Until now.
Chapter 11
When Joss had left for work this morning, the sky was bright and sunny, the wind barely there. Her mind was on Maddox and the way he’d changed last night at the pub. Something seemed different about him—conflicted for sure. She kept telling herself to stop thinking about what was on his mind and just keep enjoying the sex he gave her, leaving it at that. But her mind kept circling back to him, every damn time. She figured her day would be spent in a vicious cycle, wondering over Maddox and telling herself not to, over and over again. That was until a couple of hours into her shift when everything changed.
Hours upon hours Joss had spent learning about tragic deaths at the academy. She’d even learned how to handle tragedies with the greatest of care. Though when she arrived first on the scene of the three-car accident, her training couldn’t have properly prepared her for the real thing.
The call had come in mere moments before, and Joss had only been a couple of minutes away from the accident. She put her police car into park and flicked her siren off, but left the lights still flashing. She’d parked her car sideways across the road, blocking any other cars from getting close, remembering all the training she’d been given.
While she exited her police car and moved to the scene at the T-intersection, a sense of calm descended. “Stay back,” she ordered to the crowd, who had gathered on the corner of the road. “It’s not safe. Stay back.”
The crowd stepped back onto the sidewalk, and some even began returning to the burger joint they’d obviously come from. That’s when Joss noticed all the phones pointed at the scene, filming the destruction that had happened on this beautiful sunny Saturday morning. She stayed focused on her job, ignoring the phones now pointed at her, and scanned the area.
Across the road was an abandoned gas station, with a body shop kitty-corner to the burger joint. There was no sense of danger now, but as she took in the mangled cars in front of her, she suspected that death had come calling.
Pieces of ripped apart metal were scattered from one side of the road to the other. The smell of burnt-chemical from the deployed airbags lingered heavily in the air when she approached the first car, and the scent of engine coolant from an obviously cracked radiator wrinkled her nose.
When she reached the red Honda, she heard a soft cry but couldn’t distinguish exactly where it had come from. The bumper of the Honda was bashed in, and a man sat in the driver’s seat. He was slumped over, blood pouring from a wound somewhere on his face. She slid her hand through the broken driver’s side window, immediately catching the scent of booze wafting off him. A drunk driver, she thought to herself as she pressed her fingers against his pulse point. The man moaned.
“Sir.” She squeezed his shoulder. When that didn’t work, she dug her fingers into his arm. “Sir. Wake up.”
He moaned again and mumbled something incoherent. She’d seen the same reaction many times from people who were drunk and disorderly. He looked about three-times over the limit, and he didn’t seem injured past the cut on his head.
“The paramedics are a minute behind me. Stay inside your vehicle,” she told him, not wanting to move him in case she was wrong about him being completely shitfaced and he had neck injuries.
Besides, there were others that needed her. She had to keep going. And his car wasn’t about to go up in flames.
While she hoped that her backup and the ambulance got there soon, she forced her feet to move forward, even though she felt sick with guilt at leaving an injured man behind. The crowd behind her grew restless, and she could hear them talking amongst themselves as she closed in on the second car. The soft cry came again, but she still couldn’t make out where the sound was coming from or if the person was male or female. Regardless that she wanted to find the person belonging to that cry echoing in misery, she couldn’t allow her mind to stray. She kept her thoughts centered on her job.
When she reached the black Jeep, she noted that the front had been smashed in quite a bit, but she couldn’t see any other damage or smell any hints of fire or gasoline. She reached the driver’s side window. It must’ve been open at the time of the accident because she didn’t find any broken glass. She peered inside, finding two young women in the car, maybe eighteen at most. “Are you both all right?” She couldn’t see any visible wounds on either of them, but the airbags were deployed, and both girls looked shaken.
“Yeah, yeah, we’re okay,” the driver said, sudden tears welling in her eyes.
“Can you move?” Joss asked.
“I think so,” the passenger said, her chin trembling.
Joss unlocked the driver’s side door and then opened it, holding onto the young woman’s arm as she exited. “Go sit by the tree over there.” She pointed at the old gas station. “The ambulance will be here shortly.” She held onto the driver a little bit longer until she felt stable on her feet.
As the driver moved to safety, Joss quickly helped the passenger across the street before moving on to the last car at the scene. Her chest clenched as she prepared herself for what she’d find. The last car was in the worst shape. Beaten up from the front and the back and the right side, Joss couldn’t even tell what kind of car it was, only that it was navy blue.
The driver’s door was open, but both airbags had been deployed. She leaned into the car, finding the windshield smashed in, and she imagined that meant that somewhere out in front of the car lay a body. Her throat tightened as the soft cry came again, and this time, she knew it had come from someone who’d been in this car. She drew in a deep breath, preparing herself to find death greeting her, but that’s not what she found.
A man sat up with his back to her.
“Sir,” she said, slowly moving toward him. “Sir. Police. Are you all right?” Upon further inspection, she noticed that he was holding onto someone, and that someone had blood covering her from head-to-toe. Obviously, she’d been the one who had gone through the windshield. “Sir. Police.”
“My wife,” the man said, his voice soft and distant. “She took her seatbelt off to reach for her bracelet on the floor. It was only for a second. She only took it off for a second…”
“Sir,” Joss said again, placing her hand on his shoulder, and he turned his head, meeting her gaze.
In that moment, all her training failed her. Nothing could have prepared her for dealing with someone else’s emotions when the pain was this raw, this real, this soon. She fought tears, her lungs fighting for air. “Sir,” she managed. “Please let me see if I can help her.”
He shook his head, tears spilling from his eyes. “There’s nothing you can do for my Rosie. She’s gone.”
Joss swallowed emotion and went to her knees next to him, reaching for the woman wearing the pretty, flowered dress covered by splatters of red.
“No.” The man squeezed his arms tighter, pressing the side of his face against his wife’s, regardless of the blood between them. “No, don’t take her. Not yet.”
“I won’t take her. I promise.” She moved in slowly, pressing her finger against the woman’s bloody neck and shut her eyes, wishing for a thump indicating that this woman’s life wasn’t over yet.
Her wish never came true.
Blaring sirens erupted and snapped Joss into action. She placed her hand on the man’s shoulder again and said the only thing she could think of. “I’m so very sorry.” So very sorry I can’t bring her back to you. Her legs were shaky when she rose and glanced over the mangled car, discovering two other police cars were on the scene now, plus a fire truck and an ambulance.
At Joss’s feet, the man sobbed, rocking his wife. “My Rosie. My poor, lovely Rosie.”
“What have you got?”
It took Joss a second to realize a paramedic was talking to her. She turned her head and shook it.
“DOA?” the paramedic mouthed.
Joss nodded.
No emotions had shown on his face before he hurried off toward the girls at the gas station. That was
the job, and Joss realized she needed to learn that skill of keeping emotions out of it as she glanced at the man at her feet again.
When his sad eyes met hers, she could barely breathe, and tears prickled her eyes when he whispered, “She was my everything.”
* * *
Later that night, Maddox arrived at Joss’s a little bit before dinner, finding her car in the driveway. He’d had today off, and spent the morning at the gym and then the rest of the afternoon servicing his car. Until the call from the sergeant in his division updating him on the accident brought him to Joss’s doorstep. Dealing with any kind of trauma was an adjustment for new rookies, and even Maddox still remembered the worst ones he’d seen in vivid detail. Those horrors never went away.
While last night weighed heavily on his mind, as did the fact that he’d lost control of himself, he needed to see her. Once he reached her front door, he knocked and waited, but she never came. He considered leaving, but his instincts told him not to. She shouldn’t be alone after what she’d seen today. In fact, after a hard scene, Maddox always spent time with Grey because Grey didn’t see the things Maddox did, and somehow, his friend always grounded him. That was his way to unload and get his head right after seeing things that no one should ever see.
He reached for the door handle, finding the portal unlocked, and as he opened it, he called, “Joss?”
“In here.”
The coldness in her voice strained the muscles across his shoulders, causing him to hurry inside and shut the door behind him. Only a few steps down her hallway, he found her sitting on the couch in her living room. Her legs were tucked underneath her, a blanket wrapped tightly around her, and a glass of red wine was in her hand. “I heard about today,” he told her, noting her puffy eyes and pink cheeks. Obviously, she’d been crying.
“You did?” she whispered.
He nodded and approached her, hastily taking the wineglass from her hand. “This isn’t a good idea.” He placed the glass behind him on the coffee table out of her reach before turning to her again. “Never drink after a bad scene. It won’t lead anywhere good. Talk about it to those who understand the reality of seeing the things we do, but don’t wash away what you feel with booze.”
She stayed silent, staring deeply into his eyes.
He frowned at what he saw in her expression. She’d always been such a bright light. Strong and steady. Not now. She was entirely something different. Something dark. “Talk to me,” he said gently.
She paused. Then, “I’m not okay.”
“I see that.” Right then, he realized that when she wasn’t okay, he wasn’t either. A heavy feeling sat in the center of his chest. He needed to touch her, not only to be close to her, but for himself. The distance between them gutted him. He took a step forward, but her sharp voice stopped him.
“Please don’t come any closer.”
A chill ran through him, and he became instantly alarmed at the emotion in her voice and her eyes. “Please tell me what you’re thinking,” was all he could think to say.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin, staring at the wineglass in front of her on the table. “I imagine you came here because you think the death today rattled me.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets, fisting his hands. “Hasn’t it?”
“A little, of course, but it’s not the woman’s death that I can’t stop thinking about.”
The coldness in her voice tightened his jaw. She didn’t sound like herself, and he didn’t realize how fond he’d grown of the warmth she exuded until it was gone. “Then what’s upset you?”
“The husband,” she replied, still staring at her wineglass.
“The man you saved?” he asked, not understanding.
She nodded, eyes glossing over, obviously lost in a memory. “When I arrived and found him, he was holding his dead wife in his arms.” She shut her eyes, closing out the world, a haunted look crossing her face. “When I moved to him, he told me that she was already gone and there was nothing I could do to help her.”
“You can’t control whether someone lives or dies,” Maddox added gently, hoping to pull her out of the darkness. “I’m sure you did what you could to help them.”
“I’m not upset that I couldn’t help them.” Her eyes stayed shut, but a single tear slid down her cheek. “What upsets me is what he said to me.”
Maddox stared at the tear that slowly but surely gutted him, a coldness sliding alongside the blood in his veins. “What did he say?”
“‘She was my everything.’” She paused. Then she opened her eyes, and emotion hit Maddox straight in the chest as she added, “But it was how he said it. The connection I had to him in those seconds where he realized that his happy life as he knew it had ended.”
Maddox’s throat tightened, and he folded his arms, fighting against himself not to move to her and take her into his arms. She might have told him to stay away, but all he wanted to do was go to her.
She drew in a long, deep breath before speaking again. “A stranger that I don’t know changed me today.” Her green eyes held his blue gaze, so much being said without saying anything at all. “And as I’ve sat here since I came home, I can’t help but wonder what we’re doing.”
His lips parted to answer her, but his reply never came. It would have been easy to say that maybe, just maybe, he could try a relationship with her and see how it worked out, but she was right. It was one complication after another with them. A relationship with her was never in the cards. Their jobs were a hefty barrier between them and couldn’t be ignored.
She sighed at his silence and slowly shook her head. “I mean, we’re not dating, but kinda-sorta dating. We’re not committed to each other, but you’re not okay with another guy getting close to me. I know this was all supposed to be fun, but is it only fun, or are we fooling ourselves?”
Beneath his folded arms, his fists clenched, his chest rising and falling quickly with his heavy breaths while she continued. “Tomorrow, you’ll still be my superior, and I’ll still be your subordinate. You could get suspended for starting a relationship with me, and that’s drama I don’t need at the beginning of my career.” Her eyes glazed over; obviously, her thoughts running rampant. “Nothing will change these truths. Nothing we can do will change the outcome of what’s standing in our way.”
I want to keep you was what he wanted to say. Again, words failed him. Not because he couldn’t say them but because it was unfair of him to put her in that situation. Just sex made sense. Anything more would complicate everything. Those were truths he couldn’t ignore.
As if reading his mind, she added, “Before, I guess you were right when you said I was the kind of girl who wants love. Maybe I forgot. Maybe it’s because I’d been hurt before, I don’t know. But I am that girl, and nothing I do will change that.” She hesitated and sighed deeply before she went on. “I don’t know when things got so messy or complicated, but they have, haven’t they? And pretending they haven’t is only going to take us down a road that can’t lead anywhere good.”
He glanced at the floor and shut his eyes, wanting to rewind time to before he’d touched her. Because she was leaving him. He knew it, and the life slowly began to squeeze out of him, seemingly all too familiar.
Obviously unable to see the torture within him, she added, “Just because I didn’t find the kind of love I saw today with Nick, and I can’t have that with you, it will never change the fact that I want a man to look at me that way. I want to be his everything.”
Maddox could barely breathe, but he managed, “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know you didn’t, and as of right now, you haven’t.” She gave him the softest, sweetest smile. “But we’ve changed, haven’t we? This is no longer just sex. Somewhere along the way, we complicated things. I know you care about me. I don’t even question that. But can you ever do what a man needs to do to love a woman? To pick her over everyone else? To stop having her be a secret and make a statement to the world t
hat she belongs to him? To stop thinking she’s like your mother and going to leave you? I honestly don’t know.”
Her last words were like a knife to his gut, and he locked his knees not to wobble when she continued. “I like you, a lot, in fact. But I promised myself I’d never make things this complicated again. Us…this…it wasn’t supposed to be like this. We were supposed to have sex. But now, everything is different. And I can’t hope and wonder if you’re going to be the guy I need you to be because then I’m setting myself up to get hurt.” She paused. Then, her voice and expression hardened. “I won’t do that again. I want a guy who wants me back. Fully and completely. Not in a way that suits him.” She blinked, and when her eyes locked on to his again, he realized he’d already lost her as she said, “I promised myself I would never be that quiet girl who sits back with a perfect smile, pretending that everything is okay. Not again. I need something real. I need something honest. And we had that for a little while.”
His breath caught in his throat as she rose from her spot on the couch. With each step she took toward him, the air seemed impossible to breathe. A soft smile reached her face as her hands came to his forearms, and he felt his muscles strain, though not from the heat of desire. This was a desire to grab on to what belonged to him and keep her safe.
“I’m sorry that this got complicated. I never wanted that. You’ve been nothing but amazing to me, and I don’t regret a single moment with you.” She hesitated then, and that’s when Maddox saw what this was truly all about. She cared for him, deeply, it seemed, and this was self-preservation. “But right now, I can walk away from you without hurting. If I let this go on any longer, I won’t be able to do that.”
His heart hammered in his ears as she stood on her tiptoes and pressed her warm lips against his in a sweet, soft kiss that said so much without saying anything at all.
Heartbreaker (Filthy Dirty Love #1) Page 14