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Her stitches were itching something terrible, she’d just started her period, plus one of the children fell on the playground today under her watch, which resulted in a very upset parent showing up at her classroom door before Principal Mitchell stepped in.
Yeah, today was not the day.
Dear M&M,
Is it okay that I address you like that, or should I go back to ‘Madison’? You kept mentioning our friendship, and it means a lot to me too. I’m just being myself and I would expect that you do the same. Keep me posted on the court date… and let me know if anything changes.
Is your hand alright? I don’t even care about the ring.
Your friend,
Eric
Madison didn’t hit reply yet.
She sat back in the chair and stared at his email, replaying it over and over again in her mind. His words were obviously how he was thinking, and she had been reading too much into all of this. He didn’t care that her ring had gotten damaged?
That hit hard – combined with the fact that he was asking if he should address her as Madison again.
Slamming her laptop shut, she refused to reply just yet. She wasn’t in a good frame of mind and didn’t want to take it out on anyone else, much less the person she was coming to care for… who obviously didn’t feel the same.
15
MORRISON
Eric nearly upsetthe table in a fit of rage as he read Madison’s long email explaining what had happened. When he got to the spot where she had been injured and the wedding ring that he gave her was destroyed, resulting in her having stitches… he was picturing it in his head, nearly coming unhinged.
He stood up quickly, not wanting to say what he was really thinking… nor did he want to put it on paper, for anyone to misunderstand.
Was he mad? Oh yeah – he was nearly blinded with his anger. His mind kept focusing on her being hurt, seeing her crying in his mind, seeing someone threatening his Madison and Max, both of them cowering in fear.
“Morrison?” someone asked as he slammed out of the computer room with Trigger hot on his heels behind him. “Hey man! You okay?”
He stormed across the base, knowing he was in a very unhealthy spot mentally, looking for an outlet. Not bothering to change out of his uniform, he walked into the ‘gym’ that was set up for the troops – and stormed towards the unused punching bag hanging in the corner.
As he got close, he threw his fist into the side of the bag, welcoming the reverberation up his arm. He heard a slow whistle of surprise as well as someone clapping behind him – and ignored it.
This wasn’t for their show.
Eric threw another punch into the bag, seeing the side of it buckle slightly with the impact, and relishing the dull thud. He slammed another fist into the bag… and another.
This was to exorcise any demons plaguing his mind right now and the helplessness that he felt, realizing she’d handled this all alone, possibly and quite unknowingly blaming him.
Why wouldn’t she blame him?
He thought they were getting closer, but she kept saying ‘friend’… and he didn’t want to be her friend. He wanted to build a relationship, to love her, hold her close, and see where this went, yet had ultimately left her there to suffer alone at the hands of her ex-husband.
Assault… she had said, punching the bag and picturing some faceless man.
Battery… he slammed his fist into the bag once more, grunting with the effort and starting to sweat as he put his everything into it.
Home invasion?He brutally pummeled the bag angrily.
“Hey Morrison? Hey man, you want some tape for your knuckles, or gloves?” someone said, and Eric didn’t bother to stop to see who it was. No, he was driven to get this feeling, this raw hostility, expelled from his system, and had never been so incredibly angry in his life.
This bag was her ex-husband.
The moment that he’d dared to lay hands on Eric’s wife, hurting her and destroying the precious ring he’d picked out for her? He had ultimately crossed a line. Any ounce of pity for the guy who was foolish enough to drive away Madison evaporated in that moment.
