Max, we found a way to deal with Valenti. We did that together-all of us. If something else happens, if someone else gets close to finding out the truth, we'll deal with that, too," she told him, her voice tense and urgent. "I love you. I want to be with you. Nothing else matters."

Max's arms were around her before she could say another word. He buried his face in her hair. "We can't-" he half said, half moaned. Then his lips found her mouth. They kissed, a long, passionate, heart-searing kiss.

He loves me! Liz thought giddily. He loves me, too.

Suddenly Max broke away. "No. It's more important to me to keep you safe." He stared into her eyes, his expression serious. "I'm not going to change my mind about this, Liz. It's too important." He released his urgent grip on her shoulders.

Liz stared back at him, his intense blue eyes, his rumpled hair, the line of his jaw. She could tell that nothing she said was going to change his mind right now.

Max turned and stumbled away from her.

Liz felt stunned. But she wasn't going to give up-not now that she'd finally realized how she felt about him. She and Max were meant to be together here, now-and she was going to find a way to prove it to him, no matter what.

[ Version History]

1.0 – scanned, formatted, and spell-checked from mass-market paperback. This was an early scan done by my sister a couple of years ago, using the old, outdated, incomplete "how to scan" FAQ, which exported everything into text format.

2.0 – July 12, 2004 – The_Ghiti – proofed in detail against deadtree format, although I did not fix italics.

3.0 – Приведение в порядок Symargl, 2009