Chapter 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

MADDOX

Rage is eating through me. It’s like the moment that woman is in my life I lose all sense of everything. It’s as though the world is suddenly choking me. I’ve finally found happiness. I finally found a family who loves me and who cares for me. And she wants to come back to choke down my happiness again?

She could have hurt Hiro… and I did nothing. I turn and punch a tree, causing pain to course up through my fingers and into my arm.

“I don’t think that tree did anything wrong,” Hiro says.

I turn quickly, not having expected him to be walking up. I don’t like him seeing me get angry. I don’t ever want to be like my father or mother, and it bothers me that I couldn’t control my anger. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me. Maybe apologize to the tree and your hand,” he says as he comes up and gently takes my hand. I realize I’m still clenching it tightly, but his fingers are soothing and so warm as I unfold it for him.

“I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to get so angry.”

“Maddox, it’s fine. Everyone gets angry. You should have seen how angry Reggie got,” he says, voice gentle.

“But I don’t want to be like my parents,” I admit.

“I know very little about them, but I can tell you with my whole heart that you are nothing like them. Maddox, how could you even remotely question whether that could ever happen? Do you not see the people you’ve saved? The people you love? The people you go to such great lengths for?”

My attention is snapped over to his cheek that’s red. I reach out and he presses it against my hand, and I can’t tell if it’s to keep me from looking at it or just to feel me. But I just draw him in and kiss his unhurt cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“Please don’t be. Now come on, let’s go back, explain everything that happened and then let the police do their work, alright?”

I nod, but I’m not overly convinced that I shouldn’t jump in my car and hunt my mother down myself. I really think I could excel at this.

“Maddox, my one true love, you’re not an assassin who is going to rush off and end her,” Hiro says.

“Maybe I am,” I mutter as we step back into the bookstore where everyone is crowded behind Hiro’s desk. All heads, and I mean all, snap over to Hiro.

“What?” he asks, looking confused.

“What?” Parker repeats in a mocking tone. “You ask ‘what’?” She turns the monitor to face us, and I watch my mom hit Hiro a moment before the gun is ripped from her hand, then she’s flung back and dragged across the room by… absolutely nothing.

“We need a fucking exorcist in here,” Mick says, making the sign of the cross.

Avery’s waving her arms around like that solves something. “I told you! This is nothing like the table that moved,” Avery exclaims, referring to the time Parker sent Hiro off with her and one of the ghosts had moved a table. She’d been quite fixated on it, but it looks like that was nothing compared to this. “Did you see that woman? She was like…” Avery uses her hand to indicate how my mother was dangling from… nothing at all.

“Oh my god. Just like… don’t show anyone else that,” Hiro says as he looks a bit alarmed. “Someone’s going to kidnap me and make me into a science experiment off in the middle of a desert somewhere.”

Mick just clicks to watch it again as his head cocks like a dog that’s heard a high-pitched noise. I’m not sure how cranking his neck to the side helps him comprehend what happened, but I see Avery trying the same thing.

“I was here, I witnessed the whole thing,” Shion says casually. “I actually lived through it.”

“What the hell? Now you guys are acting like I’m the creepy person!”

Mick waves his arm around. “Are they here?” He’s trying to touch one but is just flailing around in the air.

“Well… uh… yeah. That’s Natalie. Natalie said that’s her boob,” Hiro says, and Mick quickly draws his hand back.

“Well, uh, do I get hazard pay?” Mick asks.

“I had to live through it, and you see what I got,” Shion says as he waves at the nothingness.

“Oh my god, I’m the one who had money stolen!” Hiro cries. “You don’t need hazard pay for dealing with me. And why are you so surprised? Like… did you all still really not believe me?”

“It wasn’t that we didn’t believe you,” Avery starts. “I mean… the table moving now looks so insignificant.”

Parker seems to notice me and remembers that we really are standing in the middle of a crime scene. “I apologize. We’re being quite unprofessional. Maddox, we have an alert out and are looking for the two now. Hiro’s outdoor camera caught their license plate, so officers are currently searching.”

“Thank you,” I respond, not sure what else to say. Someone must have told her that it was my mother who did this. I guess it’s not like I could have kept it a secret and swept it under the rug, no matter how much I want to.

The police officers working the case ask Hiro and Shion for their statements, so they go over to them as I reach the computer and restart the video. Everyone stares at it as I imagine Reggie standing there, protecting Hiro. It’s almost like I can envision him as he grabs that wretched woman and drags her away from Hiro.

I’m so lucky he has so many people prepared to do anything to protect him. It’s not that they wouldn’t protect someone else, but I think Hiro’s selflessness has made it so that anyone and everyone is prepared to go to great lengths for him.

I love him so fucking much.

He’s just so fucking… perfect. I never realized I could have a family like him.

I see that he’s finishing up and give him a smile.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I say as I walk toward him.

I’m just so lucky.

Hiro quickly moves away from the police officer and takes one step toward me before throwing up right at my feet.

“Oh my god… I’m so sorry,” he cries as he scrambles for the trash can, but instead of throwing up again, he sinks down to the floor hugging it. And I realize that not even this can deter my thoughts of how perfect he is.

“You sure he’s okay? I think he might need an exorcism,” Shion says.

“I don’t need an… exorcism,” Hiro groans as I rush over to him, but he waves me back. “No, no, no. I can’t… right now. I’m sorry. I can’t.” And I realize he’s saying that he can’t deal with the ghosts surrounding me right now. I want to get rid of these wretched things so I can go over to him and help him, comfort him… do something.

I hesitate, hating that I have to stay away. “Parker?”

She gives me a look of alarm. “Ohhhh no. I don’t know how to comfort people. Definitely never learned that.”

“I’m fine,” Hiro assures us, even though it’s quite obvious that he’s not.

Avery hurries over with a smile on her face. “Let’s get you up on your feet! Is this the headache thing you get after you sic your demons on people?”

“Yes. But I’m fine,” Hiro mumbles as she pats his face with a tissue.

“You look a bit clammy,” she says when the tissue sticks to his sweat.

“I threw up on Maddox’s shoes…”

“It’s fine,” I assure him.

“It’s not fine,” he says, still hugging the trash can. “Reggie said that one time you were so drunk you pissed on Parker’s car tires. I think he thought that’d make me feel better.”

“You did what?” Parker growls as her eyes snap over to mine. I quickly dodge them.

“In my defense… we didn’t like each other when we met,” I say. “Hiro, please don’t tell any more of my secrets.”

Hiro clearly can’t hear my pleas as he continues, “And that you unplugged her keyboard and then watched in glee as she couldn’t figure out how to use it.” This even makes him smile a little.

Parker’s look sharpens as I do what I can to avoid her eyes.

“Hiro is oblivious at this point. He’s making up random shit,” I assure her.

She isn’t convinced. “Look me in the eyes. Was that you?”

“Yes?” I whisper. “You weren’t in the position you’re in now, so… it wasn’t as serious! Everyone thought it was funny. Hiro, can you please not let Reggie tell you anything else? If you’re done throwing up, maybe we can take you home before you get me fired?”

Avery drapes a wet towel around his neck. “There we go! Good as new!” I’m not sure where she got that from when he looks pale as a ghost.

“Yay,” he says, sounding half dead.

“Okay… maybe not new, but we’re getting there!” Avery decides.

“Guys… please help us find who wants to kill Maddox,” Hiro says as he looks up at them, trash can held tight. “Please? I really can’t lose anyone else in my family.”

“We’re doing our best,” Avery assures him.

“Please?” he asks, looking close to tears.

“Hiro, we really are,” Parker says. “Even if he pissed on my tire like a stray dog.”

“Twice,” Hiro says.

“Dammit, Reggie, begone with you,” I growl. “Where’s salt when I need it?”

“You can’t banish him with salt. I think I’m okay now,” Hiro says as he holds a hand out to me.

“You sure you want me to come near you?”

“Yeah.”

I hesitate but go over to him to at least help him to his feet. “Maybe I’ll have Shion drive you home and meet you there?”

“I can definitely drive on the correct side of the road,” Shion says, since in Japan they drive on the left side of the road.

“I can drive,” Hiro insists. “If someone holds my trash can. Shion will hold my trash can.”

“Won’t be the worst thing a handsome man has asked me to hold,” he quips.

“I will drive you to your house,” Avery states. “Then, Maddox, we can talk for a bit about this.”

“Yeah, okay,” I say, reluctant to see Hiro go without me.

It’s not long after Shion and Hiro are gone that Parker comes over to me, but I notice she waits until I have the mess on the floor cleaned up first. “My car tires need to be scrubbed, Detective.”

“This was so many years ago, you’ve gone through like three cars since,” I assure her. “You weren’t even deputy chief yet.”

She gives me a look that says she gives no shits how many years it’s been. Thankfully, her phone rings before she can make this an order. While she’s dealing with that, I go over and watch the surveillance footage again on repeat until she comes up beside me.

“They found the car abandoned. They’re still hunting for them, but we’ll find them,” Parker assures me.

“You’re not going to be able to use this,” I say as I look at the footage. “I don’t want Hiro to be targeted. If the wrong person saw this…”

“No one’s going to see it besides us here. And no one would believe any of us anyway. We’ll have Mick pull a still of her face and use the footage of them entering the building. Okay?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

She gives my shoulder a squeeze, which seems like too much, so she quickly draws her hand back before hurrying out the door. Clearly, that was too much affection between the two of us and we both feel awkward about it.

After checking with the officers who are dealing with the case and who have assured me they have the gun secured and all the information they need, they leave. Now it’s only Mick and me.

“I’ll hang around until you go back to the station,” he says.

“I’m almost ready,” I tell him as I straighten things that got shuffled in the mess. I also refill the cash register for when Barry comes in. Then I contact Barry and tell him what happened and assure him that my brother Ben is going to work with him for the day to make sure nothing happens.

“You alright?” Mick asks as I finish up.

“Been better.”

“The police will find them,” he assures me.

“If not, I will,” I decide.

When I get home from work, I find Shion at the table browsing the forum on his laptop. “Hiro’s asleep,” he says. “I told him he shouldn’t sleep with the trash can and finally got it away from him. He sure loves that thing. I wish a man loved me as much as he loves that trash can.”

“Thanks. I’m very sorry I got you involved in that.”

“Pretty sure you didn’t get me involved in anything. But if you want to make it up to me, I really think Hiro’s brother should eat dinner with us,” he says nonchalantly.

I raise an eyebrow. “Nicolás?”

“Is there another handsome brother I need to look out for? How many does he have?”

“No, no, just the one. I’ll shoot him a text. Might make Hiro feel better.”

“It’ll definitely make me feel better,” Shion says. “I suffered so much. So much trauma that could only be solved by being stuck in a cabin alone with only one bed.”

“Uh-huh…” I say with a raised eyebrow. “So glad Nicolás, of all people, could cure you of that. Is he aware that he has this power?”

“Not yet.” Shion grins as I head back and peek in at Hiro. He’s fast asleep with two cats on him. His face is burrowed in Stella’s fur and Bandit looks quite pleased while being tucked between his arms. It’s really fucking cute, so I take a picture of him before sneaking over to the room the computer is in.

I sit down and open my email where I see that I have another email from the community center.

What are the chances of that?

I stare at it for a long moment. Honestly… what are the chances of my mother finding me now, of all times? What are the chances that a person who is grooming people to kill those who have wronged them would pick at me at the exact same time that my mother makes her reappearance? There’s not much evidence about my past, I was too dumb or na?ve to seek help, but there’s enough that someone looking for it could figure out what was there, such as the report a teacher had made or the medical records from the time my dad fucked up and hit me too hard.

And what are the chances that the person behind all of this could have found my mother and sent her my way?

They’re setting me up.

The reason they’ve never interacted with any of our posts is because they know they’re lies or they’re not enough to get me to do anything. While Hiro’s was truthful, there was nothing to latch on to. He isn’t going to suddenly lash out at his aunt or grandma. He’s too forgiving, too caring.

I don’t know how to be like that. I don’t know how to forgive those who’ve wronged me.

No, they want me to bite… and once I do, they aren’t planning on letting me go.

I slowly close my eyes and take a deep breath.

“Hey, I didn’t hear you come in,” Hiro says.

I look back at him and smile. “You done spooning your trash can? Shion said he had to fight it away from you.”

“I was pretending it was you,” he jokes.

“Oh joy. So glad I could be compared to a trash can.”

Hiro laughs. “What are you doing?”

“Realizing that I’m being played.”

“Like… by me? Oh nooooo, did you just realize that you could have a better man?” he teases.

I grin as I hook him around the waist and pull him onto my lap. “There’s no better man than you,” I say as I kiss the side of his head. “Like… I can’t help but wonder how sad everyone else is knowing that they’ll never have someone as perfect as you. I bet they lie awake at night and cry about it.”

“I mean, now you’re just buttering me up. So… what’d you find?”

“Whoever this is, I believe they sent my address to my mom. They want me to become fixated on her enough that I would do anything to stop her. And they know just how to accomplish that,” I say. “I was so enraged after I saw that she’d pointed a gun at you that I would have done something that I might not have regretted.”

Hiro leans back until he’s resting against my chest. “I would have regretted it.”

“I know.”

“So you have to promise me you won’t ever throw away your life like that… because you’d be throwing away our life as well. Yes, you’d still be alive, but you’d be in prison.”

“I know; I promise I won’t. I’m just… I’m saying I was mad enough that I felt like I could have done something stupid. I won’t, but it makes sense that they want to play with my emotions. And what better way than to send my mom to me?”

“That’s true,” Hiro says as he thinks about it for a minute and then looks at the new post I’d opened. It’s currently blank, but he’s staring at it like there’s something fascinating there. “Were you going to write something? Want me to leave?”

“I definitely don’t want you to leave.”

“You sure?” he asks.

“Positive,” I say as I reach around him to the keyboard. “Your head is better?”

“A bit. Umm… I hate to ask… but did the floor get cleaned up before Barry came in? I’d feel really bad if I was like ‘Here, Barry, work all these extra hours and clean this mess up.’”

“Yes, I cleaned it up.”

He grimaces. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’ve dealt with so much worse,” I say. “And not even just with my job.”

“You’re the best. I will totally owe you.”

“You also owe Shion, who wants Nicolás to come over in exchange for his ‘trauma.’”

“They would be super cute together. But Nicolás is so stubborn. He’s never interested in anyone.”

“Shion doesn’t seem to mind the challenge,” I say.

“Nicolás really could use someone. I think he’s afraid to open up. He’s only ever open with me and Patricia… and you, now that he knows you.”

Hiro falls silent as I realize that’s my cue to write something, but it’s hard to even figure out what to write.

He gives me a reassuring smile. “You don’t have to tell everyone, you know? You can be vague.”

“True.”

“And I can leave.”

“I don’t want you to. I’m positive if you do, I won’t write a damn thing.”

“Okay.”

So with a deep breath, I start to type.

From a young age, I realized my parents found most of their joy in the bottles of alcohol they left lying around. My father spoke with his fists more than his words. My mother didn’t care where she got her money, her alcohol, or her drugs. She turned my brother and me into liars and thieves. If we were hungry, she’d take us into a diner where we’d feast like kings before she’d sneak us out through the bathroom window. That was on the good days. On the bad days, she’d lie in a pile of her own vomit and throw shit at us for claiming we were hungry. She’d tell us that we were spoiled and nasty beggars who didn’t deserve food if we couldn’t appreciate what she’d already given us.

Dad was his own breed of toxicity. My brother and I did everything we could to avoid him. The issue with our father was he could be happy. He could be a great man, but he’d switch so quickly that we could never keep up with the whiplash of it, so it was best to avoid him if we wanted to avoid his temper.

The toxicity increased as their hatred for each other grew. I don’t know if they were claiming to stay together for us or if they didn’t know how to exist without each other. Their interactions were nothing more than screams, harsh words, and harsher hands. They were like drowning animals that could only attack each other and everyone else.

When they finally divorced, my brother and I were ripped apart. My brother, who’d been my rock, went with my father because he’d found solace in the drugs my father had a surplus of even when our cupboard and fridge were empty. He disappeared with a friend not long after, and I began to resent him for leaving me. I was stuck in this stupid mindset where I was convinced that I couldn’t leave on my own. My mother had an insidious way of making you feel like you were nothing without her—but you were also nothing with her. She made me useless. She made me toxic. She destroyed my sense of self-worth, and without my brother, I saw little reason to find joy in others and in life itself.

I was too used to the toxicity to realize that I could survive without her. That I would thrive without her. She made everything I did seem like a failure. She made me believe I deserved the abuse, and I was too fucking stupid to even realize it was abuse. I was convinced it was a way of life. If I spent the money I worked hard for on a sandwich with a friend, then I deserved to be ridiculed and hit. That wasn’t my money to spend. That was hers to drink away and to shoot into her arm.

My brother found peace in drugs, and I only found hatred. I hated him for a while. I hated him for finding an out. At times, I hated him more than my parents because he hurt me more. No, he never abused me, hit me, or cussed at me. But he left me, and that was worse than anything they could do to me. It was worse than the time my father locked me in a closet and forgot he put me there. It was worse than my mother breaking my nose with a beer bottle before sobbing until she made me feel like it was my fault. I thought that if drugs could solve all of his issues, maybe they could solve mine, and I jumped off the deep end one night. It threw me into chaos unlike anything I’d ever felt, but it solved nothing.

I woke up somewhere I didn’t know in bed with a man twice my age who never even gave me his name. And I walked out of that house in some random neighborhood with absolutely nothing and knew that if I didn’t change right that fucking second, that horrible woman was going to drag me down until I couldn’t get back up.

I worked my ass off. I had one friend who could drag me out, and I owe him my life. He kept my head above water and would give me the clothes off his back if I ever looked like I needed him. It’s so weird that when my mother had been whispering toxicity in my ears, I didn’t realize I could be saved by others. But with her gone, I began to thrive. I could see the toxicity of my friend’s family but could never see mine. And I wanted to protect him. I wanted to keep others from having to deal with what he went through, failing to even recognize what I’d gone through myself. I threw myself into law enforcement to protect people like him .

I was short with people. I was rude and closed off. But I was good at my job because it became my new fixation. When my friend died, that despair began to eat at me again, but my brother returned to my life, finally drug-free, and he was what I needed to keep my head above water. I fell deeper into my work, deeper than I’d ever been. I blamed myself for my friend’s death. I blamed myself for everything I could because my mom always taught me it was never her fault. It was mine.

That was until I met him. Until I met the man who wasn’t happy with just my head above water. Without hesitation, he dragged me all the way out of that water I’d spent my entire life drowning in. It’s funny how the shore was never that far away, but I needed him to find it for me. I don’t know if he even realizes how much he’s changed me. How much he’s broadened my world. How much he’s shown me.

I’m not the man he met and I’m so thankful for that. On the outside, I might have seemed fine, but I was always on the edge. But he pulled me so far from it that I was finally allowed to feel like everything was perfect.

Yet now my mother is back, threatening to take that from me. Threatening to take away that happiness as she spreads her toxicity throughout my life. And I can’t let her. I will do anything to keep her away. And I’m afraid of what I’d be willing to do, but I know I would do it to protect the happiness I feel with the man I love.