“Hey, did the shouts back there affect your hearing?” Maddox asks after catching up with me. “I’ve been calling your name for half a block.”
I keep my eyes fixated on the street while replying, “Yeah… ah… it was pretty crazy.” I hate lying, but I’m grateful I’ve not yet learned how to lie to someone’s face without stammering. “Sloane will be extremely happy.” Since my last comment is straight-up honest, it’s delivered without the slightest jitter from my vocal cords.
I stupidly drift my eyes from a stream of cars parked down one side of the street to Maddox when he asks, “Are you happy?” He nudges his head to Stamina’s, a boxing gym my uncle ‘claimed’ as his almost four years ago. “Because you looked pretty devastated when Saint locked lips with your friend.”
Hating that he read my disappointment in the wrong manner, I briskly shake my head. “Oh, no, I’m not upset about that.”
Maddox slants his head in a manner that’s much too adorable for a man who’s been able to grow a beard since he was sixteen. “Then what are you upset about?”
Have you ever wanted to confess your heart out like they’ll be no consequences to your actions? That’s what I’m facing right now. I’d give anything to tell him the truth, but since I can’t, I pretend I’m a perfectly stable twenty-one-year-old.
“Did you feel the spark back there?” I hook my thumb over my shoulder. “I just lost my best friend.” My only friend.
My dropped lip lifts into a half-grin when Maddox playfully bumps me with his elbow. “If Saint’s track record is anything to go by, your best friend will need you in T minus…” He checks his watch like he can set a schedule to Saint’s dating calendar. “Six days, twenty-three hours, and fifty-two minutes.”
I’m a horrible person for smiling about the future heartbreak of my best friend, but it can’t be helped. You didn’t hear the wittiness in Maddox’s tone. It truly seems as if he’s happy I noticed the mammoth buzz brewing between Sloane and Saint.
We walk half a block in silence before Maddox breaks the quiet. “Come have a drink with me?”
When I suddenly stop, an old lady with purple curls and a face full of makeup bumps into me. I’m stunned by Maddox’s offer but also psyched about it.
After apologizing to the lady not watching where she’s going, I stammer out. “W-w-what? It’s only Thursday.”
“And?” Maddox asks with a laugh, killing me with his perfectly straight white teeth. His smile is one of the reasons he shouldn’t be in the industry he is. It could convince you that the world is flat and my uncle is a kind man. “That means you have all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to sleep off your hangover.”
I shouldn’t laugh, but I do. “The fact you think I’ll have a hangover means you don’t really know me at all.”
My eyes lower to his kissable lips when he rakes his teeth over them. “Are you sure about that, Demetria Andria Petretti?”
I slap a hand over his mouth like I didn’t just imagine what his lips taste like. “Who told you my real name?” We went to the same school since the first grade, but not once was my name shared in its entirety.
It’s an effort not to whack Maddox in the stomach when a string of gibberish spills through the cracks in my fingers. If he spoke normal, I’d hear him perfectly fine, but I guess that would mean I would win this round, and the Walshs don’t back down when they’re being haggled.
The air my fist forces out of Maddox’s lungs dries the sweat on my hand. It’s a pity it can’t fix the sweaty mustache forming on my top lip. I’ve known the Walshs for years, but this is the first time I’ve stood across from my crush without one of his siblings chaperoning our interaction. I’m swimming in waters out of my depth, but the fear of drowning won’t harness my interrogation.
“Seriously, Maddox, who told you my name?” My teeth grit when my endeavor to remove the panic from my tone fails. It weakens the chemistry brewing between Maddox and me and switches the sparkle in his eyes from playful to concerned in under a second.
Maddox removes my hand from his mouth, but he doesn’t release it from his grasp. I’m twenty-one-years old. Handholding should no longer affect me, but I’d be a liar if I said zaps of electricity weren’t surging up my arm.
After peering down at our hands long enough to convince me he’s experiencing the same sparks, Maddox confesses, “I overheard it when your uncle was schmoozing the Dean for a scholarship. I go to STEM Academy. They have a first-class understudy program.”
“Oh…” I could say more. I should say more, but I just can’t. I’m too busy seeking the closest hole to bury myself in. I’m skirting the truth like it will give me rabies, yet Maddox is being as honest as it comes. ‘Understudy program’ is what the fighters in the college circuit call the underground fight tournament in this region. “Sorry.”
He flashes me a grin that’s more immoral than decent. It brings back the sexual tension tenfold and has me fighting not to squirm on the spot. “What do you have to be sorry about, Andi?”
I fan my spare hand across his chest, not only announcing that he needs to stop following me but also warning him I don’t appreciate the nickname. Although, the spasm my briefest touch causes his pectoral muscle has me considering permitting him to call me whatever the hell he likes.
Confident he’s gotten the point and needing to remove my hand from his chest before I replace it with my tongue, I tug my hand out of his grip before I continue pacing down the street.
Maddox gets the hint about my dislike of his nickname, but he doesn’t quit following me. “Still not a fan of nicknames, eh?”
He’d understand my continued dislike if he knew the names tossed at me by my uncle’s men. Pet. Kitty. Baby doll. They’re just a few I’ve been hit with the past week, and they’re the only ones I can repeat without vomit scorching my throat. Andi may seem the weaker of them all, but it’s more than capable of destroying me.
Only one man calls me ‘Andi.’
He doesn’t use it affectionately.
He only brings it out when he wants to maim.
When I increase the length of my strides, eager to place distance between Maddox and me before the wrong person sees us together, Maddox jogs to catch up to me. The length of his strides is almost double mine, so he doesn’t need to jog. He just wants me to know he’s aware of what I’m doing and that he’s refusing to let me get away as easily as he has the past four years.
Stubbornness is another well-known Walsh trait.
We walk for almost two blocks in silence before the quiet gets the better of Maddox for the second time. “Are you not a fan of talking anymore? I could barely get a word in when we were kids.”
“I like talking,” I snap out before I can stop myself. “Just not with you.”
Jesus, Demi. Cut the guy down with an ax, why don’t you.
“Ouch.” His hurt would be more believable if he weren’t chuckling. “Dress me up and call me Shirley, did I just get my first rejection?”
I roll my eyes. It’s the only defense I have to hide my grin. I don’t usually find cocky men endearing, but I’m seeing it in an entirely new light since it’s coming from Maddox. “Let me guess, your middle name is Cocky?”