by Sosie Frost
“It’s not late…” She wagged her phone at me. “It’s early.”
Like I could read the numbers. No blood stayed in my head. “All the more reason to sleep.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure, you can. Get in bed. Pull the covers up. Rest your head right here.” I pointed to my chest. “You used to do it all the time, Sweets.”
“No, really, I—”
“It’s me, Josie.” My voice lowered.
Her gaze snapped to meet mine, but I didn’t trust how far she moved from the bed.
Was it the scars? They were ugly, only a year to heal the burns. The flames ruined my tattoos, but at least they’d disfigured me and not her.
“It’s me,” I said again. “Come to bed.”
She didn’t hesitate, not even a fake reluctance. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where else would I go?”
She nibbled on her bottom lip. Anxious?
“I don’t know,” she said. “I had no idea you were out. I thought…you shouldn’t be here.”
“Why?”
Her voice hardened. “It’s my apartment. Do I have to explain why?”
I snorted. Where the hell was this firecracker coming from? My girl wasn’t confrontational, she was resourceful and adaptive. Two years ago, Josie couldn’t even return a bucket of the wrong colored icing for her cupcake orders. Valentine’s Day turned blue, and everyone in Saint Christie kissed each other with indigo-tinted lips.
I moved from the bed. Pride got me to my feet, but stupidity opened my mouth.
“You don’t have to explain.” I grunted. “Just figured you’d miss me or something. Been a year, Sweets.”
“Yeah. A long year.”
She reached over a laundry basket filled with spare bags of flour to search for clothes. Something to hide her delicates. Josie and lingerie didn’t mix—not around open flame and splattering bacon and pancake breakfasts. That was fine. I preferred her padding in the bedroom wearing only my shirt.
Josie wrapped herself in a robe instead, a frustratingly oversized puff ball that hid everything I took beneath a force-field of a fuzzy, knotted belt.
Point taken.
I followed her to the kitchen though I tugged on my jeans before I bobbed cock-first after her. I wasn’t some lovesick puppy, but I deserved more than shifting from the heat between her legs to enduring a cold shoulder.
She aimed for the flour—her usual stress relief. I preferred working out, hitting a punching bag until my fists bled. Josie kneaded instead. Piping bags and sugar crowded her countertops. She didn’t have enough room for a rolling pin between the wall and the sink. A tower of unevenly stacked baking sheets threatened to topple.
This wasn’t a good apartment for her. Hell, even her oven door came with a bungie cord.
I pointed at the make-shift solution. “Broken? I can fix it for you.”
Josie didn’t look at me. “It’s not big enough for a standard cookie sheet. I bungie the door closed when I bake.”
“You’re shitting me.”
She studied her ingredients. “I don’t have an industrial kitchen anymore.”
I asked the question that burned me since I got to town. “Why didn’t you rebuild the shop?”
“No money.”
“Insurance?”
This apparently wasn’t her favorite subject. She turned, clutching a bag of sugar. “Do you want the long or short version?”
“It’s just a question, Sweets.”
“Granddad got hurt in the fire. Bad. By the time the fire marshal was done with the investigation and the insurance paid out for the arson…” She swallowed. “We had medical bills. You know how it is.”
No. I didn’t. She was lying to me. Josie never fibbed because she couldn’t pull it off. A year away hadn’t changed that.
She set a mixing bowl on the counter and measured her flour. Her hand trembled as she dumped more ingredients into the bowl.
Why was she scared?
I thought a year separated from her would kill me. This was worse. I hated to bring up the fire, but I had no idea what else might have frightened her so much. I folded my arms. Didn’t help. Now my scars flexed, raw and ugly. They gave me cred in jail, but I wasn’t looking for confrontation now.
I just wanted my girl in my arms.
“What do you remember from that night?” I regretted the question as soon as I asked it.
She answered immediately, like a reflex. “Nothing. I woke up in the hospital after the fire. Can you please pass me the egg beaters? They’re on top of the fridge.”
She was no bigger than half a bite of cookie, but she could damn well reach. She meant to change the subject.
She was lying again.
What the hell.
“What are you making?” I asked.
“Cookies.”
“Why?”
“The pay is good.”
This wasn’t my Josie. My girl never shut up. She rambled about recipes and imported chocolates and ideas for her newest creations. Before her, I never gave a shit about the girls I slept with. Wouldn’t have talked to them, and they had nothing worthy to say. But once I fell for Josie, I gained five pounds and a new appreciation for the Belgians and their cocoa powder.
She tugged at her robe. Her lip trembled. It took a lot to make Josie cry, not when she had enough ideas and ambition to exhaust every plan before letting a tear escape. In her kitchen, crying was for spilled milk. And shattered sugar sculptures. And the DeAngelos dropped wedding cake.
I’d only ask it once. “What’s wrong?”
She stared at her bowl of flour. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Want me to go?”
That she hedged. “We broke up, Maddox. Remember? Before the fire? You were…” She hugged herself. “You got so mad.”
“Because I knew what we had. I knew we were wrong to let it go. I wanted to make it work.”
“Me too. I tried. But you’re…”
“What?”
“No one in the town trusted you. They said you were dangerous. And then you got arrested…”
“I was innocent.”
“Not to the town. Or the judge.”
“What about you?”
She didn’t answer. The silence was like a punch to the gut.
“You didn’t come to see me in jail,” I said. “You didn’t write. Didn’t call. You didn’t even say goodbye after the trial.”
“What was I supposed to do? You were convicted.”
“I was innocent. You fucking know that.”
She dropped the egg. It cracked over the counter. She swore, forgetting our argument to count the rest of the eggs in the carton.
Shit. Josie did have money problems. Who fretted about one lost egg?
What the hell had happened since I was gone?
A chill gripped the back of my neck, the hand of whatever god decided to hold me before I made another legendarily bad decision.
“Forget the past. I want to keep you safe.” I paused. She didn’t look up. “I’ll take care of you.”
“I’m safe on my own. And I’ve been taking care of myself and Granddad for a year.”
“Then I’ll help.”
“I don’t need your help.”
I offered her a towel from the stove. She mopped up the mess, still avoiding my gaze. My temper got the better of me. I forgot to think before I jerked off my own rage.
“There’s an arsonist in this town, Sweets. Someone who destroyed your store. And I got news for you—it ain’t me.”
“No one is after me.” Josie’s voice lowered, the once sugar-sweet now lost in bitterness. “Except you.”
“Damn right, I am. I’ve spent a year away from you. I’m done fucking around. I want you, Josie. I want you with me. I want you to be mine. Forever. You get that? I’m not wasting any more time.”
“We broke up, Maddox.”
“Yeah?” Easily remedied. “We’ll un-break up. Marry me.”
“Marry me, Josie.”
“I know you were in jail for a long time…”
I moved closer. She stepped back. It never bothered me before, but this time, I wasn’t playing. I tossed my weight and strength around, but I wanted her to lean in, not seek shelter behind a pair of eggbeaters.
“Yeah. I was in jail. Gave me some time to think. To figure out what I want. Sweets, it’s you. I want it all. I’ll find a good job, get some money. We can buy a house. Get your shop rebuilt. Start a family—”
“A family?”
I didn’t like the hush in her words, but mine mirrored the same quiet hope.
“We tried…before the breakup,” I said. “We can try again. We’re good at that part.”
She quieted. “I’m on the pill again.”
I expected it. Still hurt. “You wanted a baby.”
“I also wanted to enter the State Cake Bake-Off. And to perfect another éclair recipe. I wanted the candy shop, Maddox. But things change. Everything changed after the fire.”
“I’m innocent. I didn’t set fire to your shop. And it won’t hurt to hear you say it. I needed to hear your voice. I just wanted to see you so I didn’t think I’d rot away forever in that goddamned prison without…being near you again.”
She ran a hand through her curls. “I was told to stay away.”
Rage surged through me. “By who?”
“Really, Maddox? Everyone. Everyone who said I was an idiot for dating you finally got their chance to gloat. All of my customers told me to stay away. Granddad. Delta. Everyone agreed that you were bad for me.”
“Is that what you think?”
She turned away. I knew it was coming before she said it, but like a damn martyr I took the hit.
“I think you should go.”
I refused to make the only woman I ever loved feel unsafe in her own damn home. Not when the real criminal was still out there, lurking in plain sight and salivating for the chance to pounce on her when she was at her most vulnerable.
It wouldn’t happen while I was free, not when I had too much to gain and so much more to lose with Josie.
“This isn’t over,” I promised. “What we have? It’s real. We belong together, Sweets. And I’m going to prove that I’m not just some delinquent. I’m not a good man, but I’ll treat you good. I’ll swear that to you.”
“Maddox—”
“You know where to find me. You call if there’s trouble. I’ll be here. I’ll protect you.”
She sighed. “There won’t be trouble.”
She was still an optimist…or maybe dangerously naïve. Either quirk made me love her more.
“Now that I’m back, the man who did this will try to hurt you again.” I didn’t care if I terrified her. She had to know what would happen, what we faced. “I’m going to find the son of a bitch who did this to us.”
“Why?”
So it was naivety. I expected nothing less, but I hated that I’d have to destroy it.
“Because I won’t stop until I get my revenge.”
4
Maddox
Josie’s world was sprinkles, frosting, and sugar plum fairies.
Mine rotted in the gutter with druggie parents, bloody knuckles, and a bullshit parole after serving a year for a crime I didn’t commit.
My reality, my life, was etched with broken bones and turf wars. I didn’t have a family, and the friends that replaced them used me only for muscle. I couldn’t hide my past from Josie. Hell, no one forgot where I came from—the town of Saint Christie especially. The holier-than-thou residents defined me by my tattoos and the rumors spread in the streets.
But Josie hadn’t cared. Or she did, but she saw some flicker of good in me. Something worth baking me heart-shaped cookies, keeping me around to grab the flour from the top shelf, and letting me strip her down and dot her body with drips of chocolate darker than her skin.
She might have kicked me from her apartment, but she’d never rid me from her heart. I was like an infection that dug in and festered. I clung to her because she was the only good thing that ever happened to me. Even the hardest bastard needed some light in his life.
But I planned to kill the man who threatened us.
Whoever he was.
And I had a good hunch.
This was where our Pixy Stick fairy tale ended. Revenge wasn’t about pride or sadism. It was justice when justice failed. Blind. Violent. Brutal. It was nothing Josie deserved to see, but it would protect her and right the wrongs that hurt us both.
It had to happen. Once it did, we could move on, have a good life, be happy.
But it was hard to convince Josie I was anything but trouble, especially surrounded by the saints of Saint Christie.
Most of the townsfolk were two cats short of a hoarders’ documentary, the rest were so white bread they’d turned stale. They held bake sales to pay for potholes, and held contests to find the town’s fattest squirrel. Most drank in the fire hall Saturday night, while the more righteous prayed for their neighbors in church on Sunday. If a family needed help, the town banded together to rebuild homes and bake casseroles…if only to lord their preferred currency over their friends—favors.
The streets of metropolitan Ironfield were cut-throat, but at least when I lived there, bleeding meant the fight was done. In Saint Christie, memories lasted generations.
The town didn’t change much in a year, but Josie’s vacant lot was an eyesore. It should have broken my heart. Instead it hurt my scars—the ones I earned in the fire and the new marks from jail. I stared at it for too long. Enough of the townspeople were out in the early morning, and if their glares counted as evidence my ass would have been thrown back in prison. I ignored most of them.
Not all.
I recognized the tumble of artificially red hair bobbing up the street. Luann McMannis used to deliver the church’s donated food to my mom when we were kids. It wasn’t charity, and it wasn’t because she was brave enough to step in a meth addict’s house. She came because she had the best photographic memory and could regale the town with stories of the time she handed off two cans of green beans and some creamed corn to my mom.
Luann counted her remaining political signs and forgot to look up. She nearly smacked into my leather jacket. The signs crashed onto Josie’s lot, facedown.
“Oh!” Luann gasped, staring at me. Her words bumbled fast and nervous. “Andrew Maddox? I…had no idea you were out of jail!”
I doubted that. News traveled quick when the gossip was good. She edged a few steps away from me, like I carried a blow-torch and grudge.
Luann gave me a fake smile. “Well, look at you. Back in town.”
“Yeah.”
“And…the police know you’re out of jail?”
For fuck’s sake. “They know.”
“And you’re…living here now? Permanently?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s early, isn’t it?”
The town suspected Luann became a court stenographer to snoop on everyone’s business. I was sure she remembered the details of my sentencing. Parole wasn’t supposed to be offered to me for three years.
But I had an agreement.
Luann cleared her throat. She busied herself, prattling about the upcoming election. She jammed the political sign in Josie’s lot. The sign practically bled with crimson letters.
Nolan Rhys - State Representative.
Goddamn it.
I ripped the sign out of the ground, forcing it into Luann’s arms. “Josie doesn’t want this on her property.”
“But—”
“Don’t let me see it on her land again.”
Luann bristled. “Look here, Mr. Maddox, Mayor Rhys asked me to deliver these signs—”
“Get them off her property before—”
“Before you set them on fire too?”
If she thought I was an arsonist why the hell would she piss
me off? “They don’t belong here.”
Luann got the point. She hoisted the signs. Nolan Rhys probably spent thousands on the damn canvassing, and another fifty grand on the rest of the campaign. He’d out-spend his opponent just like he did everyone in the damn town and think of himself some sort of noble champion of the people.
At least he had money. I thought times were tough before. Being on parole meant I couldn’t risk my normal work on the streets in Ironfield. I called to Luann once she escaped to a distance where she felt safe enough to do me a favor.
“Need a job.” I let the implication hang. “Who’s hiring?”
Luann turned, her eyebrow arched in a perverse amusement. “A job for you?”
I didn’t need her attitude. I knew I was trash. Everyone was better than me, but only one woman had the right to judge, and it wasn’t Luann McMannis with her fire engine red hair, two pack a day habit, and third husband waiting at home.
“Try Freddie’s Auto,” she said. “He’s looking for a mechanic. I figure that’s…your type of work.”
It wasn’t. I’d trained to be an electrician, but I could work cars. Luann bolted away, pulling out her cell phone. Probably to call Freddie, to warn him or to prepare others for the fireworks.
Screw her. I’d work. Hard. Do what needed to be done to get money and support Josie—if she’d take me back. I had to think about the future. It was impossible in a town obsessed with the past.
Luann didn’t lie. The mechanic’s shop had a busted bay door, but Freddie managed enough brake repairs and oil changes—as long as his customers drove domestic cars. A hand-written sign in the window read Help Wanted. Good enough for me.
Not for him.
Freddie Baulder didn’t welcome me into his grease-coated garage. Surrounded by too many flammable oils to feel comfortable, probably. He hitched up his jeans and leaned over the counter, eying me with a face so wrinkled I’d have thought he spent his years in the sun, not under a hood.
“You back in town?” Freddie sucked on a toothpick.
“Just got in.”
“Out of trouble?”