My heart pounded from the lethal mixture of her reminder of the past, having her this close, and the desperate need to take care of her when she was crying.
To help bring her back when she disappeared inside herself.
Where’s all that glow, Mads?
I followed the tear that slipped free and into her hair before locking onto her eyes again. Voice lowering when I said, “If I hadn’t started dating Piper to get over you, I wouldn’t have asked her to marry me. If I hadn’t been engaged, you wouldn’t have left when you came back here. That’s what keeps going through my head. Add on the timing of that with your marriage?” I pressed a hand to my chest. “Do you know what that shit’s doing to me?”
Her head shook wildly, a muted sob breaking free. “Everything has mattered,” she ground out, chin trembling. “Hurting you mattered. Leaving mattered.” She inhaled shakily and suddenly lowered herself to the truck bed. Hiding her face with her hands for long moments before revealing all that beauty that had been gone from my life for too damn long. “I came back when Rafael asked me to marry him. Is that what you wanted to know?”
Yes.
Yes, and at the same damn time . . . no.
Because that meant she’d been there. She’d made a decision when life offered her two paths . . . and I’d unknowingly blocked the path she chose.
That future I’d wanted. The life I’d been so sure I was supposed to have. It could’ve been mine if I would’ve just fucking waited for her.
“I think some of these questions are a bad idea,” she murmured, her chest trembling with her uneven breaths. “Look what they’re doing. The what-ifs and unnecessary pain they’re bringing up. We made our choices, Hunter. There’s no changing the past thirteen years.”
From the way her voice hitched and twisted around the words, I knew she wished we could. And it had me straining not to demand to know why.
Why she’d left.
Why she’d destroyed us.
Because as much as I was beating myself up for Kansas and Piper and not being here . . . I couldn’t forget that Madison had given me every reason to believe she wouldn’t come back. That I shouldn’t wait for her. Still, she’d returned once.
And she was back again.
Madison was in Amber to find strength and peace. She was there to heal from her failing marriage, I knew that. That didn’t mean a goddamn thing to my heart. Nothing ever had when it’d come to that girl.
For thirteen years, I’d been sure I would never see her again. For twelve of those years, I’d still known she was it for me. When I’d started falling for Izzy, I’d fought my feelings because of the girl in front of me.
So, yeah. Madison had come back because she’d been hurt. She wasn’t mine and probably never would be again. But that part of me that belonged to her would never understand or accept that. And it left me wholly torn in a way that made me want to rip my heart from my chest and leave it lying in a mangled heap at her and Izzy’s feet.
“Why did you leave, Madison?” Before she could respond, I continued. “If you’d decided you wanted to go to another school? Yeah, I would’ve been waiting for you at the end of it. I would’ve waited anywhere for you, but you destroyed me and cut off every one of your friends back here for good. I mean, fuck, I thought—”
I pushed away and shakily moved back to the corner of the truck as she did the same, her movements slower. Careful, almost.
I tossed off my baseball cap and dragged my hands through my hair again and again. Sucking in deep breaths as the pain from the past rose so damn easily.
“I had to go,” she said softly after a minute passed in weighted silence.
A huff tumbled from me. Hushed and lacking any kind of amusement. After another few moments, my stare drifted to her.
Brows pulled tight as she watched me. Hands wringing and revealing her worry.
“Big city. Fashion.” My head dipped as I pointedly looked at the outfit she was wearing. Looking like she was ready for a photoshoot even though I’d bet those were her comfiest clothes. “Yeah, all right. You found a city and sure as hell came back looking different. But none of what you said ever made sense. None of it was you. You avoided big cities for any reason. Every dream you had, I knew about. I knew you.”
She sucked in a breath to speak only to release it. Her head slanted a little before she looked away. After a while, she murmured, “I had to go.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that,” she said simply, shocking me so completely that I just sat there for a while, studying her moonlit profile and trying to figure out what could’ve made her go.
Because it sure as hell wasn’t the bullshit excuse she’d given me when she left.
“So, what, you want me to accept that and let it go? Because the real reason you left is the only answer I’ve wanted for thirteen years.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathed, the words coming out strangled as her gaze shifted back to me. “That’s all I can say. I’m sorry, Hunter.”
I nodded absentmindedly before admitting, “I thought it might’ve been your parents because it just didn’t make sense. We’d been fine. We’d been perfect.” When I continued, my voice was softer and twisted with old pains. “I went over every day, every conversation, and every look. I was sure your parents had something to do with it, but I’d thought . . . I’d thought you were pregnant.”
Heavy silence filled the space between us, making my stomach clench with unease.
“Thought maybe your parents had lost it and made you leave so no one would know. Forced you to break up with me.”
I roughed a palm across my jaw as I remembered those months and those flights out to see her. Draining my savings in an attempt to get her back. To find out what the hell had happened—what was going on. Coming home a little more broken until I shattered.
“And that thought only solidified every time I went to see you. Because it was just you and them in a hotel in Seattle. And if you were leaving—if you needed room to breathe—why did they go with you? Why were they with you the entire summer?” My head shook slowly. “Then that last time happened—what you said. The way you said it like you’d been trying to let me down easy all the other times.”
A grieving noise rose in her throat as she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
“That’s when I thought maybe you really had just left.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered after a while, voice all kinds of subdued. “My parents . . . it was nothing like you thought.” She gestured to me before folding her arm around her legs again. “I told them I was leaving for Seattle the night before I told you—that I was going to the University of Washington instead of A&M. They were just as shocked and completely worried.”
My brows drew tight as I absorbed this new information. As I listened to every word like it just might be the key I’d been waiting for.
“But the next morning, they said they would come with me to check out the campus and explore the city.” Her shoulders lifted briefly. “They just wanted to spend time with me since I wouldn’t be a couple hours away in the fall. And I actually just found out this evening that my momma thought I left because of something that happened with you.” Her face creased with sympathy. “So, I’m sorry if she’s ever said or done anything.”