Cadillac Payback: Rising Tide by AJ Elmore (the false prince .TXT) 📕

I rush her, crunching bits of glass beneath my shoes. She doesn't have time to say another word before I sweep her off her feet. Her weight is easy to manage, and she starts struggling when I carry her out of the radius of debris.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing!” she cries, wriggling in my grasp.

I tighten my grip on her so that she cries, “Ouch! What the fuck!”

Just before I cross the threshold to her room, she wrenches an elbow free and it connects with my jaw. The pain strings along with my anger, and for a moment, I consider dumping her on the floor and walking out the door.

I throw her on her bed and back up, seething in long breaths through my nose. For a stretch, she's confused, staring around her, maybe trying to stay her vision. Then her eyes land unsteadily on me, and they narrow.

She says, “Is this'all you want? Sure, that's what I'm good for, right? Just a stupid piece of ass like all your oth'r bitches.”

A strained sigh escapes from me. I don't move, don't approach or back up. I'm surprised and impressed by my control when I quietly say, “Stop it, Maria. You know better than that.”

She laughs, bitterly, and the tears return, pooling in her bloodshot eyes. Maybe she wants to pretend she can blame everything on me and make it true. Maybe she would do that to anyone standing in my shoes. Maybe someone else would let her.

“Then why the fuck are you here?” she says, the words soggy and wavering.

The fight drains from her as the tears rise. Her shoulders droop. She looks so miserable it hurts deep in my chest. Her head is shaking absently from side to side, and her hands are useless on the mattress. She's still fighting the raging storm of emotions, but this time, they're stronger than she is.

Alligator tears. The thought glances through my whirring mind, but it keeps on going.

“I told you,” I answer in the same tone, “I was worried about you. Clearly I had reason to be.”

There's something painfully familiar about her tears, and the chaos that's awakening in her. It reminds me of a crucial drive into Mississippi, drying blood, vengeance born. Except now she has no enemy to focus on. Everyone is family.

Easy, Joshua. Just don't make the same mistake twice. Don't say the words you've regretted for over a year.

“Now you care?” she says, but it's hard to understand. She's taking shots at the shadows at this point.

She seems past violence. I'll take my chances. I take a knee in front of her, and grab her by the shoulders. I squeeze until she trains her bobbing vision on me.

“I always have,” is my answer, one that takes a moment to process for her. When it does, a sob is her only answer.

Shit. I hate this. I hate it more than the entire past year stacked on top of a shit pile. I hate it more than my denial, and her decision not to cut me loose. If she had just done that all that time ago, maybe I'd have some other, more normal life. But I guess if I had really wanted that, I would have chosen it for myself. Like Izzy did.

It's not a conscious decision to wrap my arms around her. I have to. I can't let her suffer alone, and the only thing I have to offer is this. All our history be damned, all I've ever been is her knight, waiting for her to need rescue. It's the only thing I've ever had to offer. It takes a damn earthquake to shake her world enough to take it.

She's shivering in my grip, and I can feel the tears soaking into the front of my v-neck t-shirt as her fears come pouring out all at once. Freddy was right. I showed up just in time. In one day, her world has shifted into some strange and perverse version of itself. Not just hers, mine, too. Freddy's, too.

We're being shuffled around the board like fucking pawns, and in the process, a ghost has come back to haunt us.

She breaks down until she loses her strength, and she goes slack in my arms. She sniffles occasionally, but she's drifting off to sleep. I'll hold her until she gives up the fight, and hopefully for that little while, she won't feel alone. Or maybe that's me.

When she goes, I'll clean the glass out of the kitchen floor. I'll smoke some weed, and drink one of the beers in her fridge. I won't leave her like this. I'll sleep on the couch.

Chapter 17 The Lord’s Day

Joshua

I startle awake with a vague notion that someone is close to me. It's a strange sixth sense that developed some time after killing people, and one that's been honed by hound-dogging through women for the past year or so.

At first, everything is too bright and unfamiliar. High windows let the day pour in, and my eyes refuse to dilate. I must look like my disorientation, because my company says, “It's just me.”

The voice is soft, hoarse, but I'd know it anywhere, and it calms the paranoid panic that seems to haunt me lately. My senses fall slowly into order, and Maria waits patiently. She doesn't say anything else until I rub some sleep from my eyes and focus them on her.

She's wearing jean shorts and a black t-shirt that's a little too big. Her hair falls in big curls against her arms. There are questions in her eyes, but for once she's exercising her self-control. I think it's been the hardest thing for her to learn since taking rank.

I'm shirtless, stretched out on her couch, where I finally fell into an uneasy sleep the night before, after smoking myself into oblivion. I'm reminded of this when