When I raise my eyes, Caidyn dips his chin in agreement. The flu he’s battling has added to the puffiness of his eyes, but dark rims have been circling them for almost a year now. He looks as exhausted as I feel.
My eyes return to the screen of Caidyn’s phone when Maddox pledges, “I’ll make this right, Demi. I will do whatever it takes to fix this. Us.You.And we will do it together.”
None of the burden for my fuck-ups belong on his shoulders, but in all honesty, I’m too tired for another argument. Today has been one bad thing after another. I’m drained, hormonal, and reasonably sure a week of sleep won’t fix the bags under my eyes, so instead of pulling up my big girl panties and taking responsibility for my mistakes, I take the coward’s way out.
“Okay,” I murmur a couple of seconds later. “But can we commence that tomorrow? I’m too tired to think straight. Those two minutes really wore me out.”
Maddox’s chuckle is only half its strength, but it’s still a nice thing to hear. “All right. Give me back to Caidyn for a few, then I’ll come tuck you in.”
I’m aware he means in the spiritual sense, but my heart still skips a beat at the thought of him walking through the front door to physically undertake his pledge. The increase it caused my pulse is heard in my reply, “Okay. I love you.”
The weight on my shoulders feels nowhere near as intense when he mutters without pause for thought, “I love you back, Demi. Always.”
20
Maddox
I’m not going to lie. The rattle of my hands is felt up my arm when Demi hands Caidyn his phone. The woman I’ve been crushing on since second grade came close to saying words that would have completely ended me. They expose how much she’s struggling and how badly I fucked up today when I requested a moment to think.
There’s no quiet in Wallens Ridge. Not a single moment of peace. The grind never ends, and the crunching of the cogs became more apparent when my desperation to hold Demi for longer than ten minutes saw me doing shit I swore I’d never do.
Over the past two months, I’ve been feared more than I have been respected. My presence instills panic instead of calm. I’ve become the very essence of the man I swore to save Demi from, all the while endeavoring to keep her at my side, fighting a battle we will never win.
How can I pledge to protect her from a monster, only to become a monster myself?
I can’t, and that’s why this needs to end. I’m just praying like fuck I can still see the light at the end of the tunnel, or nothing I’ve done the past twelve months will be worth anything. I’ll once again be forced to watch proceedings unfold via the sidelines.
I hear Caidyn’s Adam’s apple bob up and down when I ask, “How much money is left from the sale of our parents’ house?” When nothing but silence resonates down the line, I coerce him into a conversation. “I don’t give a fuck about what you did or did not suggest for them to do, Caidyn, we will have that discussion at a more appropriate time. I just need to know how much money is in the kitty?”
It feels like I’m punched in the gut when he replies, “None.”
“None? How the fuck can there be none left? The house was valued in the millions.”
“Believing it would benefit you quicker, Mom took a cash offer that—”
“Dramatically lowered the asking price,” I interrupt, annoyed but also understanding of my mom’s frame of mind at the time. She never thought she’d have to pay bail for one of her children, much less fund legal expenses exceeding one hundred thousand dollars.
I can’t see Caidyn, but I imagine him dipping his chin when a rustle sounds down the line. “I didn’t know Demi wanted all the funds together before paying off her uncle, so I cashed the check and deposited it into Col’s account.” On the assumption Demi aired all his dirty laundry today, he adds, “We have a few thousand put away from Saint’s fights, and about twenty thousand left of the original two hundred thousand you put away.”
“Only twenty thousand?” I ask, my tone as high as my brow. Demi is frugal with money. She penny-pinches more than our parents did when they were saving to purchase the block of land their family home was built on, so I’m not only shocked she burned through so much cash in a short period of time, I’m worried. You can get anything with the right amount of money. Drugs. Guns. Oxycodone. You can even make an entire family disappear, hence the reason I’m crunching numbers. “Owen agreed to work on a flat fee.”
“Yes, he did,” Caidyn agrees. “That wasn’t where the money went. It was put toward an expense none of us were planning but wanted to occur more than anything.” I wait, knowing there’s more, and am proven right when he says a couple of seconds later, “Demi paid the remainder of Justine’s college tuition.”
Although I am not surprised by his comment, Demi is as generous as she is beautiful, something doesn’t add up. “Justine had a scholarship.”
“Had being the operative word,” Caidyn replies. “She took too much time off. They granted her leave for as long as they could, but eventually, the funding got redirected to more appropriate candidates.” He licks his lips before adding, “Demi is aware her generosity could set back your release by a year or two, but she’s also hopeful it could shorten your time behind bars. Justine switched her studies from architecture to criminal defense. You know how stubborn she is when she sets her mind to something. She’ll have you out by Christmas…once she’s graduated.”
I’m confused and grateful at the same time, but since curiosity is always my strongest emotion, I go with that first. “Demi is paying for my release?”
I was unaware you could hear brows pulling together until now. “Yes,” Caidyn answers, his tone as high as I am picturing his dark brows. “Did she not tell you that?”
I shake my head, truly stunned. With my mind hazed by all the information Demi bombarded it with hours ago, I haven’t had the chance to sit down and contemplate what Demi was paying her uncle for. I knew it wouldn’t have been for anything good, but I had no clue it centered around my incarceration.
Too curious to discount, I ask, “How much did he request?”
My heart rate spikes as fast as my hope when he answers, “A little over three million. We’ve sliced it down to one point one the past twelve months.”
“One point one,” I murmur to myself. Months ago, that would have seemed like an unachievable figure, but after seeing the numbers Agent Moses has flashed around the past couple of months, it seems like barely a drop of water in the ocean. It isn’t an amount I can get overnight, but it could be possible within a couple of months. I just have no clue if Demi’s mental well-being can wait that long.
