CHAPTER FIFTEEN - ANDI
SOMEHOW, WE MAKE it back home without the cop coming back to the house or following us. And once we arrive home and park in the garage, we stay in the truck a while longer, making out like teenagers in the front seat with my legs straddling his lap.
I can’t get enough of him.
He’s riddled his way into my bones. I crave him in every way. But most especially in lazy moments like this one, when he’s holding my face in his fingertips and memorizing the lines of my face. When there’s nothing more than the noise of our steady, elongated breaths. When the seconds seem to pass to the beats of our hearts.
“Does it scare you?” I ask as we settle in the silence.
“What?” he asks.
“Anything,” I reply. “The world. Playing onstage. Death.”
Maddox curls his finger in my hair, eyes softly drifting over me. “The only thing that terrifies me right now is losing you,” he whispers. “In any capacity. Whether it’s your brother, Adam, or even going back on tour. Anything that takes me from moments like this.”
“Why does that scare you?” I ask.
“Because losing you might be the thing that unravels me.”
I lay my head on his chest and linger against him, my ear to his heart, and for a few more minutes, we soak in our secret bliss.
The morning is a frenzy.
Maddox and I are surviving on a mere few hours of sleep. It’s all I can do to throw on sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt before heading downstairs when I smell the aroma of coffee drifting upstairs.
However, as my feet hit the kitchen threshold, I pause.
Maddox is pacing outside on the deck, phone to his ear.
I study him for a beat. Something about the way he’s pacing makes my insides squirm.
“What… What’s going on?” I ask my dad. “Is he okay?”
Dad sighs heavily and exchanges a glance with Tina. “Just that council moron trying to stir things up,” Dad says.
My heart skips.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
But my phone rings before I can ask more. I frown at it, noting that it’s Cynda on the line.
“That’ll be your update,” my dad says.
“You’re probably right—Hey, Cyn,” I answer as I slip out the back door.
Maddox glances over his shoulder at me, and I can see the frustration in his eyes. I want to go to him and tell him it’s okay. That the people around him will take care of it.
“Hey, so, did you hear?” Cynda says on the phone.
“I actually just walked downstairs for coffee and saw Mads outside. What’s going on?” I ask, looping around toward the side of the house.
“That creep from the protests has been slandering Mads all morning on socials,” Cynda says. “We’d usually ignore it, but the accusations don’t exactly paint the prettiest picture.”
“What are they saying?” I ask.
“The guy posted the mugshots of Mads’s father, along with redacted police reports of the girls his father was convicted of raping,” Cynda says. “The names of the women and even his father’s name were blacked out. It’s like the asshole is teasing it. At least it hasn’t made any headlines.”
What. The.Fuck.
