I, however, need a couple more minutes to deliberate. “Can we think about it?”
The disappointment that darts through Maddox’s eyes cut me like a knife. Thankfully, the gratitude I feel when Agent Brahn dips his chin makes the wound not as painful.
“I have a dozen matters to sort out before I can consider what our next step should be.” Agent Brahn bounces his eyes between Maddox and me. For a tall man with wide shoulders, a shiny head, and an immorally corrupt smirk, his eyes reflect nothing but kindness. “Take the time. Use it wisely.” He drops his eyes to Maddox’s pocket that is vibrating like crazy. “And stay off that. Agent Machini moved your bike so we’d have a cover story if needed. If you alter her plan of attack, the first chip in the stack will commence wobbling. It only takes one wobble to spill an entire stack.”
“I understand,” Maddox says while pulling his cell phone out of his pocket to silence it. I can’t see the screen of his phone, but I’m confident it is one of his brothers calling him. Unlike my family, they stick together through thick and thin.
After a final cautious grin, Agent Brahn exits my room, shutting the door behind him. I have every intention to use the time wisely as suggested, but it seems as if Maddox has other ideas. He requests for me to lay down before he toes off his nicked-up shoes, dumps them under the chair next to my bed, then asks me to scoot over.
The pain scuttling through my veins doubles when he joins me on my bed. He isn’t hogging the mattress like he usually does. His eyes are responsible for the constrictive hold on my heart. The fluorescent tube lighting above our heads had me mistaking how green they are. Nearly all the blue is gone, leaving nothing but green flecks of torment, love, and heartbrokenness—three starkly contradicting emotions for one immensely intense pair of eyes.
“Maddox—”
“Not yet.” He floats his eyes ever so slowly across my cheeks and down my nose until he stops at my lips. “I need more than a few minutes to drink in every perfect piece.”
I nuzzle into the hand he uses to trace the scar on my right cheek, then I breathe heavily into his palm when he treks his thumb across my lips. “Tell me I’m not dreaming. That I didn’t get into a wreck on my race back to the hospital.”
Even with my confusion at a pinnacle, I reply, “You’re not dreaming.”
I was unaware he had left the hospital. I hated waking up alone and confused as to what had happened, but I assumed Maddox was close by. That he needed a minute to wrap his head around the fact we were going to be parents before our child was cruelly stripped away from us—kind of how Kaylee was from my parents.
I try to keep the focus on the future instead of the past, but that is hard to do when selfishness isn’t naturally ingrained like it is with my uncle. “He said he killed my sister.”
Maddox appears lost about the swift change in our conversation, but he catches on remarkedly quick. It doesn’t take a genius to unearth who is responsible for the furious heat burning me alive from the inside out. I’ve never disliked a single person I’ve met because the hate I have for my uncle leaves no room for anyone else.
“I think I was three or four at the time. Kaylee was young.” While trudging through the mess of an anesthetic hazed brain, I seek one of the tiny freckles dotted across Maddox’s chest. If my memories aren’t leading me astray, I did the same thing anytime my brain sorted answers to questions a child should never need to ask. “I think she was around two… if that. Her hair was lighter than mine.” I smile when a memory I hid many years ago pushes through the fog clouding me. “Dad said that was because her halo was still above her head. I had supposedlyripped mine off years earlier with the tenacity of a bull shark.”
Although the vibration trembling in Maddox’s chest exposes he found my comment as humorous as I did, he keeps his chuckles on the down-low. There’s too much guilt in my voice for him to portray happiness.
“I can’t believe I forgot her.”
Maddox tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear before raising my chin so we’re eye to eye. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You said you were three or four. I struggle remembering what happened last week.”
He has a point, but that’s only because all the evidence hasn’t been presented just yet. “I asked about Kaylee when I was seven. Dad kept a baby seat in the back of his truck for years, then one day it was gone.” When I shake my head, incapable of conveying my shock that my father kept something so vital from me, a rogue tear falls down my cheek. It doesn’t fill me with shame like it usually would. I’m too horrified that I am mourning the loss of my sister many years after her death to feel something as worthless as embarrassment. “Why did he keep her a secret from me? Why did he act like she never existed?”
“I don’t know,” Maddox answers, genuinely stumped for a better reply. “But from what you’ve shared about your father, he did it for a reason, Demi. To protect you. To keepyousafe. He didn’t do it to hurt you. You have to believe that.”
The words he is speaking are true. My daddy loved me like no man ever had before Maddox, but it still hurts knowing he took a critical part of my life and made out as if she wasn’t important. I had a sister, someone I could have looked out for and protected like Maddox does his siblings, yet I completely forgot about her until my own life precariously floated in the wind.
That makes me a terrible person.
It makes me unworthy of love.
“No, Demi,” Maddox says sternly when I attempt to pull back. “You promised that you wouldn’t run when you get scared.”
“I’m not scared. I am…” My words trail off when I fail to find a reason for my stupid, unhinged behavior.
“Angry?” Maddox asks as his massively dilated eyes bounce between mine. “Mad? Wishing like fuck you could treat your uncle as poorly as he’s treated you?”
“Yes!” I shout on a sob. “I hate him. Who he is. Who he made me be. What he made you do.” Tears trickle down my cheeks when I stammer out, “A-And our b-baby. Despite him claiming otherwise, he can’t perform miracles, but I can’t help but blame him for that too. If he hadn’t made us so stressed, maybe I would still be pregnant.”
My heart pains when Maddox remains quiet while removing the salty blobs from my face. He did the same thing when I cried in his arms for the first time because he’d rather remain quiet than lie.
I swore back then I’d never let my uncle get the best of me again.
I didn’t even last two damn months.
“I’m sorry. I am being ridiculous. It must be the hormones.”
