Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
" M ommy?" I cried out, but the roaring flames were so much louder than my little voice. There was so much fire all around me, and I couldn’t seem to get out.
"Get out and hurry. We can use her life insurance policy and show it was an accident," my mother said as the front door slammed shut.
I stared around at the blankness surrounding me. The smoke fogged the room, making it hard for me to see what was in front of me as I jumped out of bed. There was no way I would be able to save anything in this room. I covered my mouth with my hand because the smoke was burning my lungs as I made my way to the window.
I propped it open as fast as I could and jumped out, thankful we lived in a one-story home.
Then I ran. As fast as my little legs would take me, I ran to the neighbors’ house where I pounded on their door. The woman came to the door in rumpled pajamas and her hair tied up in a bow. I never knew their names, but I was grateful they answered the door. The moment their eyes looked at the house next to them being engulfed in flames, she grabbed my hand and ran me inside.
But all I could do was stare at my room that was completely burnt. All the things I had hoarded—my books, my stuffies—were gone. My parents were the ones who were supposed to save me. They birthed me, so weren't they supposed to raise me?
I’ll never forget the generosity the neighbor gave me that night. The way she sat with me while the police came and encouraged me to tell the truth. How she gave me something hot to eat—the first thing I’d had in over a year. I yearned for that type of love again. I’d spend the rest of my life trying to recreate that feeling.
As I lay in bed with Walsh's protective arm enveloping me, I shared the painful story of my family. Walsh, listening attentively, questioned, "What happened afterward? The reports said that you never spoke." I shook my head, recounting how I never divulged the truth to the police, still clinging to the desire to protect my parents.
"My parents ditched me after the fire, and I went to live with a temporary foster family before my grandmother was located." I laughed, remembering when I met her for the first time. She hugged me as she sobbed. "Neither of us knew we existed."
"Madison—"
"Let me finish." He nodded but shifted me so we were nose to nose. "After I moved in with my grandmother, we found out my mom OD’d and my dad ran away. I found him eventually. He’d cleaned up his act and pretended like I never existed, raising a family out in Joshua Tree."
"You’ve never reached out? You know I can…"
"No. I don’t want to contact him. His family doesn’t know I exist and I want to leave it as such. He made that choice. Maybe one day I will, but it was my grandmother who taught me to create the barrier I’d developed over the years."
I paused before speaking again. "I wish she never taught me. I became obsessive about being the person I wasn’t when I was a kid. I wanted people to love me, desperate enough to fit in that I did anything I could to get to the top."
"Hence, Cagen," Walsh added.
"Yeah. I was so close, or at least it felt like it, before you told me that the whole group she hung out with hated me. I had no idea until you blew it up in my face." He frowned. "But I am glad you did. I don’t regret anything about it, Walsh, aside from what a horrible person I was to your sister.
"And the bonfire." I got choked up. "The bonfire was one of the worst nights. I blamed myself for it all. When you guys were having the fire outside, I couldn’t stand to be around the warmth. It terrified me and reminded me of the fire that took my entire room down."
"Madison…I had no idea." Walsh brought a hand up to brush a tear off my cheek.
"You wouldn’t have known." I offered a tight-lipped, sad smile. "I blamed myself for her death because I left. Maybe if I was brave enough to deal with the fire, we would have stayed inside and she wouldn’t have tried to save you."
I paused. "But then, you weren’t there to protect me, and I knew that we could never be together. Because you reminded me of the people and memories I was running away from. I just needed someone to protect me."
"I tried." His voice broke as he spoke. "I ran over to you that night and tried, but you were…"
He shook his head, his hair falling onto his forehead as he did.
"You were lost…" he murmured, pressing a small kiss to my nose. I pulled the cream comforter over our bodies as we laid in the stillness of the night. "I should have been there."
"I read and learned a lot in my psychology classes."
"Yeah?" He pulled away so his deep-brown eyes gazed right into mine. "What about?"
"I learned that people who bully others do it because they are so broken on the inside and feel as though the wall they built so tightly around them is being threatened."
"When I met you, I was so broken and didn't realize it, but you had threatened to ruin my entire wall. I never would have dared hurt Cagen by hooking up with you, but I was a hurt person, hurting people. You terrified me, not because of who you were, but because of what you meant to me."
He inhaled deeply, struggling to speak. I propped myself up on my elbow to see his face as I bared my vulnerable and raw self.
"I was really fucking lost for a long time without you there. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or what my purpose was. When you came back into my life, I was terrified because of what my heart felt for you."
He stared at me in comfortable silence for a while.
"I love you, Madison Solis."
Wha-hat? What did he just say? My heart started to do that racing thing and my palms became sweaty. It was so much worse since I was sitting face-to-face with him, his eyes searching for something in mine.
My first instinct was to run away, turn around and never look at him again. I glanced out the window where I knew my little apartment was still sitting with all my stuff, where Fire was. It was my haven, and I debated how fast I could get out of there and remove myself from the situation.
Then his arms wrapped around my shoulders, and his lips pressed against my back. I snuggled into him so I was facing outward.
"I’m here, Muse. You don’t have to say anything back. I may have been terrified before because, like you, I was a hurt person, too. I had thought that I needed to live in the confines of what was built for me."
He hesitated for a few, then continued. "When my mother died, I watched my little sister shocked and unaware of what had just unfolded in front of her. I was just a kid, but I saw the terrified look on my father’s face. He knew he would be forced to run an entire mob organization, something he never thought it’d come down to.
"I don’t know." Walsh’s voice got so low it was barely a whisper as he continued to rub small circles on the top of my shoulders. "I guess I thought I had to make sure my family was taken care of. I started to live my life, even when I was little, in this rigid way, making sure that no one would attack my impenetrable castle I built around me physically and mentally."
I grabbed his hand in a show of support, even though I still couldn’t turn around. "The moment I laid eyes on you, you fucking destroyed those walls without even trying. It’s like you somehow wielded a magical sword in that, within seconds of just looking at you, you could somehow see inside of me. It’s like I could see the mask you wore, and I so badly wanted to tell you that we were both alike?—"
"But when you’ve built a life like we have, it’s hard to start becoming vulnerable with someone like that," I added, and he nuzzled into my back.
"Yes, Muse. I apologize."
Wha-what? I turned around and searched his face in the darkness. His eyes were heavy with a profound sadness I’d never seen before. "I am really fucking sorry for being a dick. I was trying to keep you far away from this fucking life. I was being selfish."
"No." I exhaled. "I understand why."
He dropped his head down to press a small kiss to the tip of my nose. "Sleep, Muse."
My eyelids grew heavy, then a loud buzz came from the table next to him. "Fuck," he murmured, twisting to see who was calling. "I have to get this."
I narrowed my eyes at him, thinking this was his way of getting out of this. "Oh…I can go back to my room."
I pushed the covers up, propping myself up in a sitting position. "No." He silenced his phone. "This is your room now. You are to sleep with me."
He pulled himself into a sitting position, and naked, he looked vulnerable as shit. "You are my wife, and I need you here."
It wasn’t a question, but if I dared push him, he’d let me go again, but I was tired of pushing and pulling. I wanted to be with him…even if that meant laying it all bare for him.
"I’ll stay."
He nodded. "Good. Good. I’ll get your stuff moved over here."
"You should go answer that call," I whispered, leaning over to plant a kiss on his cheek. His hand rose to the spot I touched, as if savoring a caress he'd never experienced before.
"Okay," he responded. As he turned to get up, a sudden wave of cold and loneliness crept back in.
"Walsh?" I grasped his elbow, pulling him backward.
His eyes locked onto me, as if searching for the three little words that circled in my own head. I felt like a coward, but I couldn't. It didn't feel like enough time had passed, whether it was for groveling or just simply time. "Will you take the call in this room? I know it's probably personal and all, but the company?—"
"Yes," he said breathlessly.
Walsh was meant to be mine. For God's sake, I'd never seriously considered divorcing him because deep down, I knew we were stuck together from that one night we'd spent together. The night I let him take me while he was with Cagen—I knew it was the end of it. When I spent an entire year dedicated to ruining him through Ember, I knew it was him.
We were two deeply hurt individuals who kept hurting people to find our way back to each other. We were the villains in our stories, the outcasts never likable enough to earn redemption. Yet we both did it because of the trauma we'd experienced and the pain that followed.
Just two hurt people, hurting people.
Yet, as he grabbed his laptop and settled into the chair on the other side of the bedroom, typing away furiously with a scowl, I couldn't imagine myself without him. Among all the people placed on this earth, we had somehow found our way to each other.
I never imagined I would ever be worthy of love. My parents never showed it to me, and when my grandmother did, she was taken away from me.
Maybe after all this, after tonight, I could see myself loving him. Maybe if he promised me a little more freedom, a little chance at something new, he’d give it to me.
He dialed the number, then while speaking to whoever, he looked up at me to get confirmation I still wanted him in the room. Offering only a slight nod, I pulled the overstuffed comforter up to my nose. Its scent enveloped me—musk and linen intertwined. With one more deep inhale, I let the fragrance lull me into sleep, a respite from the tumultuous emotions swirling within.
In the midst of a dream or that limbo state between wakefulness and being deeply entrenched in slumber, Walsh's voice reached me, urgent and hushed, stirring me from my restful state. I couldn't pinpoint exactly what woke me, but there he was, standing by the bedroom window.
He looked so fucking edible with one hand on the window and the other shaking out his hair. He’d put on a pair of gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. The casual look surprised me. I was so used to seeing him constantly put together. Whatever call he was on, though, was stressing him out. His eyebrows scrunched as he listened, and I had to pull myself up a little to see his jaw ticking.
Blinking away the remnants of sleep, I struggled to get my bearings in the dimly lit room. "Are you okay?" I rasped, my voice still hoarse from waking up.
Worry etched across his features, his hands ruffling through his hair as he turned into the room. His deep gaze bore into me. It seemed to be the early hours of the morning, with dawn imminent. I refrained from rolling over to check the clock, opting to remain in the moment.
"Go back to bed, Madison," Walsh uttered, covering the speaker of the phone. I nodded, slipping back beneath the comfort of the overstuffed blanket. Truthfully, I was far too exhausted to argue with him, and still drowsy. Although I intended to respect his privacy, curiosity got the better of me, and I couldn't help but eavesdrop on the muffled conversation.
The room seemed to hold its breath as Walsh continued his hushed conversation by the window. Shadows danced on the walls, and the dim light of dawn began to filter through the cream curtains. My senses heightened, and every creak of the floorboards echoed in the silent room.
Through the thin barrier of Walsh's hand, I caught snippets of dialogue that raised more questions than answers. "I don't care if the Irish are upset. It's not my problem…Canceled their holiday plans? Well, that's not my concern. I'm here with my wife…No, I'm not with Cairn. I'm here with Madison."
The gravity in Walsh's voice hinted at frustration with whoever he was talking to. The muffled tone of the voice on the other end conveyed urgency and insistence, creating an unspoken tension that hung in the air.
As I lay there, the heaviness of the conversation weighed on me. The relationship dynamics hinted at by those few words sparked an array of emotions: confusion, concern, and a twinge of something resembling fear.
The conversation continued, yet I couldn’t piece together what I’d heard. While my logical mind tried to piece together the information, another part of me was fixated on the name "Cairn." It sounded so familiar, yet elusive memories danced just out of reach. Where had I heard that name before? The mystery deepened, leaving me with more questions than answers.
"I’ll come to bed soon, Muse. Close your eyes."
I didn't realize Walsh could still see me, so I gave him the faintest of smiles. He stared back at me with a look that I’d forever etch into my memories. His deep eyes filled with a longing so achingly soft. The circles beneath shared a story of exhaustion that only I could see. He was so devastatingly handsome, broken down in so many ways, I knew what I had to do. I decided when morning came, I would tell him how I felt.
"I need to head into the barn and grab something, I’ll be right back," he whispered, dropping down to give me a kiss on the cheek before leaving. The warmth of the bed and the comforting presence. The mysterious name and the cryptic conversation slowly faded into the background as fatigue claimed me once again.
With a final sigh, I surrendered to the drowsiness that beckoned, embracing the familiarity of Walsh's presence and the promise of a few more hours of rest. The events of the night and the early morning gradually slipped away, leaving me to sink into the soft embrace of slumber, where dreams held neither the weight of reality nor the enigma of unanswered questions.