With that, she tromps away. And I’m left standing, small and alone in the vast acreage where I climbed trees and drew with chalk and curled up on the front porch during thunderstorms. But that makes this a half-remembered house with an apparition of a family that was only a figment of my hopes. Because when it comes down to it, my mark isn’t really here. There is only the footprint of the ill-fitting shoe I crammed my toes into. For them.
Maybe I never belonged here, but it was home all the same.
And now …
I peer back at the sight of the outrage, and everyone other than my father and Maddox has scattered. They’re discussing something. It isn’t confrontational, but there’s a heaviness shrouding them.
I’m utterly lost, which is not a destination I’m familiar with. I don’t generally struggle with how I feel about things, butMaddox coming here today slices me to shreds as vehemently as his Karambit knife would. Not because it’s all bad. Because it isn’t, and that’s confusing. Because he is the face of all I’ve lost and all I didn’t realize I was yearning for.
After a few cleansing breaths of the fragrant country air, ripe with magnolias and jasmine and the marshy scent of the bayou that divides then and now, I regain my composure and amble toward them, determined not to reveal how despondent I am.
Maddox pats my father on the arm, as if to excuse himself, and immediately closes the distance between us. He grips my chin, his eyes teeming with regret. “I am so sorry, Tess. I … didn’t intend—”
“Of course you didn’t,” I say quickly because the man before me, who is usually a heartbeat away from breaking into a dance, is tormented, and I can’t stand it, so I steer us in a direction that will bring out his smart-ass bravado. “You could’ve shut up about the piercing. That was a dick move.”
A smile blasts across his face, and he releases his hold on my chin, embracing the momentary lightness. “You’re always glass half empty. I was on my best behavior. Itwasmy dick that removed that barbell, and I didn’t say anything about how I rode Tessa all morning until I was so sweaty that I had to peel myself off her hot body.”
I press the back of my hand to my mouth to stifle my amusement because laughing out loud seems in poor taste with my family so upset. It’s enough for him to run with though.
He bends so his lips skim my earlobe, and his hand clamps on to my hip. “Or how I plan to let Tessa ride my face tonight.”
Tilting my chin to obtain a better view of him, I am suddenly aware of the blazing Louisiana heat. “That doesn’t work with the bike.”
Those cool gray eyes frolic all over my face. “That’s not the Tessa I was talking about.”
For a still beat, we are suspended in that realm of crackling energy that thwarts brokenness and differences. It’s just us. Hammering heartbeats and a gravitational pull. But we both know we can’t stay here.
“What do you need from me?” he asks, and I’m instantly transported to that awful night.
But it isn’t the disillusionment that I see. It’s the man who showed up. Who wants to show up now. It’s foolish to get attached here, regardless of him saying so many right things today. Before I get caught up in those baffling emotions again, I move on to a topic that will keep me from weaving the shambles of this day into a fairy tale.
“I need to know what I’m missing, what you’re protecting me from because …”
He doesn’t wait for me to find an eloquent way to phrase it. He simply hears the part I didn’t vocalize. “Because you can’t trust anything else I’m saying if you don’t trust me to tell you the truth about the rest.”
“Yeah,” I whisper, a little taken aback that he knows me so well. It was one thing to understand my reference to Zero when he asked about a ghost in the attic, but reading my motivation ismore.
“I’m going to let you talk with your father.” He slants his head toward my dad moseying toward us with my grandmother in tow. “But I’ll tell you everything when you’re done here. There were some complications back then that I’m trying to deal with now. Maybe I shouldn’t have hidden it, but I didn’t want you to be scared. I’ll fix this though. Not just that, but also what happened today.”
“This isn’t something you can fix, Maddox. I don’t expect you to. I’m not … I’mtryingnot to be mad. You shouldn’t have come here, but of course you didn’t intend for any of this to happen.”
He smooths my hair back and plants a peck on my forehead as my grandmother and my father join us.
“Your mother was upset because she’d bumbled the blueberry soufflé.Again.” My grandmother brushes her hand up and down my spine. “Don’t you let all that nonsense get in your head.”
That has another subdued laugh leaking out of me. “I think this surpasses a tantrum over a cooking mishap, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“It was a pleasure to meet you, young man.” She smiles at Maddox, who winks and dips his chin to her, before she turns back toward the house. “I’ll see you both inside.”
Moments like this make me wonder if my grandmother is losing touch with reality. I don’t think Maddox or me setting foot inside that house is an option.
Maddox palms my head, that tortured darkness filling his eyes again. “Take care of what you need to. I’ll be around when you’re done.”
He extends a polite goodbye to my dad and heads out. I watch him go, shocked by how some force inside me longs to follow.
“You don’t need to leave.” My father stands beside me, his focus flipping between Maddox’s receding frame and my crestfallen face. “This is my home. You’re my little girl, and you’re always welcome here. Your mother will calm down. So will your sisters.”
“That’s wishful thinking. We both know they won’t. It’s been rocky since I announced I got the job there more than eight years ago.”
