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She ran then. I watched her go through the door. Fucking running. Good. I wanted her out of my sight. My damn dick was still throbbing after she’d squirted all over my hand.
“Huck, I could slap your face right now,” Maddy said angrily. “You might believe what all you just said, but no woman deserves to walk in and hear that about herself. You should have apologized, groveled at her feet, anything!”
Maddy walked toward me with her finger pointed at me. “Not only are you an asshole, but you are also cruel.”
“Mommy!” Cree called out. “Hut asshole!”
Maddy shook her head at me as if she was disappointed. “While y’all are gone, she’s coming back to the house with me. I am not leaving her here alone. She …” Maddy paused, and I could tell she wanted to say more and stopped herself. “She could use new scenery.”
“Mommy! Hut asshole!” Cree shouted and clapped his hands.
I turned to look at Blaise, who was grinning. He shrugged and pressed a kiss to his son’s head, then sat him down. When he stood back up, he looked at Maddy. “Have her go pack her things,” he told her. “I’ve got Cree.”
Maddy nodded and turned to follow Trinity.
Once she was gone, he looked at me. “You pissed off the queen. I’m not sure anyone can save you now.”
I scowled and poured another drink. Maddy was softhearted. She was the reason Gina was alive and living God knew where with a new identity. Blaise would have put a bullet in her head had Maddy not stopped him. She was the savior of all women, apparently.
“You know what I don’t get?” Blaise asked me.
I didn’t care at the moment, but he was going to tell me anyway.
“Why you think she’s so damn bad. Sure, she fucked a married man. We don’t know he and his wife weren’t separated. Who the fuck cares that he was fifty? She was a stripper. So? We’ve known a lot of strippers. You have a couple who visit this place frequently. As for the other shit, it was never proven. She wasn’t officially charged. They were accusations. There is no reason for you to be so hard on her. You put bullets in men. We all do.”
I downed the drink in my hand and slammed the glass on the table.
“Hayes was a good kid. He deserved a woman who was equally good. Someone who loved him. Not someone who was lying to him.”
Blaise chuckled. “Hayes was a man, not a kid. He might have been in the ministry, but he was a man with a fucking dick. She walked into his church, looking like a damn smoke bomb, and he moved in on it. He was smart. If he was going to settle down and do the church shit, at least he would have a wife with a body that knew how to dance on a pole for him. You are putting him on a pedestal that he never asked you to put him on. If he’d lived and married one of those good girls you think he deserved, do you think she’d have been fun in bed? Highly doubtful.”
I glared outside, hating that Blaise might have a point. “How likely is it that she was accused of so many things and not guilty of at least one of them? I could see it if that was a one-time thing. Maybe revenge or some shit from her stepmother. But why the hell would that other person who’d accused her of stealing make that up? She’s got enemies for a reason.”
“Roy Hayley probably did it for the same reason his mother did,” Blaise replied, sounding smug.
I turned to look back at him. “Who’s his mother?”
“Tabitha Bennett.”
Fuck. That, I hadn’t expected. “What about the grand theft auto?” I reminded him.
Maddy had made him weak. Too soft. At least with women.
“Oh, the car she supposedly stole, which belonged to Benjamin Bennett, her father? She was eighteen. It was the night of her high school graduation, and her father was out of town on business. She used his car, and when Tabitha found out she’d taken it, she called the police and claimed she’d stolen it. Benjamin had the charges dropped.”
I was going to need another fucking drink.
Sixteen
Trinity
This house was even more impressive than Mr. Esposito’s house. It was bigger and brighter, and it felt less like a museum and more like a home. The photos of Madeline, Blaise, and their son, Cree, filled the walls. Random toys were scattered around. From where I stood in the room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking rolling hills and green pastures with horses off in the distance, I could hear laughter.
Maddy had taken Cree upstairs to bathe him and get him ready for bed. Blaise had driven us here, then left to go meet Huck, Levi, and Gage. They had some business that would be taking them out of town for a few days. Although I’d told Maddy I would be fine back at the house, alone, she’d insisted, saying she could use the female company.
Deep down, I’d known she was worried about my mental health and leaving me alone. She had found me in the garden shed behind the house. I was checked out, having one of my episodes, rocking back and forth on the floor. When I came back from the dark corner of my brain I’d escaped to, her blue eyes were the first thing I saw. For a moment, I had stared at her silently, unsure of where I was. At first glance, she looked like an angel. As in an otherworldly being. Her platinum hair, perfect heart-shaped face, blue eyes, and genuine smile were shocking. Then, she spoke. Introduced herself and held out her hand for me. She stood up, pulling me with her. Then wrapped her arms around me and hugged me.
I was stunned. I wasn’t sure anyone other than Hayes had ever hugged me and meant it. Sure, the church people at his funeral had hugged me, but that had been required. This woman had done it because she wanted to.
