by Rachel Grant
“Oh. Wait. She’s Trina’s friend. Madison. Or Maggie?”
“Close. Madeline. Goes by Maddie.”
“Something go wrong between you two? And why is she in the same hotel?”
“She was doxed Sunday night because our picture was in the paper on Sunday morning.”
Chase’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been holding out on me, Warner. Someone else was doxed, and I’m just hearing about it four days later?”
Josh flicked his gaze to Ava. “We’ll talk about it in your room.” He gave Chase the key to his room with the king bed. Their rooms were connected to provide extra protection for Ava should someone figure out where they were staying.
Ten minutes later, he grabbed two beers from the honor bar in his room and knocked on the connecting door. Chase opened the door on his side. Josh turned to Ava, “Don’t answer the front door for anyone. If you hear a knock from the hall, get me. Room service should take about forty-five minutes.”
“Sure,” she said. Her tone was subdued, not at all the girl who’d been excited a few hours ago at the idea of staying in a posh downtown hotel for a few days.
In Chase’s room, he closed and locked the connecting door. He didn’t want Ava barging in on this conversation.
“What’s the deal with Maddie Foster?” Chase asked.
“Can you let me open the beers first?”
“You can open and talk at the same time.”
He set the beers on the counter above the minibar and found the bottle opener. “Maddie was with me Saturday night when the teargas grenades were tossed through the window.” He handed Chase one of the beers. “We were, uh, fooling around.”
“Way to bury the lede, man. I still can’t believe you’re just telling me this now.”
“Sunday afternoon Ava said she caught Maddie going through my personal papers when they were in the house alone the day before. And she said something very hurtful to Ava.”
Chase frowned. “What did Maddie say when you asked her about it?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
“You didn’t ask her,” Chase said with growing disbelief. “But didn’t you say she was doxed? You must have talked to her then.”
Josh shook his head. He took a swallow of beer, then said, “She, uh, also had her house broken into while she was at the gym with us on Sunday.”
“So this chick you’d been fooling around with on Saturday night, who then was hit with a tear gas grenade and doxed because of you, and, we can only assume had her house broken into because of you…and you haven’t talked to her? Because your insecure, jealous niece said she did something wrong. Shit, man, and people say I’m messed up in the head.”
Josh nearly choked on his mouthful of beer. “No one says—”
“We’re talking about your dumb ass right now, Warner, not me.”
“You don’t understand. Maddie reacted to something said on Saturday that…kind of confirms what Ava accused her of.” Hell, he’d begun to wonder if Maddie had told her brother about the letter and that was why the guy had mentioned the resemblance. Like, maybe the whole brother rift was a lie.
His brain had traveled a lot of dark roads in four days and three hours. Not that he was counting.
“What did she do?” Chase asked.
“I can’t. It’s…I just can’t.”
“If you aren’t going to talk to Maddie, you should talk to someone.”
“You know how delicate my relationship with Ava is. If I talk to Maddie, she’ll think I don’t believe her. Ava needs to be my focus.”
“You’re being manipulated by a seventeen-year-old girl. She’s sweet. And troubled. I’m not dissing on her. I like Ava a lot. But she’s manipulating you just the same, because she knows you’re terrified of fucking up your newfound fatherhood. News for you, Josh. All fathers screw up. Even the best ones make mistakes. Dads are human too.”
“But I don’t get the luxury of making mistakes, Chase. Her real dad already made them all. She turned seventeen a month after I took over all the parenting jobs. I’ve got less than two years to undo all the damage her parents did in the first sixteen years and eleven months of her life.”
“Josh, she’s a person, not something you can fix. Just like you can’t fix me. Or Owen. You are a great friend. An amazing mentor. You’re one of the best people I know. I respect and admire you and I love you like a brother. But you can’t fix the damage other people did to me. All you can do is provide a safe space for me to express what I’m processing now. The rest has to come from me. I have no doubt you’re the best dad Ava has ever had—”
“That’s not saying much.”
“But you can damn well bet for Ava, it’s everything. She loves you so much, she’s terrified of losing you. It’s a demon that’s controlling her, and through her, you.”
“You don’t even know what she said Maddie did.”
“I don’t need to. I saw the way you looked at Maddie and she looked at you. There was enough pain going back and forth, I got a contact gut punch.” He shook his head. “Go talk to her, man. Tell her you’re sorry. Tell her you’re a dipshit.”
“I can’t. It will screw things up with Ava.”
“Josh, it’s not like you to be such a chickenshit. What did Maddie supposedly read in your papers that has you too scared to face her?”
He looked at Chase sharply. “I’m not afraid.”
“Bullshit.”
And it hit him, another damn blow to the nuts. Chase was right. He hadn’t been able to face Maddie knowing she’d read the letter in which he poured out his heart and all the pain of wanting someone he could never have, especially knowing the woman in question was one of her closest friends and Josh’s best friend’s wife.
It was too much for a relationship that had barely started.
He met the younger man’s gaze. Chase, who’d been tortured and brainwashed—twice. Chase, who had spent years under the control of an evil bitch who’d fucked with his brain as a scientific experiment.
Josh had made it his personal mission to help Chase in his recovery, but he never considered that the guy was way ahead of him in emotional intelligence. He sat on the edge of Chase’s bed, the wind knocked out of him. “There’s nothing wrong with your brain. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Aw, hell, man, I’ve got a bag of cats playing with knives in my head. It’s you I can see clearly.”
Josh let out a pained laugh. He liked this Chase, who was nothing like the man he’d worked with before last October. “I’ve really fucked up, haven’t I?”
“Dude, this one is epic. I don’t know Maddie, but I know Trina. If Trina says Maddie’s one of the good ones, she is.” Chase fixed him with a knowing look. “I take it you like her. You weren’t just fooling around to blow off steam.”
Josh thought back to Saturday night, when they’d stood in his garage and held each other. “I’m crazy about you,” he’d said, when what he’d been thinking was, am I falling in love?
“Yeah,” he said to Chase.
“Then get your ass to her room and talk to her.”
“I can’t leave Ava alone.”
“I’m here for Ava. I’ll leave the connecting door open.”
“I don’t have her room number, and at this point, I doubt she’ll give it to me.”
Chase shook his head. He pulled out his phone and tapped the screen, then held it to his ear. “Rico, hey, it’s Chase. Listen, we just checked into our hotel and want to check on Maddie Foster and don’t have her room number. Yeah, probably in the shower or something, because she’s not answering texts. I know Raptor booked her room. Do you have the number in the file on her case?” He smiled and paused. “1420? Ha. Same floor. Makes it easy. Thanks, man. Have a good night.”
Chase hung up, then looked at Josh. “She’s just down the hall. No more excuses.”
“I’ll tell Ava—”
“I’ll tell her. You go. Now.” He pushed Josh toward the door to the hallway.
<
br /> He stepped out and glanced at the numbers. Maddie would be down the hall and around the corner.
He reached the corner and paused.
Get a grip, man. You used to be a SEAL.
He squared his shoulders and marched forward until he stood in front of Maddie’s door.
The knock shouldn’t have startled Maddie. She’d half expected it after seeing Josh in the lobby, but still, it did. It wasn’t as if she’d given him her room number.
Like that would stop a Raptor operative.
She sighed and reached for the door. Might as well get it over with. She wasn’t quite braced for the gut punch of seeing him again. But there he stood, broad shoulders, stiff, almost military stance. Rigid. So handsome, it made her guts ache.
His expression was neither hot nor cold. But upon closer look, she could see something, some spark of emotion in his eyes. She just wasn’t sure which emotion.
She waited, saying nothing. He closed his eyes as if searching for a place deep inside that would tell him what to say.
“There’s only one thing you can say to me right now, and if it’s not the first words out of your mouth, you can leave now.”
“I fucked up.”
“That’s actually pretty close, but not it.” She shut the door.
“I’m sorry!” Josh shouted. “I’m so, so sorry, Maddie.”
Her heart pounded as she stood next to the closed door. Should she open it? Should she hear him out?
“Please, Maddie,” he said, his voice suitably pleading. “Please let me apologize. Let me explain.”
Slowly, she pushed down on the bar and opened the door a crack.
“Can I come in?” he asked.
She pulled the door open wider and stepped back, allowing him to enter.
He stepped into the room and turned to close the door. With his back to her, he repeated, “I’m sorry.”
“Face me when you say that.”
He turned as she commanded. His face was flushed, and his eyes burned with intensity. “I’m sorry. I fucked up.”
“Yes. You did.”
“You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“No. Why should I?” She crossed her arms. “Do you believe Ava?”
“Honestly? I think I did, but never a hundred percent. I just believed it was possible she was telling the truth. With that in mind…I—I didn’t know what to do.”
He ran his hands through his hair. “I told you the night we met that she has to come first. Ava has to be the number one on my priority list, and if there was any chance that you said what she claimed, I had to be there for her. She needs me. Needs one adult to count on.”
“She also needs discipline. And letting her manipulate you is about the worst lesson you can teach her. But aside from that, I don’t really know what she said about me. So as much as I’m sympathetic to your reasons and maybe might even understand a little bit, I’m not quite there. The time for you to confront me with this was Sunday night.”
She took a deep breath and turned to pace the room. She couldn’t keep staring at him and maintain her sanity. “When I offered to take Ava for a few days to help you both out, I told you there was nothing she could say that would hurt me. And that was true. She can’t hurt me, because I understand her. The only one who hurt me is you.”
She paused before the window. Evening was settling in, and the city was lighting up. “And if you still believe her, why are you even here? Why are you saying sorry? I have work to do, and I don’t need you wasting my time if you’re just here to tell me why you ghosted me and then walk away again.”
That was the crux, the very heart of her pain. Right when she’d needed him, he’d ghosted her. This man who spent his life taking care of others wasn’t there for her the moment she needed him most. Her anger spiked, and she turned to face him. “I was doxed and I was robbed, and you ghosted me. Do you have a clue how that made me feel? I needed you. And you abandoned me.”
Her voice broke on the last sentence. She couldn’t help it. She did not want to cry over this man, and yet here she was, not only crying over him, but in front of him.
She couldn’t stop the tears, so she would defend them. “You abandoned me less than twenty-four hours after I told you how I feel abandoned by my family. After I shared with you how much it hurt to be betrayed and abandoned by my fiancé and best friend.”
He dropped to his knees and reached out, placing his hands on her thighs just above the knees and pressing his face into her jeans. “I am so sorry, Maddie. I’m ashamed.” His shoulders rose like he’d let out a sob, but he didn’t make a sound.
He released her, and she stepped back. She dropped to the edge of the bed and willed him to look at her. She wanted to see his eyes. To see if this could be some sort of act.
“Chase talked some sense into me. He made me see something that I didn’t want to. I think I shut down the moment Ava said you’d read the letter about Trina.” He took a deep breath and finally looked up. His eyes were damp. “I—I was afraid to face you. I was so ashamed. I’ve never told anyone, but in a moment of desperation, I wrote it all down, what I would say if I could. Hoping to exorcise my demons. Maybe if I put the words out there, the feelings would go away. It wasn’t healthy, and I hated myself for it. Moving to Portland was an escape from everything I hated about myself. An escape from the daily reminder I was obsessed with my best friend’s wife.”
He rose to his feet and began to pace. “But it’s not why I moved here. I moved here for Ava. I’ve worried about her since the day I first held her in my arms. I worried about my brother following in the abusive path of our father. And I still don’t know if Ari ever hit her. I trusted Lori to protect her. I told her if she ever needed me for anything, I’d be there, and I meant it. I have loved that girl from the day she was born, and her whole life, I’ve wanted to save her from the shitty family she was born into, because I, more than anyone, know exactly who my brother is.
“My greatest fear is I’ll screw up with Ava. That I’ll lose her to drugs or depression, like she lost Lori, so you reading that letter represents my deepest shame and my greatest fear all rolled into one horrific package. And there I was, sitting in a car, and my niece tells me she loves me and needs me and wants me to be her dad, and the next minute, she tells me the woman I’m crazy about told her about Trina and said I’d only moved to Portland to get away from Trina.”
Maddie couldn’t hide her jolt at his words. All of it. Her emotions went into overdrive. The accusations. The heartache. The shame. It was too much.
He was supposedly crazy about her, but his behavior this week denied that. But maybe he was running scared because of his deepening feelings. He certainly seemed to believe he couldn’t prioritize Ava and care about someone else at the same time.
Maddie had never found love of any kind to be a finite commodity, but then, she hadn’t grown up in an abusive household, which Josh had just hinted at.
No wonder he had a driving need to take care of people.
But she wasn’t one of the people he was interested in taking care of. He’d proved that by ghosting her. And while she didn’t want to be taken care of, she did want a partner who would consider her feelings. That shouldn’t be too high a bar.
If she forgave him now, what would happen the next time Ava lied? He needed to deal with her, to set a boundary that didn’t allow for any more lies, before Maddie could even consider a future with him.
“That’s a lot to take in,” she finally said. “I’m sorry about your father and your brother. And you have no reason to be ashamed about Trina, because you never put the burden of your feelings on her. You respected her, her marriage, and your best friend. We can’t always control whom we develop crushes on. Would that it were that easy.” She gave him a sad smile. “I’d give anything not to have feelings for you right now.”
He flinched, but didn’t interrupt.
“I’m not going to defend myself when it comes to what Av
a said. It hurts that you took her word unquestioningly, but it’s not my responsibility to change your mind when I’m the accused. The burden of proof is on her. One thing I know, if you don’t set boundaries with Ava now, she will learn nothing from this and things will only get worse. Thank you for your apology, but you need to deal with her before your words will mean anything to me. Come back to me after you’ve gotten the truth. Come back to me when you can one hundred percent say you know I didn’t do what Ava claimed. You’re not welcome in my room or in my life until then.”
She swiped at the tears that slid down her cheek and crossed the room to open the door. She turned and faced him. “Goodbye, Josh.”
19
There was no getting out of it, Maddie had to return to the Kocher Mansion. Notes from the Nielsen archives indicated that at least one of the woven baskets in the main display room was a funerary object and should be returned to the tribe along with the bones in vault 73. But she needed to inspect the basket to be certain it was the one described. And she wanted to take a second look at the remains in vault 138 again. The red staining on the clavicle and scapulae nagged at her.
She should have looked for soil or organic material adhered to the bones instead of just noting the possibility. Pollen analysis might explain the odd staining.
After everything that had happened, she should ask Josh to go to the house with her. Kocher was openly a White Patriot, and he had strong motive to hinder her work. She’d been doxed and robbed, and he could see that as an opportunity to attack her and shift the blame. It would be beyond dangerous to go to the mansion alone at this point.
She would call her boss and ask for advice, but Sienna had given birth to a baby girl two days ago, six weeks early. Mother and baby were doing fine, but the baby needed to be in NICU until her lungs were ready for the world. The last thing Sienna needed was to be bothered with the situation Maddie had managed to get herself into with a rotten client.
After some consideration, she texted Josh and asked if Chase could accompany her to the house late afternoon or early evening.