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I backed up, shaking my head, feeling like I would splinter into a million pieces if he touched me.
“Madeline, don’t do this. Please, you need to let me explain.”
“SECRETS! YOU SAID I KNEW EVERYTHING!” I screamed at him, throwing all the papers I had clasped in my hands at him. “I didn’t know that you had my father and brother killed. That was something you didn’t tell me.”
Blaise’s nostrils flared, and he ran his hands through his hair like a man who was close to falling apart. I was already there. I had fallen apart, lost in my own reality.
“Jesus, how did she get these?” he roared, looking at Gina.
“How doesn’t matter. What matters is that you let me fall in love with you. You had taken my family from me and lied to me. I’ve been living this life, being happy, fucking you, wanting you, and you killed the only family I had left in this world. NO! NO!” I backed away. “I am leaving, and you,boss”—I spit the last word at him—“will let me go.”
I walked away then. Without my phone, without a purse, without anything but the clothes on my back. I opened the front door and walked out into the August heat. Down the stairs. Down the long drive. When I reached the iron gate, I pressed the keypad to open it. I watched it swing open slowly, then stepped through and onto the dirt road. I had to leave. Get away from this place. From these lies. I had accepted and embraced.
I didn’t get far when a familiar truck pulled up beside me and stopped.
I looked up at Saxon, then kept walking.
I heard his truck door open, but I didn’t look back. I knew why he was here. Blaise had called him, and Saxon always did what he was told. A good little soldier. Like they all were. One of those soldiers had killed my father and brother. My stomach rolled, and I paused, sure I was going to throw up.
“Maddy, I didn’t know. I still don’t know much. Blaise called me, and he was not okay. He asked me to pick you up and take you wherever you wanted to go.”
I bent over and heaved. Staring at the dirt and wishing I’d died on that concrete floor. That would have been easier. When the heaving ended, I spit, then stood back up and turned to look at Saxon.
“You didn’t know Blaise had my dad and brother murdered?” I asked him.
Saxon’s face told me more than words could. He hadn’t known. His horror reflected my own. But then Saxon was good. He would never do anything like that.
“Oh God, Maddy,” he whispered, looking like he might cry.
I couldn’t walk forever, and I had no way to get a cab, hotel, anything.
“I don’t want to go to Moses Mile. I want out of this town,” I told him.
He nodded. “Anywhere you want to go.”
I walked back to his truck and climbed in.
He started the engine, and we turned around and drove. Neither of us said anything. We sat in silence. It was over an hour later when he pulled into a service station.
He looked at me when he stopped. “You need something?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Those two words seemed to crack something open inside of me. A loud sob broke free, and I wrapped my arms around my waist.
How could a heart hurt like this and not kill you?I felt like I had just lost my soul.
Saxon moved over to me and put his arm around me. I didn’t lean into him. He couldn’t comfort me. All I had ever loved in this life, I had lost.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
No. It would never be okay.
I took a deep breath, trying to stop my breakdown. Get control of myself. This wasn’t going to help me. There was nothing that could make this go away.
“Even now,” I whispered, “knowing this … knowing what he did … I feel like I left my soul back there. I’ll never be the same.”
