Once Upon A Half-Time 2(135)
“You aren’t the arsonist. You were the fuel on the fire, all because you wanted to protect me.”
Maddox gritted his teeth. “I never wanted that to happen. I hate myself for dragging you into my life, through the blood and violence and gangs. I don’t fucking deserve you. I never deserved you. I’ve always been the shit on the bottom of your shoe, but just knowing I had a chance to make you mine forced me to change. If I could shed that past, it’d be gone in a second.”
“This isn’t about your past.”
“You made me a better man.”
I shook my head. “Don’t say that.”
“You saved my life, Josie.”
“You don’t believe that.”
He bit back. “Why the fuck wouldn’t I believe it?”
“You can’t talk about changing and bettering yourself and loving me when I know what you’ll do when you find the man who framed you. Don’t promise me the world and then bleed it dry for your revenge.”
Maddox pushed off the door. “That’s different, Sweets.”
“If you can’t see how murder is different—”
“It’s revenge.”
“Well, I’m not looking for revenge. I want justice. I want Nolan behind bars where he belongs.”
He laughed, but I didn’t get the joke. “That’s not how the world works. You know better than that.”
I was getting tired of people condescending to me, pretending they knew better because they had hurt more than me. I didn’t answer.
“Even a little town like Saint Christie is corrupt to the core,” Maddox said. “There’s no justice when everyone is a victim.”
“Only one of us is corrupted, Maddox.”
“You’ve seen the racism. The hatred. We have a police chief who would hurt innocent people. A damned mayor who lusts after you. Hell, your own grandfather was taken for a ride by his bookie—”
“Don’t you dare bring Granddad into this.”
“Why not?” Maddox didn’t let me look away. “He was hurt in that fire too. Josie, someone is lurking in this town who would destroy your store and hurt your family in cold blood. And if you don’t think the rest of the world is a mirror-fucking-image of this town, then you’re not naïve—you’re goddamned ignorant.”
One step too far.
My temper flared. “We haven’t lived the same life. I won’t pretend to know what you’ve done, what you’ve seen. But the world isn’t that dark alley you crawled around in. It’s not all violence and rage.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Only if you make it that way.” My words thickened, forced through the sticky, syrupy sludge that was my own heartbreak. “You want a reason we can’t be together? Right there. That’s why we’re incompatible. You’re looking for revenge to answer for our past. I want justice so we could have a future together.”
Uh-oh. I said too much.
Maddox loomed. I shrugged him away. I wasn’t letting him touch me, hold me.
His voice softened but it never lost that feral threat. “Do you still hope we can work it out?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “All I have is hope. But that dream of us together? It won’t come true if you’re obsessed with that vengeance. I can’t love a murderer.”
“But wouldn’t you feel safer knowing that arsonist was gone?” Maddox cupped my chin. “If it was Nolan Rhys, the law can’t touch him. We can’t trust the courts, and he could buy his way out of any sentence a judge passed. He’d get away with arson, and then he’d come back for you.”
No. He wouldn’t try to hurt me.
He’d aim for Maddox instead.
And for the first time, I almost wished I could let Maddox take that revenge, if only because it started to sound like his only form of self-defense. But everyone would know. They’d immediately suspect him. They’d take him away, and I’d lose him to prison forever.
My eyes prickled with tears.
“I won’t be a part of it,” I whispered. “I won’t let you do it.”
“Why?”
“Because I already lost you once for a year. I won’t lose the man I love to a lifetime in jail.”
I spoke too fast, without thinking, and revealed everything I’d hidden from him. I spun for the door. Maddox grabbed me, forcing me into his arms. My back pressed to his chest, and his thick arms coiled over my waist.
“You still love me?” His words rasped, a fracturing growl.
What was I supposed to say? “I never stopped.”
“Why did you break up with me?” he asked. I couldn’t answer, not when both our lives were endangered by the admission. “You said you didn’t want me anymore.”