CHAPTER FIFTEEN #2
I peer back at the sight of the outrage, and everyone other than my father and Maddox has scattered. They’re discussing something. It isn’t confrontational, but there’s a heaviness shrouding them.
I’m utterly lost, which is not a destination I’m familiar with.
I don’t generally struggle with how I feel about things, but Maddox coming here today slices me to shreds as vehemently as his Karambit knife would.
Not because it’s all bad. Because it isn’t, and that’s confusing.
Because he is the face of all I’ve lost and all I didn’t realize I was yearning for.
After a few cleansing breaths of the fragrant country air, ripe with magnolias and jasmine and the marshy scent of the bayou that divides then and now, I regain my composure and amble toward them, determined not to reveal how despondent I am.
Maddox pats my father on the arm, as if to excuse himself, and immediately closes the distance between us. He grips my chin, his eyes teeming with regret. “I am so sorry, Tess. I … didn’t intend—”
“Of course you didn’t,” I say quickly because the man before me, who is usually a heartbeat away from breaking into a dance, is tormented, and I can’t stand it, so I steer us in a direction that will bring out his smart-ass bravado. “You could’ve shut up about the piercing. That was a dick move.”
A smile blasts across his face, and he releases his hold on my chin, embracing the momentary lightness.
“You’re always glass half empty. I was on my best behavior.
It was my dick that removed that barbell, and I didn’t say anything about how I rode Tessa all morning until I was so sweaty that I had to peel myself off her hot body. ”
I press the back of my hand to my mouth to stifle my amusement because laughing out loud seems in poor taste with my family so upset. It’s enough for him to run with though.
He bends so his lips skim my earlobe, and his hand clamps on to my hip. “Or how I plan to let Tessa ride my face tonight.”
Tilting my chin to obtain a better view of him, I am suddenly aware of the blazing Louisiana heat. “That doesn’t work with the bike.”
Those cool gray eyes frolic all over my face. “That’s not the Tessa I was talking about.”
For a still beat, we are suspended in that realm of crackling energy that thwarts brokenness and differences. It’s just us. Hammering heartbeats and a gravitational pull. But we both know we can’t stay here.
“What do you need from me?” he asks, and I’m instantly transported to that awful night.
But it isn’t the disillusionment that I see.
It’s the man who showed up. Who wants to show up now.
It’s foolish to get attached here, regardless of him saying so many right things today.
Before I get caught up in those baffling emotions again, I move on to a topic that will keep me from weaving the shambles of this day into a fairy tale.
“I need to know what I’m missing, what you’re protecting me from because …”
He doesn’t wait for me to find an eloquent way to phrase it. He simply hears the part I didn’t vocalize. “Because you can’t trust anything else I’m saying if you don’t trust me to tell you the truth about the rest.”
“Yeah,” I whisper, a little taken aback that he knows me so well. It was one thing to understand my reference to Zero when he asked about a ghost in the attic, but reading my motivation is more.
“I’m going to let you talk with your father.
” He slants his head toward my dad moseying toward us with my grandmother in tow.
“But I’ll tell you everything when you’re done here.
There were some complications back then that I’m trying to deal with now.
Maybe I shouldn’t have hidden it, but I didn’t want you to be scared.
I’ll fix this though. Not just that, but also what happened today. ”
“This isn’t something you can fix, Maddox. I don’t expect you to. I’m not … I’m trying not to be mad. You shouldn’t have come here, but of course you didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”
He smooths my hair back and plants a peck on my forehead as my grandmother and my father join us.
“Your mother was upset because she’d bumbled the blueberry soufflé. Again.” My grandmother brushes her hand up and down my spine. “Don’t you let all that nonsense get in your head.”
That has another subdued laugh leaking out of me. “I think this surpasses a tantrum over a cooking mishap, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you, young man.” She smiles at Maddox, who winks and dips his chin to her, before she turns back toward the house. “I’ll see you both inside.”
Moments like this make me wonder if my grandmother is losing touch with reality. I don’t think Maddox or me setting foot inside that house is an option.
Maddox palms my head, that tortured darkness filling his eyes again. “Take care of what you need to. I’ll be around when you’re done.”
He extends a polite goodbye to my dad and heads out. I watch him go, shocked by how some force inside me longs to follow.
“You don’t need to leave.” My father stands beside me, his focus flipping between Maddox’s receding frame and my crestfallen face. “This is my home. You’re my little girl, and you’re always welcome here. Your mother will calm down. So will your sisters.”
“That’s wishful thinking. We both know they won’t. It’s been rocky since I announced I got the job there more than eight years ago.”
At the time, I was young, enamored with the city, and wowed by the mystique of La Lune Noire.
The fact that it stood for the opposite of everything I had come from only heightened the allure.
While that’s no longer the draw, if I’m completely honest with myself, I’m still enraptured by it all. Sketchy morals or not.
“It was long before that actually,” I tack on. “This was inevitable.”
My father doesn’t argue the inevitability of the relationship breakdown because it’s the truth.
“I’m not sure what’s going on between you two.
” He casts one final look at Maddox. “That man isn’t who I would have chosen for you, if it were up to me, which it isn’t.
Do you want to know what he said to me?”
I stare into the eyes that were so often my safe harbor, growing up, my place to find acceptance and direction, and I realize I’m scared about what I might find there now. “I’m not sure I do.”
He smiles. “That’s fair. I’ll tell you some of it anyway.
He asked for a moment of my time when he arrived, told me that he hadn’t planned on showing up here, that he knew you were here, and he’d been out riding his motorcycle and couldn’t stay away.
In the few minutes we spoke, he casually referred to you as phenomenal, gorgeous, and brilliant. ”
My lungs constrict. I wasn’t expecting him to share anything like that. “That seems generous. I’m kind of mean to him.”
He bobs his head with a chuckle. “He said that too.” When he clocks my raised brow, he swiftly amends that statement.
“He said you were strong-willed and a force. I deduced the meanness. He also told me what an incredible friend you’ve been to his sister-in-law and how you’re one of his nephew’s favorite people. ”
“Oh,” is all I manage, overwhelmed by his view of me.
“I left him in the backyard and intended to tell you he was here, but then Hunter interrupted us, and I thought maybe letting you have a moment with both was important. That backfired, I suppose.” He gathers his thoughts for a tranquil beat before a muffled hum collects in his throat—a sign of him pondering something.
“I just hit him with the question I’ve asked any boy or man who’s been interested in one of my girls. ”
I know that question. He always asks the guys what sets his daughter apart. Why her?
Eden’s husband, John, said it was her values. That made it crystal clear they were destined for each other.
I don’t think I want to know what Maddox came up with when there was no reason to ask him in the first place, so I keep it simple. “Did you like his answer?”
His lips quirk up, like he knew I’d inquire in a roundabout way. “I understand your mother’s perspective. She has valid points, Tessy. Things you need to reconcile before you get yourself into something you can’t get out of.”
No matter what transpires between Maddox and me, it’s too late for that, but I don’t bother sharing the tidbit that my life already belongs to the Noires. Till death do us part.
“But his answer was hands down the best.” He rubs his hand over his chin, like he’s thinking back on the conversation. “I can’t imagine a better one.”
“We’re not even together.” My protest is weak. I’m struck with this urge to sprint after Maddox and coil myself around him, which is a terrible idea.
My father pulls me into a hug, his chest rattling with part chuckle and part ragged breath. “He told me that too, honey.”
Like it did when I was a little girl, his hug breaks down my defenses, and I have to fight a sob working its way up into my throat. “I wanted to be here for Violet, but maybe I should go.”
He squeezes me tighter. “Only if you promise to come back soon.”
“Of course I will,” I lie because everything about this feels like goodbye.
Once he grabs my purse from the house, I meander down the long driveway to the car I arrived in. One of the guards opens the door, and I slide into the back seat, pulling my phone out to find a text from earlier.
Maddox: Water balloons or cornhole?
If I’d seen that, I would have realized he was here sooner, and this whole mess could’ve been avoided.
We also wouldn’t have kissed, and that thought alone is gut-wrenching. I might not know what he said to my father, but while everyone else was shouting how I was failing, he was telling me I was enough.
“You’re stunning in that dress, as always, but it’s more. I needed you.”
“I won’t pretend in front of anyone, for any reason, that you aren’t the most fascinating, addictive, and infuriating woman I’ve ever known.”
“This is me telling you that the kiss back there was only the beginning. I want more. I’ll fight for more.”
“Tessa is a grown woman—a damn impressive one who balances both strength and compassion, which is why she’s tolerating this with far more poise than anyone here deserves.”
And he said he hid things about that horrible night from me because he didn’t want me to be scared. That’s not the controlling-bastard picture I painted of him. Fuck.
As if I conjured him from my racing thoughts, when the car rolls to a stop at the end of the street, I see him perched on his bike.
“Wait,” I tell the driver. “I’m getting out.”
No one objects since it’s to see Maddox, and the second I open the door, his whole face lights up.
He hops off to greet me, but there’s a hint of contrition lining his grin. “Hey there, baby girl.”
“You’re still here?”
“Of course,” he says, pulling me against him and kissing my hair. “I told you I would be.”
Did he?
“Can I ride with you?”
“Always.” He lifts a helmet, as though he planned this. “You want to go talk?”
Talk? About that night. About why he hid things from me. About why he made me come back to work and why he bought my apartment building and why I need guards around me now.
“You’ve been protecting me.” It’s a statement because I see it now.
“Yes.”
I loop my purse across my body and lift my long skirt, knotting it around my thighs so it won’t get in the way. Maddox rakes his gaze up my bare legs, but doesn’t utter a sound while I process my thoughts.
After about thirty seconds of my silence, he hooks his knuckle beneath my chin, worry etched in his features. “Where to? Home?”
“Yeah.” I think about my empty apartment and change my mind, shaking my head. “Can we go to La Lune Noire actually? Or is that … is me being with you against the rules?”
“There is no rule I wouldn’t break for you.”
The air in my lungs billows out, so I grab the helmet he’s still holding. “That’s good. Take me there, but … I don’t want to talk.”
He nods in understanding, but doesn’t make a big deal about it. He fastens my chinstrap, gets on the bike, taps the seat for me to follow, and bestows some of his suave cockiness. “Press those sexy curves against me, Nightmare. And don’t let go.”