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Xavi passed Maddox a beer and sat beside him on the dock while Nate and I sat on the edge of the deck. We were at the shop, and Seth just showed up to tell us what he found out from Gary. My dad was still in the wind, and to be honest, I didn’t care what he was doing. All I wanted was to get him out of our lives for good. Even if he’d stuck to his word and left Garron forever, I still wanted to know. I needed to know he couldn’t come back someday and ruin our lives… again. That deadbeat had already ruined my life enough.
I’d have to think of him every time I saw Maddox’s scar—my own scars, for that matter. I’d have to attach him to my origin story, to the one and only relationship of my life, and I’d have to see the damage he caused my mom every time I looked at her. That was enough. He didn’t get to claim anything else. I needed him gone so we could move into that happiness part like Maddox had said. I wanted the fuck ups, the laughs, the joy, and the love that sometimes led to fistfights. I wanted hot sex and late-night bickering in a trailer that was too small to contain our energy but housed us anyway because we loved living in our chaos. It was time to remove Jim and start focusing on new goals. Preferably ones that changed my last name.
To get all of that, Jim had to go. This time, I had my fucking family at my back. I looked at Maddox at the same time he looked at me, our eyes connecting over our brother’s heads. He’d always been tight-lipped, and he still was, but I could read everything he felt just by looking into his eyes these days. Most of his looks came across as angry, but this one… it meant safety. With a look, he told me we’d get through this together. He grinned shyly, hated himself for it, so threw me the middle finger to earn himself a bit of credit.
What a damn sweetheart.
“Alright, so Gary is either lying or he really is as dumb as he seems,” Seth said, sitting on the step and trying not to look at our beers. He already told us not to change around him, but I still felt shitty.
“What’d he say?” Xavi asked.
“Claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about. Told me he had no connection to Harris, which was a lie, and said he hadn’t talked to Jim in years, which was also a lie. I saw them talking a few weeks before that day. So, the only thing he might be telling the truth about is not knowing about those shipping slips.”
“He seem scared?” Nate asked. “Being threatened to keep his mouth shut, maybe?”
“Nervous as all fuck,” Seth said. “Sweaty. Shaky.”
Which meant my dad held something over his head. Either that, or Patrick Harris had something on Gary. Maddox had warned Harris not to get involved with my dad again, so were they working together for a bigger score, or had Jim stolen them from Harris?
Nate nudged me in the side, a silent assurance that we’d figure it out. It was hard when nothing made sense.
“So, we fucking Gary up or what?” Maddox asked like an asshole, swigging beer and wiping his wrist across his mouth.
“I say we figure out who the captain of the ship is first,” Xavi suggested.
“Don’t you have friends down at the docks still?” Maddox asked Seth. “Can you talk to a few guys?”
Seth agreed to put some feelers out. I guess it was a place to start, since Gary hadn’t offered up anything useful.
“What about the douchey cop?” Nate asked. “What’re we doing about him?”
I wanted to kill Davis myself. He almost took Maddox from me, and fucking no one could do that. “We can’t touch him,” I scoffed, anger eating me up. “He’s under house arrest and he has cops monitoring his place because he made them think we might still be a threat. We’d be feeding right into his plan if we went after him.”
The fact that Davis spun a lie and everyone believed him grated on every part of me. Once again, we didn’t have a voice. We lived in fear and got laughed at while he only temporarily lost his badge and had bodyguards keeping an eye on him. All we could do was fight to have our voices heard, but who wanted to listen to a couple of rednecks like us? Nobody, and it fucking showed.
I looked at Maddox again. I might not have much, but I had him, and that made me the richest man in the world. There was only one Maddox Kane, and he was fucking mine. I’d never take that for granted again.
“I’m gonna head down to the docks right now,” Seth said, standing to leave. “Don’t do anything stupid.” He aimed that one at Maddox and Xavi, mostly. I didn’t know why, because I’d been the one to do stupid things.
“Thanks, Seth.” I gave him a nod. I had a lot of respect for Seth now. If he hadn’t been there that day to take control and make me move, Maddox wouldn’t have made it to midnight. “Let us know if you find anything.” With another nod, he left.
I learned something about myself that day Seth stepped in to take control. I sucked under pressure. I always figured I’d be able to react to a situation and handle it until the crisis ended, but no. It was Maddox dying on the ground, and I got too swept up in heartbreak, terror, and guilt to be productive. Hated myself a little for that, but I hid it from Maddox because he was sick of dealing with my shame.
Xavi and Nate went inside, so I grabbed a few more beers and sat down beside Maddox. He stayed quiet, lost in his own head. I studied the furrow of his brow, the clench of his jaw, and the blackish-purple circles under his eyes. The sun made them darker, but the water’s reflection made him calmer. He hadn’t been sleeping well, and I knew he was stressed out. How did a guy like him deal with stress? Well, usually, he fucked, fought, rode his bike, or swam in the ocean to muffle the world for a bit. His medical restrictions put a damper on all that, and I was left with a volatile boyfriend who couldn’t use his vices. There had to be a safe way for him to vent, exert some stress, and lash out at something without hurting himself.
Sex. Sex was probably the safest. I’d seduce the hell out of him later and let him take it all out on me.
“We still having that weekend?” I asked.
He took a sip and watched the horizon. “Yeah.”
“Look at me.” I waited until he lowered his beer and looked at me without much glare behind it this time. Just tiredness. “You need to sleep if you’re going to keep up with what I have planned for our romance weekend.”
“Romance weekend,” he huffed a laugh. “Tea parties and go-fish?” What a dick. Yeah, we were competitive, and since we hadn’t been able to compete in any of our usual ways, we’d resorted to cards, board games, and stupid little challenges around the trailer. He won all the cooking ones, but I didn’t mind losing because it made him happy.
“A different kind of game this time, bud.”
“Hm,” he mused. “Snakes and ladders?”
