Fire

by McAdams, Molly

  My world, my world, my world.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  I’m so fucking sorry.

  I stared at the house I’d grown up in as rain fell relentlessly around me. Wondering how long it had been since I’d stood in front of it.

  Almost exactly ten years? Would’ve been longer if the people inside hadn’t destroyed my life. Taken everything I loved and ripped it away from me without a goddamn care in the world. Just to go on with their lives as if nothing had happened, if all the cars parked in front of the house were any indication.

  I made my way across the rest of the drive and up the porch steps. My breaths coming a little rougher with each step. My fingers curling into fists and relaxing over and over again. My blood racing and heart pumping this unforgiving beat the closer I came to the door . . . just as it opened.

  Leaving only the glass storm door between Hunter and me.

  But not just Hunter.

  He was holding the hand of Madison’s little girl and pushing her behind him. Hiding her. And at his other side was Madison.

  Fucking Madison. The reason behind all my anguish.

  Looking like a little family when they’d stolen mine.

  I reached for the storm door, and Madison reacted. Staggering back and grabbing the girl from Hunter before rushing her away—in the direction of my other brothers and their girlfriends.

  “Beau.”

  “Fifteen days,” I said in a cold, grave tone as my attention dragged back to Hunter. “I haven’t seen my wife or my kids in fifteen days because of you.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to be all placating and shit. “I’m sorry. But whatever you’re about to do isn’t gonna change that. You know that better than anyone.”

  “Fix it,” I ground out.

  “Beau—”

  “Fucking fix it,” I snapped just as Madison returned alone. Slipping up to Hunter’s side and glaring at me like she would refuse to back down even though she was trembling. Even though Hunter was trying to push her back the same way he’d done to her daughter.

  But she stood her ground and grabbed Hunter’s arm. Whether to help keep her stance or silently tell him she wasn’t leaving, I wasn’t sure.

  It didn’t matter.

  Just seeing them together had an all-too-familiar red haze threatening to slip over my vision as everything I’d just lost mixed with her words from so long ago.

  “You don’t understand what you’ll be doing to all of us!” Madison had cried out. “Risking your relationship by not telling Savannah? Beau, all of our relationships are going to be ruined when you do.”

  “Ruin everyone?” I ground out, throwing her words back at her as my head moved in rough shakes. “Just Savannah. Just me.”

  “Beau, I’m sorry,” Madison whispered, trying to sound sincere when everything falling from her lips sounded like bullshit. When nothing she said now would make a difference.

  My wife had kicked me out. She’d kept my kids from me.

  All because of the woman in front of me. Because she liked to make demands and then go back on them when it was convenient for her.

  “It wasn’t just y’all,” Hunter said quickly, seeming to sense where my thoughts were—my growing anger—but that’s when I saw it.

  Madison’s hand where it was still clinging to Hunter. Her finger. The band covered in diamonds.

  I clenched my teeth. Sucked in shallow breaths as my blood pumped faster and faster. My stare flashed to Hunter when I asked, “Sure about that?”

  Our younger brothers, Sawyer and Cayson, came up on either side of them then. Looking like they were prepared to stand up for Hunter. Stand united against me.

  The possibilities of why they would need to made my heart beat faster when I was struggling to calm it. The demons I’d battled lately of that exact scene—my brothers standing against me—tore through me. Had that fear building and shifting into barely restrained rage in an instant when I was already so weighed down by it.

  My jaw ached from the pressure I was putting on it as I willed that red haze back.

  As I fought against the anger and the darkness that was so quick to fill my veins.

  But then Sawyer leaned against the open door where he stood next to Madison and said, “Beau, you have to take fault in this.”

  And I lost it.

  That frail grasp on my control.

  On reason.

  I don’t remember moving. Only knew that I was trying to get to Sawyer as Hunter held me back. All while I shouted, “I’ve tried!”

  I had tried. I’d been ready to confess everything so damn long ago, and I’d kept my mouth shut for Madison. Because of her. Then she’d come back into all our lives about a month ago and destroyed everything exactly the way she’d begged me not to over a dozen years ago.

  All of this came down to Madison.

  I gripped one of Hunter’s arms where he struggled to keep me back and turned my glare on him. “Why the fuck do you think Madison left? Because I tried to come clean.”

  Hunter’s tone was that same, soft calm when he said, “I already know.”

  “I mean now,” Sawyer sighed and gave me a look like he was already over the confrontation. “This. What y’all did is only part of it for Savannah.”

  A shock. Right to my fucking heart.

  That’s what hearing her name did to me.

  “What you’re doing now?” Sawyer continued. “That’s—”

  “You talked to her?” I asked, chest heaving as I thought of anyone talking to my wife. Of anyone seeing her.

  My world.

  The answer to every fucked-up part of me.

  As if finally realizing what this was doing to me, Sawyer shifted. Straightened. The annoyance slipped away from his expression as he gave a slight dip of a nod. “Yeah. We all have,” he said. “We’ll be there for her the same as we’ll be here for you. But, man, you’re not hearing me. This, what you’re doing right now, is a huge part of it for her. Your anger. Your fighting . . .”

  When he didn’t continue, Cayson spoke up from Hunter’s other side. “That’s why you aren’t seeing them.”

  The rage and need for revenge fled from me on a jagged breath and were replaced with the deepest kind of pain.

  The kind that ripped through you. Slow and brutal.

  Both Sawyer and Cayson had spoken softly. Gently. As if trying to soften a critical blow. But there’s no lessening the knowledge that you’re being kept from your family because of you. Because of something so deep inside you that is nearly impossible to control.

  Something dark and sickening and toxic.

  I staggered away from Hunter, my head moving in slow shakes as my life with Savannah and our kids flashed through my mind.

  I had a problem with my anger—had since I was a kid. But Savannah had always been my calm. The ice to my fire.

  One look at her. One touch. Even just hearing her voice, and my rage cooled. Disappeared.

  But that constant, simmering rage was a lot to deal with. I knew that. And she’d told me long ago that if I got in one more fight, she was done.

  I’d never been more afraid of anything than losing her. Then, when we had our kids, losing them as well.

  I’d never fought as hard against anything as I had to keep myself in check, every day, until Hunter and Madison threatened to hurt my marriage.

  “Savannah—my kids—I’ve never hurt them,” I said through the grief choking me.

  “I know. She knows you wouldn’t,” Hunter said just as softly as our other brothers had spoken. The smallest spark of hope flared in my chest until he added, “But you got to a point . . .”

  I forced my stare to him. To where he seemed to waver with what he was about to tell me.

  And it fucking terrified me.

  “Beau,” Hunter began hesitantly, “she’s afraid she can’t stop you anymore.”

  The air rushed from my lungs on a pained breath as his words stripped me bare. Confirmed what I’
d been agonizing over these past months—those demons I’d been battling. The reason my brothers would all take up against me. The same reason I’d stayed away when they’d begun reconciling.

  Because I didn’t want to see the look in their eyes when they realized I was like our dad—the worry that I would become him someday. A man who physically and verbally abused his own kid for years.

  Worse than all that . . . that my own wife would realize I wasn’t any better than him. That she was truly afraid of me.

  My knees hit the wooden porch.

  My fingers dug into my chest. Trying to tear at it. To relieve the fierce pain. To take my heart and offer it up to Savannah because I didn’t want it if I didn’t have her.

  I had nothing if I didn’t have her or our kids.

  It’d been one thing when I’d thought she’d been keeping them from me because of Hunter and Madison. Because of the betrayal and lies. I would’ve gone to the ends of the earth to fix that. To make it right.

  But taking our kids to protect them from me?

  Saying she knew I wouldn’t hurt them only to say she was afraid she couldn’t stop me?

  There was no fixing that.

  Savannah had known me most of my life. She knew the way I worked better than anyone. Better than me. And she’d been witness to the past ten years of keeping that anger leashed.

  If she was scared, she had every reason to be.

  And I’d put that fear there.

  “Why are you sad?”

  “Avalee.”

  I forced my head up to see Madison holding her daughter to her. Protecting her. Stopping her from coming closer to me.

  “Avalee, go back to the kitchen,” Madison continued, voice a hushed plea.

  But her daughter just tilted her head as she studied me. “I saw you that one time when I was with my friends, Quinn and Wyatt, and you were mad. But right now, you’re sad. Like, so, so sad. This sad,” she said, spreading her arms wide.

  My heart wrenched at the names of two of my children, the shock of the pain stealing my breath.

  “I’m sorry,” Madison whispered as she stepped backward with her daughter in tow.

  “Beau,” Hunter began after they’d left, voice uncertain, but I spoke over him.

  “Am I Dad?” I met each of my brother’s blank stares when there wasn’t a response, my chest pitching with my uneven breaths the rougher they came. “Am I Dad?” I demanded harshly.

  Hunter’s stare flashed Cayson’s way for a moment before meeting me again. “Come inside, man. Dry off. We’ll talk.” He reached for my shoulder, and I jerked back.

  Staggered to standing and continued backward as he followed.

  “Beau—”

  “Answer me,” I shouted as I reached the lip of the top step.

  “Let’s go inside and talk,” he said calmly as he neared me.

  One of my hands shot out to shove him back, but he grabbed my forearm and twisted it to the side before I could touch him. In the next second, I had the collar of his shirt clenched tight in my other hand and was pulling him closer.

  My jaw aching in protest as I seethed, “Be a fucking man and answer me.”

  His nostrils flared as he watched me slowly give over to that haze of anger. “You want a real answer? Then you need to talk to all of us,” he ground out. “Sawyer’s been there nearly every day—he sees you with your kids. Cayson lived through the bullshit with Dad—he’s the only one who saw that side of him. I was your best friend before you destroyed my life.” His grip on my arm tightened as I struggled to escape the anger surrounding me. “But it’s been ten years since we’ve seen each other, Beau. I can’t answer that.”

  “You can. You won’t.” I shoved him back and raked my trembling hands through my hair as that pain continued to tear through me like a dull, jagged blade.

  I turned. Moving down the porch steps instinctively as Hunter called out my name.

  His voice getting closer and closer as I walked through the rain even though my feet were moving faster as I reached the cluster of cars and trucks.

  “Beau, stop,” he shouted. Grabbing my arm and jerking me to a stop.

  I had a hand around Hunter’s throat and had him slammed up against the side of a truck in the next second.

  My entire body trembling with the rage that always stayed just beneath the surface. Ready to explode. Racing through my veins and consuming me.

  His brows were drawn close and his eyes were narrowed. One of his hands was on my chest to keep me back, the other was wrapped around my rain-soaked wrist and was squeezing in an attempt to make me loosen my hold on him.

  I gripped tighter.

  “You got what you wanted,” I seethed. “You got your life back at the cost of mine.”

  “Beau, that isn’t—” His jaw flexed when I shoved him harder against the window.

  “We’re done,” I said slowly, making sure he heard me. “Forever. Understood?”

  “Yeah.”

  I pushed away from him and stalked across the gravel driveway, never stopping even as I passed my truck. Fighting to see through the red haze and pouring rain. Struggling to breathe as the agony and fear and self-hatred built so high, it felt like I was suffocating.

  By the time I stepped onto the main road just off the property, I was running.

  Running from my demons.

  Running from the nightmare I was living in.

  Trying to outrun the man I’d become—the man who had destroyed everything good and pure in my life—knowing I never could.

  “I’m gonna kill you!”

  Cayson took off, letting the bucket he’d used to dump mud over my head and down my back drop behind him.

  Jerk was fast.

  But when I was like this? When that gross feeling began in my chest and went all the way to my fingers and toes, making it so I was like someone else? There was no getting away from me.

  But I kinda wished he could.

  Because I didn’t like it. I didn’t like feeling like I couldn’t stop. Like there was something wrong with me or the way it always felt like I was gonna be sick once it was finally over.

  Hated everything about it.

  About me.

  Hearing my parents when they thought they were alone. My momma crying, saying she didn’t know what to do with me anymore. That I was getting worse.

  Calling me things like uncontrollable and violent. Saying I was hopeless.

  I wanted to be better. Show them I wasn’t those things.

  I tried. I really did.

  But I couldn’t stop it.

  Cayson cried out when I caught up to him and tackled him to the ground. Called out for help when I rolled him over and sank my fist into his stomach.

  “Get off me!” he yelled as he tried to fight back.

  But it never mattered if he fought back—if anyone did. It couldn’t slow me down.

  I saw when he started crying. I heard his grunts and shouts with each hit. And it made me fight harder. Faster.

  I yelled out when I was ripped away from him and slammed onto my back. My thrashing arms and legs pinned down. My dad’s face coming into view.

  Talking and talking.

  Saying things I couldn’t hear because I needed to move. I needed to fight. And he was stopping me.

  I wrestled against my dad’s hold. My fingers clenched tight into fists as I tried to move him off me, a frustrated cry bursting free when I barely lifted my arms off the ground.

  “Why are you so angry?”

  I flinched and looked up and to the side. My chest shaking with deep, deep breaths as I searched for the voice that broke through everything. For the girl who’d washed away the anger and that sick feeling as soon as she’d spoken, in a way nothing ever had.

  Staring down at me, eyebrows pinched together. Looking at me like she was worried for me instead of afraid of me.

  “I’m sorry,” my dad was saying, sounding all kinds of embarrassed. “You probably shouldn’t be here.”
<
br />   No.

  “Who’re you?” I asked before my dad could send her away.

  “Savannah, honey,” someone called out from farther away.

  The girl looked behind her before skipping off in that direction, and I tried to go after her. Stop her. But I couldn’t move because my dad was still holding me in place.

  “She can’t go. Dad, she can’t—who is she?”

  When he didn’t say anything, I looked up. Heart racing like a stampede of wild horses because I needed to stop that girl before she disappeared.

  But he was just staring at me. Eyes and mouth wide like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “I’m so sorry,” that same, distant voice called out, and we both looked in that direction, but I couldn’t see anything from where I was. “We wanted to come introduce ourselves, but we’ll come back another time.”

  “Oh no,” Momma began, and Dad huffed out a soft laugh as he waved and said, “Just another day around here, ma’am. Sorry for the wild welcome wagon, but don’t feel like y’all have to run off. It was just clearin’ up here.”

  Silence followed for a few seconds before that same voice said, “If you’re sure. We won’t take up much of your time.”

  “’Course we’re sure,” Dad said, then gave me a look. Like he was making sure I wasn’t gonna go for Cayson again as soon as he let me up.

  I didn’t say a thing. I just waited, needing to see that girl. To know I hadn’t imagined her.

  As soon as he stood, I scrambled to follow. My eyes searching and landing on where she stood next to a real pretty lady.

  Both were looking at me. Something about their stares had my stomach twisting up. But not like it did when I felt sick. This was different. Like I was embarrassed for something I had no control over.

  The woman reached into the car they were next to and pulled out something covered up that looked like it might’ve been a cake, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t sure anything mattered anymore other than the girl beside her because she’d stopped it.

  “Well, I’m Christi Riley, and this is my daughter, Savannah,” the woman said as they came closer.

  “Riley!” my momma said, sounding all kinds of excited like she knew who these people were. “Y’all bought the land next to ours.”