“Sounds fantastic,” I murmured.
“No.” She shook her head passionately. “It’s sad. He looks so, so sad, but he says he’s mads. Mads with an s. He’s standing in the rain all, all, all alone. And he says he can’t dance anymore.”
Ice shot down my spine.
Chills erupted across my skin.
I might’ve stopped breathing.
“I try to show him because I know how to teach him, but he won’t. He keeps saying he can’t. And then,”—she lifted her arms out to the sides and shrugged—“that’s the end. So, did we come here to teach him how to dance?” An excited look stole across her face. “I love dancing in the rain. It’s my favorite because it’s your favorite. Maybe it’ll be his favorite too after we teach him, and then he won’t be sad-mads.”
It had been his favorite . . .
It had been our favorite.
And I had been his Mads.
I sucked in a painful gasp when my lungs finally remembered how to work, my head bobbing distractedly as I stood. “Yeah, maybe,” I breathed, turning a little so she couldn’t see the moisture gathering in my eyes. “Sweet dreams, Avalee. I love you.”
I hurried for the door and barely waited for her response before turning off the light and closing the door behind me.
I couldn’t handle the freakishly-real dreams she’d started having. I couldn’t handle this day or this week . . . this life I had somehow found myself in.
Leaning up against the hallway wall, I pressed my hands firmly to my mouth to muffle the sob threatening to escape.
My eyelids fluttered shut as I focused on my breathing, but all I saw was Hunter. All I heard was the shock and pain in his voice.
“I live here . . . Madison, I’ve been here.”
My eyes snapped open and I pushed from the wall. Tremors worked through my body as I headed downstairs, where my parents were in the living room.
Dad was sprawled across the couch, watching the news.
Momma was sitting on the opposite end of the sectional, reading a book. Or, at least, pretending to. Her stare was off to the side and she was worrying the collar of her shirt.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I began as I came to a stop near the coffee table.
My dad looked from the television to me, clearly not understanding what I was talking about. Not that he asked, and he wouldn’t. That’s just how he was—a man of very few words.
But he switched off the television and sat up, giving me his undivided attention.
“How long has he been here?” I asked, voice twisting with regret.
At that, my mom set down her book and brought a hand to her mouth, trying to hide the tremor there.
I didn’t meet my dad’s eye, but from the way he straightened and roughed a hand over his face, I knew he’d caught up.
“A long time,” my mom finally said, remorse weaving through her words. “Just after you and Raf married.”
My knees went weak so abruptly it was as if someone had knocked them out, but I managed to lock them before I could fall to the floor in a sobbing mess.
Falling to the floor . . . I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But my parents had always raised me to show my strengths and hold my weaknesses close so no one could use them against me.
Maybe that was why I hadn’t cried until I’d seen Hunter.
I’d been through enough emotionally and mentally recently to leave me a fragile mess. Yet, the tears hadn’t come. But to run into the one man I’d shared all my weaknesses with? To realize just how horrifically I’d messed up?
It stripped me of my strengths.
Left me bare and vulnerable in a way only Hunter could.
“Tell me,” I softly begged, jaw clenched tight to hide the waver there. “Tell me everything.”
A minute came and went before my mom said, “Mr. Dixon passed nearly ten years ago, very unexpectedly.” She looked to my dad, who dipped his head in confirmation after some thought.
“Right,” I mumbled when they didn’t continue.
I’d known that. I’d come home from my honeymoon to the news of his passing. It was probably the last thing my parents had told me about the Dixons.
Momma gave me a look as if I was missing her point. “That’s when Hunter came back, sweetheart. Alone. No longer engaged.”
I was trembling.
Silently crying.
My stare darted back and forth between my parents as grief sliced through me and questions gathered on my tongue.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked again, the words thick with regret and emotion.
My parents studied each other for a while before my mom looked at me. Her fingers moving to the neckline of her shirt again in a tell-tale, nervous gesture when she said, “We didn’t know how, sweetheart. We worried telling you would hurt you too much. Cause you to regret the decisions and vows you’d made.”
I nodded because I wasn’t sure I could say anything more. Because I was sure she was right . . .
Before we married, I’d known that I loved Rafael.
But an hour before I walked down the aisle, I’d broken down because he wasn’t the man I was supposed to spend my life with. Raf would never be the man my heart whispered for in a steady rhythm when we were apart and cried out for in wild abandon when we were together.
But I’d destroyed any chance of a future with Hunter, and he was moving on. I’d needed to do the same, and my heart would only let me move on with Raf.
If I’d known about Hunter all those years ago . . . well, who knows what I would’ve done. How I would’ve reacted. What I might’ve said . . .
Funny how life works. Plays its role and places us where we need to be so Karma can intervene at the right time.
Grabbing my wedding ring, I pulled it off my finger and let it fall unceremoniously to the floor.
The sound of the door closing jolted me.
Brought me back to the present when I’d been trapped in a fucked-up mixture of my life with Madison and the short conversation we’d had the day before.
Trying to see the girl I’d known in the woman who had been so entirely different. Trying to wrap my head around the fact that she was here, that she’d come back when I was in the Army and engaged to Piper.
I blinked slowly, my eyes feeling raw and tired, as I searched out the source of the steps I’d know anywhere. And then Isabel Estrada strode into the kitchen.
My Izzy.
“Animals are all still put up,” she said curiously. Head slanted, smile and eyes bright but assessing as she continued toward where I sat at the table.
Everything in me froze. Faltered. Restarted.
It might’ve been my heart, I wasn’t sure.
I couldn’t focus on much more than the way it felt like I was slowly falling. My body meeting with ice and fire in a way that wasn’t nearly painful enough.
Since the evening before, questions had bubbled to the surface before being shoved away by thoughts of Madison. Now, those questions were screaming.
What was I going to do?
What was I going to tell Izzy?
How was I supposed to get through this when I’d just realized I couldn’t lose her?
And Madison Black being back . . . that changed fucking everything.
My hands automatically went to Izzy’s hips when she sat on my lap, straddling me and weaving her hands through my hair so she could better study me.