Once Upon A Half-Time 2(129)

This wasn’t the time or place for this dark of a conversation. I demanded answers from Maddox in the middle of a bright and sunny day, surrounded by the entirety of the town responding to a particularly vulgar leash crisis. These secrets deserved an interrogation room, where we insulted each other with accusation, not dreaded curiosity.

Maddox exhaled. “I wasn’t doing anything, Sweets. You know that.”

I wasn’t so sure. “You were out.”

“After you broke up with me, I was out every night.” His words stung. “I didn’t do a damn thing. Chief Craig had it out for me. He set fire to your shop. That’s why he was there so quickly, the first on the scene, making sure no one but me got hurt.”

I didn’t answer. It didn’t go unnoticed.

Maddox edged me away from the street and around the corner, hiding us from view. I let him bump me into an alley, trying to suppress that quick and dangerous shiver that passed over my body. My back struck the brick.

He hid me here deliberately.

“Know where we are?” Maddox whispered. A rare smile touched his lips. “Remember?”

“I remember,” I said. “But that was a long time ago.”

He glanced over the alley…at least, what constituted an alley in Saint Christie. The underused sidewalk connected Main Street with Highland Road. It seemed darker when I was first pursued by him, a dangerous and naughty place where a good girl like me didn’t belong and bad boy like him lurked to take advantage of innocent virgins.

I was seventeen and hadn’t yet been kissed.

He was nineteen and knew exactly what he was doing.

“I fell in love with you right here.” Maddox pressed against me, his scent invading my mind. “I hadn’t lived until I touched you. I hadn’t known happiness until I kissed you. I didn’t know what it meant to love until I took you. Josie, you’re the reason I didn’t die in a gutter somewhere. I changed for you. I will protect you. I’ll find the man who separated us, and I’ll make him pay for that year he stole.”

Why did he speak such beautiful words and then threaten with blood? I pressed my hand to his lips.

“Don’t say it. Please don’t talk about revenge.”

“I love you, Josie.”

Those words were just as dangerous. I had no defense against the only secret I longed to hear.

He lowered himself, brushing his lips against mine. Nothing sweet, because the memory wasn’t sweet. Nothing gentle, because nothing about Maddox had ever been gentle.

The kiss was sheer possession, a bite of passion that stole my words and tangled me in his feral instinct.

Was it possible to want this man more than when I first had him? The separation killed me, but being together would endanger him.

I had to tell him about Nolan. I had to warn him.

But nothing I did would save Maddox from his own vengeance. If he knew the extent of Nolan’s threats, we’d both be lost.

Only the truth separated us now.

I pulled away, breathless and unsatisfied. “What happened between you and Chief Craig? If you’re right…why would he do such a thing? Why would he want to punish you?”

Maddox darkened. His fingers tightened against me. Desperate. “That’s the way it is.”

“That’s not a motive.”

“He’s not the man you think he is. The marriage, the kids, the nice house. It’s a cover. He’s a monster, and he wants to ruin me.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s an evil man. And you shouldn’t trust him.”

But that wasn’t a motive either. And it didn’t sound true. Chills twisted along my spine.

Maddox brought me to the place where we had our first kiss, where we fell in love, where I knew I’d spend the rest of my life with him. We shared a beautiful memory…and then he destroyed it.

Because Maddox was lying.





10





Maddox





Town hall meetings were a shit-show.

The monthly business discussions were little more than a circus, and all of Saint Christie became the animals pissing under the tent. Not that bureaucracy didn’t have a place in a small town made up of apple pie, Uncle Sam, and disability checks, but the town meetings didn’t move fast enough to solve any problems.

The people delivered signed petitions with grandiose speeches to fix one pothole. A “citizens’ watch group” blocked the seeding of the new baseball field because they weren’t spending money on other towns’ kids…even when the other town visited to play a game with the high school. On the first Monday of every month, the residents completely shut down the entirety of Saint Christie’s government, and then they bitched about inefficiencies the rest of the week.