Ava nodded happily, and poured syrup over the pancake, her face glowing as she watched Maddox cook.
Hannah glanced over at him, and her heart tightened when she saw the yearning on his face as he watched them. Suddenly, her heart started to pound. There was no mistaking the expression on his face. He was feeling the same thing she was feeling. He didn't want to leave. If that was the case, maybe he didn't have to leave. Maybe she could make it safe for him to love himself, the way he had made her feel safe to simply be.
Her heart pounding, she stood up and began to walk over to him. It wasn't something she would ask in front of Ava, because she already knew how much Ava would want him to stay. But she had to let him know how she felt. She had to say something. He would never believe that he deserved to stay. It would never occur to him to insert himself in their lives, so it was up to her to show him that he was welcome, and that he was worthy.
His eyes darkened as he watched her approach, a sultry, heated expression that was so similar to how he had looked at her the night before when he had been making love to her, claiming her as his own.
"Hey gorgeous," he said, as she approached him. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her up against him, planting a decadent, delicious kiss on her that sent ripples of excitement and desire through her body.
The moment he ended the kiss, she gripped the front of his shirt, her fingers clenching the soft fabric of his T-shirt. "Maddox."
He grinned and kissed the tip of her nose. "Hannah."
"Do you hear the chainsaw?"
His smile faded. "Yeah."
"How long do we have?"
"Not too much longer." There was an edge to his voice, a sense of regret that she recognized, because it was the same one that gripped her own heart.
She took a deep breath. This was her moment. He'd probably say no. He would probably tell her he had to leave, for the safety of her and Ava, but she had to tell him that she wanted him to stay, if for no other reason than to give him the gift of knowing that she believed in him, and she saw the beauty in his soul. Maybe he wouldn't be ready to accept that about himself now, but she could at least plant the seed, and she could at least open the door for him to decide to stay if there was any chance of that possibility. "I was thinking—"
His cell phone rang, making them both jump. He swore and glanced over at the counter, where his phone was sitting. Hannah followed his glance, and saw the name Chuck Williams on the screen. Maddox silenced the phone, and turned back to face her. "Sorry. Tell me what you were thinking."
His cell phone beeped, and they both looked over as a text message from Chuck Williams popped up on his phone. Maddox. When are you back in town? I'm overloaded with cases right now, and I need you back on the job.
Hannah looked up at him, her heart pounding with the reminder that Maddox had a life outside this little cabin. "Is he your boss?"
Maddox shrugged. "I take the cases I want. I wouldn't call him my boss." He shrugged, but his face had become hard again. "I'm not very tolerant of people who try to control me and dictate my actions. It doesn't bring out my best side."
Hannah's determination faded as Maddox's tone shifted from soft and nurturing, to one more defensive and protective of himself. "Do you like being a bounty hunter?" It wasn't what she had meant to ask, but for some reason the question popped out, maybe because she didn't want to see him as a man who worked with criminals, carried a gun, and was willing to shoot people if he had to.
She wanted him to be the man who had been so tender, kind, and nurturing for the last few days.
Maddox met her gaze, and something flickered in his eyes, something that told her that he understood why she was asking. "I believe that bad people shouldn't be allowed to hurt other people. Someone has to drag their asses back to the jail they're supposed to be in, and I'm good at it." He met her gaze. "I'm good at it, because that's my world. Darkness. Violence. Staring death in the face. It doesn't bother me. And I have no problem dishing it out. That's the real me, Hannah." He gestured toward Ava, who was happily munching her pancake. "I can't keep this up," he whispered, his voice low. "I can't keep being this person."
Frustration gripped Hannah. "I don't understand. Are you miserable? You seem happy here, with us. Is it all just a lie?"
He swore and ran his hand through his short hair. "No, dammit. That's not what I'm saying. Right now, we're living in this little cocoon, but life isn't like this. Life is going to get shady. It always does. And that's going to bring out the side of me that neither of us wants to see."
Hannah felt like stomping her foot. "How do you know what I want to see? With all that I've been through, don't you think that I know when someone is a good person, and when someone isn't? You bring peace to my soul, Maddox. For the first time ever. My soul couldn't possibly trust you if there was anything about you that would endanger me. Don't you understand? Just because you can bring in criminals, and because your dad was a jerk doesn't mean you're destined to destroy everybody." She stepped back and held her arms out to her side. "Look at me," she demanded. "Just look at me. Do you honestly think that you could hurt me? That you could destroy me? Is there any part of your soul that could bring harm to me? Or to Ava?"
Anguish flashed across Maddox's face, anguish so deep that she felt the ache in her own heart. "Yes," he said, his voice hard and flat, almost dead. "I would, if I stayed around you long enough. Someday, something is going to set me off, and that will be the end. I will not stay around long enough to do that to you."
The truth of his words. He believed everything he said, all the way to the depths of his heart. "I don't understand," she whispered. "Why can you not see what a good person you are?"
He raised one eyebrow. "And I don't understand," he said. "How can you be given the gift of a family like the Harts, and shut them out of your life? How can you be so consumed with loss and darkness that you can't let in the sunlight that the universe gave you so long ago?"
Her mouth dropped open in shock at his words. She stepped away from him, her heart clenching painfully. Loneliness assaulted her, a deep sense of fear, fear of reaching out, fear of going back to who she'd once been, and a fear of more loss. "They aren't my family," she whispered. "They're teenagers who saved me many years ago."
Maddox walked over to her and caught her chin, lowering his voice so quietly that Hannah could barely hear it. "That's bullshit, Hannah. Family isn't about blood. If it was, my dad wouldn't have been such a son of a bitch. Except for Ryder, each of my brothers has a different mother than I do. You could call them my half-brothers, except that would be a lie. Each one of those men is my brother in every part of my heart and soul, including Dane Wilson, the Rogue Valley sheriff. There isn't a drop of blood that Dane and I share, but he is my brother in every way possible. I'd be dead by now if it wasn't for them. I may be fucked up. I may be a bastard. I may be a demon waiting to be unleashed. But I also know that without my brothers, I'm nothing. You have that kind of support with the Harts, and you know it." He met her gaze. "So why are you walking away from them, if you know how important they are?"
His words made her heart cry. There was no way for her to deny his truth. The Harts were her family, and she had walked away from them so many years ago. "I don't know." It was the truth. Maddox was wrong. He wasn't the broken one in this room. It was her.
"I didn't mean to make you sad, hon." His face softened, and he took her hands, holding them to his heart. "The truth is, sweetie, that we all have baggage from our pasts. It defines who we are today, and it drives our actions every moment of our lives. Because of your past, you can't reach out to the Harts. Because of mine, I am forever burdened with the darkness inside me. Yeah, it sucks on some levels, but protecting those we love makes it worthwhile."
Tears filled her eyes. "Are we really protecting those we love? Or are we stabbing ourselves in the heart?"
He sighed and slid his finger over her cheek. "It might be both, but I'm okay with that. I'd stab myself in th
e heart a thousand times a day if that's what it took to keep you and Ava safe."
She stared up at him through tear-blurred vision. "What if keeping me and Ava safe meant you staying with us? Could you find a way to do that?"
Regret filled his face, and he sighed deeply. "Sweetheart, there's nothing more dangerous to you and Ava than me. So, no, I wouldn't stay with you."
"But—" She stopped when she heard the loud roar of an engine coming from the front of the house. Her heart seemed to freeze when she realized it was the sound of a snowplow. They had broken through. The protective shield around their enclave had been broken.
She looked at Maddox, and gripped his shirt. "It's too soon," she whispered. "I'm not ready."
Maddox wrapped his hands around hers, dwarfing her fists in his hands. "I will never be ready to walk out the door and leave you and Ava behind," he said softly. "It will always be too soon."
She searched his face, trying to understand. "Then why do you have to leave? Tell me whatever it is you haven't told me. There has to be more than what you've said."
He frowned, and then sighed. "There is."
Chapter 18
Maddox's soul felt like it was being pierced in a thousand places with Hannah looking at him like that, trying to understand why he had to leave. He couldn't believe what it felt like for her to look at him with such faith. She honestly believed in the goodness in him, and that made his throat tighten, and his chest ache. "Hannah," he said softly, stroking his finger along her cheek. "You have no idea how badly I want to be the man that you see when you look at me. The only way I know how to do that is to walk away."
He heard the engine of the snowplow pause, and he swore silently, realizing that at any moment someone was going to knock on the front door, or even just walk right in. He couldn't leave Hannah looking at him like that, with hurt in her eyes, unable to understand why he was the way he was.
He knew there was only one way to do it. Only one way to show her what he was. Gritting his teeth, he pulled his wallet from his back pocket and flipped it open. He paused for a moment, his heart pounding, then he took a small, yellowed piece of paper from behind his credit cards and he handed it to Hannah. "After the incident with my dad and Beth, I put the engagement ring in her locker at school. I wrote a note and said that I had bought it for her, and I still wanted her to have it. I told her I wanted her to keep it, so she would always know how deeply she was loved. I told her that she had been the only bright light I'd ever had in my life, and I appreciated all that she had done for me. I also wrote that I would never bother her again, because I understood that she could never trust me to keep her safe."
God, he remembered those words he had written. His hand had been shaking. His eyes had been blurred with tears, a seventeen-year-old boy who had given up on dreams before he had even become an adult. But even then, he'd learned what his limits were on what he deserved to hope for or ask for in life. "I wanted to do right by her. I wanted to somehow find a way to wipe away the trauma from that night, the heartbreak of finding out that the man she loved, that she had been willing to marry, was nothing more than a monster, and that she had failed to see it."
Hannah stared at him, her lips slightly parted, her dark brown eyes riveted to his face. Her fingers were loosely clasping the note, but she wasn't looking at it. She was just watching him, and the empathy in her eyes was almost too much for him to take.
He nodded at the note in her hand. "I found that note from her in my locker the next day, along with the ring. That letter is my curse. It's my destiny. It's my reminder of what I can't allow myself to want or have. I want you to read it."
Hannah looked down at the paper in her hand, staring at it for a long moment. Maddox felt himself tensing, knowing that she was going to read the words that he had made his mantra for so long, words that had literally broken him when he had first read them.
She finally looked up at him. "Why on earth does it matter what a seventeen-year-old girl thought of you fourteen years ago? Why would I care what she thought? I know what I see today. That's the truth. That's the reality."
Maddox swore. "You should care because she saw what I'm capable of. You haven't seen it. I have. I've lived it. I feel the darkness fermenting inside me. I feel the need for violence. I feel the hate. I feel it. She saw it. She knows." He pulled the paper from her hand, his hand shaking as he took it. He needed Hannah to understand what he was. He simply could not walk away until she knew. He didn't know why, but he needed Hannah to see the real him.
He stepped away from her and unfolded the paper. "Ava, hon," he said as he turned toward the little girl. "Mommy and I need to talk in the living room for a sec. Is that okay with you?"
She nodded and gave him a thumbs up and a smile. She looked so happy and peaceful, sitting at the table that his heart turned over. She pointed to the snow and made a patting motion with her hands.
He raised his brows. "You want to make snowballs later?"
She grinned and made a throwing motion.
"A snowball fight?"
She nodded again, smiling more widely.
He nodded. "You and your mom against me. Sound good?"
She clapped her hands, her eyes dancing.
"As soon as I get done talking to your mom." He walked over, gave her a kiss on top of her head, then grabbed Hannah's hand and walked out into the living room, leaving before he could let himself think about how sweet and adorable Ava was.
He shut the kitchen door and then took Hannah to the far side of the room. When he turned to face her, she was staring at him as if he were insane. He frowned. "What?"
"How on earth can you consider yourself a monster when you treat Ava like that?"
He didn't answer her. He unfolded the note and began to read it.
Maddox. I have never seen anything like I saw last night.
Everyone in town talks about your father, his drinking, and his violence. I knew the kind of home you came from, or I thought I did. I had no idea what your life was really like. I can't believe your father punched me in the face. That isn't violence. That's sick. Your father's sick, not the kind of sick that can be helped with treatment. The kind of sick that belongs in a horror movie.
But you… You're so much worse than he is. Your father doesn't pretend to be anything other than what he is. No one trusts him. No one cares if he lives or dies. No one is surprised when he gets put in jail for being a drunk. But you. You're the real demon. You pretend you're kind. You pretend you're sweet. You pretend you're worth trusting. You make people believe that you're a good guy, that you'll keep them safe, that you'll use your strength, and your heart to weave a cocoon of protection around everybody that you care about.
Damn you, Maddox. Damn you!
You're a liar and a cheat. You betrayed me, and everybody else in the school and this town who sees any kind of goodness in you. Anyone can protect themselves against the threat they see coming. But no one can protect themselves against the hidden threat, a threat shrouded in the disguise of a friend, a lover, and a protector.
You took my heart, you made me trust you, you made me love you, and you made me believe in you. My parents didn't believe in you, and I fought against them in support of you. I gave everything to defend you, because you made me believe in you, and you made me love you. And it was all a lie. A lie!
You are so much more of a monster than your father ever will be. He's an old man. A drunk. A loser. One punch, and you had him on the ground. One punch had ended it, but then you attacked him like a rabid animal, salivating for the taste of his blood. I can still hear the sound of his nose crunching under your fist. I can still hear his groans as you kicked him in the ribs. I can still hear that horrible scream tearing from your throat, like a wild animal attacking its prey. I will never forget watching the man who won my heart turn into a monster right in front of me.
I don't want this ring. I don't want this note from you. All I want is to find a way to wipe you from my mind forever, so
that I never have to think again about the fact that I live in a world that is also occupied by you. Stay away from me. Stay away from my family. Stay away from my friends. Stay away from my town. Do everyone a favor, and just die. Beth.
Maddox took a deep breath as he finished the letter, trying to slow his racing heart. He hadn't read it in several years. He'd forgotten exactly how bad it was. He could still remember the stark shock that had reverberated through his body as he read the words of the girl he had built all his dreams and all his love on.
He looked up at Hannah, and her face was white, sheet white. "When I read her note, I realized she was right," he said. "Every time I was with her, I had made sure to show her only a nice guy. I was considerate, kind, understanding. I pretended that I was fine. I pretended that my father hadn't affected me at all. I pretended that I was worthy of who she was, with her protected life, her happily married parents, and her Sunday mornings at church. I never once let her see what was inside me. So, she's right. I did betray her. I did lie."
He folded the letter over, the creases well-worn from years of living in his wallet. "I learned a lot from that. I learned that I'm a monster. I don't remember kicking my dad. I don't remember screaming. I don't remember feeling my fists sink into his flesh. All I remember is rage, so much rage. But her letter is the play-by-play that I don't recall. I lost control because I loved her, and that love made me vulnerable. When my dad hit her, I had no ability to control myself."
He met Hannah's gaze. "Love turned me into the demon. I won't do that again, especially not to you and Ava. You guys have had much too much violence and loss in your life. Do you really think either of you could handle it if I became violent in front of you? This is why it's so important to me that you understand who I am. No more misrepresentation. No more pretending I'm something that I'm not." He held out his hands, palms up, in surrender. "This is what I am, Hannah. And we both know that you and Ava need so much more than a ticking time bomb that will explode at some point."
A Real Cowboy Loves Forever (Wyoming Rebels Book 5) Page 14
