“If you leave here tonight without me, he dies.”
“I’ll protect him.”
“Josie—”
I ignored his shout, stumbling from Jackson’s as I fought the wine’s hold and forced step after step towards my shop. The road blurred and shifted. I fell into Sweet Nibbles’ door. It swung wide open.
Unlocked?
Why?
I smelled the smoke, but my body felt too heavy to move. I crashed through the dining area, tripping over a chair. Then another. I blinked, and I was in the kitchen. Couldn’t remember getting there. I turned, and my toe caught on the stair case. I tripped. Hit my head. Or was I already in pain? How did I get upstairs?
The heat surrounded me. I coughed. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t hear anything over the crackling.
The walls groaned and splintered. The stairs creaked. It wasn’t safe.
But his arms grabbed me, held me, and he promised to help.
The world turned to smoke, and I woke in the hospital. Nothing made sense, and no words stuck in my mind. They told me I survived the fire. The shop was destroyed. Granddad was hurt.
The doctors injected me with something that made it even harder to think over the beeping machines and fretting nurses. The fire was only Nolan’s first retaliation. He wouldn’t stop until he destroyed everything I loved.
Maddox wasn’t safe. How could I protect a man everyone feared?
I needed a plan to separate Maddox from Nolan, to prevent Maddox from murdering Nolan before Nolan killed him.
But what could I do while I was trapped in the hospital?
Present Day
“Maddox, please listen to me!”
He didn’t, and I deserved the betrayed silence.
He packed his clothing and belongings into a duffle bag. The motel emptied of his things, but Chelsea’s still lined the counter. She left in a hurry when he burst through the door and didn’t even give me a second glance.
But I saw her and her badly blackened eye.
Maddox’s jaw flexed tight. He swallowed a profanity. I wished he’d just curse at me, talk to me.
I wished he’d let me explain.
Maddox was a force of utter destruction to those who challenged him. This time, he aimed that rage at himself. He chugged the half-empty bottle of whiskey from the bathroom counter and threw the bottle once he finished. The glass shattered against the wall. The amber liquid dripped onto the carpet.
“Nolan was going to kill you!” I stood in front of the door, slamming it closed when he tried to get past. “You don’t understand. I had to do it!”
He grunted, his voice rough with whiskey. “You had to frame me for arson?”
“I had no idea they’d convict you. I thought they’d only hold you for a day.”
“For Christ’s sake, Josie. Without your call, they didn’t have enough evidence to hold me for an hour. You caused this fucking disaster!”
“I was at dinner that night with Nolan. He threatened you. He knew how much you meant to me, and he was using you against me.” Every word clawed from my unwilling chest. “Don’t you see? He was the reason I broke up with you a year ago. He made me leave you or he said he’d hurt you. It wasn’t because I stopped loving—”
He sneered, baring his teeth. “Did you think that little of me or that much of him? Why the fuck didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because you would have gone after him. You’d have murdered him first.”
“Damn right.” He swore. “I would have protected you from him.”
“He was serious about it, Maddox.”
The bag dropped at his feet. “So was I! About everything! You told me you loved me. You wanted to marry me.”
“I know.”
“You wanted to start a family!”
“I did!”
Maddox dragged a hand through his hair. “But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me I was in danger? That a fucking scrawny ass momma’s boy talked a little tough to you?”
“It’s Nolan Rhys. He had the means to hurt you then, and he’s still threatening you now. He’s been controlling me and every decision I’ve made for a year. I couldn’t risk him hurting you!”
“All you had to do was tell me the truth.”
“It wasn’t that simple—”
“You put me in jail, Josie!”
“I never thought you’d be put away.”
“Oh, well. I feel much better then.”
“Nolan was going to kill you that night. I couldn’t go to the police and tell them to drag the mayor in for questioning. Even before I knew that Chief Craig was—”
“A bastard looking to lock me in chains?”
I couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t understand.
I was losing him.
“Nolan couldn’t touch you if you were in jail.”
Maddox’s laugh was hard, humorless. “No. He couldn’t. But a lot of other people could.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You have no idea what you did to me.” He unzipped his jacket, practically tearing the shirt from his abs. He flashed a scar on his side. “That was from the first week at state. It was an orientation of sorts.” He pointed to the second scar, a white, jagged mark on his pec. “I looked at the wrong guys in the cafeteria and got jumped in the yard.”
“I didn’t—”
He held up his left wrist. “This was broken during a fight in the showers.” His scowl grew, dark and menacing. “You don’t want to know what they planned to do…and you sure as hell don’t want to see how bad I bloodied the bastard who tried it.”
My stomach twisted into knots, and that was fine. I no longer had a heart to take up room inside me. “If I knew that would have happened—”
“You didn’t have to know! What you did is unforgivable. You said you loved me. You said you wanted to be with me. And fuck…you didn’t even come to see me in prison? Didn’t write? Didn’t call? I thought you believed I was guilty—”
“And as long as I stayed away, I could pretend you were guilty. I could do my own investigation unhindered.”
“Bullshit.”
“I wanted to prove Nolan was the arsonist and put him in jail. I was close, Maddox. So close. I know he caused the fire that night—”
“For fuck’s sake, Josie, it wasn’t Nolan!”
I quieted. Maddox looked at me in a way he never had before.
Frustrated. Angry. Like no longer recognized me as the woman he loved.
“Nolan isn’t the arsonist. Your shop was on fire when you got there. He didn’t have time to order anyone to throw a match—much less start an electrical fire—before it burned to the ground. He didn’t want the land. He had plans for the shop, for that bed-and-breakfast he thought he’d open.” Maddox turned away. “You sacrificed me because you were too hell-bent on revenge.”
“I don’t want revenge.”
“Bullshit. Maybe yours isn’t bloody, but don’t pretend you’re after justice. You wanted to humiliate Nolan as badly as I wanted to kill him. That’s the only reason you lied to the police about me, why you got me out of your way—”
“Christ, Maddox. I didn’t frame you because you’d ruin my plans. I wasn’t sending you back to jail for murder.”
“What’s another twenty years to my sentence? You’d already ruined enough of my life. Why not fuck over the man you love, lose your property, and get tangled in Nolan’s perversions?” He didn’t let me answer. “I’m amazed you think Nolan Rhys is capable of hurting me. Not when you do it so well.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“Glad to hear it.” He banged a fist against his chest, over his heart. “Because this feels like shit.”
Everything fell apart, and I had no idea how to stop it. My worst crises came in bags of the wrong brand of flour or when I burned the last of the butter. Losing Maddox was worse than losing the store to the fire, if only because I had no idea how to rebuild a love that precious and rare and broken.
“I’m trying to fix things,” I said. “That’s the only reason I was with Nolan tonight. I told him I’d sell the property, and I hoped maybe that would satisfy him.”
Maddox shook his head. “You’re not that naïve. Did he ask you to sleep with him?”
“I wasn’t going to do it.”
“Fuck. You never should have been in that position. You shouldn’t have met him at all.”
“I had no other option,” I said. “Granddad is sick. He can’t care for himself anymore—he can’t even take his own medications without accidentally hurting himself. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to keep us all alive here, Maddox.”
He didn’t answer. The fight extinguished from him, the fire burned out, starved of any reason to care. A shell remained—cold and hollow.
A shadow.
A fading memory of what we once had together.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I whispered.
He lowered his head. “Well, I’ll make this one easy on you, Sweets. I’m leaving.”
“Please, let’s just talk—”
“I’ve wasted enough time talking, trying to prove I could take care of you…” He swore again, the word torn from his throat. “I never said I was a good man, but I thought I’d pretend for you.”