Hi guys.

So... I suck. It's been more than a month since I last updated, even though I promised I would update every weekend. And I could tell you guys that I've been super busy (which I have been, we're going to nationals for soccer and training is a bitch) but it's no excuse. I should have found time to update.

So, feel free to be mad at me. But at least this chapter is sort of long and not terrible.

I have nothing really to say, besides the fact that I have no idea when the next update is coming. I'll make sure it's before the end of the month, and I'll be writing essays for school all tomorrow, so maybe I'll get bored with that and write a chapter for this instead. Who knows?

Anyways, read and review!

Max was sick of waking up with a hangover. How many times could she overestimate her ability to handle her alcohol? That was what, her second day in a row waking up with nausea and a pounding headache? How stupid was she?

This was also the second day in a row she was waking up to see a foreign place. She was getting tired of that, too.

It took her a moment, but she did recognize where she was. The sappy artwork on the walls and the warm atmosphere alerted Max that she was at Nudge's house. She eyed the flowers on the coffee table warily, and wondered how a woman who could kill a man without batting an eyelash couldn't bear to see her flowers wither.

"Nudge?" Max called out slowly, wincing at her own shout.

A second after the shout, Max heard a set of footsteps to her right. They were coming from the master bedroom. She heard two more coming from the hallway to her left, which was where the guest bedrooms were located. Max knew this for a fact; she didn't spend more than a few minutes in a place that she didn't know the floorplan of, much less an entire night.

Nudge appeared a minute before Angel and Ella. "Hey, Max," she said groggily, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

"What happened last night?" Max asked, cutting straight to the chase. "How much did I drink?"

"A lot," Angel replied, a disapproving look on her face. "So much that you were about to go home with three guys."

Max groaned. "I wasn't going to sleep with them." She looked up at the other women, only to see whatever-you-say expressions. "Seriously, I wasn't."

Ella raised her eyebrows. Max might not remember last night, but Ella did. And Ella remembered how Max was leaning all over the dark haired man, how she wouldn't take her eyes off of him. She believed her sister wasn't trying to go home with all three of the men, but she wasn't sure that Max was going to end up alone if they hadn't taken her home.

"So what were you doing?" Nudge asked, still not fully believing her friend.

Max sighed. "I don't want to involve you in this mess."

Silence took over the room as Ella, Nudge, and Angel exchanged looks. Max obviously did not remember their conversation last night. She didn't remember telling them about her plan to kill Jeb. If they really wanted to, they could pretend it never happened and continue their lives. They could escape now, stay safe and pretend to be unaware. The question was if they wanted to.

Ella ended up being the one to break the silence. "You already did."

It took a minute for Max to reply, but when she did, her voice was tense and her eyes were wide. "What did I say last night?"

Ella took a deep breath. "You told us about not being able to finish a job." She didn't say any more than that; she didn't know how to continue.

It was silent for another minute, tension shrouded the room, before Angel bluntly said, "And you told us about how you and others are planning to kill Jeb."

Max's reaction wasn't what the women expected. They had anticipated anger or sadness, an emotion that was easy to explain and easy to react to. What they hadn't predicted was for Max to sigh and calmly ask, "What are you going to do about it?"

Nobody knew how to respond. Angel was staring off into a wall, her lip nearly bleeding from how hard her teeth were pressing into it. Nudge was lost in thought; she'd open her mouth and then close it again, rethinking whatever it was she was about to say. Ella, on the other hand, was too stunned to do anything.

It wasn't necessarily that Max's composure had shocked her, it was what was hiding behind that calm façade. Max always retreated back to her mask of coolness when she didn't want anybody to know what she was thinking. Ella had always been the one person who could see straight past the mask. And that didn't change now. It was what was behind the disguise that scared her.

Max looked defeated. She looked as if she didn't even care what the other women decided. Nudge and Angel might not have seen it, but Ella did, and it broke her heart. She could have dealt with it if she had seen anger or sadness, but she had no clue how to work with defeat. She had never seen Max like this. Well, not since it happened. And she wasn't going to let her sister go through a series of awful choices in order to get over that feeling.

So she did the one thing she thought could help.

"I'm going to help you."

Max's gaze flew up to Ella's face. That look of defeat hadn't disappeared, but it had lessened considerably. And that was enough for Ella, at least for the moment. She couldn't bear to see her sister like that. The last time she had seen it, the woman her sister had been vanished for a long time. Max hid behind alcohol and random men and killing. And Ella sure as hell wasn't going to let that happen again.

"Thanks, El," Max said quietly, a small smile lighting her face.

Ella returned the smile. It was a simple gesture, but Max knew exactly what she was saying. The smile told her that she would do anything for her sister. The smile told her that Ella would never turn her back on her.

Nearly a minute after Ella had spoken, Nudge blurts out, "I want to help, too. I can't see you get hurt, Max." She paused for a moment. "Plus, who really needs Jeb anyways?"

Max thanked her friend before they all turned to Angel.

The blonde took the stares without wavering. She met everybody's gazes with an even stare. On the outside, it looked like she was calm; like she had everything figured out. On the inside, her brain was whirring at one million miles per second. She had no clue what she wanted to do. Teaming up to kill an insanely good assassin is one thing, Angel wasn't afraid of that. If anything, she was tempted by the challenge. It was the fact that it was the boss that threw her off. If they did this, a once calm and organized society of assassins would be thrown into turmoil, at least for a little while. And it would be her fault.

Angel pursed her lips as she thought. Was it worth it? She could just leave now, stand by and pretend she knew nothing. She knew Max wouldn't blame her. But it would affect their relationship. Deep down, Max would feel a little betrayed. And Angel could deal with that. She's dealt with plenty of her relationships falling apart before.

But as she looked out at her three best friends, she realized she didn't want that to happen. She didn't want a schism to form between them. Maybe Jeb's death would cause upheaval, but she could deal with it. These thoughts were why she smiled a bit and simply said, "I'm in."

"Thank you," Max said, her voice low.

Nobody acknowledged her thanks; how they felt went without saying. Besides, they had already agreed to a job that might possibly get them killed. Max assumed they knew how grateful she was without the thanks.

Nudge was the one to break the silence, of course, with her inability to keep quiet for long. "We should eat breakfast."

There were various murmurs of agreement before the foursome made their way to the kitchen. Nudge quickly made breakfast, and in ten minutes that went by much too quickly for Max, they were all sitting at the table and looking at Max expectantly.

Max knew they wanted to hear more details about the case. Why wouldn't they? But that was why she felt so uncomfortable while she sat there; she had nothing to give them. So far, Fang and she had found next to nothing on how to kill Jeb. Iggy and Gazzy helped, gave them more options, but there was nothing even remotely solid yet. They were grasping at straws.

Ella seemed to realize that they weren't going to get anything from Max. She knew her sister too well to misread the obvious signs. It was in the way she wouldn't meet anybody's eyes. She looked scared to even initiate conversation. So Ella went in another direction.

"Who's Fang?"

All three pairs of eyes flashed to the Hispanic woman. Nudge's showed exposed interest, while Angel's curiosity was thinly veiled. Even if they had wanted to know about the actual case, this was also extremely fascinating.

Max sighed and chewed her last bite of eggs slowly before answering. "He's an assassin." The words were said reluctantly, even though they were next to no information.

"No shit." Even though the situation was serious, everybody laughed at Angel's comment. "Elaborate."

"I was supposed to kill him," Max paused, writing a script in her head. "I didn't." She said every single word very carefully. The conversation was a minefield, and she had no intention of exploding.

"I don't want to hear about that," Ella's smirk was devious, and her eyes sparkled with mischief. "I want to hear about what's going on between you two."

"Nothing," Max said flatly.

Nudge scoffed. "It didn't look like nothing last night. You were all over him."

"I was drunk," Max pointed out. "You guys know what I'm like when I'm drunk."

They did know what she was like when she was intoxicated. She was very open with her emotions and brutally honest. When drunk, it was easy to tell what was going through Max's head. And it was rare people even had to guess what she was thinking, she usually just said it outright. A drunken Max had no filter. A drunken Max also slept with anything that had a pulse and was willing. But she was almost professional about it. Sex was a distraction for her, nothing more, and nothing less. She just wanted to escape her own thoughts. When she disappeared with a man, she was very careful, no matter how drunk she was. That isn't what Nudge, Ella, and Angel witnessed last night.

They saw Max being giggly and nervous. They saw her acting like a middle school girl with a crush. That meant that she didn't just want sex. She wouldn't have been acting like that if she just wanted to stop thinking for a little while.

"And you were definitely drunk," Angel muttered under her breath.

Ella snorted at the blonde's comment before speaking. "You weren't acting like you usually do with your hookups. You were acting like you had a crush."

Max shook her head before turning back to her food. "No, I was acting like I was drunk."

Nudge made some comment about being drunk in love that made Ella laugh, which got the other two women to smile a bit. And in a minute or two, all four women were giggling about nothing in particular.

But the moment couldn't last forever.

Angel left first, claiming she had a job to finish before she could take up a new one. Apparently she had to kill some cheating businessman who pissed off his partner. Most of her jobs were like that. Her girlish, innocent looks made men trust her. That was her strategy; lure men into bed and then slit their throats, simple and quick.

Max and Ella left together. They caught a cab, which they hadn't done since their lives had been torn apart. As they climbed into the taxi, a vision of Ella sobbing in the back seat while Max stared blankly ahead flashed in Max's mind, but she pushed it away. It happened years ago; she didn't need to think of it.

"Do you want to come back to my place?" Max asked once they were seated comfortably.

An evil glint entered Ella's eyes. "I want to meet Fang."

"I can't just show up at his apartment!" Max protested, even though she knew Fang wouldn't mind if she knocked on his door right now.

"Something about the way he was with you last night tells me he wouldn't mind," Ella replies, mischief in her smile.

Max sighed but gave the cab driver Fang's address anyways, along with a few extra dollars. Max's memories of the previous night were hazy, but she was pretty sure this was the same cab driver. And if she remembered correctly, she spilled tequila in his cab last night, and he probably had to clean it up. No, never mind. It's still on the seat. Still fresh, actually.

They stayed silent as they drove through the city. They both had too much on their minds to talk.

Neither of them spoke as they walked through Fang's apartment building either. Max was dreading how Fang was going to react and Ella was too excited to meet the man.

When they reached the right apartment, Max only had to knock three times before Fang opened the door.

"Max?" he asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes. "What are you doing here?" his eyes flickered over to Ella. "And who is this?"

Max's lips turned up into a tight smile. "This is Ella."

Ella stuck her hand out to be shook. For a second, Fang just grimaced at it, but took it and shook it firmly. After, Ella pretended not to notice how quickly he withdrew his hand.

"Uh, you can come in," Fang said, stepping away so the two women could enter. Ella walked in first, and as Max followed, Fang leaned close and whispered, "We need to talk."

Tensely, Max nodded. She knew Fang would have questions. She just didn't know if she was prepared to answer them.

Once they were all awkwardly standing around in Fang's apartment, Ella opened her mouth. "So this is the man that got you to make one of the stupidest decisions you've ever made." Ella's eyes swept up and down Fang's figure, judging him. "I kind of see why now."

Immediately after Ella finished speaking, Fang growled, "You told her?"

Max raised her hands up in surrender. "It's not my fault I get chatty when I'm drunk."

Fang rubbed a hand over his face before he attempted to fix his bedraggled hair. "So what's she going to do about it?"

Ella replied before Max could. "I'm going to help. Same with Nudge and Angel."

Fang turned to Max again. "How many people did you tell?"

Max held up three fingers almost sheepishly.

"Why didn't you just waltz into Jeb's office and tell him yourself?" Fang muttered under his breath. Then, in a louder voice, he said, "I want to talk to Max. Privately."

Max allowed herself to be dragged into the bedroom so Ella wouldn't be able to eavesdrop. She loved her little sister, but if there was one thing that Ella was, it was mischievous.

"What the hell were you thinking?" Fang hissed as soon as the door was closed.

"I wasn't," Max replied, her voice tense. Maybe she made a bad choice, but she sure as hell wasn't going to let Fang lecture her like he was her father. "But it's done, and there's nothing we can do about it."

Fang stared at her, emotions battling in his chest. There was anger, which was strong, but it had to contend with the stupid warm feeling that was always present now. He still hadn't figured out what it was, all he knew was that it got stronger when he got close to Max.

Finally, he settled on just sighing and saying, "You're lucky I'm too hungover to deal with this."

When they reentered the room, Ella is standing there. She looked small in the big space. It should have put Fang at ease, seeing somebody who seemed so timid, but it didn't. He knew it was a strategy that assassins like Ella used. If you're not scared of somebody, you won't be prepared when they try to slit your throat.

"I think we should call everybody over," Ella suggested after a moment of silence. "If we're going to do this, then we might as well start now."

Fang's eyes met Max's. They stared at each other for a second, trying to communicate without saying anything out loud. A few seconds passed before Fang sighed and relented. "Yea, fine."

Ella smiled smugly, as if this had been her plan all along, which it probably had been. "I'll call Nudge and Angel."

Fang let out another annoyed sigh, but grabbed his phone to call Iggy and Gazzy nonetheless.

"We just have to wait for them now," Fang said when he hung up with Gazzy.

Iggy was the first to arrive. He entered the room, his always present smile on his face, and let his eyes trail across everybody in the room. "Fangles!" he greeted before he saw Max, "And Sunshine!" Max rolled her eyes at the nickname but smiled at him anyways. And then his eyes landed on Ella. "And who is this?"

Protectiveness swelled up in Max's chest when she saw how Iggy eyed Ella. Sure, she liked him, but anybody who looked at her little sister like that was not going to win themselves any points with Max.

"Ella," Max said curtly, sending a glare his way, "My little sister."

Iggy didn't notice Max's death stare; he was too busy looking at Ella. "Pleasure to meet you," he said, a grin on his face. "I'm Iggy."

Ella smiled at the man. She was flattered that he was actually paying her any attention. Men generally gravitated towards Max. Her aura of mystery and good looks drew them in, usually leaving Ella forgotten. It was nice to get some of the attention.

Somewhere along the way Ella and Iggy had stepped closer to each other, and were now only a foot or so apart. Max was looking on with a face that could turn a man to stone. She was about to say something about the unnecessary proximity when somebody else cleared their throat.

"Jesus," Gazzy said from his place in the doorway. He had one eyebrow raised and a look of mock annoyance on his face. "Do we really need another couple? Aren't Max and Fang already enough?"

Max was about to protest when yet another somebody spoke up.

"Apparently not." Angel was standing a step behind Gazzy, her blonde hair framing her face and making her look like a cherub.

Looking at the pair now, Max wondered how she didn't see their similarities before. They shared the same blonde hair and blue eyes, and tall, thin frames. They had similar bone structures and carried themselves in the same manner. If Max thought Iggy and Gazzy looked like brothers, Gazzy and Angel looked like twins.

The interruption had forced Iggy and Ella to step apart, which relaxed Max a bit. Her instinct to protect Ella from anything and everything was screaming at her, telling her that being with an assassin is only going to get her hurt, maybe even as hurt as Max was with – no. She wasn't going to think about that.

Silence had taken over while Max had gotten lost in her thoughts. Angel broke it by crossing the threshold and speaking, "Well, I'm Angel and I'll be dealing with all of you for however long it takes for this to play out."

Gazzy followed her example and introduced himself. "I'm The Gasman, Gazzy for short. And I like fire."

Max rolled her eyes but she was smiling now. She felt comfortable around these people. Safe, almost.

Nudge arrived after a few minutes, and slipped right into the conversation. Max thought that bringing everybody together would make it almost like middle school; with all the boys staying on one side and the girls on another. But they all seemed to know each other already with the way they talked and interacted with one another. There was no awkward period where nobody knew what to say. It was comfortable.

And as they sat and talked and laughed and planned, Max knew she made the right choice.