“How long?”
“Four years.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone, Maddox?”
I look at him with raised brows. “Would you have told anyone?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “I would’ve done exactly as you did.”
“All those years protecting me. Guess it didn’t do much good, did it.”
He lowers his head. Frustration rolls off him in waves. “You are notme. Stop thinking you are. O’Dell, Alton, Rossi? They suffered the consequences of their depravities. Only reason I didn’t do it isbecause you got there first.”
“You tell anyone?” My stomach churns at the possibility that he did.
“No one else knows. I haven’t even told Rory. That’s why they’re still looking for Rossi. It doesn’t make you evil, Maddox.”
“If you say so, Bastian.”
I agreed because I didn’t feel like arguing, but I didn’t believe it. I knew better.
The cycle of suffering goes on
Journal entry #6
September 2013
The years following my return to New York were uneventful and normal. I still struggled like hell with the desire to get blasted. There were days the noise in my head was so loud I struggled to concentrate. But it was mostly normal.
Well, for me anyway. Ryder had been in hell for months. He was on his own bender of alcohol, drugs, and sex. Lots of sex with anyone he could get. Then there were the times he only wanted me. No one else would’ve been able to handle him like that. He was angry, and it seemed he was only getting angrier by the day.
He hid it well, but not from me. He told me everything. Which was why I always felt like shit because I hid so much from him.
I thought returning to New York would be hard. And it was for a bit, but I’d spent more time there in the last ten years than I had in Louisiana. It didn’t feel like home exactly, but it was familiar. I had my friends, including Dane, who we’d met at NYU his senior year when we were freshmen, and Jake, who was currently at UCLA for his sophomore year.
We clicked instantly over music and ink. We started a band, and I made it my mission to make sure we played as many gigs as we could. Once Jake left for college, we continued, but we refused to replace him, sohis spot was always there whenever he was home for breaks.
Shortly after he graduated, Dane opened a tattoo shop. He’d given me my first ink when we were still in school. He was a tattoo master. Almost as good as Sebastian, but I’d never tell him that. All of my ink had been done by him but one. That one he refused. Years later, his sister did it for me, and his reaction to Tori tattooing my dick was hilarious.
One not very special day in September, Dane was slammed in his shop, Ryder was back at his apartment with a hangover,and wrapped around God only knew how many women and men, and Cara, Dane’s baby sister, needed to be picked up from school early. I had been in class all morning and was just walking out of class when I got a text asking me if I could get her.
I had no problem swinging by and getting Cara. I loved that brat like my own sister, and if she needed me, I was there.
I walked into her school's main office, signed her out, and went back outside to wait on her. I was listening to the latest from Alice in Chains, not really paying attention to anything, when a man walked out of the office with Cara. The sight of his hand on her shoulder sent chills up my spine.
Since that day in his office, I hadn’t heard or seen anything of Murphey O’Dell. I knew he sued the school and my dad. I also knew they all settled with him because I wouldn’t give them a reason for what I did. Dad was irate, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t their business.
When Dad sent me back to New York, I knew he wouldn’t be at the school. He resigned shortly after his settlement, citing some post-traumatic bullshit—he didn’t know the fucking meaning of the word—and I knew I wouldn’t see him since there was technically a restraining order in place against me. I was not allowed within one hundred feet of him.
Cara smiled at the man and began walking to my SUV with a smile. I gave her one in return, but my eyes were firmly locked on the predator she’d just walked away from. When his eyes locked with mine, my stomach churned violently with nausea but also with red hot fury. He jerked his eyes to Cara and back to me with a smirk. My fingers wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel I thought it might break.
“Who’s that guy?” I asked Cara once she was in the car and belted in. That wasn’t what I wanted to ask. I wanted to ask if he fucking touched her, but I couldn’t.
“He’s the new school psychologist,” she said cheerfully. “I’m supposed to start seeing him next week.”
My head snapped to her so quickly, distracting me from the car in front of me, I nearly caused a collision. “Why would you see him? You already see a therapist every week.”
“He said it would do me some good to have extra counseling,” she shrugged.
