Sink or Swim || Outer Banks || JJ Maybank

Chapter 17

Madison sat on the couch next to John B as they both were both lost in thought. They were silent for a minute with the only sound in the house coming from the clock on the wall. The Routledges weren't sure how to process the information that the gold wasn't in the ship. It's all they had heard about their whole lives and it felt like the ground had been shifted from beneath them. "He's really gone, isn't he?"

"Yeah," John B tried to keep his emotions shoved down because he was so damn tired of being upset over something he should have known was true.

She chewed on the skin around her thumb nail. "What are we going to do now?"

"Same thing we've been doing," he shrugged, not really knowing what else to say. He wanted to reassure her that everything would be okay but he needed to believe it himself before he could try and convince her.

He pushed himself up from the couch and made his way into their father's office. Madison could hear things being thrown around but remained on the couch letting him get out whatever he needed to until he started carrying piles of research out to the front lawn.

"What are you doing?" She followed him back to the office where he was gathering up another pile to bring outside.

"We don't need it anymore."

She wanted to yell at him, fight for her opinion to be heard like she had done so many times in the past but instead she found herself snatching the pictures of captains off the wall only adding to the pile outside.

John B doused the pile with gas, giving Madison one last look as he struck the match alongside the box. "Last chance, are you sure about this?"

"Burn it."

"Mads," he tried one more time because while she was upset now there was no bringing back the memories once they were ash.

She nodded, "Burn it."

It was cathartic watching the flames eat away and destroy what she had spent so many hours of her life trying to figure out. The hunt for the treasure was truly over and for once the only thing she had to worry about was being sixteen years old. Her heart ached at the thought of how much time she had wasted over the years but she was finally free.

X-X-X

JJ sighed in relief as he walked through his front door that his father was out doing God only knew what. He grabbed a warm beer from the table and popped it open, taking a long pull. It wasn't much but it was what he had at the moment. He had to admit he was a little more than disappointed that the gold wasn't with the Royal Merchant especially after the recording from Big John. Hell, he had already spent a good chunk of it in his head, daydreaming about getting away from the filth of a house he was in now.

He made his way to his room, not wanting to be in the living room whenever Luke decided to show up, and closed the door behind him. It wasn't until he flipped on the light that he realized he wasn't alone. Madison was curled up on his bed, her black eye sticking out from underneath the sheet she had wrapped around her.

It wasn't the first time she had snuck into his room. He had made her promise years ago that if she saw Luke's truck out front that she was to call or text him and he would meet her wherever she wanted no matter the time of day but that under no circumstance was she to be in the house alone with his dad. But there were those rare occasions that Luke had been too drugged out to come home for a few days and the youngest Routledge found comfort sleeping in JJ's bed that smelled purely of him.

JJ set the half empty beer on his dresser and stepped closer to the bed, assuming she was sleeping but his face fell when he saw silent tears rolling down her cheeks. "Hey, hey, what's wrong?"