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He doesn’t wait around for me to change my mind. Luke spins and runs to the door, flinging it open and fleeing my office like the room is on fire.
“You’re a fucking asshole!” Avery shouts, slapping her palms against my chest and giving me a hard shove.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I mutter.
Stepping forward, I bend at the waist to swipe the rifle up, setting it back on top of my desk.
“You scared the shit out of me,” she admonishes, pacing over to the chairs in front of my desk and collapsing into one of them. “Seriously, do you even realize how fucked up that was?”
I grunt, striding around to the other side of my desk and taking a seat in my own chair.
“You know that’s the kind of bullshit that earned you the nickname Mad Maddox, right?” she snorts. Then she leans back, scrubbing a hand over her face in exasperation. “I really thought you were going to make Jenkins blow his own head off for a minute there.”
I swivel in my chair, folding my hands over my lap and staring at the gun lying on my desk. The one that could’ve killed the only woman I’ve ever loved before I had a chance to make things right with her.
Avery watches me for a moment, tilting her head. “How’d you know it wasn’t loaded?” she asks.
I lift my gaze to meet her eyes. “I didn’t.”
24
“What the fuck was that?” Ares grumbles, blinking in confusion as Madd charges back out the door of the infirmary.
I shake my head, just as confused as he is.
“Why would someone mess with your phones?” Lo asks, wrinkling her nose.
I glance down at the pair of cell phones in my lap- my own, and what I’m guessing is Madd’s. I lift it and the screen lights up, an image of a muddy Jeep wrangler set as the background of the lock screen.
Yup, definitely his.
I pause when a prompt appears to enter the passcode, realizing that I don’t know it. It used to be my birthday back when we were teenagers, but surely he’s changed it since. Then again, I never changed my own.
So I try it.
And it works.
When the phone unlocks, his messaging app is already open, and my heart skips a beat as I realize what I’m looking at.
Madd’s messages… tome.
Only they’re messages I never actually received, the most recent one sent just yesterday, asking me to meet him on the roof.
My heart plummets, all the air whooshing from my lungs on an exhale.
“Sloane, what’s going on?” Lo asks, her brow creasing in concern as she leans in to try to see what I’m looking at.
I jerk Madd’s phone away from her prying eyes, pressing the screen against my chest protectively and whipping my head around to stare at her and Ares, my mouth hanging open. “I… it’s…”
I shake my head, mind reeling as I try and fail to find words while the two of them look to me in question. Then I draw a deep breath, grasping for some semblance of composure in light of the fucking bomb Madd just dropped in my lap.
Ares cocks a brow, both of them still awaiting some sort of explanation.
I wish I had one.
“Thanks for checking up on me, guys, but I just… I need a minute,” I grind out, forcing the words past the growing lump in my throat.
The two of them exchange glances, hesitantly rising from their chairs beside the cot.
