The Billionaire Playboy's Regret (Lark and Max)

Max motioned to the nurse who hadn't really left, and she immediately came to his side.

"As soon as the service is done, we can go. You can get the team ready, and I'll be out in thirty minutes. I'm going to walk out though with the casket since I'm a pallbearer so take the chair now and I'll sit in the pew with my family until it's time to walk out the doors."

"Of course, Mr. Villeneuve."

He rose up and moved to sit in the pew where his maman earlier had told him they'd be seated, not

paying any further mind to the woman taking the chair away. He felt Johan flop down beside him. "Ollie's pissed at me."

"Too bad for Ollie. I think you're doing the right thing."

"You do?" Johan seemed surprised.

"Yes. I lost too much time with Lark because I never spoke the truth. f**k, I almost got her killed."

"You can't swear in the chapel," Johan giggled.

"Pretty sure you shouldn't be drunk in a chapel."

"Jesus turned water into wine."

"Wine not bourbon," he laughed as Johan dropped his head on Max's shoulder. "Buddy you are tanked." "Tried to keep up with your dad and Grady. Grady gave me his blessing to help watch over Gracie. I think I'm going to relocate to Houston for awhile."

"You can work remotely from anywhere, Johan. Your company is strong."

"You seem quiet. Too quiet for Max."

"It's just a hard day," he whispered softly. "I have a lot on my mind and the woman who I used to talk to when my brain got noisy is gone. Nana Prue always had the best words of wisdom."

"She really did." Johan sighed regretfully. "I miss her."

"Me too." He looked at Lark who was talking to her father and holding a bottle of water up. Grady was smiling widely at Lark as he took the bottle and drained it before hugging hugged her tight. She was such a good woman. He coerced her into agreeing to get married. What had he done?

The entire conversation from the conversations in the week were rebounding in his head. Throughout the rest of the funerary process, the sermon and then the eulogy which was delivered by Everly with such emotion the entire congregation was sobbing pitifully, his eyes never left Lark.

His desperation to keep her close, to not lose her again and to make up for the lost time was pressuring her into doing what she didn't want. He reminded himself he should have stuck with his original plan. They slept together too soon. They became too intimate too quickly. If he'd taken his time, wooed her and gingerly worked his way back into her life then maybe she wouldn't think he was such a coercive person. He wanted her to move in with him from the moment they made love. He'd been planning their future and thinking of how beautiful their babies would be, admittedly it was something he thought of from the time they were kids too.

Memories of Ollie hopping all around them when they were seven and eight singing, Max and Lark, sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g reverberated in his head as he recalled every time as a boy, he dreamed of growing up to marry Lark Hoffman and living right in the treehouse in their parent's back yard. They could use his mother's kitchen and the shower when they needed. Eight-year-old Max had tons of ideas of how happy they would be living in the back yard. Grown-up Max found the perfect solution in a house right on the other side of the fence line. She thought it was a bribe.

"Max, you alright?" Ollie asked as she squeezed his hand, tears streaming down her face as the eulogy came to an end. "Yes why?"

"Because everyone else is sobbing and ugly crying and you're dry-eyed and you're typically like Papa. You cry more than the rest of us."

"I'm fine," he leaned sideways and kissed her temple hugging her close. "You have enough tears for us both today."

"What's wrong?" she squeezed his fingers. "You can't hide it from me."

"She doesn't really want to marry me. I blackmailed her into it, and I didn't even realize it until she told me."

Ollie looked to where Lark was holding Fallon who was a veritable wreck. "She wants to marry you Max. She and I were talking about it."

"I'm not holding her to it." He said quietly. "I'll have a chat with her before she goes back to Houston to sit with Gracie." Ollie looked up at him incredulously, "Max, are you kidding me? Yesterday, when I came down to talk to you, you were over the moon. You love her," she pointed her finger in Lark's direction ignoring the hiss from their parents to stop talking.

"I do love her. More than I love myself. I f****d up, Ollie. I moved her too fast. Being terrified of losing her and losing out on a single second of time with her made me panic and I forced her hand. I can't force the woman I love to marry me," he said solemnly.

"You're not forcing her."

"Nope, just manipulating her. Her words, Ollie. She used those words." He gave a humorless chuckle, "Just like you accept me for being bitchy, I accept you for being coercive." He mimicked her voice to Ollie. "She said that? Max, she's drunk. She didn't mean it.'

"She did, though." He stood up as the music started and the rest of the pallbearers made their way to the front of the church to escort Nana Prue's casket out of the chapel into the waiting hearse.

Two hours later he was sitting in his bed at the hospital with his tablet in hand and waiting for his therapist to join him virtually. The chiming of the video call made him sit up straighter.

"Max!" the woman said cheerfully. "How good to see you. How are you feeling?"

"Like a dumpster fire, otherwise I wouldn't have booked an emergency session at double the rate."

She chuckled, "well considering the last time you were here in my office you punched a man out, you're lucky the session rate doesn't stay doubled permanently."

"He made maman cry."

"He did but his feelings are his to express. Sessions are supposed to be the safe place to share out emotions." "Not at the risk of making cry the person who sacrificed her entire lives for us. Did you know despite my parents loving each other very much, she raised us on her own from the time we were born until Ollie, and I were eight? She went to school to become a paralegal and she sacrificed so much for us. She deserves all the respect in the world and LJ treats her like a doormat he can wipe his boots on." The woman nodded, "I understand where your feelings are coming from. Your relationship with your mother is far different than your brother's. I don't think though this is why you're calling me today. Does it have anything to do with the funeral?"

"No. Yes." He rubbed his forehead. "My girlfriend called me out for being manipulative." "Oh."

"I didn't see it." He admitted quietly. "I thought," he gave a bitter snort, "I was fulfilling some childhood fantasy for her and turns out she thought I was bribing her. In effect, looking back at all the conversations and how I worded things and especially how I presented things during various situations, I know why she thought I was manipulating her. I was. I didn't see it. Now I do."

"Okay."

"Doc, how do I take back a marriage proposal without losing the girl?" he saw the counsellor's eyebrows raise at his question and the stunned shock. "In hindsight, I pretty much extorted her into marrying me with bribes and coercive demands. I literally refused to come back to Dallas and stay here in the hospital unless she agreed to marry me. She agreed but it was to keep me safe. I'm not stupid. I know she loves me, but she doesn't want to marry me.'

"You base your statement on what? How do you know she doesn't want to marry you?"

"Because she would have said yes if I'd asked." Max said quietly. "The more I've been thinking on it, the more I realize the reason I felt I needed to sweeten the pot was because I knew, deep down, if I gave her the entire childhood fantasy, she wouldn't say no. She doesn't want to marry me, Doc. She wants the house with the white picket fence and the neighborhood we grew up in. I knew she wouldn't refuse it." "So, you did coerce her."

"Yes. I never meant to. I thought I was doing something good by giving her exactly what we talked about our entire lives." "Are you sure she doesn't want to marry you?"

"If she did, she would have said yes, even before I mentioned the house. The problem is, I love her and losing her for the second time in my life is going to hurt more than this heart attack did and I'll do whatever it takes to keep her. I can't marry her yet though."

"You could." The woman shrugged haplessly as if testing him with her nonchalance. "If she said yes, what do you have to lose? She wants the dream and the fantasy."

"I want her to want me." Max admitted weakly. "Not the fantasy or the house or the promise of kids who are our doppelgangers. I want her to want me. Instead, I forced the situation to happen much too soon and with all the emotions, feelings, and insanity of the last several days, she agreed."

"Do you doubt she loves you?"

The question made him pull his head back and he pondered it seriously. "I doubt she loves me as much as I love her." The admission was painful. "She is so much better than me. She could walk down any street in any city in this country and find a man who deserves her far more than I do. I told you before of how she almost got raped because I didn't show up. The guilt I feel is immeasurable. How can she love me when I did such a thing to her?"

"Max, love isn't something you quantify on a score card. There's an old bible verse about love. I know you and your family are not particularly faithful to any religion but there is a line from the verse which says love does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." She took a breath, "I'm not saying loving someone means you never fight or argue but one of the things I've learned in my practice of over twenty years is, of all the pieces of advice I've ever come across, this one singular line holds true. If you're keeping track of who did what and who hurt who more and who deserves what punishment more, then is it love? If Lark really loves you, she's not quantifying the number of times you wronged her. She is qualifying the recompense of the things you do."

"Like when I set up our first date and made her mac and cheese." He said thoughtfully. "She told me it was the best first date she ever had."

"Max, if Lark is willing to leave such things like what happened on the roof in the past, you also need to let them go. You need to focus on making the love you have for her stronger." She took a breath, "you can't make Lark love you. Giving her a fantasy and a dream is a lovely gesture, but it won't make her love you. If she loves you, it's not for those things."

"I want her to love me the way I love her."

"She can't."

At the blunt statement he stared at his counsellor. He'd really been hoping she would tell him how to fix this.

"Max," she chastised gently, "you can't make someone love you the way you love them. They can only love you the way they are capable of loving you. You need to decide if it's enough for you. Also, talk to her. Tell her how you're feeling." Max wondered why he was paying double the rates for advice when what he really wanted was a cure. She was right though. He'd have to talk to her, and he prayed he didn't lose her doing it.