Page 13 of Every Sunset
“We’re not running from any…”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. You’re not running,” he cut me off. “Like I said, don’t care! Just tell me if I need to up security around here though, yeah? Logan is renting that place to you for a steal. Least you can do is be honest about this one thing.” He glared hard at me and I gave in. He was right. Logan was being so good to us. Maddox too in his own asshole-ish way. He was working on my car and he’d offered to give me aid. I owed them something.
“No one is going to come looking for us. There’s no danger,” I told him honestly. That danger was gone, at least in the way Maddox thought anyway.
He stared at me in complete silence for what felt like forever, and I knew he was looking for the truth in my face. Finally he seemed to see the honesty I had given him, and he nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Now get back up here and let me fix you up before your son gets back and freaks out any more.”
I stood frozen for a moment, weighing up my options. I could walk out of there, go to the cottage, grab my son, and run again. Of course our car was out of commission and we were miles from town again. I was exhausted and feeling pretty terrible, but I could make it. I would make it if I felt that was our best option. But where would we go? If we ran again right then, we’d be running forever and that wasn’t the life I wanted for Max. He deserved the world and I had already failed to give him so much.
“Anna, come and sit down. I promise you’re safe here. You don’t need to keep running,” Maddox sighed, and when I looked up to him he smiled just a little. His face was softer now and in his eyes I saw some understanding of the fear I was feeling. It was enough to have me moving back to the stool and struggling to get back up to the seat.
“Sorry,” I whispered once I was seated. I dropped my gaze to the wood countertop below me and urged myself to get it together again, not that it seemed to be working for me.
“Let me see your hands,” Maddox said as he held his hand palm up on the counter before me. I placed my own in it with a quick glance up to him. He was studying me, I realized, and I dreaded to think what he would find.
“How old’s your kid?” Maddox asked after ten solid minutes of him working to clean up and pick out remnants of road from my hands, and me, just trying not to meet his watchful gaze.
“His name is Max, and he’s almost sixteen,” I answered as I lifted my head and looked at him.
“You were young when you had him?” It wasn’t an accusation like I usually got, or even really a question. Just an observation, but I answered anyway.
“About the same age he is now when I got pregnant.”
“That explains it,” Maddox said.
“Explains what?”
“How protective he is with you.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right, but it doesn’t make it right,” I sighed. I was exhausted, my body heavy with the need for me to just lie down and sleep. Ever since the transplant I had felt this way when I pushed too hard, and it was frustrating. In the past, before my body failed me, I had always been fit and healthy, likely from the shifts I worked at diners and restaurants. I was constantly on my feet, and even when I wasn’t working, I was always running around after or with Max. “He’s a kid. I want him to enjoy that for as long as he possibly can. He’ll learn soon enough how tough and unrelenting being an adult is.”
“Maybe it’s too late for that. He seems pretty mature for his age if you ask me.”
I slammed my eyes closed as emotion filled me at those words. Was it too late for my son to enjoy his last few years just being a teenager? Had I really fucked it all up for him with my stupid, idiotic, selfish mistake? He was mature for his age. He always had been in a way, I supposed, but since that night - since he saved me – he had become a man way too fast and soon. I’d forced him to because I couldn’t handle everything alone. I’d done that to him then, and every day since, as I fell apart before his eyes and forced him to worry about me.
“I failed him,” I whimpered, then I lost my fight to hold back the pain of that realization all over again. Tears spilled down my cheeks as I tried to bury my face against my shoulder to hide it. Everything hit me at once. That weekend. Letting that monsterinto my place. The fear. The pain. The terror that at any minute Max would come home. Then he did and…
“Anna. Jesus, what’d I do?” Maddox asked. He was on his feet and beside me now. I looked up at him through tear filled eyes and I didn’t even know where to begin making it all stop. The floodgates I’d been fighting to keep closed had sprung a leak and I was falling to pieces.
Maddox wrapped his arm around the top of my shoulders and pulled me into his front. My head rested just below his chin, against his chest and I didn’t even resist as he wrapped his arm snug around me and just held me tightly. It was the comfort I needed in that moment and I didn’t have the strength to turn him away.
“It’s okay,” Maddox soothed as he held me to him. My hands, which were covered in some kind of salve were just held in the air, but I desperately wished I could grab onto the solidness, and support that he was and just hold on with everything I had. I wished, even if just for a few minutes, that I could stop worrying, even thinking, and just be held.
“I’m sorry,” I managed to squeak out between sobs, but I wasn’t sure he even heard it.
“I get it, you know? I know what it is to feel lost and afraid. All you want is to find someone or something that feels solid and safe and just cling to it as tight and as hard as you can. You can cling to me, Anna. I’m a grumpy asshole, carrying so much baggage it wouldn’t fit on a damned airport luggage carousel, but I’m here if you need me. Logan and I, we can both be here for you and for Max if you’ll let us be,” he told me.
“You don’t even know us,” I sniffled as I forced myself to pull away from him so I could meet his eyes.
“You didn’t know me when you tried to scrape my drunk ass up from the ground last night,” he reminded me.
“I thought you were hurt.”
“And youarehurting. You live on our property. You think either me or Logan can just walk past you on the daily and not be there when you clearly need someone? I might be a complete asshole, but I still have some human decency inside me.”
“I don’t think you’re an asshole, Maddox,” I told him honestly.
