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“Maddie. I’m so sorry. It was just all so fucked up and we thought we were doing the right thing keeping you out of it. I want to explain, but it’s not just my story to tell,” he sighed. “We thought we were doing what was right for you. You were happy there and you had a decent home. I know it wasn’t the best, but you were safe. We couldn’t offer you that back then.”
“A decent home? Safe?” I scoffed through my tears, my rage once again parked by his words. “You have no idea, Hunter! I was in Hell there and the only thing that kept me going was the four of you. Then you left me! You left me in Hell, all alone withhim!” My last words came out in a squeak as I pushed through my emotions.
“What?” Hunter leaned forward and looked at me with a hard stare. “What the fuck are you talking about? You told us you were okay there. You told us Clive and Julie were taking care of you. We knew they didn’t feed you enough, but we figured they were safe at least.”
“Just fuck off, Hunter!” I snapped as I tried hard to halt any more tears from falling. I couldn’t allow him to see me so weak. I needed to stopbeingso damned weak.
“No! Tell me, Maddie. Was that fucker hurting you?” he growled.
“It’s none of your business!”
“Still so fucking stubborn!” he hissed as he ran his hand through his messy hair again. He took a deep breath and then looked to me, his face filled with a mixture of sadness and annoyance that I hadn’t just given in to him. “I’m so sorry that we left you. We really did think we were doing what was best for you. We had no money, no place to go and no way to take care of you. We thought we were leaving you in a safe home,” he explained sadly, sounding exhausted.
I looked over to him and saw the genuineness in what he was telling me. I wasn’t too proud to admit it settled a part inside of me that had been devastated for so many years. It was everything to believe they hadn’t just abandoned me. That I had actually meant something to them after all. But that didn’t fix what they had done.
“You knew me better than that,” I told him. “I didn’t need anything except the four of you. You were all I had.”
“We messed up, Maddie. It was crazy and we were freaking out. We just ran. We realized pretty soon after that we’d made a mistake, but by then it was too late.”
“Too late? You couldn’t have called me? You couldn’t write me a damned letter?” I barked, annoyed by his weak argument.
“It’s complicated. I want to tell you everything but the others should be here. It’s their story too.” He took another deep breath and inched even closer to my bedside. “ We searched for you. We’ve been looking for you for the last few years, but we couldn’t find you,” he continued.
“I changed my name,” I told him, taking a little pity on him. He looked like he was close to breaking, and as mad as I was, I still cared about him. . “When I turned eighteen I got my CPS file and it had my dad’s name listed. I changed my last name to his in the hopes of a new start. That worked out really well for me,” I sighed as I glanced to my daughter.
“You called her Willow?” he asked. I looked to him, surprised and he smiled a little, “Nico told me.”
“I missed you all so much. I just wanted a little piece of what we had,” I shrugged, knowing I should be stronger and tougher with him, but I just didn’t have the strength.
“We missed you too.” He reached out and covered my hand with his much larger one. “I want you and Willow to come home with me, Maddie. The guys and I, we have a place in New Jersey. Cam and Ev’s grandfather finally did the right thing and left them everything when he croaked. He left us his business,Servo, and his mansion. We live there together and we have a ton of space for you guys. We can protect you both and we can get to know each other again,” he told me.
“You can’t do that, Hunter. You don’t even know me,” I sighed.
“Yes we do. We’ve always known you, Maddie. You belong with us. Please, let us make amends for our mistake. We want you and your beautiful daughter in our lives, where you belong.”
“What about the others?”
“I called them. They were so fucking happy I found you. They want this too, Maddie. We need you,” he pleaded as he gave my hand a squeeze. “We…we joined the army when we split, all of us. Turned out we were pretty good at it too. We did three tours, but on the last one…well, things went bad. Everett….he didn’t come back, Maddie. He’s fucking gone and Cam…he’s a mess. Fuck, we’re all a mess without Ev. We need this. We need you. Please.”
“Oh God!” I gasped. Tears ran down my cheeks as I realized what he had just told me. Everett was gone. My Everett. One of my twins. “Poor Cameron,” I whimpered as I tried to imagine him without his brother, who had always been at his side.
“It’s been three years and he still barely comes out of his damned room. It broke him. He’s lost without Ev. We all are.”
“How did life get so fucked up, Hunter?” I squeaked through my tight throat.
“I don’t know, but I think it’s time we found a way to unfuck it, don’t you?”
“I think it’s too late for that.”
“No, it’s not. We’re here. We can change things now,” he told me, and more than anything I wanted to believe him. But that was the problem. I had believed him before – believed all of them, when they told me things would be okay. I had believed in the hope for a future they had promised me, only to have it all fall down around me and crush me to dust when they left. I couldn’t let that happen again.
“No.” I sat up and took a deep breath, looking right at him. “It’s too late to go back. I’m not going with you, Hunter. You should just leave. Nico already offered to help me and I actually trust him to keep his word.”
“You can trust me, Maddie.”
“No I can’t! I will never trust any of you again. You left me!” I raged, then froze and looked to Willow when she whimpered a little in her sleep. I moved to try and go to her, but Hunter was already beside her, running a soothing hand up her back and whispering sweet words to her until she sighed and settled once again.
“Think about her. She’s not safe here right now,” he said as he turned and came closer to me again. “Your husband is likely to look for you, according to Nico. How long before he gets to you and to Willow? Do you really want to risk that? Are you going to put her through his anger and violence again, just because you’re pissed with us?”
