“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.”