AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Instead of berating his father that he should have taken Nicole seriously, Matt navigated his dad’s grief and got the information he needed to help. The next day, he was still trying to wrap his head around everything when he stepped off the plane in Denver. He missed Madison like hell. He hadn’t slept for shit without her, and he needed her so damn badly. He gave in and reached out.
I had to fly home unexpectedly. My dad had an emergency. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.
She answered right away.
Oh, no. I hope everything is all right. Is there anything I can do to help?
Nothing. I’ll let you know when I’m back in Lafayette.
Even if it would be better for you if I didn’t, he thought.
Okay. Don’t hesitate to ask if I can do anything.
This situation is tricky. It might take a while.
I’ll be here. Good luck. I miss you.
He tried to focus on his dad’s problems during the two-plus hour drive from the Denver airport to the Albany County jail, but his body screamed with every mile that he was headed in the wrong direction. Every part of him wanted Madison.
Thankfully, he had his father sprung by suppertime. Since he’d worked a half-dozen years with the sheriff’s department, he knew almost everyone in town, including the coroner and the DA, so he’d been able to talk to the deputies assigned to the case. Because the sheriff had once relied on him to help solve homicides, Matt pointed out discrepancies in their case that made it next to impossible for his father to have killed Nicole Hall, age thirty two—a mere two fucking years older than Matt himself. They’d listened. Still, he understood their suspicion. After nearly three months of witnesses swearing his father had verbally abused her, not to mention a series of screaming matches the cops had been forced to break up, every law enforcement officer in the county thought Dad had finally lost his temper and offed his girlfriend.
After another week, Matt finally made enough people see reason that the DA dropped the murder charges to involuntary manslaughter, then gave up altogether because he didn’t have a winnable case. Finally, Matt could return to Lafayette.
But should he? He knew the answer. Dad’s near brush with a murder trial should be a potent reminder.
Problem was, Matt didn’t want to stay away. He’d been trying. Madison had texted a few times in the past week. It had taken all his restraint, but he hadn’t responded. What the hell could he say? What kind of promises could he possibly make?
The night before he left Wyoming, Matt sat at the same speckled linoleum kitchen table his mother had picked out when he was a kid, nursing a cup of after-dinner coffee when his father grabbed a mug and sat across from him.
“Thanks for all your help, son. I couldn’t have made it through this without you. If you hadn’t stepped in and done your thing, that crooked DA would have let me go down for killing Nicole just to say he got a conviction.”
The asshole would have at least tried because the Montgomerys were regarded as nothing but white trash in this town. “It’s over. You can help yourself by doing what you promised me before I left home last time and staying single, figure out why you keep gravitating to these destructive relationships.”
“I did. I was alone for two weeks after you’d gone.”
“Two whole weeks?”
“I don’t need your sarcasm.” Dad frowned. “You have to understand… Nicole seemed stronger. I thought she was.”
Matt grappled for patience. “She’s eighteen years younger than you. From everything I’ve heard over the last week, she was emotional, needy, and fragile.”
Just the way Dad liked his women.
“Aren’t most of them?”
“No.” He’d met plenty of women who had backbone and grit. Trees’s bride, Laila, came to mind. She was a realist and a survivor. A fighter. “You have a type.”
After Madison, isn’t it clear you do, too?
Not that she was weak, but during their days together, her emotions constantly bubbled just under her surface. Once he’d dug and hit the wellspring, he’d felt how much she needed him—his attention, his praise, his touch. After he’d ripped away the barrier of her clothes and torn down the walls between them, he’d found her beautiful heart. Because she’d been hurt, it was fragile, like a foal testing its legs for the first time. And he’d enjoyed the power of knowing that, in their moments together, he alone had kept her upright.
“Maybe, but that doesn’t make me a bad person,” his dad argued. “We fought, sure, but—”
“A lot, from what I hear.”
“You know when I go all-in on something, I go hard. I thought Nicole was special. I saw us having a future together.”
“So what happened, really? Not the BS you told the police.”
