“Why are you in group therapy?” The question comes a little while after leaving the diner. We’re once again back inside his truck. He’s at the wheel as he slowly rolls through the four-way stop sign. The blast of a horn from another driver calls attention to his reckless driving. He simply flips the other driver off before continuing.
It’s a question that comes completely out of left field. It takes me off guard, as I’m sure it’s meant to. Idly, I tug on a loose black string that’s unraveling from the black decorative button on the cuff of my long-sleeved shirt. I don’t know how to immediately answer. So instead I ask, “Why are you?”
It’s not a question I expect an answer to. Not from him. Remembering his reaction earlier when the waitress talked about his mother, I can safely assume Maddox isn’t much for sharing personal history. The unexpected blare of a car horn causes me to jump slightly as I quickly look into the side mirror to see the same car from earlier behind us at a red light. It’s a nice car. A sleek, navy blue Infiniti that looks like it just rolled out of a showroom. He’s high-beaming us, flooding the interior of the truck with overly bright bluish-white LED lights. That alone is irritating enough, but the driver kicks the annoy factor up a notch by polluting our ears with the incessant blare of his horn.
“What’s his prob—” Maddox jumping out of truck stops me from finishing my question. The next few minutes are a blurry descend into chaos. I push open the passenger door and hop out in time to see him grab a sledgehammer from the bed of the truck. He carries it with relative ease as he makes his way to the other car. A swift raise of the sledgehammer over his head is the only warning the other driver gets before the heavy metal crashes down on the navy blue hood of his Infiniti. It leaves behind a crater-sized dent. But it looks like Maddox is just beginning. As he circles to the front of the car, he swings and smashes first the right headlight and then moves to the left. This all happens in the span of a few short minutes and while he’s on this path of destruction, I stand gobsmacked at the rear side of his pickup. Eyes wide and my mouth hanging open to the asphalt, I silently bear witness to Maddox’s violence.
“You son of a bitch!” The driver finally leaps out of the car like a bat out of hell, and his rage-filled screech can be heard over the tinkling of fiberglass shattering across the ground and the crunching of aluminum every time the sledgehammer makes contact. “You’re going to pay for this, you little fucker!” He charges for Maddox; a Brahman bull looking to skewer his enemy with his horns. He’s a heavy guy, tall with enough muscle fat working for him to tackle Maddox to the ground and pulverize him. But Maddox has agility, using the other man’s own weight against him, he’s able to quickly move out of the way. He doesn’t allow the other man a second to recover as he drives the wooden handle of the sledgehammer into his side with enough force that he instantly crumbles to his knees and falls on his side with an agonized groan. A set of headlights a short distance down the street signals the inevitable approach of another car. The immediate thought that someone could be watching this right now and calling the police prompts me to finally move. I run to Maddox’s side.
“We need to go.”
He says nothing, only stands over the driver who’s curled up on the ground in a fetal position nursing his side. He raises a booted foot, and a hard nudge brings the other man to his back. The heavy metal head of the sledgehammer descends to the other man’s throat, and though he brings his hands up to frantically remove it, Maddox only presses down more. My eyes I’m sure are just as wide as the man on the ground. He’s choking as oxygen is slowly bleeding from his wide-open mouth, his face contorting in agony, the panic and fear watering his beady, brown eyes. He flails like a fish out of water, limbs flopping around in an attempt to escape.
A look to my left reveals an image that would’ve frightened a smarter, saner girl. It’s been proven however that I possess neither of those traits. If I did, I wouldn’t be here, standing next to a guy who looks rabid enough to commit murder. What’s more disturbing is that he appears completely in his element here. Comfortable, unfazed in the act of slowly robbing a man of his life.
His cold rage is palpable. It whips out at me with all the subtlety of a typhoon. It’s a tumultuous thing that clouds his face and makes him look far too sinister. His body is drawn tight from coiled tension, like a rattlesnake waiting to strike. He keeps the weight of the sledgehammer steady and firm as he pushes further down. There’s no end in sight. He won’t stop.
He’ll kill him.
Help me!The man’s eyes seem to wail out to me when they momentarily catch mine. Without thought, I set my hand on Maddox’s forearm. There’s just the slightest jerk of muscles tightening reflexively from the unexpected touch. But it’s the lightning-quick electric heat beneath my fingertips the instant my hand lands on his bare, tattooed forearm that rattles me to the core.
“Let’s go,” I barely manage, still shaken. When he fails to move, I tighten my hold and tug. “Don’t be stupid.” That gets his attention as he spears me with sterling eyes. I don’t look away. Not this time. Why I choose now to hold that intense stare I can’t quite say, but I’m glad for it. I’m glad for the momentary backbone. “I think you’ve out road raged him. I also think it’d be really stupid if you ended up in jail because of it. All this would be pretty much pointless.” I’m not sure how effective my words are until he walks away a very small eternity later. I rush behind him, hop back inside the passenger seat, and close the door just before he takes off. I don’t stop looking at my side mirror till long after we leave the scene.
***
“You can take the next left and drop me off at the corner of Birch Drive, my house is right around the corner. I’ll walk from there,” I say, into the silence, when he turns on the street that parallels mine. We didn’t speak about what happened earlier at all throughout the ride. The last fifteen minutes have been spent in repressive silence charged with tension thick enough to cut with a knife. This time there isn’t any music to fill the silence. I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not to ask him exactly what happened back there. The sort of rage he displayed had to stem from something. And I want to know. I want to ask. But I won’t because I’ve been unable to work up the courage to do so for namely two reasons: 1) I know I have no right to pry since I was so reluctant to talk about my own issues earlier. And: 2) Fear of his derision as he’ll most likely charmingly tell me to “fuck off” keeps me reasonably quiet.
“You live on Birch?”
I shake my head. “Denton. Just the street over.”
“What number?”
“At 76 Denton Avenue.”
He says nothing more after that as he turns right on Denton. Soon we’re idling in front of the white and blue single-family house with the two-car garage and the pretty perennials lining the cement walkway leading up the four-step porch with the light on. My heart jumps to my throat at the sight of the Durango in the driveway.
“You hold your blades a little too tightly and I always want to smash someone’s face in.” When I look at him, the reason for my fear temporarily vanishes like vapor and he becomes my only concern, the only thing my mind wants to orbit around. His glance is lazy, slightly narrowed, and yet the intensity in it remains unparalleled. In this truck, this space, up so close, his striking features are made even more so by the shadow and light caressing his face as softly and as sweetly as I want to do. “Guess we have to satisfy our demons somehow,” he quips. There’s a self-deprecating resonance to his tenor that pulls one side of his mouth into a humorless grin. “Looks like your old man is waiting.” I follow the path of his gaze over my shoulder to find Tim leaning against the porch railing with his large arms folded across his barrel chest. With the brightness of the porch light beaming behind him, his facial features remain obscured. But I don’t need to see his face to know the expression he’s sporting. Anger is his default emotion. He’s looking in our direction, and I’m praying he doesn’t see much.
The sudden urge to remain in the truck and beg Maddox to keep driving is so strong that I have to chomp down on my bottom lip to keep the words from tumbling out. “Thank you,” I reply, tugging on the string on my shirt sleeve from earlier and mindlessly twirling it around the tip of my index finger once I pull it free of my shirt. “Thanks for the ride.” By the time the string is gone, I’ve wrapped it several times around the tip of my finger, effectively cutting off the blood from circulating to the area.
“So, not just blades then.”
I blink before pulling my hand out of sight. “Will you pose for me?” I ask, ignoring his remark.
He shrugs. “Haven’t decided yet. Like I said, I don’t have time to waste. You gotta make it worth my while.” I’m a target locked at the end of his loaded stare.
My tongue darts out to lick my lips nervously. “How?” I’m not altogether sane, but I’m not stupid. I know what he’s implying. I know where he’s steering this conversation. Even now, his unspoken words charge the air in the truck. It’s heavy and stifling. Every breath I take is saturated with his unrepentant sex appeal. A flush bursts in my cheeks when he reaches out a hand to cup my jaw and languidly grazes his thumb across my damp bottom lip. His gentle caress forces me to acknowledge the part of my flesh I refused to pay attention to before. It’s awareness that’s too strange, too foreign, and yet remarkably familiar.Hemakes it familiar. I’m a girl and he’s a boy and the suggestion of his touch makes me cognizant of that. It’s electrifying. I want more of it. My breasts feel so full that every time I breathe my tight, pebbled nipples chafe with the sweetest torture against my bra. My pulse is racing, fluttering to the same maddening cadence of my beating heart.
“You’re a smart girl, Aylee. I’m sure you can come up with something.” The dropped octave of his voice coaxes a slickness that runs hot and wet in the valley between my legs. The way it dampens my panties is both embarrassing and oddly alluring.
His sensual mouth forms a grin like he knows. Like he understands exactly how his touch is a sweet devastation. “You should go now.” I mourn the retreat of his hand. “Wouldn’t want to get you in trouble.”
“I…”Don’t let me leave.“Thank you, again.” I remember to grab both my canvas bag and my backpack before I jump out of his truck and close the door behind me. I’m about halfway between the house and the truck before I give into temptation and look over my shoulder. Maddox is looking back, gaze focused on me. I falter in my next step like my body is trying to turn in the opposite direction. Toward the white pickup. Toward Maddox. Toward something unknown and yet so beguiling. But I don’t. I do nothing. The chance to do or say anything has passed. My cowardice is in control now, and it won’t contemplate any sort of defiance. Meek, weak, and regulated, I walk toward the house, toward Tim, toward a misery that I know, one I’ve been conditioned to never stray away from. My subconscious crawls further inside that dark place in my head, while reinforcing walls I’ve built so long ago, preparing for the worse.
The worse is a strong hand at the nape of my neck when I get close enough for Tim to grab me. It’s a viselike grip he uses to guide me the rest of the way to the house. I pray Maddox has driven away by now. I pray he doesn’t stay to see this.
Chapter 11
