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.”
“Don’t go yet. I can make you understand.”
“Save it.”
“Maddox, I love you.”
His eyes darkened, and I couldn’t stand the way he stared at me.
“Yeah, we all make mistakes. Just so happens, most of mine were made for you.”
The door closed behind him.
I sank onto the bed and clutched my cellphone. The text message came immediately. Nolan must have followed us, watched as my life crumbled and Maddox left me with my regrets.
His text set my teeth on edge.
I hope you said goodbye.
Goddamn it. This ended now. No more threats. No more warnings. No more buying my body so I could buy my freedom.
Nolan wasn’t hurting either of us anymore.
I opened the app on the main screen, replaying the sound recording I made of Nolan.
“Like I would trust you around Maddox.”
“You can trust this, Josie. If I wanted Maddox dead, he’d be buried by now.”
“I’m tired of your threats.”
“Meet me at Jackson’s in an hour or it won’t be a threat any longer.”
My thumb hovered over the send button.
Even if Maddox left, I could still protect him from Nolan’s jealousy.
Maybe it was revenge, and maybe it would eventually destroy the little of me that remained, but I wasn’t letting Nolan Rhys control my life any longer.
First, I’d protect us from Nolan.
Then, I’d get the man I loved back because it was never a mistake loving him. It was a mistake to lose him.
I sent the text and recorded clip to Nolan, wrapped in my own dire threat.
Come near us, and I’ll end your campaign, your reputation, and your life. Your move, Mayor.
Chapter Seventeen – Josie
The knocking echoed through my apartment.
Damn it. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. The papers bundled over my chest. They made lousy blankets. I tossed them on the couch and checked my watch.
Seven o’clock. A three-hour nap?
Ew. I figured I’d be tired, but this was downright lazy.
The persistent thudding on the door chased away my grogginess. I listened, wishing to hear Maddox call for me. But the rapping was too light and feminine. Plus, she tapped out the rhythm of our high school marching band’s drum cadence. As relieved as I was that it was Delta on the other side of the door, two weeks had passed since Maddox left.
I guessed he wasn’t coming back tonight either.
I didn’t bother with a headband. My curls went wild, billowing around my head. Delta snickered when I let her inside, but she had endured my puffball pigtail phase in junior high with me. A little volume wasn’t scaring her away. She came bearing an accordion folder stuffed with insurance forms and a paper bag filled with Chinese food.
I wasn’t in the mood to eat. Didn’t even think I could.
“Whoa.” Delta nearly dropped her armload as she stared at my apartment. “Okay, Josie. It’s time for you and me to go out and get some air.”
She didn’t hand me the insurance paperwork. I took it anyway. More to add to the once meticulously sorted piles of newspaper clippings, police reports, and information I found on the fire.
Delta headed to the coffee table with the food. No room around the piles of papers there. She tried the kitchen but my counters sprawled with bags of chocolate chips, mixing bowls, and the construction plans for Nolan’s proposed bed-and-breakfast. Delta thumbed through my notebooks and ignored the whiteboard in the corner.
“All right, this is fucking weird, Josie. Even for you.”
“I’ve been a bit busy,” I said.
“No, you’ve been a bit crazy. What the hell is all this?”
I sorted through the papers on the couch as best I could. Nothing was giving me the answers I needed anyway, so I pushed everything onto the floor to make room for Delta and dinner.
“I’m trying to figure something out.” I edged away from the bag of Chinese with a quick swallow. “And it’s…hard.”
“And not at all obsessive.” Delta picked up the paper at her feet. A newspaper article from the fire. Next to her were the court documents and transcripts from when Maddox was tried. “Josie, what are you trying to do?”
Right now, I was desperately avoiding my once favorite Kung Pow Chicken. “I have to figure out who burned down my shop.”
“Oh.” Delta paused. She put it together pretty quick. “So Maddox left for good? Hasn’t been back?”
He hadn’t returned my texts, calls, anything. “He’s gone.”
“Did he know you were doing all this?”
“No.”
Delta cautiously balanced the container on her knees and speared a piece of General Tso’s chicken with a plastic fork that already lost a prong. “What’d you find out? Anything you didn’t already know?”
Yeah. I uncovered one big revelation that didn’t help any of us. “It wasn’t Nolan Rhys.”
Delta snorted. “I could have told you that.”
“I swear…it just made sense. He was so obsessed with me and Maddox. But the timeline is wrong, and he would have lost too much money burning it down just to buy the land and rebuild what he wanted.”
“You know who the criminal is, don’t you? Forget the papers and the charts and all the investigations.”
“It wasn’t him.”
“Josie, he went to jail.”
My chest squeezed. Guilt hurt worse than any loneliness. “I know. I framed him for it.”
“You what?” Delta stilled, the fork an inch from her mouth. “Did…you forget to bake the cookies before you ate the dough?”
“I’m serious.”
“Did you happen to leave the gas oven on?”
Goddamn it. It wasn’t a joke. I ruined my life, and I lost the man I loved. All because I was so stupid, so helpless to stop the inevitable.
“Nolan threatened his life, and I knew he was in danger,” I said. “I gave an anonymous tip to the police so they would hold him in a cell until I could get out of the hospital and prove it was Nolan who set the fire.” I kicked the papers at my feet. They scattered. I didn’t bother picking them up. They couldn’t help me now anyway. “It wasn’t Nolan. Goddamn it. It wasn’t Nolan.”
Delta quieted, and I hated it. Without her talking, she could hear the break in my voice. I’d collapse in tears, and it’d do nothing but humiliate me and waste more time that I could have been finding answers and researching. I rubbed my eyes. It hurt, but it stuffed the tears down.
“Josie, when was the last time you slept?”
I didn’t have time to sleep. Not like I could anyway, not with him gone and my mind racing and my heart shattering and my stomach flipping and my body aching—
“I just napped,” I said.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“I’m really, really not hungry.”
“I’m officially worried about you.” Delta sighed. “I talked to Sean. He said you called off from the paper three days in a row. Have you left the house at all?”
“I saw Granddad.”
“Good.” She sounded too relieved. “How is he?”
I didn’t want to answer that one. “Worse. Sullen. He’s not eating much, and the last time I visited him he only said one thing.”
“What was it?”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“He didn’t say. Just…everything probably. We moved him to the different wing, and he knows we don’t have the money for it. That guilt is killing him, and there’s nothing I can do to…help. I can’t pull him out of this depression.”
Delta shifted the papers on the coffee table and dug out the framed picture Granddad gave me. She flashed the photo at me, and I didn’t realize how much I missed Granddad’s smile until I saw it beaming from that perfect time years ago when the shop kept us all together.
Just another reason to find the man who destroyed it.
I pointed to the wall where I hung police reports and newspaper articles with details on the chief.
“I have two other suspects,” I said.
Delta laughed. “Suspects? Are you setting up an interrogation room in your kitchen? A forensics lab in the bathroom?”