“But I have my…” I look to my Audi. To my keys.
Then I understand his words. This car was never mine. It was never in my name. It’s just another status symbol, another way to keep me indebted to my family.
Shaking my head, I drop the keys to the ground and move down the long driveway. “I’d rather walk.”
Bryan
Baby, It’s Cold Outside
The gate buzzer sounds and draws me out of my daze as I lay back watching TV in the dark, the sounds of rain against my roof lulling me into a type of coma.
Maddi was going home to get fresh clothes, probably to go a round with her parents because they’re fuckwits, then she was coming back here to spend the night with me.
Exactly where she belongs.
Since I’m expecting her, I merely walk to the control panel at my front door, and hit the release so the gates open. Opening the door and expecting to see her headlights as she rolls through the gates, I frown when there are none.
I step onto the porch with searching eyes, only for my stomach to drop when I find her standing at the end of the driveway, in the rain, with her arms pulled low from the weight of two suitcases, and her hair drooping and sticking to her neck. My hat sits on her head, it shelters her eyes from the rain, but the rest of her is soaked to the bone.
“Maddi?” I dart down my porch steps in nothing but sweatpants. No shoes, no shirt, no hat. I sprint along my long road until I catch her at the gates.
Her lips are almost blue from the cold. They tremble, and her eyes swim with tears and rainwater.
“Baby? What the hell happened?” I take her bags, set them on the ground, and pull her into my arms. She’s freezing, and sends goosebumps racing to my toes when she presses her nose to my warm chest. “You’re so cold.”
“I don’t feel it anymore,” she murmurs. Her voice cracks, and her teeth chatter. “I went numb.”
“Come inside. Fuck.” I grab her bags in one hand, and throw my free arm over her shoulder to try to lend her a little of my warmth, then I lead her toward my front door and curse the fact I left it wide open.
She needs a warm house, not a door left open in the winter.
Most of the other houses that surround us are tucked away for the night. My uncles and aunts, my cousins, my sisters and my parents. Everyone but Evie and Ben, no doubt, are asleep by now.
I lead Maddi along the narrow street and up my porch steps, then through my front door. I drop her bags in the middle of the room, and lead her straight up the stairs. Along the hall, into my bedroom, then into my bathroom.
I flip the shower on at full heat, and come back to Maddi to strip her soaked clothes off. I set the hat on the counter, pull her sweater up over her head and take care not to pull her hair or earrings.
She’s changed her outfit since I last saw her, but her makeup remains… sort of. It runs now, from the rain. From tears.
I drop to my knees and begin unlacing her shoes. Then I unbutton her jeans and use all my strength to drag them down her legs. Wet denim is like fighting a fucking alligator, but I drag them down and internally curse her frozen skin. I push her back to sit on the closed toilet, tug her shoes off. I toss the denim and her panties into a pile, then I pull her back up to stand and lead her to the shower.
I fix the temperature, and as soon as it’s warm – not even hot, because it’ll feel like razor blades on her cold skin – I gently push her in, and stay out only long enough to drop my sweats and kick them aside.
I follow her in and plaster my chest to her back, and as time passes and we stand under the warm water, I increase the heat until the room fills with steam.
“Maddi?” I press a kiss to the back of her neck. Then add more, gentle, nipping kisses. “Baby? What the fuck happened?”
“Can I stay here?”
She bursts into howling sobs when my kisses stop.
Turning, she buries her face against my chest and cries. “Can I stay a couple nights until I can find someplace else to go?”
“You can stay forever.” I draw her face up and swallow her sobs when I press my lips to hers. “Forever and ever. You’re mine now, okay?”
“Okay.” She lowers her face and chokes on her tears.
“Forever.” I hold her close, wrap my arms around her trembling body. “When a Kincaid knows, he knows.”
“Okay.”
She doesn’t believe me.
“Unconditionally.”
Maddi
Unraveling
I do my very best to hold myself together all day Sunday.
It’s the day after Ben and Evie’s wedding, and despite the fact they said they weren’t honeymooning anywhere – at least not until after the tournament – they still deserve at least twenty-four hours of blissful ignorance.
But the truth sits heavily in my stomach. It’s like a growing, pulsing tumor that won’t go away until I voice it out loud.
Being with Bryan today has been calming. He doesn’t demand answers, but he likes to feed me. It’s his thing, I guess. When he’s unsure how to fix something, he makes food.
Pancakes for breakfast. Biscuits with jam and whipped cream for ‘second breakfast’. Fresh-made lasagna for lunch, and candy and a movie for second lunch.
His niece comes over in the middle of the afternoon, brings her dog, and she simply climbs onto the couch between us and settles in for a movie.
She’s the sweetest kid I’ve ever met.
Bry chatters with her for hours, but he doesn’t make me feel left out. He holds my hand, plays with my fingers, and each time that pulsing tumor wreaks havoc with my anxiety, he stretches my fingers out, and forces me to tell us both that I love him.
It’s such a discreet system. It’s silent, and can be done by feel. We don’t have to see, we don’t have to hear. We just have to be holding hands to express our feelings.
And damn him for being so sweet when I have such a massive secret to tell.
Alyssa writes a book while we watch a movie. She says it’s about me, but I’m not allowed to read until she’s done. Which is fine, and so effing sweet that I barely stop myself from weeping.
Or maybe the weeping is because of the dismissal in my family’s eyes, which continue to flash through my mind.
I was disposed of. Just like that. So fucking easily, like I was a bad business investment and not made of their flesh and blood.
But now it’s dinnertime, and Ben and Evie have deemed their alone time over.
“Turdsky?”
Bry sits beside me at the table while his family talks over each other to be heard. We eat all sorts of things – pizzas, pastas, salad. There’s fried chicken in a baking dish right in front of Alyssa, as well as a tall glass of something that fizzes while her dad and soon-to-be stepmom giggle between themselves.
I wish my stepmom was more like Lyss’. I wish my stepmom loved me enough to treat me as hers, to hug me when I was sad, to kiss me at night, and hold me in her lap when I needed human contact.
Instead, my stepmother is only two years older than me. And that has made me sick from the moment she was brought home and introduced to me as my new mother.
There was no, ‘Hey, Maddi. This is Daddy’s new friend. Would you like to spend some time getting to know her?’ It was literally, ‘This is your mom now. Don’t bring up your late mother anymore.’