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The alcohol must've been working because I bit back the vicious retort that was on the tip of my tongue… the one that held no truth behind it. The one that was purely meant to drive Maddox away.
"I didn't ask to come here," I reminded him.
Yeah, the alcohol was definitely making the truth a little easier to speak.
Maddox sighed and reached for his drink. He held the glass in his hand and moved it back and forth in a small circular motion as if getting lost in the way the liquid moved. "One month," he said softly. "Give me one month. If you can look me in the eye in one month and tell me you don't want to be a part of this, I'll let you go. Hate me, call me every name in the book, try to force us to send you away, but just give me one month."
I shook my head because I had no clue what he was asking. One month of me not trying to leave? I couldn't do that anyway. And if he was giving me permission to keep behaving like I had been, what exactly was he trying to accomplish? "One month? One month of what?"
"Your word."
Clearly the loss of my legs had made me a lightweight when it came to alcohol because I still didn't get it. But when I opened my mouth to say so, Maddox cut me off.
"I want you to give me your word that you won't try to hurt yourself for the next thirty days."
The blunt comment startled me, but Maddox wasn't finished. He let out a soft laugh, an ugly one, and said, "You went with the wrong strategy, Jett. I can do stubborn, I can do hatred, I can do rage… hell, I can even do silence. But I can't do nothing."
It took me a minute to get what he was saying, but when I did, I wanted to laugh at my own stupidity. In coming up with my scheme, I’d chosen the obvious route, but there was nothing obvious about Maddox. It was like his brother had said, I had a choice in all this. I always had. Maddox had brought me here to keep me from giving up on my life, but the change of scenery had no control over that. Only I did. If and when I was truly ready to let go of the life I'd been given, that was it. I would just have to stop living. And that was what Maddox was so afraid of.
So he wanted thirty days of not having to watch me just give up. He wanted thirty days of not feeling helpless. He wanted thirty days of not having to witness the light leave my eyes.
It was so simple and yet not. From the moment I'd enlisted, my life had been about survival. Hell, it had been that way long before that. Even after I'd lost my legs and prayed every day for death, I'd still fought it. I was still fighting it. I'd just made excuses for the reasons behind that fight. Not checking out for my grandmother’s sake had been an excuse. So had Maddox “forcing” me to return to Pelican Bay with him.
Dallas had been right. I did have a choice. Maddox was giving me thirty days to not have to make it. Thirty days of a reprieve from having to decide what my life was going to look like. I could give myself time to not have to obsess over the fact that all the days afterwards would be spent in a chair. I wouldn't have to battle it out with my former best friend and I wouldn't have to pretend to be something I wasn't. I could just… be for the next thirty days.
A month to get my head on straight. A month to decide what my truth was. A month to make peace with my choice, no matter what it would be.
A strange calmness settled in my belly, but I wasn't sure if I should attribute it to the alcohol or Maddox's offer. In the end, it was irrelevant.
"One month," I said as I rolled my chair forward so I could reach for the empty shot glass. I held the glass out expectantly. Maddox let out a little sigh of relief as he reached for the bottle and filled my glass.
"One month," he agreed and then we did what we'd always done when it was time to face our next battle together.
We drank on it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAWYER
God bless the wildlife of the state of Minnesota for keeping me busy for the better part of the week that followed my disastrous encounter with Jett. Between a black bear that had gotten its paw mangled in a trap and the discovery of a litter of orphaned wolf pups, I had little time to think about the man back in Pelican Bay who'd messed so badly with my head without even trying.
