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The doctor said it was a miracle she pulled through. If I hadn’t gotten her here as fast as I did, she would have died. They cut her open to reach her heart. They fixed it. They promised she’d live. But they never knew I felt it all. Never saw my own heart exposed and bleeding for her. For a life I dared to dream of but had ripped from me.
They said she’d make a full recovery, given time and rest. I wasn’t so sureIwould.
Did she lie? Was her sudden good health nothing but another lie to cover up the first? Was she so desperate to stick by my side that she pretended to be fine? She did a damn good job. Worthy of a fucking Oscar. I believed her because I needed to. Trusted her because it was the only way forward. Leaving her was never an option, anyway. I just made myself believe it was.
“My father lied. I was never sick.”
But she was. She fucking was. All this time. She was a ticking bomb, and I had no clue. I let myself relax and abandon the fear of loss and the deeply ingrained belief thateveryoneleft. I let it rest. My fucking heart. Let it love.
The irony made me laugh. Just my luck. Falling for a girl with a fatal heart condition when the death of a loved one was my darkest nightmare. How fucking poetic.
But it’s not fatal anymore.I reminded myself. The doctor’s words. I looked at her, so peacefully sleeping as if nothing happened. As if she didn’t dance on the border of death. As if she didn’t rip my heart out along with hers.
I needed answers. And I wasn’t going to get them from her. I gave her one last look, then I steered toward the door.
*
The inside of the California state prison was as unfriendly as I imagined it to be. There was a time I expected to spend my life here. Going down for murder wasn’t something you walked away from, and I was ready to take my punishment. Why would it matter? I was fucking dead inside, anyway. But the charges against me went away. I should have questioned it. But I had no energy to care.
Looking back, it made perfect sense. Julie’s death wasn’t something trivial as arobbery gone wrong. It was murder. Planned. Calculated. Cold. Murder. And all because she was the sister of amobmember. I never knew. And Julie’s secret life destroyed mine. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.
Did someone take mercy on me? The thoughts crept around my mind as a grumpy guard led me to the visitor’s booth. No doubt someone in their twisted familyknew. And what was I to them? Some unlucky son of a bitch who lost everything due to their personal war? I scoffed at the thought. No matterhowandwhy, I was grateful I got away with my freedom. But someone knew. The bastard I was here for knew. And he used it against me.
I sat down, lifted the phone, and looked the man who started this in the eyes. They were blue too, just like his daughter’s. But lacked her depth. Instead, they were empty. Shallow and cold as they stared back at me.
“Maddox,” Kaylie’s father greeted. “How nice to see the man who put me here.”
I laughed a cold sound that matched his icy stare. “I wanted to end you,” I growled into the phone. “But you deserve this. To rot.”
“What do you want?” he snapped. “Come here to gloat?”
“She’s dead.” Even saying the words cut through my already bruised and battered heart. “You knew. You knew she was sick, and you let her die?”
Regret ghosted across his face. He cast his gaze down. When he looked up, the sorrow was replaced with a cold smile.
“Yes,” he said, and I gripped the phone so hard my knuckles turned white. “She held on longer than I expected.”
It took all my control not to slam a fist into the glass separating us. The fucker has some nerves. Kaylie wasn’t dead. But if she was… I’d be on that side, beating him to a fucking pulp for speaking about her like that.
Then, amid the storm inside, another thought grabbed me and refused to go.
He never lied.
It only meant one thing…
She did.
Having it confirmed broke something in me. I came to remove the doubt, not have it thrown back at me.
She knew.
She lied to my face. She knew what her dying did to me and she didn’t fucking care…
“The pills you gave her. What was that?” I asked, and he replied with a cold smile.
“Why should I tell you anything?”
I leaned closer, fixing him with a stare as cold as his. “I know people who can make you wish you were dead. Answer my fucking questions.”
