by Sosie Frost
I was the caller who slipped the police the tip about the arsonist. I was the one who said it was Maddox that burned down my shop. I was the reason he went to jail.
And he’d never forgive me for it, even if it saved his life.
Chapter Sixteen – Josie
One Year Ago
The wine tasted bad—even more bitter than usual. Nolan asked how it was. I forced a smile and spat most of it back into the glass with a disguised nod. I never got tipsy so quickly. I felt awful, and it wasn’t the company I was keeping.
Or the threats he made.
“Do we have an agreement?”
Like I had a choice. I already broke up with Maddox at his request, but Nolan wasn’t satisfied with me sleeping in an empty bed.
Not when he wanted to lie next to me.
“Why?” I whispered. “He’s nothing to you.”
“But he’s everything to you.”
“I won’t let you hurt him.”
“Then all you have to do is sign.” He toasted our deal once more. “Come on, Josie. To our business and our future. Drink up.”
Drinking gave me time to think of a plan, but every gulp dizzied me more.
I couldn’t do this.
“No.” I rose to my feet. My legs didn’t want to hold me upright. “You won’t get my shop. You won’t touch Maddox. And I swear to god, I’ll expose you for threatening him and propositioning me.”
“If you leave here tonight without me, he dies.”
“I’ll protect him.”
“Josie—”
I ignored his shout, stumbling from Jackson’s as I fought the wine’s hold and forced step after step towards my shop. The road blurred and shifted. I fell into Sweet Nibbles’ door. It swung wide open.
Unlocked?
Why?
I smelled the smoke, but my body felt too heavy to move. I crashed through the dining area, tripping over a chair. Then another. I blinked, and I was in the kitchen. Couldn’t remember getting there. I turned, and my toe caught on the stair case. I tripped. Hit my head. Or was I already in pain? How did I get upstairs?
The heat surrounded me. I coughed. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t hear anything over the crackling.
The walls groaned and splintered. The stairs creaked. It wasn’t safe.
But his arms grabbed me, held me, and he promised to help.
The world turned to smoke, and I woke in the hospital. Nothing made sense, and no words stuck in my mind. They told me I survived the fire. The shop was destroyed. Granddad was hurt.
The doctors injected me with something that made it even harder to think over the beeping machines and fretting nurses. The fire was only Nolan’s first retaliation. He wouldn’t stop until he destroyed everything I loved.
Maddox wasn’t safe. How could I protect a man everyone feared?
I needed a plan to separate Maddox from Nolan, to prevent Maddox from murdering Nolan before Nolan killed him.
But what could I do while I was trapped in the hospital?
Present Day
“Maddox, please listen to me!”
He didn’t, and I deserved the betrayed silence.
He packed his clothing and belongings into a duffle bag. The motel emptied of his things, but Chelsea’s still lined the counter. She left in a hurry when he burst through the door and didn’t even give me a second glance.
But I saw her and her badly blackened eye.
Maddox’s jaw flexed tight. He swallowed a profanity. I wished he’d just curse at me, talk to me.
I wished he’d let me explain.
Maddox was a force of utter destruction to those who challenged him. This time, he aimed that rage at himself. He chugged the half-empty bottle of whiskey from the bathroom counter and threw the bottle once he finished. The glass shattered against the wall. The amber liquid dripped onto the carpet.
“Nolan was going to kill you!” I stood in front of the door, slamming it closed when he tried to get past. “You don’t understand. I had to do it!”
He grunted, his voice rough with whiskey. “You had to frame me for arson?”
“I had no idea they’d convict you. I thought they’d only hold you for a day.”
“For Christ’s sake, Josie. Without your call, they didn’t have enough evidence to hold me for an hour. You caused this fucking disaster!”
“I was at dinner that night with Nolan. He threatened you. He knew how much you meant to me, and he was using you against me.” Every word clawed from my unwilling chest. “Don’t you see? He was the reason I broke up with you a year ago. He made me leave you or he said he’d hurt you. It wasn’t because I stopped loving—”
He sneered, baring his teeth. “Did you think that little of me or that much of him? Why the fuck didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because you would have gone after him. You’d have murdered him first.”
“Damn right.” He swore. “I would have protected you from him.”
“He was serious about it, Maddox.”
The bag dropped at his feet. “So was I! About everything! You told me you loved me. You wanted to marry me.”
“I know.”
“You wanted to start a family!”
“I did!”
Maddox dragged a hand through his hair. “But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me I was in danger? That a fucking scrawny ass momma’s boy talked a little tough to you?”
“It’s Nolan Rhys. He had the means to hurt you then, and he’s still threatening you now. He’s been controlling me and every decision I’ve made for a year. I couldn’t risk him hurting you!”
“All you had to do was tell me the truth.”
“It wasn’t that simple—”
“You put me in jail, Josie!”
“I never thought you’d be put away.”
“Oh, well. I feel much better then.”
“Nolan was going to kill you that night. I couldn’t go to the police and tell them to drag the mayor in for questioning. Even before I knew that Chief Craig was—”
“A bastard looking to lock me in chains?”
I couldn’t breathe. He wasn’t listening. He didn’t understand.
I was losing him.
“Nolan couldn’t touch you if you were in jail.”
Maddox’s laugh was hard, humorless. “No. He couldn’t. But a lot of other people could.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You have no idea what you did to me.” He unzipped his jacket, practically tearing the shirt from his abs. He flashed a scar on his side. “That was from the first week at state. It was an orientation of sorts.” He pointed to the second scar, a white, jagged mark on his pec. “I looked at the wrong guys in the cafeteria and got jumped in the yard.”
“I didn’t—”
He held up his left wrist. “This was broken during a fight in the showers.” His scowl grew, dark and menacing. “You don’t want to know what they planned to do…and you sure as hell don’t want to see how bad I bloodied the bastard who tried it.”
My stomach twisted into knots, and that was fine. I no longer had a heart to take up room inside me. “If I knew that would have happened—”
“You didn’t have to know! What you did is unforgivable. You said you loved me. You said you wanted to be with me. And fuck…you didn’t even come to see me in prison? Didn’t write? Didn’t call? I thought you believed I was guilty—”
“And as long as I stayed away, I could pretend you were guilty. I could do my own investigation unhindered.”
“Bullshit.”
“I wanted to prove Nolan was the arsonist and put him in jail. I was close, Maddox. So close. I know he caused the fire that night—”
“For fuck’s sake, Josie, it wasn’t Nolan!”
I quieted. Maddox looked at me in a way he never had before.
Frustrated. Angry. Like no longer recognized me as the woman he loved.
“Nolan isn’t the arsonist. Your shop was on fire when you got there. He didn’t
have time to order anyone to throw a match—much less start an electrical fire—before it burned to the ground. He didn’t want the land. He had plans for the shop, for that bed-and-breakfast he thought he’d open.” Maddox turned away. “You sacrificed me because you were too hell-bent on revenge.”
“I don’t want revenge.”
“Bullshit. Maybe yours isn’t bloody, but don’t pretend you’re after justice. You wanted to humiliate Nolan as badly as I wanted to kill him. That’s the only reason you lied to the police about me, why you got me out of your way—”
“Christ, Maddox. I didn’t frame you because you’d ruin my plans. I wasn’t sending you back to jail for murder.”
“What’s another twenty years to my sentence? You’d already ruined enough of my life. Why not fuck over the man you love, lose your property, and get tangled in Nolan’s perversions?” He didn’t let me answer. “I’m amazed you think Nolan Rhys is capable of hurting me. Not when you do it so well.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“Glad to hear it.” He banged a fist against his chest, over his heart. “Because this feels like shit.”
Everything fell apart, and I had no idea how to stop it. My worst crises came in bags of the wrong brand of flour or when I burned the last of the butter. Losing Maddox was worse than losing the store to the fire, if only because I had no idea how to rebuild a love that precious and rare and broken.
“I’m trying to fix things,” I said. “That’s the only reason I was with Nolan tonight. I told him I’d sell the property, and I hoped maybe that would satisfy him.”
Maddox shook his head. “You’re not that naïve. Did he ask you to sleep with him?”
“I wasn’t going to do it.”
“Fuck. You never should have been in that position. You shouldn’t have met him at all.”
“I had no other option,” I said. “Granddad is sick. He can’t care for himself anymore—he can’t even take his own medications without accidentally hurting himself. Don’t you get it? I’m trying to keep us all alive here, Maddox.”
He didn’t answer. The fight extinguished from him, the fire burned out, starved of any reason to care. A shell remained—cold and hollow.
A shadow.
A fading memory of what we once had together.
“I didn’t have a choice,” I whispered.
He lowered his head. “Well, I’ll make this one easy on you, Sweets. I’m leaving.”
“Please, let’s just talk—”
“I’ve wasted enough time talking, trying to prove I could take care of you…” He swore again, the word torn from his throat. “I never said I was a good man, but I thought I’d pretend for you.”
“Don’t go yet. I can make you understand.”
“Save it.”
“Maddox, I love you.”
His eyes darkened, and I couldn’t stand the way he stared at me.
“Yeah, we all make mistakes. Just so happens, most of mine were made for you.”
The door closed behind him.
I sank onto the bed and clutched my cellphone. The text message came immediately. Nolan must have followed us, watched as my life crumbled and Maddox left me with my regrets.
His text set my teeth on edge.
I hope you said goodbye.
Goddamn it. This ended now. No more threats. No more warnings. No more buying my body so I could buy my freedom.
Nolan wasn’t hurting either of us anymore.
I opened the app on the main screen, replaying the sound recording I made of Nolan.
“Like I would trust you around Maddox.”
“You can trust this, Josie. If I wanted Maddox dead, he’d be buried by now.”
“I’m tired of your threats.”
“Meet me at Jackson’s in an hour or it won’t be a threat any longer.”
My thumb hovered over the send button.
Even if Maddox left, I could still protect him from Nolan’s jealousy.
Maybe it was revenge, and maybe it would eventually destroy the little of me that remained, but I wasn’t letting Nolan Rhys control my life any longer.
First, I’d protect us from Nolan.
Then, I’d get the man I loved back because it was never a mistake loving him. It was a mistake to lose him.
I sent the text and recorded clip to Nolan, wrapped in my own dire threat.
Come near us, and I’ll end your campaign, your reputation, and your life. Your move, Mayor.
Chapter Seventeen – Josie
The knocking echoed through my apartment.
Damn it. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. The papers bundled over my chest. They made lousy blankets. I tossed them on the couch and checked my watch.
Seven o’clock. A three-hour nap?
Ew. I figured I’d be tired, but this was downright lazy.
The persistent thudding on the door chased away my grogginess. I listened, wishing to hear Maddox call for me. But the rapping was too light and feminine. Plus, she tapped out the rhythm of our high school marching band’s drum cadence. As relieved as I was that it was Delta on the other side of the door, two weeks had passed since Maddox left.
I guessed he wasn’t coming back tonight either.
I didn’t bother with a headband. My curls went wild, billowing around my head. Delta snickered when I let her inside, but she had endured my puffball pigtail phase in junior high with me. A little volume wasn’t scaring her away. She came bearing an accordion folder stuffed with insurance forms and a paper bag filled with Chinese food.
I wasn’t in the mood to eat. Didn’t even think I could.
“Whoa.” Delta nearly dropped her armload as she stared at my apartment. “Okay, Josie. It’s time for you and me to go out and get some air.”
She didn’t hand me the insurance paperwork. I took it anyway. More to add to the once meticulously sorted piles of newspaper clippings, police reports, and information I found on the fire.
Delta headed to the coffee table with the food. No room around the piles of papers there. She tried the kitchen but my counters sprawled with bags of chocolate chips, mixing bowls, and the construction plans for Nolan’s proposed bed-and-breakfast. Delta thumbed through my notebooks and ignored the whiteboard in the corner.
“All right, this is fucking weird, Josie. Even for you.”
“I’ve been a bit busy,” I said.
“No, you’ve been a bit crazy. What the hell is all this?”
I sorted through the papers on the couch as best I could. Nothing was giving me the answers I needed anyway, so I pushed everything onto the floor to make room for Delta and dinner.
“I’m trying to figure something out.” I edged away from the bag of Chinese with a quick swallow. “And it’s…hard.”
“And not at all obsessive.” Delta picked up the paper at her feet. A newspaper article from the fire. Next to her were the court documents and transcripts from when Maddox was tried. “Josie, what are you trying to do?”
Right now, I was desperately avoiding my once favorite Kung Pow Chicken. “I have to figure out who burned down my shop.”
“Oh.” Delta paused. She put it together pretty quick. “So Maddox left for good? Hasn’t been back?”
He hadn’t returned my texts, calls, anything. “He’s gone.”
“Did he know you were doing all this?”
“No.”
Delta cautiously balanced the container on her knees and speared a piece of General Tso’s chicken with a plastic fork that already lost a prong. “What’d you find out? Anything you didn’t already know?”
Yeah. I uncovered one big revelation that didn’t help any of us. “It wasn’t Nolan Rhys.”
Delta snorted. “I could have told you that.”
“I swear…it just made sense. He was so obsessed with me and Maddox. But the timeline is wrong, and he would have lost too much money burning it down just to buy the land and rebuild what he wanted.”
“You know who the criminal is, don
’t you? Forget the papers and the charts and all the investigations.”
“It wasn’t him.”
“Josie, he went to jail.”
My chest squeezed. Guilt hurt worse than any loneliness. “I know. I framed him for it.”
“You what?” Delta stilled, the fork an inch from her mouth. “Did…you forget to bake the cookies before you ate the dough?”
“I’m serious.”
“Did you happen to leave the gas oven on?”
Goddamn it. It wasn’t a joke. I ruined my life, and I lost the man I loved. All because I was so stupid, so helpless to stop the inevitable.
“Nolan threatened his life, and I knew he was in danger,” I said. “I gave an anonymous tip to the police so they would hold him in a cell until I could get out of the hospital and prove it was Nolan who set the fire.” I kicked the papers at my feet. They scattered. I didn’t bother picking them up. They couldn’t help me now anyway. “It wasn’t Nolan. Goddamn it. It wasn’t Nolan.”
Delta quieted, and I hated it. Without her talking, she could hear the break in my voice. I’d collapse in tears, and it’d do nothing but humiliate me and waste more time that I could have been finding answers and researching. I rubbed my eyes. It hurt, but it stuffed the tears down.
“Josie, when was the last time you slept?”
I didn’t have time to sleep. Not like I could anyway, not with him gone and my mind racing and my heart shattering and my stomach flipping and my body aching—
“I just napped,” I said.
“When was the last time you ate?”
“I’m really, really not hungry.”
“I’m officially worried about you.” Delta sighed. “I talked to Sean. He said you called off from the paper three days in a row. Have you left the house at all?”
“I saw Granddad.”
“Good.” She sounded too relieved. “How is he?”
I didn’t want to answer that one. “Worse. Sullen. He’s not eating much, and the last time I visited him he only said one thing.”
“What was it?”
I gritted my teeth. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“He didn’t say. Just…everything probably. We moved him to the different wing, and he knows we don’t have the money for it. That guilt is killing him, and there’s nothing I can do to…help. I can’t pull him out of this depression.”
