I reached up and grabbed the back of his head and forced his mouth down on mine, and kissed him the way I did when no one was looking.
“Eww,” Georgy groaned. “I’ve got a sensitive stomach.”
“Madison,” mother chastised. “We are at the dinner table.”
“Are you insane?” Dad demanded.
“Is that a piercing in your mouth?” Leigh criticized, judgment.
I pulled away, finding Klay’s eyes full of dark humor. I grabbed his hand and lifted our tangled fingers. “This is Klayton. My boyfriend. Even if that term doesn’t do him justice, that’s what he is. I love him, and he loves me. Right?” I checked, holding my breath.
He nodded once, no doubt, no hesitation. “Right.”
“We’re together, so get used to it. I’m not a child. I’m an adult. I can date who I want. Go where I want. Lock my door,” I sneered at my father, who was red-faced and furious. “I can be who I want, too. I earned that right the day my control was taken. I earned the right to find some shred of happiness, and Klayton makes me happy. You raised me to be respectful, so I expect the same from you too.” I looked at my mother, who was aghast, and my father, who was equally horrified. “And you—” I looked at Leigh. “Wish you could feel my tongue ring.” I looked at Klayton, whose brows were raised in admiration or mirth, and then smiled at him. “That felt good.”
He pressed his forehead to mine, midnight eyes starry and twinkling. “You’re my hero.”
No, I thought. You’re mine.
Epilogue
Klayton
Loving Mad was easy.
I hadn’t known at the time, that when she walked into my tattoo shop on that fateful day, that I was looking at the woman I would spend the rest of my life with. Looking back, I understand why I fought myself. Love was about finding that one person who loved your madness, who loved you, despite your faults, hell, because of your faults—it was finding someone who loved you even if you didn’t love yourself. Eventually, you had to face yourself. Your hurts, your pain; in order to admit that you loved them, you had to face the fact that you had to love yourself as well.
And that was almost as hard as healing Mad’s heart.
Loving myself seemed like an afterthought. But for some reason, I was the man Madison picked, and what kind of monster would I be refuting her, when I craved her so much?
Love is mad. It’s hard, it’s painful, but at moments like this, it’s always worth it.
We moved Guns & Ink to Portland the winter after I brought Madi home for the first time. Colorado wasn’t good for her. Denver, Boulder—they were all too close to her attack. And all the therapy in the world couldn’t cure a torment that happened a few miles away. Wayne and Corey split. Cat came with us. Guns & Ink flourished in Portland. And so did Madison the moment she was free of the state that held her pain.
Brando kept in touch at first, stopping by occasionally when he thought he’d found something new. Eventually, for Madison however, there came a time when she had to accept that her attacker may never be caught. That hurt. She’d slipped back into her mind for a few weeks, but like the strong woman I knew she was, she got back on her own two feet—until she created a version of herself that was nothing but raw, beautiful strength.
So of course, the moment she was good, Brando came back two years later. I was tattooing a pair of bones on a punk chick’s calf at the shop in Portland. The bones ended in a pair of pink bows and a quote from one of her band’s song lyrics, all the madness in the world couldn’t keep me from you, was scrawled in my script between the piece. Mad was at the register, her dark blond hair in a ponytail, and her beautiful face pinched in concentration as she poured over her textbooks. She was going to college for business online. Refused to step foot on a college campus. I didn’t fight her on most things. I only fought her when she fought herself.
The front door opened and everyone looked up. Cat had been tattooing a shoulder piece of a pair of red wings on a guy with skin white as snow. My new employees, Miriam, a twenty-one-year-old female artist who stumbled in looking for a job a few months ago, and Isaiah, a twenty-two-year-old incredible artist who had a shittier attitude than I did at his age. The kid was emotionally dark, but the ladies loved him, and he could ink the sickest pieces blind and hogtied, so I kept him around. Madison loved him. Said he reminded her of me. I thought Madison and Cat still had the wrong idea about me, but I finally admitted to myself that I found comfort in their love of me.
I had nothing without them.
Everyone looked up, but Isaiah and Miriam were the only ones who looked back down. They didn’t know our guest. Only Cat and Madi and I did. My heart dropped. Cat gasped. And Madison’s pen fell from where it had been between her teeth to fall to her textbook. In the quiet shop, I heard it fall to the floor.
Brando Hawkins walked in, and his eyes fell across my shop the way I would a happy ending—he was trying to make sure it was real.
“Brando?” Mad whispered.
He turned to her, and his lips rose in a smile. A soft smile, one he’d never given her before, I knew it, because there was nothing on his end to smile about. At least there hadn’t been.
“We found him,” he announced.
Madison fainted.
“Shit!” I hissed, ripping my gloves off and pushing away from my client. I ran over and sunk down on my knees, pulling Madi’s head in my lap. I didn’t live at the shop—the apartment we shared with Cat was fifteen minutes away—so I couldn’t just take her up to bed. I scooped her up in my arms and carried her unconscious body back to the breakroom.
Brando and Cat followed.
I sank onto the leather sofa in the back and tucked her on my lap, stroking her head as Brando sat beside me on the edge of the sofa, and Cat stood by the door after she closed it. This meant as much to her as it did to me.
My eyes met Brando’s at the same time his met mine. Madison had to be awake for this. I could see the finality in his eyes. The truth that her horror was over. I put my mouth over her ear. “Mad? Wake up, baby?” I stroked her cheek with my thumb. “Come on, Madi. You’ve got to wake up.” It was horrible of me, but I did it anyway. “Madison!” I screamed, making Cat jump across the room.
Mad’s eyes shot open, blurred with confusion, and then dilated with unease when she saw Brando. She scurried off my lap and stood, taking Cat’s hand when she offered it to her. “You found him?” she squeaked.
Brando smiled that same soft eerie smile. “We found him, Madison. And he’s gone now.”
“What do you mean?” she asked desperately.
“I mean, he’s gone. Forever.”
Tears fell from her eyes, Cat’s too. Mad shook her head, not denying him, but denying the truth that it was over. “What happened?”
“Sit, please, baby. I don’t want you fainting again.” I patted the sofa next to me, but she shook her head again, unmoving as she waited. I gave up—I knew a lost fight when I saw one—plus I was just as desperate for this as she was.
“He took two more girls from the DU campus. One a year after your abduction and one a year later. My partner and I thought your escape scared him into hiding. I think we were right. But it didn’t scare him enough. The woman he tried to take managed to get away. But she dropped her cell phone in his car, and he didn’t know it when he made his getaway. We traced it.” He pulled out a packet from his inner suit pocket. He opened it and pulled out a crime scene picture. Then he put it on Madison’s lap. “Is that the man who raped and abducted you, Madison?”
The picture was taken in a hotel room. It was old and worn, with a bed against one wall, and a table and chair across from it. There was one body sprawled out on a dingy blood-stained mattress. Madison and I leaned in, studying the picture intently. My stomach turned, but Madison didn’t look sickened. She leaned in closer. She looked caught in the headlights of her attack. The man was on the bed, with so many bullet wounds in his chest I lost count.
“Is that where …?”
You were taken? I couldn’t finish.
“Yes,” she answered strongly. She looked up at Brando. “That’s him.”
“How do you know?” Brando asked, not like he doubted her, but because he knew why she did.
“Because I know.” She patted her chest. “I know it in here that’s him. There isn’t a doubt in my mind.”
“Well, that would never hold up in court.” Brando set out another picture. It was of a bundle of scraps. Jeans, a shirt, one shoe, and dirty pink panties.
Madison’s face paled further. “Are those my clothes?”
“Yes,” Brando said pointedly. “The stupid bastard kept your clothes, Madison. He kept them for two years.”
I knew why he showed her the clothes, why he came all the way across the country. There was no honest, true proof that was the man who took her. A feeling—even though I believed her—wouldn’t convince her for long. But the clothes would prove to her that her nightmare was over.
“We’ll need you to come back to Denver to take some DNA to match to the clothes and make a report, and then I can finally close this case.”
Madison closed her eyes, and I watched peace slide over her face. It settled in her heart, and when she opened her eyes, there was nothing but relief and hope in her gaze.
Relief because it was over. And hope because of all she and I would feel together, do together, and become.
The moment her case was closed, Madison and Mad forged to create a woman I would spend the rest of my life falling madly for. She was strength, she was mine.
Our love was mad.
But in our madness, we found the perfect kind of love.
Madison
I would never know full peace.
But my life wasn’t about seeking out perfection anymore. Perfection didn’t exist, and it did me no good wanting it.
My life was about seeking out the moments that reminded me of my strength, moments where I laughed so hard I cried, where the only reason I puked was because I’d eaten too much good food. When the only time I felt afraid, was when I was taking a step forward and didn’t know the outcome.
I would never be a normal wife to Klayton. Sex would always be an issue, I still had nightmares, and some days, I couldn’t forget. We made love for the first time a few months after he’d brought me home, and it was a disaster. But Klayton didn’t balk, he didn’t run. He took his time, he let me break, and soon, he showed me that making love could be mine too, as long as I wanted it to be.
Klayton was my hero. Not because he held my broken parts, but because my broken parts broke him too. Love wasn’t about sex or commitments to us. Love was about never remembering our emptiness. Because together, we weren’t empty.
Together, we were happy.
So, I would never know true peace, but I would always know true love, and all the madness in the world couldn’t take that from me.
I would heal. I would love. I became a mother. A wife. Because that’s what I deserved to be. A woman who loved and did not fear.
I stood on the edge of the ocean, staring out at the water. Klayton and Mell’s distant screams and giggles brushed against the side of my face on the salty breeze coming off the water. I smiled to myself, watching Klay scoop up our four-year-old daughter as her uncontrollable giggles echoed across the ocean.
Mell healed me the moment I found out I was pregnant. I despised condoms because of my trauma, and somewhere between not using them and forgetting to take my birth control, Mell happened.
Mell needed a healthy mommy, and she deserved a gentle daddy. Klayton and I were all those things for our daughter. And being those things fixed our souls.
“What’s Mommy doing?” I heard Klay ask.
“She’s watching the water,” Mell said.
“What do you think she’s thinking about?” he wondered.
“Probably coffee. Mommy loves coffee.”
Klay laughed. “What do I love?”
Mell took her time to answer. “Me and Mommy?”
My heart melted. It healed. It shone through my nightmare to a blinding, beautiful light.
“You and Mommy,” Klay promised, clearing his throat. “I love you both so much. What do you love, Melly?”
Klay and I couldn’t pick her name. I wanted to name her Bell because she was beauty, and he wanted to name her after me, something I didn’t want. I wanted her name to be free of anything tainted, but that only seemed to break Klay’s heart, so I compromised on Mell.
“Aunt Cat,” Mell said. “She’s funny.”
Klay chuckled. “Funny? I always thought she was kind of annoying.” Mell snorted at her dad. “You ready for her wedding? Being the flower girl is a huge deal.”
“I’ve been practicing. Want to see? Mom!” Mell bellowed. “Come watch me twirl!”
I turned around and waded through the sandy overgrowth on the ocean’s edge. We were in Hawaii for Cat’s wedding. My surrogate sister. The other parts of my strength. Tears burned in my eyes when I thought of her finally getting her happily-ever-after. She deserved to heal as much as I did.
We deserved to love, and be loved.
I wrapped my arms around Klay’s waist and sighed in contentment when his came around me. We watched our daughter walk in a barely straight line in the sand, twirling with an imaginary basket in her hand, her dark blond hair floating on the breeze and her gray/blue eyes shining. She looked like an exact replica of me. Sweet, untainted, and bursting with childhood innocence. She was a blank slate for Klay and me, a chance to right the wrongs of our past.
She would only know love. She’d never touch fear. And she would smile so much she had laugh lines.
Klay’s lips touched my ear. “I love you, Madison Caldwell.”
I leaned back and kissed my husband under the sun, gazing into his stunning midnight eyes. “I love you, too, Klayton. So much.” He pressed his forehead to mine, and I saw the gleam of happiness burning around his pupil.
Every pain I ever felt got me to every joy I would ever feel.
Cat walked out of the beach house with her fiancé close behind.
“Barf,” she teased, running in the sand to scoop up Mell. “Come on, Melly. I’ll save you from your kissy face parents.”
“Yay!” Mell squealed. “Kissing makes me sick.”
Klay laughed; the sight of his happiness that close was a stitch over my broken parts.
There’d be scars, but they would heal.
Look out for Cat’s happily-ever-after, book 2 in the Guns & Ink series, Hard Love, coming soon!
SHANA VANTERPOOL
Romance author, coffee drinker, and bad boy aficionado. Every second not spent breathing is an opportunity to write and read. I live in Northern California with my family and actress dog, Halle Bella. (Just Bella when she decides to cut the crap.) Escaping with a good book is something I live for and I write so others can do the same.
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Website: https://shanavanterpool.com
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Mad Love (Guns & Ink Book 1) Page 28
