Page 66 of The Trick

“That’s what I’m trying to get to, Maddox. I did something today that’s been a long time coming.” Cam reaches in her pocket for a folded piece of paper, but my attention moves to where Blair is walking down the pumpkin lined aisle, dressed in black lace that looks like it’s painted on her hauntingly beautiful curves.

With each sway of her hips, I’m transported back to the first time I ever saw her. There I sat, miserable and angry, because I had to pick up my stepbrother who I hated with every fiber of my fucking being. Yet if I didn’t oblige my mother’s request by picking him up, I would have never seen her. And that moment when I first witnessed the dark storm cloud of her aura walk in front of me has remained one of the most pivotal moments in my life.

I never thought I was capable of loving anyone the way my dad loved my mom, mostly because I never thought someone would invite my demons in to play with their own. No one ever wanted to, not until Blair Van Tassel let my depravity mingle with hers.

Now as I stare at her inked skin and peer into her raven color eyes that stare back at mine, I realize that every curse in my life that made me the brute I am, is what also made me the person she needed me to be. We are unconventional at best, delusional and immoral at worst, but we are meant to be. It may have taken well over a decade—fifteen grueling fucking years in fact—to get here, but fuck if I wouldn’t wait decades more to have this moment.

“Are you even listening to me?” Cam chimes as Delilah swoops in.

“Um, I’m going to say no,” she laughs, sounding super uncomfortable. Cam’s lips part, an audible breath leaking from them, though whatever she was going to say is halted by where her and Delilah’s attentions look to where mine is glued to my little hellcat.

“Is everything ok?” Blair asks. She takes a deep breath which accentuates her cleavage spilling over the neckline of her dress.

I take a step forward, my hands reaching for her hips, pulling her into me. “It is now,” I say, pressing her lips to mine though I can feel the hesitancy in her kiss.

Thanks a lot, Cam.

Cam clears her throat, which Blair uses as her cue to break our kiss.

“You look beautiful, Blair. It’s a nice change seeing you fully clothed,” Cam laughs.

“Don’t get used to it,Glinda. I thinkandwork best scantily clothed,” she winks.

My fists tighten at my side. I become lost in my head, anger wreaking havoc on my body. I know Blair has not subscribed to my insistence on calling Glinda,Cam, nor do I expect her to. It’s my issue with her, not Blair’s.

“It’s ok,” Cam says to Blair before turning to me.

“Mijn zoon,”my son.My heart feels like it’s being stabbed hearing her call me that because I haven’t been a good son to her in a long time. Ever since I started working with her, it’s become more of a distant business relationship instead of the mother son one it used to be.

“Please,” she pleads. “Listen to me. I remember the day your father gave me my vial ring. I looked at him like he was crazy. But he explained to me how, although he loved me and wanted to spend his life with me,” she pauses, clearing what sounds like a tight throat. “Sorry,” she sighs, as I move closer to her, reaching for her hand, nodding for her to continue.

“Go ahead, mijn moeder,”My mother.

“Thank you, baby,” she smiles, taking in another deep inhale before continuing. “Your father always said that marriage was just a word. A piece of paper exchanged between two people, paired with overpriced rings. He always said he wanted more than marriage. He wanted a true commitment. So, on our wedding day we exchanged rings with empty vials that we filled with a drop of each other’s blood. Each anniversary we would add a few drops more. The goal was to keep filling vials to replace with a new one, but life had other plans.”

“No, Byron did,” I interject before she can say anything else.

A saddened expression smears across her face as she nods.

“Yes. You’re right and that’s why I did what I did.” She swallows hard, trying to fight back tears.

“Please, you married him!” I shout.

“Yes, Maddox! To get close to your father’s killer, so that he wouldn’t have a clue in the fucking world what was coming to him, when we killed him!” Her words end in a gasp, tears falling from her face. Blair walks to her side, as does Delilah, leaving me to stand across from the three on them, with such raw anger in my fucking veins, that it’s over shadowing what should be, me and Blair’s day.

“Well, this was–” I begin, but I’m interrupted by Blair’s hand that is raised with a piece of folded paper in it.

“Maddox, I love you, I do but if you don’t shut the fuck up and let your mother talk, I’m going to strangle you. Now read this.”

She hands me the folded paper, and my eyes shoot over to where my mom’s chest is heaving. “Please, just read it,” she whispers.

Reluctantly, I begin to unfold the card stock.

My heart skips a beat, when I see a signed certificate confirming that she finally changed her name back to what it should have always remained. No longer Glinda Campbell, my stubborn mother is once again GlindaCrane.

My mother’s wrinkled hand invades my periphery as I keep reading the line that reads her married name, the one she had to my father, over and over again.

“If you remember, your father always said that–”

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