Maxx gave me a sheepish grin. “Oh yeah. He was good. He wants me to go with him to look at art schools this summer.” He pulled out a box of cereal and dumped some into a bowl. He looked in the refrigerator, but there was no milk, so he started eating it dry. I thought about buying him groceries, but I knew that his pride wouldn’t allow him to take money from me.

I wrapped my arms around his waist and nuzzled into his chest. “That’s awesome, Maxx.” Aside from the financial stresses, I knew that he agonized over how to make his relationship with his brother work again. Landon felt betrayed, and I completely understood where the younger boy was coming from. And in true teenage fashion, he held a serious grudge.

Maxx crunched on his cereal and swallowed before leaning down to kiss the top of my head. “I’d like to take you out sometime next week. Somewhere nice,” he said suddenly. I pulled back and looked up at him.

“You don’t have to. I’m just as happy staying here and hanging out with you,” I protested. I didn’t want Maxx wining and dining me when he could barely afford the bare-bones groceries in his kitchen.

“I’d really like to. I haven’t had a chance to take you out on a date that you deserve.”

I kissed his chest and laid my cheek over his beating heart, strong and sure beneath my ear. “You have other things you have to pay for. You don’t need to take me to some fancy dinner,” I argued.

Maxx put his bowl on the counter and wrapped his arms around me so that we held each other. “I haven’t done much right by you, Aubrey, but let me do this. Besides, I’ll be flush with cash after the weekend,” he said offhandedly.

I leaned back, pulling out of his hold slightly, and gave him a questioning look. “Oh yeah? Why’s that?” I asked.

“I’ve been given a chance to make some great money.”

I brightened. “Did you take your stuff to a different art gallery?” I asked hopefully. I had, as subtly as possible, been suggesting he try to sell his art to other art dealers. The interest was out there for his work; he just needed to seize it. He had been adverse to it after his earlier rejection, but maybe he had finally come around.

Maxx scratched his temple. “Uh, no. That’s not it. I don’t really want to talk about it right now, but hopefully my days of living hand to mouth will be over soon and I can finally start banking on our future.” He pulled out of my arms and dropped his now-empty bowl into the sink.

I wanted to badger him about this great new opportunity. The fire in his eyes worried me. But before I could say anything, he picked up the small gift bag I had brought with me and held it up.

“Is this the surprise you were teasing me about?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, feeling distracted.

Maxx grinned and began pulling tissue paper out of the bag. He lifted the heavy frame into his hands and stared down at the picture behind the glass. His face was carefully blank, and I wondered if I had overestimated his pleasure at receiving it.

“How did you find this?” he asked quietly, not looking at me, his eyes trained on the photograph of the four people in the picture.

“Actually, I found it one of the first times I was ever here. I know you kept it in the back of your drawer, and I just thought it was time you took it out of hiding, don’t you think?” I asked quietly.

Maxx stood there for a long time, then without a word, he walked down the hallway. I followed after him, not sure what he was going to do. He approached his dresser and slowly put the framed photo in the center. He moved it until it was facing his bed.

“I hope it’s okay that I did that. I wasn’t trying to violate your privacy—” I started to say. Maxx grabbed me suddenly and hauled me up against him, his mouth claiming mine hungrily. He pulled back a moment later, both of us breathless.

“Thank you, Aubrey. Thank you so much. Every day you remind me of what it means to be given a second chance. And I swear to God I won’t let you down.”

Then we stopped talking for a while.

Sometime later, when we finally came up for air, we lay on our sides pressed together in his bed. Maxx played with my hair, and I stroked lazy circles on his chest. “Do you ever think about where we’ll be in ten years?” I asked him.

Maxx ran his hand up and down my back. “All the time,” he murmured. I rolled onto my belly and propped my chin on his chest, looking up at him through my lashes.

“What do you see?”

Maxx pulled me up so that I was eye level with him. “I see you. I see me. I see us living in a great big house with a dog that you insisted on naming Molly, though I liked the name Daisy.” Maxx’s eyes take on a faraway expression, and I watch him, fascinated as he recounts a life we hadn’t lived yet.

“We have a little girl, five years old, who looks exactly like you, but she loves to paint, just like me. You’re pregnant with our little boy and we spend our weekends fixing up the nursery. I paint a motorcycle on the wall and you hang blue curtains in the windows. Your parents come to visit on holidays and my brother stays with us when he’s in town. You’re a teacher and I’m an artist and we make it work because we love each other just as much, ten years from now, as we do right now.”

His beautiful vision for our future gives me goose bumps. “Wow, you’ve really thought about this,” I said softly, kissing his chin.

“Every day, Aubrey. It’s what gets me through all the bad stuff. It’s what kept me in rehab. Let me show you something.” He carefully pulled out from underneath me and got out of bed.

He walked over to the pile of painted canvases that had slowly grown over the past few months. He pulled out a canvas toward the back. He brought it over to the bed and sat down, holding it in his lap.

I sat up and crawled over to him, looking over his shoulder, and was instantly speechless.

It was a picture of me in profile. In true X style, it was vivid and detailed. The colors were more muted than was typical of his artwork, but it punched me in the gut with its power.

In the painting, I stood in front of a window, looking over my shoulder, my long hair billowing behind me, bleeding into a large sun hanging in the imaginary sky. I wore a long, flowing dress that disappeared into a field of flowers at my feet.

The painted Aubrey held her hand out, and long, masculine fingers intertwined with my slender ones. Maxx had painted himself emerging from the shadows to grasp me. He had never painted himself before. I couldn’t deny the significance of this picture. It took my breath away.

Maxx looked at me. “When I think of my future, this is what I see. You. Me. Together.” I kissed his shoulders. He put the painting down beside him and reached around to cup my face. “Which is why I will do anything for you. I will walk through fire to give you the life you deserve. Do you trust me to take care of you?” he whispered, kissing my cheeks, my nose, my mouth.

Did I trust him?

I wanted to.

So I didn’t answer him, choosing to kiss him instead and hoping that was all the answer he needed right now.

I stared down at the course listing for the education department and was overwhelmed. There was a lot to choose from. And in doing the calculations, by changing my academic track midstream like this, I was pushing back my estimated graduation date by at least a year.

But I wasn’t questioning my decision to move away from counseling. I truly felt it was the best choice I could have made. It just felt right.

I was sitting in the Coffee Jerk, sipping on my latte and poring over the catalogue. Maxx wasn’t working, which was just as well, because I needed to focus on figuring out how I was going to make this whole change-my-major thing work.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?” I glanced up as Brooks pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down. I hadn’t seen much of him in the last few weeks. Not since his declaration that had left things feeling very awkward.