Page 22 of Heartache & Playdates
“Good, but we have to go!” She tugged at both our arms.
I wasn’t sure if it was because I was scared to be alone with Maddox, or if I was just too confused about what was going on to do anything about, or if it was just the people pleaser in me but I allowed myself to be pulled out of my chair, but whatever the reason, I agreed to go with her. “Okay.”
Once I stood, Maddox followed suit and threw a couple of hundred-dollar bills on the bar, taking care of both of our drinks and then some.
He lifted his hand to Micah. “Thanks, man.”
Micah dipped his chin and grinned. His eyes then darted in my direction and the look in them told me he had not missed the moment that had just transpired between me and Maddox. For some reason it made me feel better to know that it was witnessed, and I wasn’t crazy.
Melinda was rattling on about her kids and her job and I was only half-listening. My heart, head, and hormones were having an impromptu debrief over what had just happened. There was a quick vote as to whether kissing Maddox would have made the Guinness Book for Dumbest Thing I Could Possibly Do. The vote passed two to one. My heart and head were on the same page, but my hormones were not.
We walked into the ballroom and I looked around. It was filled with a sea of faces I didn’t recognize.
Melinda squeezed her hold on my arm. “I was so surprised when I saw your name on the list of attendees!”
I smiled at her. “So was I.”
She chuckled politely. I wasn’t joking.
“Okay, I have to go up on stage.” She turned to Maddox and her long French tipped nail pointed directly at his face. “Donotgo anywhere.” Then she turned back to me and instructed, “Watch him like a hawk.”
That wouldn’t be a hardship. I grinned and nodded in agreement.
Once she scurried away, I turned to him and once again tried to lighten the mood and distance the conversation from whatever had passed between us at the bar. “I’mnotabove accepting a bribe if you want to sneak out and from what I’ve read, you can afford it.”
“Areyoustaying?” The intensity in his eyes combined with the growl in his tone had my cheeks burning.
The question was innocuous enough on the surface, but the implications had my hormones doing jumping jacks and shouting, “Put me in coach!”
“Yes, I’m staying,” I breathed out the response.
A flash of disappointment and, if I wasn’t mistaken, relief flickered in his dreamy brown eyes. I could see that I wasn’t the only one struggling with the attraction that was clearly still between us. I was, however, the only one who knew that nothing could happen. Maddox mightthinkhe knew that, but he didn’t know the half of it.
“And now, your Union High Class Reunion Queen…” A drumroll played over the speakers. “Julianna Pierce!”
There was a wave of applause as the pretty brunette stepped on the stage and had a crown put on her head. I’d always liked Julianna. From what I remembered she was quiet but very sweet and smart.
I clapped as Melinda stepped back in front of the microphone. “And your Union High Class Reunion King is…” There was another drumroll. “Maddox Cruz!”
The applause was louder for Maddox, who exhaled in irritation a split second before he pasted a smile on his face. He took one step toward the stage before turning toward me, his cocoa-colored gaze pinning me in place. “Donotleave without saying goodbye.”
I could see the deep seeded abandonment insecurity in his stare that my actions had attributed to, and I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I won’t,” I promised.
As I watched him walk up onto the stage, the guilt I’d thought I’d worked through in a decade of therapy to try and process reared its ugly head.
I’d left Maddox without saying goodbye. I’d spent the night with him. We’d taken each other’s virginity, and I was gone when he woke up in the morning. Not gone to go home. Gone out of the country.
I didn’t even leave a note. I couldn’t, because I hadn’t known what to say. At the time, I’d known that it was selfish, but I’d done it anyway.
Maddox had been abandoned by everyone who was supposed to love him.
His dad went to prison when he was one for armed robbery and manslaughter. As far as I knew, he was still there. Maddox didn’t remember him and the last I knew, had no desire to know him.
His mom left to go get milk when he was three, and never came back. He spent almost a week in an apartment by himself before a neighbor checked on him and found him. His mom was an addict and was off getting high somewhere. Maddox told me that he had memories of being alone. Being scared. Trying to find food to eat. And of the neighbor, who had bright red curly hair and smelled like cigarettes coming in and calling the police.
After that he lived with his paternal grandmother. Maddox said from what he remembered she seemed checked out, or maybe just old. She didn’t really talk to him, but she had made sure he was fed and had clean clothes, which apparently was more care than his mother had ever shown him. Then one day she dropped him off at kindergarten and never came to pick him up. He had memories of sitting in the school office until after it was dark. Then a cop walked in and told him that his grandmother died of a heart attack.
