Page 33 of Every Sunset
“You both survived alone after that?” I gasped. Logan wasn’t even as old as Max and he was responsible for his little brother. How did they manage that?
“It wasn’t easy, but it was so much better than being apart from each other. Logan found work and he brought me along to the places I could earn something at too. Sometimes we’d have enough to find a hotel or motel to sleep in. Most of the time we slept rough. We survived, and we even finished high school with some extensive lies about our parents working away a lot.
“When Logan left high school he worked days at a diner, and nights at this club in the city. He made enough to get us an apartment and things got better after that. I worked my way through college, with a few scholarships along the way, then I joined the academy. I think I wanted to be a cop because I felt this need to do some good, I guess. Maybe to counteract what our parents did, or maybe just to try and catch thieves and criminals like them. I’m not sure, I just know it’s all I ever wanted.”
“What happened?” I asked, in little more than a whisper, unsure I really wanted to know. Logan and Maddox had clearly been through enough in their lives before they even got to adulthood. I didn’t want to hear about anything else happening to either of them. It wasn’t fair, but then I knew only too well that life never was.
“I made it. Even made it into S.W.A.T. I had a team that felt like family to me, and a career I loved and planned to do until I was too old to keep going. Logan was in the city too, managing the club he started working at straight out of school. We lived in a converted warehouse apartment we loved, close to the beach and things were good, weren’t they?” Maddox asked his brother, who just nodded with a look of sadness. “Then I fucked it all up,” Maddox sighed.
“Madd. Don’t. You didn’t do a damned thing wrong,” Logan growled, and I suspected he had said those same words countless times to his brother since whatever had happened.
“I was an idiot. I should have realized.”
“Realized what?” I asked.
“One night after my shift I went to the bar across the street for a drink. I was headed to meet Logan at the club, but it was early,” Maddox began, and when I looked at him, his eyes were no longer on me or Logan. He was staring blankly past me, clearly reliving what happened that night. “This cute woman came over and sat beside me at the bar. She started talking to me and she seemed nice. I wasn’t really interested in it going anywhere, since Logan and I had just split with a girl we’d been seeing together for a few months.”
“We were a little burned from the break up, since we’d both really liked the girl we were seeing, Hannah, and we thought it was going well. It really knocked us when one night she turned up at our place, and simply told us she was seeing someone else. I’m still not sure what went wrong to be honest, but she just left after announcing that, refusing to explain any further, or even talk to us. She walked out and we never saw her again,” Logan explained.
“Sounds like a lucky escape if you ask me,” I told them both confidently. Why would anyone walk away from Maddox and Logan? Well, anyone who didn’t live in the midst of the shit show I was caught in right then, anyway? If I were free and able to pursue the relationship the guys had mentioned to me earlier, you can bet your ass I’d have dived on them. Things were just too complicated though.
“Yeah, probably,” Logan chuckled.
“Anyway, I chatted to the woman at the bar for around an hour. She bought me a drink and I bought her one, but I made it pretty clear I wasn’t looking for anything and she seemed good with that. I was half watching the game on the screen over the bar and listening to her talk about the salon that she worked at, when all of a sudden she leapt into my lap and smashed her lips against mine. I had no idea what she was doing, but I pulled away and stood, putting her on her feet so I could get away, but she got what she wanted.”
“What? To kiss you?” I asked confused. It was not cool that the girl took liberties with Madd when he’d made things clear to her, but I didn’t understand how it ended his career and left him as jumpy and paranoid as he sometimes became.
“To kiss me at the exact moment her husband walked in to the bar,” Maddox replied angrily. “She’d caught her husband cheating on her, checked his cell or something. I don’t really know, but she decided to get revenge. Her husband was a detective with narcotics, and he and his buddies always came into the bar at the same time on a Friday night. She set me up, timed it all perfectly so the second she saw him coming, she could jump into my lap and make it look like I was all over her.”
“No way!” I gasped. “That’s insane. What happened?”
“I tried to explain the second the guy charged forward and started yelling, but he wasn’t listening. He went to hit me and I dodged him, still trying to explain it wasn’t what it looked like. The husband went for me again, spoiling for a fight as his wife just stood aside happily watching. I managed to get the upper hand, since I was way fitter than him, and his buddies pulled him away. I grabbed my shit and left the bar as quickly as I could, not wanting to get into shit for fighting with another cop.My career was everything to me and I refused to have it fucked up by what had happened.”
“But it wasn’t over?” I guessed, and Maddox shook his head as he lowered his gaze and absently ran his hand back and forth through his hair.
“Madd came to the club to meet me. He walked because he’d had a few drinks, and it was only a few blocks. He made it two of those blocks before that fucker smashed into Madd with his car on a quieter back street.”
“He followed me from the bar. I didn’t realize. I think I was still trying to make sense of what the fuck just happened and I was distracted. The car…it hit me head on, but he wasn’t going that fast. I bounced off of the windshield and into the street hitting my head pretty hard as I landed on the concrete. I must have blacked out because…because when I opened my eyes that guy…the woman’s husband…was over me, beating the shit out of me. I managed to get out from under him and get a few hits in, but I could barely see straight and my left shoulder was dislocated. I hit the guy a few times and I heard him run. His car door slammed and I thought that was the end of it. I collapsed onto the sidewalk, my head fucked up and my vision a mess. I pulled my cell out to call Logan, but I never even unlocked the screen before I heard the car coming towards me again. I tried to roll out of the way, but I was too slow. He ran me clean over with the car, but I only remember the impact of it hitting me before I blacked out. Apparently he reversed back over me when I was down.”
“Oh God!” I cried as tears, which had filled my eyes, ran free down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Madd,” I whispered as I got to my feet and went to him, wrapping my arms as tight as I couldaround his waist. “Please tell me he was caught,” I pleaded as I clung to Madd but looked to Logan.
“He was arrested the next day when Maddox woke up and managed to tell the detectives everything. He was charged with attempted murder and he’s in jail right now, but he got off too fucking easy if you ask me.” Logan hissed angrily.
“A cop will not fare well in the system. Trust me, he’s paying for what he did,” Maddox said.
“Not enough. It’ll never be enough for what him and his bitch wife did to you!”
“Did she get charged with anything?” I asked.
“Nah. Nothing they could charge her with,” Maddox shrugged.
“So that’s what ended your career?” I pushed.
“Losing a leg, and a brain injury that makes me paranoid and prone to violent outbursts lost me my career. I was medically retired from the force and given a shitty pension to live on.”
“You lost a leg?” I was crying pretty hard now. One woman’s idiotic idea of revenge against her asshole husband had cost Maddox so much. He was such a good man, and he never deserved any of what happened to him. I hurt for him. Suddenly, the way he’d been since we met him, the drinking, and the mood swings, the way he looked at me so knowingly, and seemed to see me so clearly, it all made so much more sense.
“Below the knee amputation. They tried to save it, but after that fucker went over me twice, there wasn’t much left to save. I have a prosthesis now,” Maddox sighed, almost like he was ashamed to admit to it.
