Page 22 of Asphyxia
We stood there in silence, wrapped in each other’s embrace for a brief minute before her eyes closed, and she went limp in my arms, passing out from everything that had consumed and drained her.
AfterputtingMadisontobed, I quickly cleaned up any of the remaining blood from the bathroom and entryway, throwingher scrubs straight into the trash. They were stained to hell and destroyed; there was no salvaging them at this point. All the hydrogen peroxide in the world couldn’t remove the amount of blood they now held.
Marcus entered the apartment just as I was about to throw the last piece of blood-soaked paper towel into the trash.
“What the fuck did you do to the wall?”
His first words upon entering as he took in the huge hole Madison had left in the wall when she busted through the door like the Kool-Aid man high on crack.
“That wasn’t me.” I gestured down the hall to my room and held my finger up to my lips, hoping he would take the hint.
“Madison?” He frowned as he kicked off his sneakers and approached me in the kitchen, crossing his arms over his chest. “What happened?”
“I would like to ask you the same thing. Did you know she wasn’t well?”
“What? Like you mean sick? I don’t fucking think the flu would cause a person to bust down a fucking—”
“Are you being serious right now? Fucking hell Marcus.” I threw my hands in the air and scoffed at his ignorance. “Tell me, did you ever question why she craved sex from you so much or why she always came toyouwhen she needed it?”
Marcus shut his mouth and clenched his jaw, unaware of what Madison was going through and why she was using himso frequently.
“Jesus Christ, Marcus…” I sighed, dragging a hand down my face before resting it on my hip. Of all the times for him to not pay attention to the woman he was sleeping with. “It’s a coping mechanism.”
“What is?”
“Sex!” I whisper-shouted, hoping to get my point across without waking Madison up because he clearly wasn’t getting it. The same guy who suggested that I fuck away my feelings.
I only noticed she had a problem because I was going through a similar mindset with my break-up. I could see the signs she was displaying and understood them for what they were—her form of grieving—but from what? “Madison uses sex to cope with whatever the fuck is or has been bothering her. How can you not see that?”
“I just—”
At a loss for words, Marcus dropped his arms, pressing his palms into the counter, and hung his head.
He was most likely just now realizing all the fine details he had missed the entire time they had been together. He brushed aside all the red flags as if they didn’t matter because he had her, and that was all he wanted.
Madison was hurting, even if she wasn’t showing it on the outside, but the real question was, how long had she been this way?
“I’m not saying that all she wanted was to use you, but that played a huge role in why she needed you so much.”
I’m sure their feelings for one another were real, but so much more was happening behindclosed doors.
“So, what do we do?” Marcus sighed with a look of defeat as he ran a hand through his hair and stared down the hallway.
“Right now? We let her sleep…” I blew out a breath as I focused in the same direction. “And when she wakes up, we are going to talk to her… because I sure as fuck know she needs it.”
Whoever broke her so severely that it was taking her this long to recover was number one on my shit list.I’ll kill the motherfucker.
Marcus and I would put her back together.
Madison didn’t need fixing—she needed to feel whole again, and casual sex wasn’t going to do that, at least not anymore.
Chapter 12
Marcus
Knowingthetypeofwoman Madison was, Dean and I shared the same bed with her last night, ensuring that if she woke up and decided to bolt, one of us could catch her before she even reached the door.
We weren’t planning on forcing her to talk to us, but we didn’t want to allow her to avoid the discussion entirely.
