Chapter Thirteen
Maddy
“Maddy, you have another delivery.”
Sighing, I roll my eyes. It’s been a month since my twin tried to take over my life. She and my mother, whose name I learned is Patricia, are locked away until their trial. Which, from what I heard, is several months away.
“You know what to do,” I call out. “I’ll call you when I get home from work.”
“Why don’t you just come back here after work, Cookie?” Daddy says, walking into the room with a single red rose and a box of Slim Jims.
“Because I have my own place, remember?” I remind him. “I promise I’m fine, daddy. I would tell you if I wasn’t.”
“Alright,” he sighs. “What about these?”
“Toss it in the box,” I tell him.
Every single day for the past four weeks, King, or someone else from his family, sends me a flower and some Slim Jims. As much as it hurts me to say this, I have donated, at the very least, twenty boxes of Slim Jims to the local food bank.
I understand what they’re trying to do. I know they feel bad about what happened. They feel responsible because they didn’t believe me when I told them that I wasn’t the one in that video.
The truth is, I forgive them. I even forgive King. But I just can’t trust them. I know they didn’t know me long and it shouldn’t bother me as much as it does that they didn’t believe me. But it does. It bothers me to my very soul. Regardless of how long I had known them, in my heart, I felt like I had known them for years. I felt like they were my family.
I know it sounds silly. I can’t make heads or tails of it myself, but it is what it is.
Memories of King’s words try to break through my thoughts but I push them right back into the corner. He’s tried to contact me several times since I got home from the hospital. I was only there for a couple of days and he was always lurking right outside the door.
Every time he would try to say a word, I would give him a look and he would remain silent. I forgive the man, but I don’t want to hear his excuses. I don’t want to see his face. The anger has all but disappeared, but every night before falling asleep my mind replays the day at the Obsidian clubhouse. The look on his face. The venomous words from his lips. The silence from his family. And each and every time, I fall asleep crying.
Freaking jerk.
“I’m going to go ahead and go,” I tell my parents.
“You don’t have to leave for another thirty minutes, Maddy,” mom says. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I smile. “I just have to stop at the dang store and get me some Slim Jims.”
My parents laugh. They know my obsession with those little meaty sticks of deliciousness. Apparently, so do the Obsidians.
Regardless of how I feel about that family, I smile as I head to my car. Too bad they didn’t act like this before. Or, you know, believed me when I said I was innocent.
Okay, so maybe I’m still holding a grudge. Sue me.
***King***
“Is everything ready?”
“You know, I really shouldn’t be helping you out. I’m still royally pissed at what Maddy told me. You’re a fucking idiot.”
“I’ve told you half a dozen times,” I remind him. “I didn’t fucking mean it. I was pissed that I thought she had lied to me and I wanted to hurt her. I thought she was trying to pull something over on me and my family.”
“And, I get that,” Blackhawk says over the phone. “In your place, I probably would have done the same thing. But the fact that you did it to someone I love like a sister, well, that pisses me the fuck off. You called her fat, man. She’s always had issues with accepting how beautiful she is because of her size. It would have been less painful had you stabbed her in the heart.”
I want to fall to my knees and tell her how beautiful I think she is. I’ve never been with a skinny woman in my entire life. Of course, I wouldn’t tell her about my exes, but the fact remains, I love that she’s not skinny. Holding her in my lap last month was the best and worst day of my life. Nothing had even felt more perfect than her sleeping against my body. But it hurt deeply because I knew I most likely wouldn’t get the chance to have her that close again.
She fucking hates me and that guts me to my very core.
“I’ve spent the last month trying to get her to talk to me,” I tell Blackhawk. “She won’t return my calls or texts. I’ve tried showing up at her parents’ house but her dad just sends me away. She’s not accepting my gifts. Or those of my brothers. How the hell can I tell her I’m sorry, to explain why I was such a fucking idiot, if she refuses to see me?”
“I told you that I’d help,” he reminds me. “You need to fight like your life depends on it, brother. Fight for this woman because she fucking deserves it.”
“Agreed,” I growl.
I don’t care how long this takes. I’ll show her what she means to me even if it kills me.
“To answer your question, yes, everything is ready. But you do know that there is a high probability that she’s going to call the police on you, right?”
I smirk as I head out to my car.
“Yep,” I say brightly. “But it will be worth it. Thanks, man. Talk to you later.”
I take a few minutes to clean the snow off the windows of my car. Winter is in full force right now, but I don’t mind. I’m about to see my woman.