Victoria's POV
I woke up the next morning to the sound of someone knocking way too loudly at the inn room door. Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I looked around to see Max pressed against me, her face practically buried in my chest. Part of me was glad that we had gotten dressed again before falling asleep because when I sat up, gently setting Max's head down on her pillow, I looked around to see Chloe and Kate laying in the bed just a few feet from ours. I could just barely make out their sleeping figures underneath the thick blankets, but I could see Kate's hair strewn every which way on her pillow.
The loud, annoying knocking on the door started again, getting a frustrated sigh out of me as I was forced to leave the warm comfort of the bed Max and I shared. Walking over to the door, I ran my fingers through my hair to get it to stay down instead of sticking up so that I looked somewhat presentable. I could feel that I really needed a haircut, maybe I could ask Kate to do it. Opening the door, my annoyance only grew when I saw who was standing in front of me, a way too enthusiastic grin on his face for having woken me up so early in the morning.
"Good morning, Victoria," Warren greeted me, holding out a tray of food to me. "May I come in? I brought food to maybe heighten my chances of entry." I rolled my eyes, taking the tray and setting it down on the table near the door before turning back to see him stepping into the room and looking around, his eyes settling on Max. He smiled warmly, making my skin crawl and a knot tie itself in my gut. "She's really cute when she sleeps, huh?" I took a deep breath, cramming down the rising jealousy I felt trying to take over my response.
"What do you want, Warren?" I asked, closing the door as he sat down at the table where the food was, taking a piece of bread into his hand and taking a big bite out of it before speaking.
"I just came by to see how the four of you were doing," he said through a mouth full of food. "That and Rachel wanted me to come by and ask if Max would be willing to meet up and talk for a bit."
"Rachel?" I asked, remembering the woman Max had mentioned while we were in France. "Max said that she hasn't seen Rachel since she left Ireland. What the hell is she doing here?" Warren just shrugged, taking another bite of bread, crumbs falling onto his trousers. I held in a scoff at his behavior. My mother would've locked me in my room without dinner if she'd seen me eating like that in front of another person.
"I asked her the same thing," he replied, looking up at me and shrugging. "She just told me that she wouldn't talk to anyone else but Max about whatever it is."
I heard someone shuffling in one of the beds behind me, making me turn around to see Chloe sit up and stretch her arms over her head to reveal her bare chest. I flicked my gaze away immediately, my cheeks burning intensely from the way she seemed to not notice that she was naked.
"Oh, hey, guys," she said sleepily. I could hear the smile in her voice, even though I couldn't see her face.
"For the love of god, Chloe, please put on a shirt," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose and closing my eyes for a moment. What was wrong with these people? Waking me up at such an ungodly hour, eating like complete pigs and then not even bothering to wear clothes.
"Huh? Oh, sorry," she chuckled, shuffling some more behind me. "We didn't wake you up last night, did we?" She walked past me, grabbing an apple from the tray of food on the table. I felt my brows furrow, watching her as she took a big bite of the fruit and chewed as she smiled blissfully.
"No, I didn't even hear you come in last night," I replied, looking at the food. My stomach grumbled when I saw some cheese and another bit of bread. I picked them up, spreading some of the cheese on the bread using a knife Warren had brought along with the food. "Why do you ask?"
"I just wasn't sure if Kate was quiet enough, is all," she said nonchalantly, looking up towards me with a grin from where she sat across the table from Warren. I paused, searching her face for some sort of meaning to the way she was staring at me so mischievously. "She doesn't always know how to keep quiet when things get heated." I coughed, putting a hand over my mouth to keep me from spitting out bread crumbs. Chloe started laughing, her head thrown back as she watched me try to keep myself from choking on my breakfast.
"Why are you all being so loud?" Max groaned from our bed, sitting up and rubbing one of her eyes. She looked to see that I was coughing and got out of bed quickly, patting my back as I caught my breath. "Are you ok? What happened?"
"Just wondering how you two slept, that's all," Chloe replied, looking as smug as could be. I looked up to see Max blushing and looking down at the ground nervously.
"We slept fine," she replied, grabbing an apple off the tray as Chloe had, taking a small bite of it as she linked her arm with mine, leaning her head against my shoulder as she moved her hand down my arm until she reached my hand, intertwining her fingers with mine. I smiled down at her, kissing the top of her head. I wished that we were just able to go back to bed and laze around together all day, but I knew that probably wouldn't happen with this Rachel person around. Chloe's eyes widened, a huge grin appearing on her face.
"Holy shit," she said, looking between the two of us. I couldn't help sighing in exasperation at how suddenly excited she looked.
"What is it now, Price?" I asked. It was way too early for this shit.
"You two slept together," she shouted, jumping to her feet, looking way to excited. My heart stopped in my chest, my throat tightening with embarrassment. Max groaned, burying her face in my shoulder. I could feel her cheek heating up through the thin fabric of the tunic I was wearing.
"Chloe," she groaned against me, her voice muffled by my shoulder. Chloe walked over, grabbing Max's arm and tugging on it excitedly, giggling like an excitable child.
"Max, I need details," she begged, looking way too happy about the whole thing.
"Why would you want details?" I asked, the question coming out angrier than I meant it to.
"Because I honestly never thought this day would come," she replied, feigning a look that reminded me of the pride shown by mothers when they talked about how much money their son made or how their daughter had just given birth to her third child.
"Hey," Max yelped defensively, finally disengaging from me to look at Chloe. "What's that supposed to mean?" She sounded more hurt than anything, but Chloe just feigned repentance, wrapping her arm around Max's shoulders and ruffling her already dishevelled locks.
"Oh, come on, Max," she said, throwing her a smirk. "You gotta fill me in, I told you everything about my first time."
"I never asked you to do that," Max retorted, looking indignant, the pouty look on her face making me have to hold in a giggle even though I was more embarrassed than I had ever been in my life.
"What makes you think they had sex?" Warren grumbled, his brows knit together in a mixture of annoyance and disappointment. We all looked over to him, causing him to look away, his own cheeks darkening a little. "I mean, there's not proof that they did, that's all I'm saying. You've always been one to make wild assumptions." I glared at him, feeling anger boiling in my chest.
"Why is that a wild assumption?" I snapped, making everyone suddenly flick their gazes to me. I cleared my throat, trying to stand my ground without giving anything away. "Not that it's true."
"Oh my god, you two totally got down and dirty," Chloe proclaimed, giving a little hop before looking at Max again. "Please tell me that you were the top." Max blushed so hard that I was pretty sure she'd stay that color forever, but I knew that I looked about the same.
"Chloe!" Max exclaimed, her eyes wide. "Can we not talk about this right now? Or ever, even, that would be nice too."
"Oh, come on, Max," Chloe whined. Her reaction to the whole thing made me smile, it was funny seeing her so interested in something that had little to do with her in the first place.
"Why is everyone screaming?" Kate grumbled from her bed, rubbing her eyes and holding a sheet up over her chest. We all turned to look at her, her cheeks going red as she realized her situation.
"I saw Rachel earlier," Warren hurried out, making us all turn our gazes to him. Chloe sighed, rubbing her forehead and Kate looked down at the bed she was laying in. I looked at Max whose eyes were wide with surprise.
"Wait, seriously?" She asked, her expression slowly shifting from shock to anger. "What the hell is she doing here? Did she say what she wanted?" Warren paused, stammering a little.
"She just said that she wanted to talk to you," he replied, looking nervous under Max's rare, but surprisingly spine chilling glare. "She said that she wouldn't tell me anything and that she only wanted to talk to you."
"Why the hell would I want to talk to her?" Max growled. I felt a shiver travel through me at her tone, the fire in her eyes filling me with a weird combination of nervousness and arousal.
"She said that she knew something about a map," Warren replied. We all froze for a moment and Max and Chloe shared a look.
"Did you know about this?" Max asked Chloe, getting a nervous laugh out of the normally confident woman.
"I might've seen her last night," Chloe replied, quickly adding onto her confession when she saw the way Max got even angrier. "But we didn't talk to her. I stormed off when she tried to talk to me and Kate chased after me." I looked over at Kate, seeing that she looked way too guilty for someone who supposedly hadn't spoken to this person before.
"I might've talked to her," Kate admitted, getting a surprised look from Chloe.
"Why?" She asked, her brows furrowed and her eyes filled with a mixture of hurt and confusion.
"She said that she had something important to tell me," Kate muttered sheepishly. "She told me that she had been following us for a while and that she knew something about the map Victoria gave to you and that she knew how to use it."
"Why didn't you say anything?" Chloe asked, her voice kind of quiet for someone I would've expected to be angry.
"After everything else that happened last night, it kind of slipped my mind," she said, avoiding everyone's eyes as we watched the exchange. "I'm sorry." My heart broke a little in my chest at the way she said those words, they sounded so full of guilt. Apparently Chloe had experienced a similar reaction because she walked over to the bed and sat down, wrapping the smaller woman in a hug and kissing the top of her head.
"It's ok," she said, chuckling as she thought over last night. "Things did get a little crazy."
"What are we going to do?" I cut in, hating to ruin the moment, but knowing that we needed a plan before everything went to shit. "Are we going to trust this stranger and listen to what she has to say?"
"She's not a stranger," Chloe said, sounding a little defensive despite herself. She sighed, closing her eyes for a moment. "She used to be a friend, a trusted one. She wouldn't have come here just to fuck with us."
"Then we should listen to what she has to say, right?" Kate asked, still holding the sheet up against her chest to cover herself.
"She said that she only wants to talk to Max," Warren said, the information, though I'd already known it, making my skin crawl a little. I didn't like the idea of Max being along with Rachel, even though I knew Max wouldn't do anything. Would she?
"Then I'll go and get this over with," Max said, pulling me from my thoughts. She had her fists clenched tight at her sides, her features tense and her jaw rigid. She really didn't want to do this, did she?
"Alone?" I asked, unable to stop myself. She turned to me, her features softening.
"I don't really have a choice," she replied.
"I could go with you," Warren cut in, looking far too excited. I held in what felt like was going to be a growl, my fists clenched at my sides as I watched him get to his feet.
"That's ok, Warren, I don't need you do go with me," Max said, sounding a little more calm.
"Because I'm going with her," I added quickly, wrapping my arm around her shoulders before staring Warren dead in the eye. His jaw tensed as he got to his feet, straightening to his fullest height. He looked as angry as I felt, I hated the way he looked at her and the way he seemed to think that she somehow belonged with him. Maybe he didn't believe that, I don't know, but I didn't care. "Do you have a problem with that, Captain?" I asked, putting as much venom behind the title as I could. He seemed to back down a little at that, but he didn't move away.
"How about we just let Victoria go with Max," Chloe suggested, walking over and standing beside Warren. "You and I need to work on a plan for when we leave, anyways. Plus, we can go check up on Presshit to see how he's doing."
My heart sank in my chest and my stomach clenched when I remembered Nathan, his face slack as his eyes rolled back in his head because the pain from his infection was too much. I decided to ask Max if we could go check on him after we met with Rachel. I wanted to be sure he was alright. My chest felt tight with guilt. I was so consumed in paying attention to Max and making sure she knew I cared about her that I nearly forgot that my best friend was probably dying right now and I wasn't there for him. My stomach clenched at the thought and Max must've noticed my sudden reaction because she intertwined her fingers with mine, smiling sweetly at me.
"Do you wanna go see him before we go to meet Rachel?" She asked, almost like she had read my mind. I couldn't help smiling a little, but even Max's smile couldn't push away the guilt I felt boiling in my chest.
"That would be preferable, but it seems that whatever information Rachel has is quite important," I replied, trying to sound more sure of the statement than I felt. I knew that we needed whatever information Rachel had about the map, but Nathan meant more to me than any treasure that map could help us find.
"It's ok," Max insisted, still managing to smile a bit through the firmness of her voice. "We need to go see him regardless, and I know it's important to you."
"Then it's settled," Chloe cut in. "Max and Victoria will go check on Nathan and then meet with Rachel while the rest of us make some sort of plan for when we set sail. Now, will all currently dressed persons please exit so that poor Kate can get dressed?" Max looked like she might explode from the amount of laughter she was holding in. I rolled my eyes, but couldn't help smiling in amusement.
"You heard her, let's get out of here and give them some privacy," Max said, grabbing her belt and putting it on before strapping her sword to it. She tugged me towards the door, Warren trailing behind us. It was weirdly quiet between the three of us as we walked, but I could tell that Max was oblivious to the way Warren seemed to be pouting behind us.
"Hey, um… Victoria?" He finally spoke up, the hair on the back of my neck practically standing on end from how hard he was trying to sound firm.
"Yes?" I asked, not turning to look at him as we reached the door of the inn. He put his hand on my shoulder and it took everything I had in me not turn around and punch him in the face. I have no idea why, but he just made me feel so angry sometimes, maybe it was the way he looked at Max. Maybe I was just being paranoid and needed to calm down. So I took a deep breath and turned around, letting go of Max's hand for a moment.
"Can I talk to you for a second?" He asked, giving Max a sheepish glance. "Alone?" Max's eyes widened and she looked to me, like she was asking me if it was safe to leave me alone with him.
"If you insist," I replied evenly, looking at Max and giving her a small smile, trying to show her that I was fine and wouldn't try to beat him to death. She nodded, smiling brightly at me before leaning up to kiss me. I kissed her back, smiling softly as she walked out of the inn, leaving Warren and I semi alone in the practically silent inn. Apparently everyone who'd been in the dining room the night before were up in their rooms, nursing hangovers and trying to connect dots that appeared in a night full of dancing blurs and lights.
"Is there something you wanted to say to me?" I asked the slightly taller man in front of me. His features grew tense and serious, his dark brown eyes staring me down.
"I wanted to tell you that what you're doing to Max is wrong," he said, his jaw tense. I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to push down the defensiveness I felt crawling up from my gut.
"And what is it that I'm doing to Max, exactly?" I asked plainly, knowing that being calm against his anger was better than fighting back at the moment. I really didn't need to piss off one of Max's friends, especially if that friend just so happened to be a pirate with a massive ship and guns and all that.
"Making her fall for you," he said, his voice rising in volume. "It's obvious that you don't care about her as much as she cares about you." I fought the anger that was boiling in my chest, the way his words not only infuriated me but confused me.
"What is that supposed to mean?" I snapped, hating that he seemed to be getting under my skin with such silly accusations.
"You just want her because she's beautiful and won't tell you no when you want to take advantage of her," he accused, getting into my personal space. "You're using her and everyone knows it. Even you know that, don't you? Max is the only one who doesn't see it because she thinks that everyone is good and doesn't see that people like you just want to hurt others."
"That's not true," I replied, but it was weak. Max wasn't that naive. She knew what she needed to do to protect herself. But, despite knowing that, it was almost like he had recited a script of every horrible thing I'd heard whispered within my own mind since the moment I met Max. That I didn't deserve her, that all I could do was hurt her. "I love her. She's everything to me."
"You better treat her like it," he growled, igniting the anger I'd felt before, but the doubt he'd planted still lingered. "'Cause if you don't, I'll show you what happens to people who hurt my friends."
"You're just jealous because she's in love with me and not you," I snapped, trying to regain some sort of advantage. That seemed to make his shrink away a little, so I kept going. "You talk about how I'm taking advantage of her, but you can't even stand to see someone else get close to her just because you have feelings for her. How long has it been since she's told you no? How many times has she had to say no to you so that you'd leave her alone?"
"What do you know?" He snarled, his fist clenched at his sides. "You barely know her, you're practically strangers."
"I know her better than you ever will," I said lowly, trying to sound more sure of myself than I felt. "She loves me and you're just too much of a child to get that through your head, so you mope around and act like she's doing it because you're a bad person, but she just doesn't feel the same way. Why is that so wrong?"
"Because I love her," he shouted, his eyes filling with tears. I froze, shocked by the ferocity behind his words. "I'd give her everything and she chose you instead. She chose a stranger, someone who is one of the people who'd rather see her hanged. She chose a woman instead of me." I deflated a little, feeling a strange mixture of anger and sympathy well up in my gut as I watched his anger being replaced by a sorrow I'd rarely seen before. It was almost like he was showing me a physical representation of how I'd felt when I thought Max had been killed. I thought I'd lost her forever, but she had been alright. But with Warren, he wasn't mourning the loss of Max herself, just the love he thought she'd give him.
"Are you guys coming or not?" I heard Max ask from behind me. I turned around to see her pause, her gaze softening when she saw the looks on both our faces. "What's wrong?" She asked.
"Nothing," Warren said, walking past me and out the door. "I'll go with you both to check on that Prescott person, but then I have to come back and help Chloe make a plan of action." I nodded, looking at the ground.
"Ok, well let's go then," Max said hesitantly, starting towards the hut Madam Melody was treating Nathan in. Max started telling stories about days she'd spent in this village, beaming as she described crazy adventures and fights that her and Chloe had won together and all the strange and different people they had met. I tried to listen, but it was hard to focus with Warren's words echoing through my mind. Did everyone really think that I didn't actually care about Max? Was I that bad at showing how I felt? Did Max think I wasn't in love with her? The thought made my stomach clench in unease and I had to stop the questions before they tore my even tempered facade to shreds.
Just focus on what needs to get done, I told myself. After the day is over, then I'll ask Max if I'm good enough. Maybe she can help me understand if what Warren said is true.