Page 55 of Love is Angry (Love is Everything #2)

Madison

I didn’t sleep well. How could I? My conscience and my sense of self-preservation were at war all night, and even when I did manage to drift off to sleep, my dreams were full of the same torment.

I’m yawning as I take a seat in the lecture hall, barely able to keep my eyes open.

“Hey, sleepy head,” Rhue says as he sits down beside me. “Get in late?”

I shake my head. “No—just have a lot on my mind.”

“You and me, both,” he says bitterly.

I give him a wary look. “What’s on your mind?”

“Family problems,” he says under his breath. “Laura’s Manny is a little too controlling for my tastes, and I think he’s brainwashing her.”

“Brainwashing her? About what?”

A couple of the students in front of us are half-turned in our direction, clearly listening in.

“I’ll tell you later,” he mutters. “How ‘bout lunch?”

“Okay.”

“Hey, dweebs!” A pair of black ultra-high platform boots crashes down between our seats, nearly clipping my shoulder. “Talking about your next hot date, huh? More super sloppy happy fun time out in the woods, or more of a casual super sloppy quicky under the bleachers?”

Rhue smirks back at the Gothic wonder. “Again, Mackenzie, you really gotta quit phrasing stuff like that. It’s honestly confusing. I mean, are you hitting on me? Are you suggesting a threesome? Because I might be down, but you’d have to take it up with Madison.”

She gives him a flat, disgusted look. “Not with a ten-foot pole,” she says.

She snatches her feet back and stomps away—I’m not sure if she’s deliberately stomping or if that’s just the only way she can move in those things—to the other side of the auditorium, where she finds some other freshmen to harass.

“What crawled up her ass and died?” Rhue asks. “She’s like—thirty-two percent bitchier than normal, and normal is already pretty fucking bitchy.”

“I dunno—she kind of sounded jealous to me. Since when does ‘how ‘bout lunch’ count as a date worth getting jealous over?”

He grins at me. “Maybe it’s not the meal she’s jealous over—but the mutual sleuthing. Maybe, just maybe, under that Gothic veneer, she has a lady boner for Hardy boys.”

He makes me laugh just as the professor steps out. Not earning any brownie points with that—embarrassed, I put my head down and start furiously scribbling away at my notes. My palms are sweaty, and I can’t even identify why.

I don’t even know if mutual sleuthing counts as a date, but I’m excited enough about it for it to feel like a date—or nervous enough about it for it to feel like a job interview.

I haven’t quite figured it out yet; the two feelings are virtually identical, physically, so it boils down to my interpretation.

Problem is, I’m not very good at interpreting emotions.

I guess I’ll just have to play it by ear—which, for the record, is my least favorite way to play anything.

He takes me to a casual taco place a few miles from campus, where it’s less likely that anyone who knows us by name and face will be around to listen in.

Even then, he’s not entirely comfortable, so we get our food to go and end up eating in his SUV, parked at a trailhead overlooking the botanical gardens.

Throughout the whole meandering journey, I’ve had that feeling of being followed, though I’ve been hard-pressed to single out any specific vehicle.

“So,” I begin as soon as we’ve settled in. “Why do you think Steve is brainwashing your sister?”

He pauses for a moment, then looks at me. “You haven’t spoken to her recently, have you?”

I shake my head. “I tried calling her yesterday because I wanted to see if she wanted to have coffee before I left, but I’m pretty sure my number’s blocked on her phone. Before that, Julian was listening in and we couldn’t really have a conversation.”

He nods. “She’s still certain that mom didn’t kill herself,” he tells me.

“She’s really insistent about it. She’s convinced that dad did it.

And I mean, I get it—mom had all these plans and all these people depending on her to take Julian down—but there’s no evidence.

Everybody I’ve talked to—and I’ve talked to a few—is sure that she killed herself.

Yeah, they all think he bullied her into it—but it was ruled suicide, and no one is arguing against that except Laura. ”

“I don’t know if that suggests brainwashing,” I tell him gently. “She’s a traumatized teenager. It’s hard enough to accept that your mother’s gone—trying to accept that she left you under her own power is a whole other level of acceptance.”

“You’re not wrong,” he says. His gaze is heavy and blank, looking out the windshield.

“But she could do it. I know she could—but every time I try to talk to her about it, about anything to do with Mom, Steve gives her these looks and clears his throat and interjects and stuff, like he’s policing the words she says.

I think he’s a plant, dad’s little stooge, put in that position to keep her confused and depressed. ”

I frown, thinking of the Laura I know, with her beaming smile and rational mind. “Does she seem depressed to you?”

“Not overtly,” he says. “But don’t you think hyper-fixating on one parent’s villainy to protect her feelings about the other parent’s sainthood sort of indicates depression?

Besides—I don’t think she’d be quite human if she wasn’t struggling with a bit of depression right now.

In the last year, her mother died, she lost the use of her legs, and she discovered that her dad is a rapist. Now she’s stuck doing his campaign for him because she’s too scared to let anyone else do it.

She’s depressed. She just doesn’t show it. ”

“It is a pretty shitty situation,” I concede. “Maybe Steve’s just trying to keep her from obsessing over it?”

He shrugs uncomfortably. “I don’t know. Maybe. Something about it just sits wrong with me, like they’re keeping a secret she doesn’t want to keep, you know?”

Ugh. That hits me right in the gut. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

He gives me a long, searching look. “What’s up, Maddie?”

I shift uncomfortably, trying to roll the tension out of my shoulders.

“My dad’s girlfriend is a journalist,” I tell him.

“She’s doing a story on the election—backgrounds of the candidates, that sort of thing—and she wants my help.

She knows I’m ‘close to the family.’ I don’t think she has any idea how close—or what kind of story she’d get. ”

He stiffened as soon as I said “journalist” and hasn’t relaxed yet. “Are you going to do it?” He asks, his voice tight.

“Do you think I should?”

He looks out the window again, his gaze morphing into a glower as he drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I think the world needs to know what kind of shitbag he is,” he says. “But I don’t want you to be the one to tell on him.”

“You’re afraid for me?”

“Damn right I’m afraid for you!” He hits his palm against the steering wheel, making me jump.

When he turns to me, his eyes are swirling with fear and rage.

“I saw the mess he left of Sibel, Maddie. That strong, no-nonsense, hard-working woman is a quivering shell of a person. My own mother was so broken down by him that everyone who knew her as a friend or colleague was completely unsurprised by her taking her own life. He’s a filthy misogynistic asshole, and I don’t want him to have any more reason to take it out on you. ”

My heart swells to see his violence turned to passion in my favor.

My mind says violence is violence, period, avoid at all costs; but my soul craves the protection of a beast, the fierce loyalty of a wolf.

I kiss him, the cilantro of my salsa mingling with the fire of the hot sauce.

His hand grips the back of my neck like he’s desperate to keep me there, touching him, forever.

The mutual intensity slowly rolls out, dissipating in lazy, lingering kisses.

Eventually we pull away, our eyes locked on each other’s.

I can see his pulse jumping where his neck meets his shoulder, his eyes darkening, nearly black.

The scent of his lust hangs heavy in the car, a musk that drives me wild with desire and sends the red flags into a screaming, panicked frenzy in the back of my head.

The conflict is tearing me apart and all I want to do is squash it.

“Maddie,” he says, his voice husky. “We need to talk about this.”

My heart sinks and I look away from him. “An ultimatum, right? If I’m going to be kissing you, I have to go all the way, otherwise I should leave you alone?” I swallow hard. “Or am I just too damaged for you to want?”

“Madison,” he snaps. “Look at me.”

I look. He gestures at his lap, the bulge in his pants. “I clearly want you. I’ve always wanted you. What my dad did didn’t change who you are, or how badly I want you.”

So it’s the first, then. Shit or get off the pot. A cold membrane begins to creep over my shattered feelings, a thin wall between my emotions and reality. He grabs my hand, halting its progress.

“But I will never give you an ultimatum like that,” he says. I hear the promise in his voice. Looking up at him, I see the oath in his eyes. “This is your ride, Maddie. You decide if it goes, how fast, and how far. I’m just along for the ride—and I’ll be okay wherever it stops.”

“Really?”

“Really.” He looks away from me, his eyes glistening.

“I can be a selfish prick. I can be mean and violent and ruthless. Half of my DNA is written that way. But not all of it.” He swallows hard.

“My mother was the most selfless person I’ve ever known.

She couldn’t be mean if she tried—and she did try.

She tried all kinds of things against my father, but she could never beat him at his own game.

She just didn’t have it in her. She was a different kind of strong—a giving and understanding and genuine kind.

She was the best kind of person—and he’s the worst kind. ”

There’s a determination, a strength in his face I’ve never seen before. “I have a choice, Maddie. And I’m choosing her selflessness and his ruthlessness and I’m going to use them better than either of my parents ever could.”

He takes my hand in his and holds it for a long moment before he speaks again.

“I don’t know if exposing Julian for who he is without a plan in place to keep you safe is the right move.

But if you feel it’s what you need to do, I’ll back you up one hundred percent.

I’ll always be here—to help you, to protect you —whatever you need.

I’m on your side, Madison. Always and forever. ”

And this is how I come to see what everyone else has been seeing all along; that Rhue is mine and I am his, no matter what labels we stick on it. My sworn enemy, my rival, my friend, my lover; no matter how this ends, we’ll end it together.