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Maddox laughed again, looking up at the moon. “Oh, hell yeah. I love a houseboat, and you have a dock, but how the fuck are we gonna afford a houseboat?”
“Maybe cheaper than a trailer. How well does your new gig pay?”
“Nothing this week,” he said.
“What?” I looked at him. “Why?”
“Shit, I mean… it’s pretty much minimum wage. Well, at least for the first few months. He said if I did good, he’d up my pay and give me perks, whatever the fuck that means.” Maddox played with the sand between us. He was hiding something from me, but it didn’t feel like a bad thing. “I learned I don’t have to bring lunch, though. That old fuck tried to kill me all morning with manual labour, and then he fed me one of the best meals of my life.”
“Why aren't you getting paid this week?”
Maddox smirked. “Trial period.”
Liar. I knew that shady smirk.
“Get naked,” he changed the subject, distracting me by being cute. “And then help me get naked. I can’t lift my arms.”
“Where the fuck would you be without me?” I smiled.
“In the darkest pits of hell,” he deadpanned.
Aww.
Maddoxhidsomethingfromme all week. He sang like a goddamn canary about his sore body, but he shut the hell up whenever I brought up his pay. I was just trying to make a damn budget, because fuck, we needed to start putting money aside for whatever future we planned to have, but he wouldn’t talk about it.
“What’s Madd up to?” I asked Xavi, trying to get the answers out of him. He had his head buried in an engine, but maybe it was best to ask while he was distracted. “He’s being all weird and stupid.”
“Weird and stupid are new indicators of sketchy behaviour?” Xavi laughed.
“No, but this brand of bullshit is new.”
“Speaking of stupid and weird,” Nate walked in carrying a box of boat parts. “You ever get a reply from Jim?” He refused to call him Dad anymore; I respected the decision.
“No, but it’s marked as read, so someone saw it.”
“Could have been anyone. Who knows who has that phone now,” Nate huffed.
Jim could have pawned the phone off, sold it, or thrown it away to be picked up by someone random. Who knew? But if he was still out there, how was he surviving? He hadn’t gotten his intended winnings from the theft of that shipping container because Davis was still under surveillance and hadn’t been able to spring it free from the evidence room. Hell, it might have been moved to a different facility for all we knew. So, what was my dad doing for money? All he had was that boat rental I paid for. Did he have some sort of contingency plan in place? Were there other people involved?
My biggest question was a constant worry about what came next. I wanted to know what that cockroach had planned and if it involved any of us. I needed that motherfucker dead or locked up.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Dev,” Nate warned again, and I wondered if I’d ever stop being pegged as the dumb one. Probably not. I had some epic failures under my belt. “Remember how good you have it.”
I would remember. I’d remember, and I’d do everything within my power to make sure things stayed this good. Madd was finally out and becoming happy, and the shop was starting to bounce back from the time we slowed down to work on the case. Things needed to keep moving forward, but Jim also needed to be dealt with. I wasn’t losing my brother, my mother, or my boyfriend in any of this.
Maddox was mine, and the next time someone tried to take him from me, I’d blow up the fucking world and watch it burn just to keep him at my side.
38
-Maddox-
Myhandsbled.ButI liked it. There was something about the blisters and the calluses, the ache in my muscles, and the fatigue that plagued me that felt important. Because I’d earned it. Not the pain, but the fucking rings. I’d done my week of free labour, and now these things were mine. Two rings with the most ideal inscription, almost like cheesy fate, glinted back at me from the palm of my hand.
I studied the words that spanned both rings, wondering if they were too lame to use as wedding rings. Which one belonged to me and which one belonged to Devon?
Without light, there is no darkness.
Devon used to be the darkness that clouded my life before I fell in love with him. He could be dark, but ever since our relationship grew to include love, he’d always been the light that pulled me out of my own dark mind.
