Chapter 8 Juliet
JULIET
Good friends will comfort you when you’ve been stupid. Best friends will smack you upside the head and tell you what a dumbass you are. For some reason, I’d thought Mads was the first kind of friend. I was wrong.
“You didn’t even call to tell me you were all right.” She glares at me even as she huddles into her sweater on the cold-ass bleachers overlooking the football field. It’s kind of cute, like an angry kitten hissing.
“I couldn’t,” I confess. “But I saw Roquel—I figured she would tell you that I was… well, that I was alive.” Not exactly all right, but surely Roquel would have told Mads what was going on?
Mads’ glare softens and then she casts her eyes downward to the curled hands resting in her lap. I frown and pull the sleeves of Nolan’s hoodie that I stole from the benches on the football field before we came up here down over my hands.
“Hey,” I say, leaning towards her. “What’s up? What’s with the face?”
Mads presses her lips together and shakes her head. “Nothing,” she replies, but it’s pretty clear from the pucker of her forehead that she doesn’t mean it. She’s a shit liar. Instead of pressuring her, though, I sit back again and turn my attention out to the football field.
The Scorpion Kings are all out in fine form today, their coach directing their actions as they dodge and duck and weave across a ground littered with obstacles.
Despite the chill in the air, none of them seem fazed by the temperature.
In fact, a couple of the players have already stripped off their shirts as sweat glides down their shoulders and backs.
I’m only interested in three of them. My three.
“Are you going to try to come back to work?” Mads asks, breaking into my thoughts once more.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “I don’t want a handout and Ma-Ri let me go for a reason.”
“That was Darrio Vargas!” Mads says quickly. “She didn’t want to let you go.”
My head whips towards her. I’d figured as much and knew from what I’d discovered from the guys, but… “How do you know that?”
Mads’ cheeks flush and she grimaces. “I… uh…” She blows out a defeated sigh. “I’ve been picking up a few more shifts,” she finally admits. “And Ma-Ri has been asking about you when I’m there.”
“She has?” To say I’m surprised would be an understatement.
“Well, she’s subtle about it, but she’s been coming out of her office more when I get to work. You know she doesn’t normally come out unless she’s needed. She asks how things are at school and… if you’re still with them.” Mads nods her head to the field.
“Have you told her anything?” I ask, curious rather than offended.
Mads shrugs. “I told her when you went to stay with Mr. Calloway and weren’t coming to school anymore. She seemed pretty worried about you when I mentioned him.”
A wind breezes through the stands and I shiver, burrowing deeper into Nolan’s hoodie and then reaching up to lift the hood over my head and ears. Mads reaches for her backpack and pulls out a thicker coat and shrugs into it. As she does, I catch sight of a ring of bruises around one of her wrists.
Without a word, I snap my hand out and catch hers. She stiffens, eyes going wide like a startled deer.
“Wha—”
I grip her sleeve and yank it back before she can stop me. It's not just a bruise. It’s the ghost of someone’s hand—five distinct, angry smudges pressed into her skin in molted purple and yellow.
Mads jerks her arm back as if my hand on her skin burns. She drags her sleeve down in one swift, practiced motion. But the damage is done. I’ve already seen it.
Silence stretches between us like a wire pulled too tight. One of us is going to snap and I’m sure it’s going to be me.
“Who did that, Madison?” Despite the rage swarming my insides, the question comes out quiet. Controlled.
She swallows hard, throat bobbing as she turns her face away, avoiding my gaze. The wind catches strands of her soft blonde hair, flinging them across her cheek.
“It’s not what you think,” she finally says.
“That’s not an answer.” I lean forward, trying to catch her attention, but she keeps her chin stubbornly turned away. She’s staring at the field like the truth might be buried beneath the forty-yard line.
I exhale through my nose, the cold biting at the edges of it. I’m still watching her when she forces a laugh—dry and brittle. It’s not a sound I’ve ever heard her make and it hurts my ears.
“Anyway…” Mads drags out the word like it’s a bridge between her and the rest of the world. “Let’s talk about you.” Her voice is too high-pitched to be natural. “Is it official now? You and the Scorpion Kings? I heard they were protective of you when you came back this morning.”
I stare at her, but she’s already slipping away, emotionally detaching in real time and redirecting attention.
A part of me doesn’t want to let her, but another part of me understands.
When you can’t fix it in an instant, sometimes ignoring it is the best thing for you.
Now that I know there’s more going on with her, I’m not going to look the other way forever.
Someday soon, she’ll have to tell someone the truth. Until then, I wonder if I can ask Lex to bug her phone or something to keep an eye on her.
“You seemed surprised to see me this afternoon,” I say, letting her have her way for now. “I didn’t know you’d heard that I was back.”
She lifts one shoulder in an awkward shrug, her other hand pinning her sleeve down as if she’s frightened I’ll reach forward and yank it back up. “There’s a difference between hearing gossip in class and seeing you in the flesh after weeks of nothing.”
My only response is a low hum, but I sit back on the bleachers, reaching out and curling my hands around the back of the metal bench to keep myself seated. Seconds pass and I feel the burn of her stare as she finally pulls her gaze from the field like it’ll save her.
“So,” she tries again. “Gio, Lex, and Nolan? That’s a lot of testosterone to juggle, even for you.”
I roll my eyes, but the tightness in my chest doesn’t ease. Not really.
“I’m not juggling them.”
“No? Then what do you call it?” She bumps her shoulder into mine, smirking now, playing her part. “You’re living every girl’s dream, Jules. Just admit it.”
I snort. “I doubt my life is anyone’s fucking dream.” Not the normal life, but my sex life… My eyes find the men on the field.
Gio’s shirt is off now—because of course it is.
Nolan’s barking orders like he runs the damn team and, well, he kind of does.
Lex, however, is turned to the side—not paying attention to anyone else as his eyes find mine across the yards that separate us.
My lips twitch and I lift a hand in a wave.
His face brightens and he raises a hand to wave back when Nolan strides up to him and slaps the back of his head, distracting him.
Embezzlement. Kidnapping. Murder. My life is one fucked-up drama after another, but at least I have them.
My gaze turns back to Mads as the bleachers creak under her shifting against it.
She lifts her hands and rubs them together, blowing into them as if her breath will be enough to keep them warm.
My fingers already feel like Popsicles and we’re still at the tail end of fall. Snow hasn’t even hit the ground.
“Juliet?”
“Hmmmm?” I watch as Lex scowls at Nolan but shoves his helmet back on his head and lowers himself into position. The team has moved on from the obstacle course. Now, they’re practicing lineup and a mock game. Hopefully, that means they’ll be done soon.
“Are you…” Mads’ voice penetrates my thoughts again, but still, I don’t look at her as I wait for her to voice the question she obviously wants to ask. I hear her indrawn breath and then, “Are you going to the funeral?”
My back clenches tight and, slowly, as if the top of my skull is attached to a string, I turn to face her. She watches me with soft eyes and her hands now folded in her lap.
“What funeral?” I ask, but I fear I already know. My stomach knots. The cold digs deeper under my skin.
“Mr. Calloway’s.” No matter how quiet her voice is, the answer stabs into my chest like a sharpened blade.
“I… didn’t know that it had already been decided,” I admit, turning my gaze back to the field and narrowing my eyes on the three men that should have told me. They have to know. They know damn near everything else that goes on in this fucking town.
“It was in this morning’s paper,” Mads tells me. “He was a big part of the town and it looks like it’ll be open to the public.”
“Who put it together?” I ask. “Don’t the police need more time with the body? Collect more evidence?” I doubt that Mads would know the answers, but I ask the questions anyway. “When is it?”
“Next weekend,” she answers. “I don’t know about what the police need from his body or evidence, but they had a whole article about him and his life in the paper.
It wasn’t just an obituary. I think someone named Stuart is coordinating the funeral proceedings.
” She pauses and when she speaks again, she sounds sad. “I don’t think he had a lot of family.”
No, he didn’t. But for a bastard like Morpheus Calloway, family wouldn’t have meant shit anyway.
I’m not surprised to learn that his assistant is the one arranging things.
That fucker had been so far up Morpheus’ ass he couldn’t see past his bullshit.
No doubt, he’ll be blubbering away in an ill-fitting black suit on the day of the funeral.
When I don’t say anything for a long moment, Mads prompts me again. “So?” she asks.
“So, what?”
“Are you going?”
I stare out at the field, but I don’t really see the game anymore. “I don’t know,” I admit.
The real question should be, do I want to?
Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to that question either.
It might be relieving to see the asshole put in the ground—to remind myself that he’s dead and gone and he can’t do shit to me anymore.
But going to his funeral will also be seen as paying my respects—and I can’t respect a man who only ever wanted to own and control me.
“The police will be there.”
I whip my head to her. “What?”
She blinks at the sudden movement, but nods.
“Yeah, it was in the article,” she says.
“They didn’t say why—just that there would be a unit of Silverwood deputies in attendance for ‘all of the good Morpheus Calloway donated to the town’.
” I grind my jaw as she rattles off what I’m sure is a line from the paper she read.
“But I think they’ll be there for another reason,” she confesses.
That makes me frown. “What other reason?”
Madison bites her lower lip, dragging her teeth over the pink flesh before releasing it.
“Well, you know they say that killers often like to go back to the scene of the crime, but if they’re from Silverwood, then they probably can’t go to the city often.
Whoever murdered him will probably be at the funeral.
The cops are probably going to see who shows up. ”
Holy. Shit. She’s probably right. We expect that whoever killed Morpheus knew him. That kind of death—being stabbed so many times—speaks to a personal vendetta. The killer might actually show up to his funeral. Which means… now, I have to go.