I’ve only known her for a few weeks; only been with her for one brief encounter. So how can I be so damn sure? But I am. I want this. The couple thing. The Devyn thing. The whole thing. And the realization about knocks me on my ass.
“You sure you don’t want a drink?” Owen asks. “Seems like you might be needin’ one.”
“I’m good.”
He looks at Devyn and back at me, raising a brow as if he knows exactly how it feels to be hit by a ton of bricks. He slaps me on the shoulder and walks away.
During dinner, Andie makes a joke about Matt, calling him Victor. Christina snorts wine through her nose. Everyone is laughing except Devyn.
“I apologize, Devyn,” Andie says. “Seems we have a lot of inside jokes around here. Matt and I used to date. Well, sort of. He was being investigated by the FBI, and they asked me to help. Turns out it was all a big mistake, but by the time I knew it, I’d fallen for this one.” She puts her hand on Maddox’s arm.
“He was my landscaper at the time,” Christina says. “He became a suspect in a missing persons case. But the woman, a single mother, was eventually found in Costa Rica with some guy forty years older than she was. Turns out money was more important to her than her kid that she abandoned at daycare and who ended up living with her grandparents, not knowing for years if her mother was dead or alive.”
“That’s—” Devyn glances at everyone at the table. “You guys have some stories, don’t you?”
“Oh, you don’t know the half of it,” I say. “Christina’s ex-husband kidnapped Andie and held her at gunpoint.”
“Oh my god,” Devyn says. “Where is he now?”
“Prison,” Andie says.
“When does he come up for parole again?” Owen asks.
“In a few months. You can bet I’ll be there with bells on, doing everything I can to keep him behind bars, where murderers belong.”
Devyn chokes on her wine. She looks sick.
“You okay?”
“I thought you said he was a kidnapper,” she says softly.
“He was a lot of things,” I tell her. “We’re pretty sure he was at least partly responsible for the death of Maddox’s grandmother, the woman who used to run this ranch, but the prosecutor could never prove it, so he only got put away for what he did to Andie, plus some drug charges.”
Devyn’s breathing quickens and sweat dots her forehead. It looks like she’s on the verge of a panic attack.
“Excuse us for a second.” I guide Devyn to the living room and sit her on the couch. “I promise you’ll be safe here. I know it seems like there’s a lot of weird shit going on, but it’s in the past.”
She breathes in and out. “This is overwhelming.”
I chuckle. “Maybe we should have just started with the four of us and worked our way up from there.”
Screams come through the baby monitor. “There’s the little princess,” Maddox says, rising from the table. “You stay, darlin’. I’ll get her.”
Andie smiles sweetly, and they share a look of mutual admiration. “Thanks, babe.”
Suddenly I can see myself in five years. Ten. Saying the same thing, sharing the same smile. With Devyn. What’s happening to me?
A timer goes off in the kitchen. Andie rises to get dessert from the oven. A second timer sounds from Maddox’s pocket as he enters the room with Vivian. “I have to turn off the grill.” He turns to Devyn. “Can you hold her for a second?”
Devyn turns as white as a ghost. “Me? No.”
Andie walks past the opening to the kitchen, holding a steaming dish with potholders. “It’s okay, Devyn. Kids aren’t as fragile as you think. You won’t break her.”
“I’m sorry. I have to go.” Devyn gets up, walks right past Maddox and Vivian and out the front door.
“What the hell just happened?” Maddox asks.
“I have no idea.” I run out after her. She’s halfway down the driveway. “Devyn!”
She doesn’t stop. I have no idea where she thinks she’s going. It’s a few miles back to the lodge, and the shoes she’s wearing are not for walking. I run to my truck, back out, and pull down the driveway. She’s in the road when I catch up to her. I pull alongside, stop, and lean over to open the passenger door. “Get in.”
“I can’t do this,” she says, standing on the blacktop.
My heart falls. Can’t do what? Us? “Devyn, get in and I’ll drive you home. You don’t have to do anything right now.”
She slides in next to me, the tears in her eyes glistening from the lights on my dashboard. “Whatever it is, it’ll be okay.”
She looks out the window. “It’ll never be okay.”
I desperately want to know why. My need to protect her is fierce. But I remain silent because she’s fragile, and unlike Vivian, I’m afraid one wrong move might break her.
Chapter Sixteen
Devyn
I’m taken to a small room with concrete walls. There are no sheets on the thin stained mattress. Behind me, the doors clank shut. I sink to the floor, barely remembering the last hour of my life. Cameras flashed, fingerprints were taken, then I was stripped out of my clothes and given an orange jumpsuit. I was moved from room to room. My hair is wet and full of tangles. There aren’t any windows, but I know it must be late—the middle of the night probably.
I relive what happened earlier over and over, my heart pounding and my stomach churning. This must all be a sick, twisted dream. I bang my head on the wall, hoping to wake up. Then I cry myself to sleep.
“DeMaggio!” a woman yells. I wake, sore from sleeping on a mattress that smells like a dumpster.
She leads me down a hallway, past other cells, to a door. On the other side of the door is an officer with a gun strapped to his side. He’s standing tall, eyeing me, his hand on the gun still in the holster. I want to tell him he’s got this all wrong. I’m not who he thinks I am. I’m not a criminal. Not a murderer. But I don’t tell him that.
Because I am.
There are four other people in the van. We’re shackled to the floor. The drive isn’t long. We could have walked to wherever they’re taking us.
“Out!” the lady guard says.
We file into a tunnel attached to the back of a huge building. We’re escorted down a long hallway and taken to a place they call a holding room.
One by one, the five of us are called to go into a different room. When it’s my turn, I realize where we are. I’ve only ever seen a courtroom on TV. A new guard takes me by the upper arm and moves me to a table.
The man sitting at the front of the room, the judge I presume, looks upset when he sees me. “Do you not have any representation, young lady?”
I clear my throat. It’s sore from crying. “Uh… I don’t understand. Everything just happened last night.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, my eyes flood with tears.
A man enters the room behind me and runs up to my side. “My apologies, Your Honor. I was just assigned to Ms. DeMaggio’s case twenty minutes ago.”