I let her go when I couldn’t breathe, gasping for air against her lips as she panted on mine. “Give them a shot. Give yourself a shot.”
“I’m scared.”
“That’s okay. You’re allowed to be scared. What you went through was scary. Talking about it is scary. But you can do it, Mad. I know you can.”
Her head hit my chest. “I’ll try as long as you’re here.”
That was the stick in the mud. “I can’t stay here. I have to run the shop.”
Panic ensued. Tears, water splashing, and terror. Watching her flail around like a broken mermaid broke my heart, made me understand that my heart wanted her, even if it couldn’t have her.
“I’ll stay!” I shouted, unable to watch her shatter one more time. “I’ll stay as long as you want.”
The fight left her as soon as it left me. She moved away from me though, settling with her back on the other end of the tub. “I’m so mad at you. I’ve never been this mad at you.” She wiped her broken red eyes and brought her knees to her chest. She glared darkly at me. “How could you, Klay?”
I wondered if she knew this was the most we’d talked since we met. I thought it had something to do with the fact that the man who took her wasn’t in this city. He was in Denver. We were in Boulder. It was safe. She may not want to be here, but it was already doing some good. I’d stay here until I couldn’t. This wasn’t my life. It was hers. As much as it hurt to admit, our lives never would have crossed paths otherwise.
They’d separate eventually.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and scrubbed a wet hand down my face. “You want to get out and get dressed? I don’t know what I’m going to do for clothes now.”
She looked at her lap. “I don’t feel bad about that.”
“Liar.” I reached for her. I held her knees in my hands, waiting for her reticent gaze. “You’ve felt bad since I met you. Kiss me.” She gave me her lips hesitantly, letting me taste them long and deep. “Let’s get dressed.”
I helped her out of her tub. I tried to let her go, but she held on to my hand in a stronghold, pulling me over to her closet. In her own space, she was much more confident. She knew her way, knew where everything was. She wasn’t a burden here. Now I was.
Her closet was huge and organized. She sifted through a shelving unit of clothes as I looked around. Something caught my eye. There was an entire section of Cardigans. I studied them. They looked dry-cleaned, prim, soft and proper. So Madison. So not Mad. Cat would love this. I touched the sleeve of a creamy white sweater, imagining her in one of these and nothing else. I had to remind myself that a hard on right now probably wasn’t the best option. Both of us naked, alone, my heart begging me to carry her out of here—I glared at my prick.
When I turned around, she was dressed in a pair of lacey, baby blue boy shorts. “I hate them,” she whispered, trying to make them bigger by pulling at her waist.
“Take them off. I brought you a bag packed with your things.”
She looked on the edge of tears again, ripping at her panties until they tore. With frustrated tears, she yanked them off. “What the hell are these?” She reached into her drawer and yanked out a tiny black thong, holding them up for me to judge, a mashup of Madison and her alter ego.
I grabbed them from her and tossed them in her drawer. Then I began searching for something comfortable. I found a pair of gray and pink pajama bottoms with the word peace on her right thigh in white lettering. “Put these on.” As she did so, I located what looked like an old P.E. shirt with her high school logo on it. If her bras were anything like her panties, I sensed a freak out coming. I left her there, knowing she’d follow, as I did my best to clean the puke from my jeans. I put my black briefs back on—those were puke free—and my jeans, but my shirt was ruined.
I came out with it in my hand to find her leaning against her door.
“We’re not leaving this room.”
I didn’t want to push her. She was on the edge already. Plus, I’d done enough. I brought her to a place that made her unstable, wild, a loose cannon. “I need a shirt.”
“Wear one of mine.”
“I don’t think they make cardigans in my size.”
“Then don’t wear a shirt.” She looked at my body. “I like you without a shirt. I’ve always liked you without a shirt; I just didn’t like the way it made me feel. Sex reminded me of being …” Her bravery stopped there. She looked down, trembling as she blocked my path. “I don’t like being here.” She raised her head, her pain showing so darkly it mirrored my own. “I want to go home with you. I’ll go to therapy. I’ll try not to puke so much. I’ll try, Klay.”
I begged my tears not to fall, but they did what they wanted. Lately, that’s how my body had been. Whatever it wanted it did.
“Is the man who took you close to my place?” She trembled harder. “If you go back home you’ll never leave the house. You’ll get worse. Every man who comes into the shop will send you upstairs. You deserve so much more than that.” I approached her. “You deserve to smile again. To wear those sexy panties and know you look beautiful in them. To laugh and sleep, to be better.” I held her tear-soaked face. “I’m not the key to that. I’m a diversion. You won’t get better around me. You have to get better on your own. For you, not because it’ll get you me.”
I felt the fight leave her body the moment she leaned her forehead against my chest. “I don’t want to go back into the room I was attacked in. I don’t want to, Klay.”
“I know. But maybe you have to. Maybe to get out of that room, you have to go back inside of it.” And then, because there was no way I’d let her do that alone, I broke. “I’ll go back in with you.” I knew it contradicted everything I’d said, but I’d never escaped hell and then had to go back inside to win. “We’ll go back into the room you were raped in together, and we’ll come out together. You and me, okay, Mad?” I stared into her broken eyes. “That’s how it’s been since you came into my life, and that’s how it’s always going to be.” Until you realize you want so much more than anything I can give you.
She wrapped her arms around me, whispering into my chest. “I love you.”
I stared at the back of her door, feeling an emotional stampede slam into me. Shock, longing, aggravation, fear … want. Other than Cat, Madison was the only other woman to say that to me. There had been a few after sex, but that was emptiness after a good roll in the sack. That wasn’t the same thing. Maybe Mad didn’t mean she was in love with me, maybe it was the same kind of love Cat felt; friendship. Which was infinitely worse. Despite common sense, I wanted her to mean it.
Even if I lost her later.
Chapter Fourteen
Madison
The only thing holding me together was Klayton.
If he moved an inch, pieces of me shattered.
If I thought of him leaving, I cracked.
He’d been the constant in my life since I escaped. Nothing would make me give him up. Nothing.
But I was still pissed and betrayed. I didn’t want to be in my old room, my bathroom, wearing my old clothes. With my perfect parent’s downstairs, between those perfect walls—not when I was so fraught with inadequacies. And maybe on some level, I didn’t want to go backward. I had to consider that Klay might be right. Maybe taking parts of the old me and mixing them with Mad could make a new person who didn’t exist on dirty, bloody sheets and whose parents didn’t have artificial expectations.
“I need a shirt,” he said.
He didn’t get it. What for? We weren’t leaving that room. His naked body wasn’t an affront to me, at least not anymore. We would build a life in my bedroom. In those four walls. With only us, because Klayton was something I never had before. A permanent part of me. Maybe my perception was altered, but so was my past, and nothing I did would change what I saw unless Klayton saw it too.
“Maybe I have something that can fit you.” I grabbed his belt loop and pulled him after me to my closet. I went to the bo
ttom of my drawers and sifted through old items, locating one of my dad’s old baseball shirts. It was gray and green. So entirely not Klay. I handed it to him, watching him examine it with disdain. “Put it on,” I ordered. That I was no longer at Klay’s place wasn’t computing even though the teal walls were proof we were no longer there.
“Is that any way to talk to your daddy?” he attempted to tease.
I leaned forward and kissed his bare chest above his tattoos, looking up at him from under my lashes. “I’m sorry. Would you like me to cut a few holes in it, maybe put some bobby pins where the nipples are? Make it cool?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. His gaze hardened with mirth and something heated. “You have no idea what’s cool. What’s the point?” He stepped away to put the shirt on. His hair was damp and uncombed. He’d shaved. With his tattoos mostly hidden he looked clean-cut. I didn’t like it. I knew what he was doing. Falling for the perfect trap.
I grabbed his sleeves and rolled them up. “Don’t hide yourself.” I rolled up the other. “I like your tattoos. Don’t worry if they don’t.”
“What’s your problem with your parents? They seem to love you. My parents didn’t give two shits about me. They wouldn’t even recognize me if I went missing, let alone look for me.”
My tongue hurt where the piercing was, but I bit down anyway. “I would look for you.”
“Tell me what’s wrong. Those two people down there don’t care that you’re not perfect. They only want their daughter.” He pointed down like he knew my parents were staring up at us through the floorboards.
“My father made me study that night.” The air left my lungs. “I told him I didn’t want to. I was too upset. It was too dark. But he told me that no daughter of his would fail over a broken heart. ‘It doesn’t even matter, Madison. You wouldn’t have lasted anyway. I didn’t send you to college to horse around with some boy.’ It was his fault I got taken.”
He stared at me, swallowing hard. “What do you mean, a broken heart?”
“Leigh and I broke up that night. I wasn’t perfect enough for him either. ‘I need someone who’s going the same places I am, Madison. You’re not even trying. You haven’t lost weight. You’re not studying enough. We’re not working out.’ But finals were coming, and Dad pressured me into studying. His obsession with perfection hurt me, after it had given me headaches my entire life, it hurt me in the worst way. I don’t understand this anymore.” I waved a hand around my room, around the clean, pristine room I’d grown up in. “I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be like you. Confident, self-aware—you don’t mind not being a part of society’s bullshit.” My chest rose and fell under the weight of my sudden rage.
“I get it now. I understand why you don’t want to be here. But this is your home. Maybe that’s one more thing you have to deal with. Together,” he added gruffly, eyes soft and hard all at once. Something I said upset him, but I didn’t know which part; he wasn’t upset with me. “That douchebag broke up with you because of your weight? What did he want, for you to be skin and bones? What a fucker. And he has the audacity to miss you on Facebook? It’s not your father’s fault, baby. It’s his.” The rage swirling around him mirrored mine. “Size three my ass. We’re getting you into at least a six. We’ll start from there. I knew he was a douche ass dickhead.”
“Facebook?”
“Never mind Facebook.” He left my closet, pacing my room in his boots. I kind of liked the look of him in my room. It was so girly, and he was so manly. The tattoos and my teal bedding didn’t mix. Didn’t make any more sense than I did.
I guessed it shouldn’t surprise me. He’d known my address; my Facebook page probably wasn’t that hard to find either. There was a brief flash of concern inside of me because I’d been angry before, but never like this. Why was I so mad? Was it because being perfect had been a pressure since birth, or was it because I knew I’d never be again?
And I was okay with that.
“We have to go downstairs.”
I shook my head.
“Madison,” he said patiently. “Your parents have gone without you for months. They want you. We have to go downstairs.”
I walked around him and settled on my bed.
“Let’s go.” He unlocked my door and left. I heard his footsteps in the hall, and then down the stairs, and then nothing.
Sitting in my room alone in the quiet, among the remnants of the old me, had me running to catch up. I flew around the corner, down the stairs, and into his arms where he waited at the bottom.
“Shh,” he whispered. “Breathe, Mad.”
“I can’t.” My living room. The hallway. The kitchen …
Mom and Dad were in the kitchen on the phone. When I came in, Dad quickly mumbled a goodbye and hung up. My legs knocked together. My entire body felt like it would float away at any moment. I wanted it to. The only thing keeping me grounded was Klay’s hand on my lower back.
Here I am, I thought miserably. Your broken, imperfect daughter.
Tears brimmed in my father’s eyes. That shocked me. My dad never cried. Mom was barely able to stand. But beautiful. She was always beautiful, always put together. And today was no exception, except her eyes. They were empty brown. No energy. My mother was always fraught with energy.
Mom moved first. “Can I hug you, baby?”
Klayton gave me a shove in her direction.
Truthfully, I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around her and smell her familiar perfume and feel her love. But the moment felt surreal. I’d yearned for it when I’d tried to scream. To be home with my family. But the instant I was free they were no longer an option. Because of this moment right here. The moment I hugged her, I’d have to face every single horror I’d endured. When they realized their daughter was gone, so would the part of me he took.
In her arms, my knees buckled. She wasn’t Klayton. She couldn’t support my weight or fall with me. I fought the desire to bolt with all my heart, and let myself sob with my mother. I heard her grunt under the pressure of my hold, but I didn’t let go. The sound of her crying was as heavy as my own. It was all real suddenly. I’d been abducted. Held captive … raped. I wasn’t ready to go back into that room, but I was willing to admit that I’d been taken.
“She won’t want you to touch her,” Klayton warned.
“You touch her,” my father argued.
“Yeah, well, I earned it.”
“Madi,” my father begged from too close behind me.
I froze in my mother’s arms.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s only your daddy. He’s missed you so much. He won’t hurt you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut when my father’s arms came around me from behind. The terror was insurmountable. It’s Dad, I told myself. He wears fanny packs. How dangerous could he be? I relaxed as best I could in the middle of a Hart breakdown. My father and mother sobbed against me for so long I had stopped crying. I didn’t move—they’d fracture. We held each other together. Before today in my family, weaknesses weren’t allowed to show. Tape them, cover them—hide them at all costs.
I didn’t realize my mistake until it was too late.
I turned around to find Klay missing. I ran into the hall and into the living room, finding it empty. In the doorway, there was my backpack stuffed full of my things. I wrenched my front door open.
“No!” my father yelled, slamming it shut. “Don’t go outside. Not yet. The reporters barely took off. If we alert them to your appearance, we’ll have a media storm again. You don’t want that. Come inside.”
Klayton’s truck was gone.
Klayton was gone.
Cold moved over me. Numbness. He left me. Together, he had promised. But Klayton lied.
“Let’s go sit. We need to talk.” Dad took advantage of my heartbreak and moved me into the kitchen and to the table.
There was a warm mug of peppermint tea in front of me; the mint swirled around in a cloud of sweet-smelling steam. I guessed th
at was it. He was done with me. All he’d wanted was to drop me off so someone else would deal with my issues. I didn’t blame him, but my heart had never felt so in shock before. Please don’t cry anymore. Too many tears shed today had left me unbearably empty.
Mom’s tea cup shook as she brought it to her lips. Peppermint tea was her go-to remedy for everything. “Where’s Georgy?” I asked.
“He’s with Lisa and her kids. He needed to get away. He, uh, didn’t take it well when we got the news. He didn’t understand that you didn’t leave. You were kidnapped. The reporters all over the house, and the bullies at school.” Dad hung his head in pain. “I’ll get both my children back.”
I blinked my tears away. Oh, my Georgy. Mom’s sister Lisa had four boys close in age, but Georgy had trouble getting along with most kids his age.
“What happened?” Mom looked into my eyes pointblank; her breath steeled as she waited for me to unleash my horrors.
I shook my head too fast. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Have you gone to the doctor?”
Klayton.
“No.”
“Let’s leave her be,” Dad said. “She’s home. She’s obviously been well taken care of by her friend. If anything was wrong, he would have done something about it.” They shared a look that I didn’t understand. “She’s well. Aren’t you, Madison?”
“What’s wrong?” I didn’t like that look.
“You were …” He cringed. “Taken advantage of. Your mother thinks we should make sure you’re okay, that’s all.”
My stomach rolled. I thought better of drinking my tea. I dug my nails into the wooden table top, ignoring my shaking fingers. I remembered the sound of ripping plastic every single time he came for me. “Okay.”
“We’ll have a doctor come over, so we don’t have to leave. But I do have to tell the detective that’s leading your case that you’re home. He’ll want to talk to you. His name is Brando. He’s a nice man, and he’s been looking for you since the night you went missing.”
Mad Love (Guns & Ink Book 1) Page 20