“What?” The flour spilled. She turned, her almond eyes wide.
“Marry me, Josie.”
“I know you were in jail for a long time…”
I moved closer. She stepped back. It never bothered me before, but this time, I wasn’t playing. I tossed my weight and strength around, but I wanted her to lean in, not seek shelter behind a pair of eggbeaters.
“Yeah. I was in jail. Gave me some time to think. To figure out what I want. Sweets, it’s you. I want it all. I’ll find a good job, get some money. We can buy a house. Get your shop rebuilt. Start a family—”
“A family?”
I didn’t like the hush in her words, but mine mirrored the same quiet hope.
“We tried…before the breakup,” I said. “We can try again. We’re good at that part.”
She quieted. “I’m on the pill again.”
I expected it. Still hurt. “You wanted a baby.”
“I also wanted to enter the State Cake Bake-Off. And to perfect another éclair recipe. I wanted the candy shop, Maddox. But things change. Everything changed after the fire.”
“I’m innocent. I didn’t set fire to your shop. And it won’t hurt to hear you say it. I needed to hear your voice. I just wanted to see you so I didn’t think I’d rot away forever in that goddamned prison without…being near you again.”
She ran a hand through her curls. “I was told to stay away.”
Rage surged through me. “By who?”
“Really, Maddox? Everyone. Everyone who said I was an idiot for dating you finally got their chance to gloat. All of my customers told me to stay away. Granddad. Delta. Everyone agreed that you were bad for me.”
“Is that what you think?”
She turned away. I knew it was coming before she said it, but like a damn martyr I took the hit.
“I think you should go.”
I refused to make the only woman I ever loved feel unsafe in her own damn home. Not when the real criminal was still out there, lurking in plain sight and salivating for the chance to pounce on her when she was at her most vulnerable.
It wouldn’t happen while I was free, not when I had too much to gain and so much more to lose with Josie.
“This isn’t over,” I promised. “What we have? It’s real. We belong together, Sweets. And I’m going to prove that I’m not just some delinquent. I’m not a good man, but I’ll treat you good. I’ll swear that to you.”
“Maddox—”
“You know where to find me. You call if there’s trouble. I’ll be here. I’ll protect you.”
She sighed. “There won’t be trouble.”
She was still an optimist…or maybe dangerously naïve. Either quirk made me love her more.
“Now that I’m back, the man who did this will try to hurt you again.” I didn’t care if I terrified her. She had to know what would happen, what we faced. “I’m going to find the son of a bitch who did this to us.”
“Why?”
So it was naivety. I expected nothing less, but I hated that I’d have to destroy it.
“Because I won’t stop until I get my revenge.”
Chapter Four - Maddox
Josie’s world was sprinkles, frosting, and sugar plum fairies.
Mine rotted in the gutter with druggie parents, bloody knuckles, and a bullshit parole after serving a year for a crime I didn’t commit.
My reality, my life, was etched with broken bones and turf wars. I didn’t have a family, and the friends that replaced them used me only for muscle. I couldn’t hide my past from Josie. Hell, no one forgot where I came from—the town of Saint Christie especially. The holier-than-thou residents defined me by my tattoos and the rumors spread in the streets.
But Josie hadn’t cared. Or she did, but she saw some flicker of good in me. Something worth baking me heart-shaped cookies, keeping me around to grab the flour from the top shelf, and letting me strip her down and dot her body with drips of chocolate darker than her skin.
She might have kicked me from her apartment, but she’d never rid me from her heart. I was like an infection that dug in and festered. I clung to her because she was the only good thing that ever happened to me. Even the hardest bastard needed some light in his life.
But I planned to kill the man who threatened us.
Whoever he was.
And I had a good hunch.
This was where our Pixy Stick fairy tale ended. Revenge wasn’t about pride or sadism. It was justice when justice failed. Blind. Violent. Brutal. It was nothing Josie deserved to see, but it would protect her and right the wrongs that hurt us both.
It had to happen. Once it did, we could move on, have a good life, be happy.
But it was hard to convince Josie I was anything but trouble, especially surrounded by the saints of Saint Christie.
Most of the townsfolk were two cats short of a hoarders’ documentary, the rest were so white bread they’d turned stale. They held bake sales to pay for potholes, and held contests to find the town’s fattest squirrel. Most drank in the fire hall Saturday night, while the more righteous prayed for their neighbors in church on Sunday. If a family needed help, the town banded together to rebuild homes and bake casseroles…if only to lord their preferred currency over their friends—favors.
The streets of metropolitan Ironfield were cut-throat, but at least when I lived there, bleeding meant the fight was done. In Saint Christie, memories lasted generations.
The town didn’t change much in a year, but Josie’s vacant lot was an eyesore. It should have broken my heart. Instead it hurt my scars—the ones I earned in the fire and the new marks from jail. I stared at it for too long. Enough of the townspeople were out in the early morning, and if their glares counted as evidence my ass would have been thrown back in prison. I ignored most of them.
Not all.
I recognized the tumble of artificially red hair bobbing up the street. Luann McMannis used to deliver the church’s donated food to my mom when we were kids. It wasn’t charity, and it wasn’t because she was brave enough to step in a meth addict’s house. She came because she had the best photographic memory and could regale the town with stories of the time she handed off two cans of green beans and some creamed corn to my mom.
Luann counted her remaining political signs and forgot to look up. She nearly smacked into my leather jacket. The signs crashed onto Josie’s lot, facedown.
“Oh!” Luann gasped, staring at me. Her words bumbled fast and nervous. “Andrew Maddox? I…had no idea you were out of jail!”
I doubted that. News traveled quick when the gossip was good. She edged a few steps away from me, like I carried a blow-torch and grudge.
Luann gave me a fake smile. “Well, look at you. Back in town.”
“Yeah.”
“And…the police know you’re out of jail?”
For fuck’s sake. “They know.”
“And you’re…living here now? Permanently?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s early, isn’t it?”
The town suspected Luann became a court stenographer to snoop on everyone’s business. I was sure she remembered the details of my sentencing. Parole wasn’t supposed to be offered to me for three years.
But I had an agreement.
Luann cleared her throat. She busied herself, prattling about the upcoming election. She jammed the political sign in Josie’s lot. The sign practically bled with crimson letters.
Nolan Rhys - State Representative.
Goddamn it.
I ripped the sign out of the ground, forcing it into Luann’s arms. “Josie doesn’t want this on her property.”
“But—”
“Don’t let me see it on her land again.”
Luann bristled. “Look here, Mr. Maddox, Mayor Rhys asked me to deliver these signs—”
“Get them off her property before—”
“Before you set them on fire too?”
If she thought I was an arsonist why the hell would she piss me off? “They don’t belong here.”
Luann got the point. She hoisted the signs. Nolan Rhys probably spent thousands on the damn canvassing, and another fifty grand on the rest of the campaign. He’d out-spend his opponent just like he did everyone in the damn town and think of himself some sort of noble champion of the people.
At least he had money. I thought times were tough before. Being on parole meant I couldn’t risk my normal work on the streets in Ironfield. I called to Luann once she escaped to a distance where she felt safe enough to do me a favor.
“Need a job.” I let the implication hang. “Who’s hiring?”
Luann turned, her eyebrow arched in a perverse amusement. “A job for you?”
I didn’t need her attitude. I knew I was trash. Everyone was better than me, but only one woman had the right to judge, and it wasn’t Luann McMannis with her fire engine red hair, two pack a day habit, and third husband waiting at home.
“Try Freddie’s Auto,” she said. “He’s looking for a mechanic. I figure that’s…your type of work.”
It wasn’t. I’d trained to be an electrician, but I could work cars. Luann bolted away, pulling out her cell phone. Probably to call Freddie, to warn him or to prepare others for the fireworks.
Screw her. I’d work. Hard. Do what needed to be done to get money and support Josie—if she’d take me back. I had to think about the future. It was impossible in a town obsessed with the past.