Shut Your Eyes

Kris POV

Never trust Max Talbot.

If there’s one thing to know about Max – that’s it. Nothing good has ever come from trusting Max, and while I’ve never ended up in prison because of him, I felt like my time was coming sooner rather than later.

Rifling through Maggie’s drawers didn’t feel right. Not to mention that every creak of a floor board or beep of a car alarm sent my head shooting up thinking that I’d see her ex staring back at me.

It wasn’t like I was scared of him – I’d driven five hours to get a good look at this guy – but I didn’t want to be caught taking things out of his apartment. That was a quick way to get arrested, and out of all the jails I didn’t want to end up in – which was all of them – Philly topped the list.

The apartment was eerily quiet.

Max wasn’t filling the silence with his usual empty chatter, not that I blamed him. I probably wouldn’t be making idle conversation either if I was in his position. When I glanced back to look at him, he was busy meticulously folding Maggie’s clothes and putting them into a suitcase – obviously not feeling the time crunch I felt.

I turned back to my own task and starting sorting through the drawers of a dark wooden bureau that was set against the wall. The top drawer full of what you would expect it to be full of, so I made quick work of putting the contents into a suitcase before moving on to the next drawer that was full of denim.

Assuming all of it was Maggie’s, I started pulling things out. Second stack in, a manila folder fell out from between two pairs of jeans and landed on the floor – scattering pages across the carpet like a fan.

“What the hell?” I muttered, setting the jeans down so I could pick up my mess. I leant down and began to gather up the papers that were strewn around. I tried very hard to ignore whatever was printed across the pages, but curiosity got the best of me and I found myself looking through the folder trying to decipher what I was reading. They were medical papers – I knew that much – but I wasn’t sure what they were for. Maggie’s full name was typed out on the top of the page, along with all the other information that hospitals ask you for when you wander in to the ER.

Each page had a different date, but most of them had the same list of services on it. Physical exams, x-rays, sometimes there was an entry about a cast or a splint. Many of the forms had business cards stapled to them for domestic violence counselors or shelters for abused women, but those weren’t the most concerning.

“Max, what’s a SAFE kit?”

He stopped folding and turned to look at me. “Huh?”

“A SAFE kit. It’s on these hospital forms.”

Max walked over and took the forms out of my hands to look over them. His mouth moved while he read over them quickly, but he eventually shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Before I could say anything else, Max had pulled his phone out of his pocket and was typing something into Google.

“Max, maybe we shouldn’t look it up. This is Maggie’s business.” Going through her things was bad enough, but now things were bordering on inappropriate. Medical records were different than jeans. Since Max didn’t already know what it was – I wasn’t so sure he should find out.

Max silenced me by making a clicking noise with his mouth – something a mother would do to quiet a child. I watched him carefully as he read through whatever had popped up onto his phone. The look on his face went from curious, to concerned, to absolutely livid.

His breathing sped up and he began glancing around quickly at the room. Suddenly he threw his phone onto the bed and walked back to the closet, stopping only to drive his fist through the wall next to the door.

The eerie silence was back as Max started folding again – a deathly calm act considering that he’d just punched a hole in the wall. He didn’t offer up any information, so I didn’t ask, but I did pick up his phone off of the bed and start reading whatever he’d found.

A sexual assault evidence collection kit, sexual assault forensic evidence (SAFE) kit, Sexual offense evidence collection (SOEC) kit or Physical Evidence Recovery Kit (PERK) kit, is a set of items used by medical personnel for gathering and preserving physical evidence following an allegation of sexual assault which can be used in rape investigat…

You know the expression ‘seeing red’? I’d always assumed that it was an exaggeration, no one could ever be that angry. But now I knew differently. Before I had wanted to get Maggie’s stuff and get out, hoping that we could avoid a potential confrontation with the police, but now I wanted nothing more than to sit my ass down on the couch and wait for that psychopath to come home.

Let the cops come.



“What do we do now?”

Max and I were standing in the living room with three bags at our feet. We’d grabbed everything we figured she’d want, from clothes to photo albums and other small trinkets that Max insisted she’d need.

He was looking around at the apartment with a hard look on his face. He hadn’t muttered two words since discovering the truth behind Maggie’s medical files.

“We wait.”

“Should we take her stuff to the car first? Just in case?”

Max stayed quiet for a moment before nodding and slinging a backpack onto his shoulder. I followed him out of the apartment and into the hallway, watching as he pressed the button to call the elevator several times.

The only sound that echoed through the empty hallway was the incessant beeping of the elevator as it climbed up from the ground floor, dinging as it passed each level. I made myself busy counting the colors in the carpet as we waited. The only thing that brought my head up was the greeting that was gritted out from between clenched teeth.

“You.”

I looked up just in time to grab the back of Max’s shirt and hold him back from strangling the tall blonde in the elevator. He was reaching quickly for the button to make the doors close, but Max had wedged himself between the doors and was swatting at the guy with his hand like a caged tiger.

“I’ll kill you, you sick son of a bitch! Thinking you can put your hands on my sister!”

Max yanked against my grip so hard, his shirt ripped itself from my hands and he flew into the elevator with Gavin. He quickly landed a punch on Gavin’s eye before I could grab him again, this time holding him back with both arms wrapped around his torso.

Max grabbed Gavin’s throat with one hand while getting ready to pummel him with the other. I didn’t see this ending well for anyone. “Max, let him go! You’re going to kill him!”

Max and Gavin were both yelling at each other, although they weren’t really saying anything, and it took a minute of pulling and pushing before I managed to pull Max off of him.

“Are you crazy?” Gavin yelled, holding a bloody nose with one hand.

“Yes! Yes I am!” Max yelled back, a manic look in his eyes.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“You hitting my sister is my problem! You hit her, you raped her, and you took her away for me – and now you’re going to pay for what you’ve done to her!”

Gavin rolled his eyes, looking slightly amused. “Your sister’s a goddamn liar. I haven’t done anything to her.”

Max struggled against me, just begging for a swipe at the man standing in front of him.

“I’ll kill you.” Max deadpanned and shoved a pointed finger at Gavin.

“Is that a threat?” Gavin snarked.

“It’s a fucking promise.”

Gavin’s eyes rested on the bags sitting at my feet. “What’re those?”

“We’re taking Maggie’s things back – they don’t belong to you.” I told him evenly. As much as I wanted to let Max go and watch while Gavin’s face turned to nothing more than pulp, someone had to be calm.

He flared with anger. “You broke into my apartment?”

Max rolled his eyes with a sarcastic huff. “What’re you going to do, call the cops? We’ll see how far that case will go once they see what you did to my sister.”

The blonde in front of Max looked at him with a dangerous glint in his eyes. The anger seemed to melt out of him and was replaced something sinister. He moved towards Max, knowing that I had him held back, and started hissing venomous words through clenched teeth.

“What I do to my girlfriend in the privacy of our own home is our business, not yours – besides,” Gavin leaned in close to Max’s ear, “if your sister knows what’s good for her, she’ll keep her fucking mouth shut. Because I have no problem shutting it for her.”

Max took another swipe at Gavin, grabbing him by the throat. Behind us, a door in the hallway opened. An older woman stuck her head out and watched us carefully, quiet as a church mouse.

Max fought against my arms, pulling Gavin in as close as he could. “Have you ever picked up teeth with broken fingers, Gavin? Because I will punch you so hard in the face you will be shitting teeth for a month. If you come near Maggie again, I will feed you your fucking heart, Gavin.”

“If you boys don’t take your fighting outside, I’ll be forced to call the office.” The old woman warned us gently from her doorway, staring out at us with a firm look in her eyes.

“Max, let’s just go.” I suggested, trying to pry him off of Gavin.

But Gavin just egged him on, even with the black eye forming on his face. “What are you going to do about it, Talbot? You can’t prove anything.”

I’d finally had enough of it. I let Max go, allowing him to fully grab on to the sides of Gavin’s face with one of his hands. He leaned in real close, making sure Gavin could hear each word he was about to seethe at him. “I think in all fairness, I should explain to you exactly what it is that I'm going to do. For instance, tomorrow morning I'll get up nice and early, go get my sister's phone... Turn it on and see and, uh... if you tried to call her or talk to her at all, I'll... crack your fucking head wide open in front of everybody in this building. And just about the time that I'm coming out of jail, hopefully, you'll be coming out of your coma. And guess what? I'll split your fucking head open again because I didn't do it hard enough the first time. I don't give a fuck about jail. That's my little sister. That's what I'm going to do."

“Boys.” The old woman was still glaring at us.

Max released Gavin’s face and moved so he could get out of the elevator. The sinister look in Gavin’s eyes was still there, but he now had a trace of fear as well. He knew as well as I did – maybe even more – that Max was deathly serious about his promise. Gavin moved out of the elevator, letting Max and I move ourselves and the bags into it. The old woman watched us carefully – making sure that we left –as we pressed the button to go to the ground floor.

I watched Gavin as the doors closed - cold and calculating as Maggie had described him, but I couldn’t help but notice the flash of panic that crossed his face as we stared him down through the disappearing sliver in the elevator doors.



It was dark by the time we got back to Max’s house. Light poured out from the windows of his condo, and a familiar car sat parked in the driveway.

“What’s he doing here?” Max mumbled, still in a foul mood from earlier.

“I guess we’ll just have to go in and find out, won’t we?”

I helped Max with the bags and followed him into the house, surprised when we found it completely quiet. Following the trail of light coming from the living room, we wandered in there only to find Maggie dead asleep on the couch with Jordan Staal curled up underneath her looking like he was afraid to move.

He glanced up at us and back down at Maggie. “She was having a nightmare. I didn’t want to wake her up.”

Max sighed and dropped the bags onto the floor in a heap. He walked over to Maggie’s sleeping form and gently pried her off of Jordan, letting her curl her arms around her own body instead.

“Thanks Jordo.” He said with another sigh.

Jordan stood up and stretched his giant body, stiff from being in one position for too long. “No problem. See you guys tomorrow.” He leaned in and kissed Maggie’s head, something out of character for him, and then made his way out the door, shutting it behind him with a firm click.

Max laid Maggie back down on the couch and sat down next to her. He rested one giant hand on her head and stared at the TV on the wall that was playing a muted old re-run of I Love Lucy. Maggie’s bags still sat in a heap on the floor, full of things she’d have to sort through while we were away.

The keys to my car sat heavily in my pocket – I wasn’t sure whether to go or to stay. Max looked over at me and gave a small smile. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Coming with me.” He whispered. Max started to pet Maggie’s hair absentmindedly.

I wasn’t sure what to say to him. Max and I had never had a moment where words weren’t going to be nearly enough. Nothing I could say would fill the gap that was between his heart and his head, but as I started to walk towards the door I reached over the back of the couch and rested a hand on Max’s shoulder. Maggie slept peacefully beside him; no sign of whatever had been plaguing her when Jordan was with her.

“You’re a good brother, Max.”

With that, I left the house and left Max to his thoughts.