by Cora Brent
It was done. Lord help her, she hand forsaken Mercer and married his brother. Reasons mattered little when what was done couldn’t be undone.
And regret, that tool of futility, was pointless.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Contention City, Arizona
Present Day
There was rain in the forecast. Maddox opened up the thin linen curtains in Priest’s room when he heard it begin to fall. He looked at the sky which was a deep shade of gray. This was not the brief fury of a summer desert monsoon. This rain was colder, more persistent. It was the remnant of a late Gulf of Mexico hurricane which still possessed teeth even this far inland.
Maddox stretched. His back ached from sitting all morning. He should really dig up a more comfortable chair than the metal piece of crap beside Priest’s bed. Mad placed a book facedown on the chair and wandered into the kitchen. He’d been reading aloud from Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing Letters. The old man had always loved Thompson. Mad had to believe that somewhere in that failing body lived the mind which still did.
He almost grabbed a beer, then thought better of it, opting for a glass of water instead. The knock at the door had to be either Gabriela or Hospice. Maddox opened it.
“Why don’t you just use your key?”
Her hair was wet. Mad could smell the rain on her as she shook the dark waves free from her ponytail. He tossed her a dishtowel.
“Thanks,” she grinned wryly, combing through the wet tangles with her fingers. “It’s your house, Mad. I figured you might not want me wandering in unannounced.”
Maddox shrugged, feeling suddenly irritable. She was too damn beautiful. The kiss they’d shared two days earlier weighed on his mind heavily. Maddox hadn’t been bent out of shape by a kiss since he was a kid. He needed to go look at something which didn’t get his gears going. “Shit, I don’t care, Gaby. It’s not really my house.” He set the glass down on the counter and returned to his father’s bedside.
Maddox picked up the book and put it down again. The steady beat of the rain was hypnotic. He heard it growing heavier.
Gabriela entered the room. She leaned against the far wall and said nothing.
After listening to the rain for a few more minutes, Mad turned to her. “Miguel in school?”
“Yes,” she nodded. She leaned over and looked out the window. “It’s supposed to pour all today and into tomorrow.”
“Hmm,” said Maddox, losing interest, “that’s a lot of rain.”
“Might be bad enough for the river to flood.”
He was dismissive. “Hell, they say that every time there’s more than a quarter inch predicted.”
“They do,” she agreed.
Maddox saw her fidget and look at the floor.
“Jensen will be around later,” he said. They’d come to an uneasy truce, Mad and his brother. They barely spoke, cautiously circling one another with the silent agreement that they needed to see their father to a restful end.
“I know,” Gaby nodded.
Mad shook his head. Of course she and Jensen would talk often. They were raising a son together. He wondered if she had told Jensen about their passionate kiss in the cemetery. He figured she hadn’t.
Gaby sighed. She hadn’t moved from her spot against the wall. Maddox stared at the plain beige t-shirt she wore. The cotton stretched over her breasts, which had grown more generous with the passage of time. He wondered if they would feel as good in his mouth as they had ten years ago.
“Mad?” she asked gently. “Do you want to talk?”
“What, here?”
“Here,” she shrugged. “Here’s good.”
He frowned and looked at his father. Every breath was a struggle. The end of the struggle was not far.
Though he knew it didn’t make a difference he said it anyway. “I don’t want to bother him.”
Gabriela shifted her gaze then. Mad saw how her face softened as she looked at his father with affection. “I think he deserves to hear. I think he would want to know how it ended.”
“It ended a long time ago, Gabs.”
She sighed. Not for the first time Maddox wondered how often she had really thought about him over the past decade. He supposed for her it was unavoidable. She was here, in the same place she’d sworn to leave. For company she’d had his father and his brother. And, of course, his nephew. He wasn’t letting her off the hook. She had done something to his heart which all the loose fucking in the world couldn’t heal.
“I’m sorry, Mad. You need me to say it again?”
“Again would be cool.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, then she grimaced. “Have you ever considered how things looked from where I sat?”
Maddox stared at the book in his hands without seeing the words. He waited for her to continue.
“I mean, Christ, Maddox, we were kids. My world had been turned upside down and I had to finish high school in a strange place. I’d never even had a real boyfriend before. And then here came Mad McLeod. The hottest bad boy in Contention City.” She smiled to herself as her hands played absently with the ends of her black hair. “You were, you know. Of course you know. Every girl in Maricopa County wanted a piece of you.”
Maddox snapped the book closed. “That’s a whole lot of girls,” he said mockingly.
“Jackass,” she rolled her eyes. Then she grew serious. “It was a lot to live up to. And you weren’t the sort of guy who was inclined to chat about his feelings. Sometimes I didn’t know what the hell was going on in your head. No one did.”
“Bullshit. You can’t excuse this away.”
She nodded, her eyes far away as she stared out the window at the rain pooling on the packed desert floor. “You know, Mad, you could have screwed me ten different ways and then laughed about it later. I know that’s how it was for you with the others.”
“You really want to scold me for being the local cherry popper after all this time?”
“No,” she said, mournfully meeting his gaze. “It didn’t occur to me until later that you were never anything but good to me. Of course, then it was too late.”
Maddox still wasn’t in the mood to make her feel better. He glared at her. “What an epiphany, Senorita de Campo.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “You should know that Jensen didn’t make a move first. I did. He didn’t touch me until I asked him to.”
“Jensen,” Maddox grumbled. “My own goddamn brother. You know, I don’t know which of you was worse. He took you to bed knowing I wasn’t in a place to do anything about it. And you? You could have picked any fucking guy, Gaby.”
“No,” she said sadly. “I couldn’t have. He was the closest I could get to you.”
“Well, that’s beautiful.” He threw the book down on the floor and took two steps over to her. Gaby’s eyes widened and she flattened herself against the wall as he glowered down. Her chest grazed his and he was aware of the way she stared at his lips, breathing heavily. He grabbed a handful of her black hair and yanked, just hard enough. The brief fear in her eyes gave way to something else. He could tell she liked the flash of pain just as she liked the way his hands crudely felt between her legs. Fuck it all, he could have her right there. Right there in the same room as his dying father, he could roll those damp jeans down her hips and bang her against that wall until she was inside out and screaming for more. He knew how to make it happen. And then he would abandon her without a word no matter how it half killed him, satisfied that he’d gotten some of his own back. It would be something like revenge. Then maybe, finally, she would be out of his head.
“Maddox,” she whispered, running her lips along his jaw, and there was so much sorrow in her voice he closed his eyes, forsaking all thoughts of vengeance.
Gabriela once did a cruelly stupid thing. Maddox wasn’t without fault. He’d done many cruelly stupid things. But she had grown up. She was raising her son and in the decade of Mad’s absence she had stayed close by and behaved like a daughter to Pri
est. She didn’t deserve some dirty screw. Maddox ought to behave better than that anyway. Yes, it was time for him to be better than that.
The knock on the door settled things. Maddox pushed away from her and didn’t look back as he went to the door. Ellen, the cheerfully fading brunette who had been assigned by Hospice to Priest’s case, gave him a standard pitying smile when he opened the door.
After asking him a few hushed questions, to which he supplied monosyllabic answers, Ellen headed into Priest’s room to check on her patient. He heard her exchange a greeting with Gaby, who had emerged quietly, tying her hair back into another ponytail.
Maddox ignored her, turning away and opening the living room window’s vinyl blinds, staring outside at the sheets of rain. The front yard was beginning to fill with water. There, in the southeast, was the remnant of a deep hole he and Jensen had dug a million years earlier. It never had been filled in properly and was now full of dirty rainwater.
Gabriela stood at his back and tentatively circled her arms around his waist. Mad wondered how it would have been if he had never gotten into Chaz Colletti’s stolen car that night. Gaby and Jensen wouldn’t have happened. Miguel wouldn’t exist. And Maddox would probably be soft and drunk like his brother as he puttered around Contention City with his plumber’s tools, going to a shabby home every night to tiredly stick his dick into the woman who waited for him there. Maybe the woman would have been Gaby. Maybe not.
When he didn’t respond to her, Gabriela finally gave up, withdrawing her arms and sinking into the ancient sofa.
Maddox suddenly remembered something.
“Hey,” he said without turning around, “what’s this shit about Jensen getting into an OK Corral shootout with Chaz Colletti?”
Gaby gave an exasperated sigh. “How the hell would I know, Mad? Some ugly incident that arose out of drinking and gambling. It was years ago. Jensen doesn’t like to talk about it. You should be able to imagine why.”
Mad shook his head. “Doesn’t make any sense is all. Chaz was an asshole, but he was also a coward when it came to taking a punch. How likely would it be that he’d start shit with Contention’s golden boy super cop?”
Gaby sounded tired. “People change, Mad. Chaz got a little rowdy and full of himself when he took over his dad’s bar. It’s not so hard to imagine him taking it too far. Anyway, there were enough people around who said he was to blame, not Jensen.”
“Yeah?” Maddox frowned. “What people?”
“Bryce Sanders for one. He’s the mayor now. Did you know?”
“Prick used to threaten to squash me into the asphalt for touching his Camaro. So I keyed the whole fucking length of it one night while he was sweating out another hoops loss in the gym.”
Gaby gave a short laugh. “And what were you, all of ten years old at the time? Miguel’s age.”
Mad considered. “Yeah, about that.” He crossed his arms and kept his post in front of the window. “Wasn’t easy for you, was it Gaby?”
He imagined her dark eyes narrowing at his back. She sounded wary. “What?”
“Sticking around, being a teen mom. I know you had better things in mind.”
She shrugged. “It was what it was, Maddox. Jensen and I didn’t last very long. I’m sure you knew that already. Now we’re what we were always supposed to be. Friends.”
“And parents.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “That too.”
He heard Gabriela get heavily to her feet. “I should get going.” She stood next to him and squinted out the window. “This rain doesn’t look so good. Remember, I live in that low area by the river. I’m going to dig in and grab some sandbags just in case.”
Mad nodded. “Need help?” He wasn’t sure if he was offering or not.
She bent her head. “No,” she said softly. “I don’t need help, Maddox.” She held her keys and paused by the front door. “Jensen’s going to pick up Miguel later. He wanted to stay here again but Jen says he needs to clean his room at their house.” She opened the door slowly, as if she hoped something would stop her. “He really likes you, you know. Miguel, I mean.”
“Who the hell else would you be talking about? Jensen?” Maddox laughed hoarsely.
“Maddox.” Her voice was sharp. Sharp enough to turn his head and force him to look at her.
She was chewing her lip. It was a habit he’d also seen in Miguel. “Are you going to stand there long?” she asked.
He thought about the question. She wasn’t asking him if he was going to remain by the window for a while. She was asking if he was going to stay in her life.
“As long as it takes,” he answered gruffly, turning back to the window and placing each of his palms on the cool glass.
“Okay,” she said with some irritation. “Okay, Mad.”
He heard the click of the door and felt the acute emptiness of the room without her in it.
Ellen hummed in the next room. It was getting on his nerves. Who the hell sang Britney Spears at the bedside of a dying man? He was on the verge of shouting at her the cut it out. But he stopped himself, figuring what the hell did it matter if Ellen hummed the score of Kinky Boots? After all, it was probably something she did because she was at the bedside of a dying man, rather than in spite of it. Priest might have even enjoyed it.
Maddox watched the rain for a while. When he was a kid he used to dash outside whenever more than two drops fell together. That’s the thing about kids who grow up in the desert; they never lose their rain lust.
His phone was ringing somewhere. He turned away from the window and tried to remember where the hell he’d left it.
When he reached Priest’s room, Ellen had already picked it up. She held it out to him with a radiant smile.
“Thanks,” he grumbled, irritably wondering if these Hospice people were trained in the art of perpetual grinning.
“No problem,” Ellen said brightly and bent down to take Priest’s pulse again.
Maddox smiled when he saw the number.
“Hey, motherfucker,” he answered as he made his way out the back door. There was a shallow aluminum overhang above the crumbling slab which serviced as a back patio. It was enough to keep the rain off.
“You know,” sighed the caller, “might to nice to once, just once, hear you say, ‘Hello, Grayson. I’m so glad you called.’”
“Aw, hell. What’s with the airs? Promise making you watch Downton Abbey again?”
“Sit on it and rotate, McLeod. Downton Abbey’s a damn good show.” Gray paused. “How is he, Mad?”
Maddox sat on the edge of a concrete planter which had once held Tildy McLeod’s small herb garden. The rain found him there but he didn’t care.
“He’s still breathing. Barely. I don’t know, Gray. This is all shit. I should have come sooner.”
“Don’t screw with your own head like that. Doesn’t do any good, man. So how’s everything else?”
So Gray remembered their conversation the night before he’d left. “I keep to the house mostly. I’ve got no cause to go mingling with the locals.” He sighed, knowing what Grayson was asking. “Jensen tries to stay out of my way. And Gaby…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Still gnaws at you, huh?”
“There’s something there,” Maddox admitted reluctantly as rainwater dripped from his hair. “You know, I thought I could bury it. I want to fucking bury it. Hurts, Gray.” He was aware that the dry cough which came out of his throat sounded like a sob. “Listen to me. I sound like a pussy. I sound like Brandon.”
Gray’s voice was gentle. “No shame in having a heart, Mad. Knew there was one in there somewhere.”
Maddox said nothing. He felt a sting on his neck and saw the tiny hail pellets fall around his feet.
“Yo, Mad?”
“Yeah, Gray. I’m still here.”
“You need us, you just call. You know it don’t matter what time it is.”
“Yeah buddy, I know that. Thanks.”
He stu
ffed the phone in his back pocket and ducked into the house only long enough to grab his keys and call to Ellen that he’d return soon. He liked riding in the rain. It was falling at a slant and harder by the minute. When he rode by Contention Hardware he saw that the parking lot was full. People tended to panic over the prospect of too much water. That flood a century earlier weighed on the minds of the long time families who’d heard the stories passed down. There were no emergency warnings back then so when that dam broke there were only precious minutes for those in the lowest segment of the valley to scramble to higher ground. Since then the narrow river had swollen a few times and messed things up a bit, but the damage had been only superficial.
Mad waited for the traffic light to change as he watched the residents of Contention City hurrying around with their sandbags and their worry. It made him think of Gabriela. She lived in the lowest part of the valley. If there was a real risk of flood, she had reason to worry.
He rode down the long stretch of the town’s main street and veered off onto a dirt road. It was several inches deep in muddy water, but nothing he couldn’t handle. Nonetheless, he exercised a little more caution than usual. This was the road to the old Scorpion mine. Once it would have been teeming with the traffic of miners and wagons. Since the Scorpion had closed before the turn of the twentieth century the road was never modernized. The only folks who traveled this way were curiosity seekers or those looking for a few private moments; to screw or to shoot up or to do whatever the hell needed to be done away from prying eyes. As he paused on the old bridge he peered down into the river. When he was a boy this section had either been dry or calmly half filled with recent rain. But the steady pour of the last twelve hours had done some work. Mad didn’t consider himself terribly perceptive or intuitive but a general sense of unease was building in his gut. The frothing water beneath his feet seemed to climb several inches just in the short time he watched. Maddox turned his bike around and headed back to town.
Old Man Townsend used to own the Scorpion Grill on the corner of Baseline and Contention Way. Mad wasn’t sure who ran it now, but he figured Stuart Townsend, who had been at least eighty years old in Mad’s youth, had likely passed on. He was part of a generational line of Townsends who had occupied Contention since the boom days. There were a handful of landmarks, including the elementary school, which bore the Townsend name. As Maddox entered the dim restaurant, a knot of patrons were clustered around the bar. The noise which pierced the air was high-pitched and jarring. It took Maddox a moment to recognize what it was; the alert from the Emergency Broadcast System. He stopped cold and listened to the words.
