“Great! Coming right up.” I dart into the kitchen like bees are chasing me, except I don’t race for the coffee pots. I bolt up the stairs like a madwoman to get changed. I’m not just wearing a grannie nightgown, my panties are from the same dreary collection. The waistband goes past my belly button, for crying out loud!
“Don’t say a word,” I say to Max when I re-enter the kitchen ten minutes later in a fitted dress with brushed hair and a dash of cherry-flavored lip gloss on my lips. “I dress like this every day. You’ve just never seen it because you’re always walking in front of me instead of next to me.”
When he raises a doggy brow, I stick out my tongue, double-check my bra is doing what it’s meant to do, then burst through the revolving door of the kitchen like today is the first day of my life instead of the day I was born.
41
Maddox
“Ibet you’re not pissed about me shooting you in the hand now, are you?” Rocco says with a snicker, his pompousness at an all-time high.
You didn’t hear him wrong. Thirty-seven days ago, my gun, Agent Machini’s gun, and Rocco’s gun all fired at the same time. Agent Machini’s bullet pierced through Rocco’s shoulder. Rocco’s bullet shattered multiple bones in my hand, and Rocco’s perfect aim saw my bullet graze my ear instead of embedding into my brain as I had planned.
He shot me to save my life, and up until ten minutes ago, I hated him for it.
Now… now I’m beginning to wonder if my bullet did its job. This is heaven, right? It has to be. Demi and Max are here.
My theory would be more convincing if Rocco weren’t here, though. I don’t care how many times he denies it, that prick is going to hell when he dies.
Even Smith agrees with me.
When Rocco places a file down in front of me, it’s the fight of my life to take my eyes off Demi. She’s moving around the counter of a quaint café in a little unknown town in Montana, preparing coffee. It’s taking her longer than usual to prepare our order since her eyes continually glance my way.
I hope she doesn’t think I’m a creep. I can’t help but stare. For one, she’s even more beautiful than I remembered, and two, she’s meant to be a ghost.
I saw her demise.
She died right in front of me.
But I realize that isn’t the case when my eyes drop to the paperwork Rocco set down. It’s marked confidential with an official FBI seal. It’s covered with handwritten text, but one name stands out throughout the scribble—Demi’s.
“Terri Glouchester died three days earlier in a traffic accident. The scar you mistook for Demi’s was from her autopsy. With her head angled to the side, and her clothing matched to what Demi was wearing, which you could get at any department store since all her funds went to Col, a mistake is easily excused.”
I place my thumb over Terri’s face before drifting my eyes to Demi. Their similar height and body shape give credit to Rocco’s claim that the wreckage that claimed Demi’s life was staged, but it doesn’t explain everything.
“How did they know we were going to crash?”
My jaw ticks when Rocco says, “Because the airbags in the Buick we’re set to go off once you were twenty miles out from the cabin.”
“You set us up?”
He nods without shame, like killing enemies doesn’t make me a murderer.
“Why the fuck would you do that, Rocco?” I lower my voice when my roar gains me Demi’s attention. I want her eyes on me. I just don’t want them to have an ounce of fear in them. She hasn’t looked over her shoulder once in the last ten minutes. That was unheard of in Hopeton. “You’re supposed to be our friend.”
“That’s why I did it. Demi was going away, Ox. They were going to pin a murder on her. I saw the shit that happens to those women in Wallens Ridge firsthand. I couldn’t sit back and watch Demi go through that.” He scoots to the edge of his chair, so I can see the truth in his eyes when he says, “I had planned to tell you what really happened, that her accident was a ruse, but then Demi’s life ended for real.”
I point to her standing mere feet from her, too shocked to talk.
She’s right fucking there as healthy as an ox.And oh so fucking beautiful.
My eyes float back to Rocco when he mutters, “She isn’t the Demi you remember, Ox. Her shell is the same, but her insides are completely different. There’s no hurt. No pain—”
“No recollection of who she once was,” I mumble when the truth finally dawns on me. I wasn’t dreaming when Demi introduced herself as if she didn’t know me. She was truly stumped. “Why doesn’t she remember me?”
When Rocco attempts to hand me a thick medical file, I push it to his side of the table. “Give it to me in layman’s terms, Rocco, because right now, I am still not convinced I’m not dead.” I tried to end my life. I was prepared to die, and not even thirty days at a mental health facility could fully convince me I deserved a second chance, so why am I getting one now?
Rocco chuckles before relaying a whole heap of mumbo jumbo that pretty much insinuates that a brain injury saw Demi lose all memories of her childhood, her teen years, and the tumultuous yet beautiful year and a half we had together.
