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“Aubrey’s? Or I can get us a motel room? We can go back to Salt Lake.” Maddox always seemed to know what I was thinking.
How did he do that?
“I don’t know.” Go home was the right answer, logically. So why did it feel like a mistake? I leaned back against the wall with a soft thunk.
“Are you quitting the contest?” Maddox asked. “Are we?”
That was what we were worried about? Now? What was I supposed to say to—
“That’s not what I’m worried about.” Maddox stood toe-to-toe with me, his dark eyes reflecting hurt and concern. “Fuck the contest if that’s what it comes to. But I’m trying to figure out how serious this is.”
“I don’t know. Am I overreacting?”
Maddox shook his head. “Friends can’t lie to friends. If you go to Aubrey’s, think she’ll let me sleep on your floor like a guard dog?”
“I think she’s going to let you sleep where you want. Why don’t I know what to do or think or feel?” I meant to keep the string of questions to myself.
Maddox pressed his lips to my cheek. The gesture was so simple and sweet and pure that my heart cracked.
“You’re allowed to take the time to figure it out,” he said. “You don’t have to forgive him. You don’t have to resent him. You can refuse to talk to him ever again, or you can decide to hear him out and agree that you understand why he did it. You can do anything in between, but you don’t have to do any of it until you think about all of it.”
“What about you?” I wasn’t the only one hurting, yet Maddox was giving me all the comfort.
Maddox shrugged. “I just feel like even though this sucks right now, it won’t always, as long as you promise me one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t shut me out.”
Why would I…? “Okay.”
“No. Don’t give me a quick answer. Think about it first. I’m asking for a promise between you and me that has nothing to do with anything else. Promise me we’re still what we were this morning. Swear to me.”
It felt dangerous to make a promise like that, like a straight shot to pain and hurt. This was Maddox though. Good, sweet, really fucking sexy, and always there.
“I promise,” I said.
He slipped his hand into mind and tugged me toward him. “Good. Let’s go to Aubrey’s, so we have a place that’s private, while we process. Depending on what we decide, in the morning I’ll go get our stuff if we want, or will sit Onyx down and torture him until he explains himself.”
The only way I could picture Maddox torturing anyone was by smothering them with positivity and kindness. “Okay.”
We stepped into Aubrey’s back room, and I left Maddox alone long enough to catch her attention. She was with a customer, so I wouldn’t interrupt. Instead, when she looked at me I jerked my thumb toward her second floor, where her apartment was. We’d wait up there for her.
Maddox and I headed upstairs, and I let us in. I had keys to a few of the houses here, and when I’d lived in my mom’s place, after she moved, Aubrey, Evie, Onyx, and Maddox all had keys to my house.
The excuse was in case you lock yourself out, but it was really because we had a your place is mine kind of thing going on.
But Onyx didn’t think it was worthwhile to tell us that his place wouldn’t be anyone’s soon enough.
I settled on the couch, and my thoughts started to thaw.
Maddox paced.
This was hitting him harder than he wanted to show, and I was making it about me. That wasn’t fair. I’d known Onyx longer, but the three of us were The Wonderland Crew. We didn’t work without one of our members.
Don kept popping into my head. Taunting me. Shredding my thoughts. I thought I’d had an amazing relationship with him—the kind of friendship that spanned universes—only to find out he didn’t feel the same. That to him, us dating didn’t equal him not fucking around.
That he would initiate.
