Chapter Six
Eight Years Earlier
Some bloke—Andrew, was it?—tossed Madden a baseball on his way down the corridor of Cumberland High, slapping Madden on the
back as he passed. Madden forced a smile and nodded at his new acquaintance, even as that slap reverberated through his entire
body, an echo he had no desire to feel. He remained stalled midstep a moment, reminding himself the slap had been a friendly
one, before getting moving again.
Two weeks into being enrolled as a junior at Cumberland High and the other students were obviously still getting used to seeing
him there, based on the way they stared as he walked through the rows of lockers. His accent had been imitated around a thousand
times. Nothing was familiar. Not the food, the constant high-fiving, or the impractically frantic pace of an American school
day. But he’d chosen this, hadn’t he?
He’d chosen to stay.
When the morning arrived to return to Ireland, he’d calmly gotten out of bed and walked into the kitchen where Aunt Fiona stood making tea and solemnly asked her to please not send him home.
The request had been difficult to make. Madden knew better than to ask for more than what he absolutely needed.
Expecting more than what he’d been allotted was selfish.
He was selfish. Hadn’t he been told that often enough?
His aunt had taken one look at his white face and nervous breathing and poured a second cup of tea. He could still hear shadows
of that conversation, alive in the house.
“We’re not really related, Fiona. I’m a . . .”
A long sip of Barry’s Gold. “You’re a what?”
“A bastard,” he managed, his first time saying the word aloud. Far from his first time hearing it. “My mother was pregnant
with me when she married my father.” Fiona’s brother. “I’m not his, it’s easy to see. They’re fair-haired and green-eyed,
the opposite of me. Maybe if it wasn’t so obvious we’re from different men, he wouldn’t be so humiliated. Maybe he wouldn’t . . .
take that humiliation out on me.”
She’d set her cup down with a rattle. Remained in silence for nearly a full minute. “Does he lay hands on his wife?”
“No,” Madden assured her. “He leaves Paul and Sinead alone too. But me being there . . . it’s unacceptable to him, Fiona.
The sight of me eats him alive and it causes problems in the house. I’m the poison—”
“You are not poison,” she hissed, her keel uneven for once.
“My father once said the same to me because I rebelled as a teenager. Married someone they didn’t approve of and then he gloated when it didn’t work out.
Made me feel like I couldn’t do anything right.
I’m in this country because I believed myself to be the poison infecting my own family.
Now that I realize it was just a lie I was sold to make a small man feel better about his own shortcomings, it’s too late to go back.
” She turned in her seat. “You are welcome here, in this house of accused black sheep, but don’t make the same mistake I made.
Allowing yourself to be run off when you’ve done nothing wrong but exist.”
Madden carefully considered what his aunt said. Perhaps she was right. But he’d been living with the belief that he was wrong
for too long to change his mind. He didn’t want Paul and Sinead and his mother to weather a storm that wasn’t their own making.
They would be happier in his absence. Without the anger he alone seemed to incite.
“I need to stay.”
That was it. She nodded and registered him for school that same afternoon.
In almost every way, being in Cumberland was better.
When Madden was at Aunt Fiona’s, at least. The quiet fell and he could breathe in a way he couldn’t have imagined back home.
In school, however, blending in became very difficult.
Fate had landed him in a house next door to Elton Page, who’d quickly ordained Madden a baseball player and introduced him
to his vast network of friends, who also played baseball every bloody chance they got. Madden had never watched the sport
before coming to Rhode Island. Now? Every pair of trousers he owned bore dirt stains on the knees. He’d planned on filling
in one time for Elton’s friend at a scrimmage, then bowing out. Trying out for a proper sport, like football. Or soccer, as they called
it here.
Then he’d been introduced to the catcher position.
He’d liked the mask.
The silence and repetition of being a catcher.
Perhaps the sport itself would never be something he chose—the noise and grit and intensity of it reminded him of home, and he didn’t want to be reminded of that—but he could bear with it from behind the cage.
In the background. Observing. Surviving.
So he continued to play baseball in this foreign place, playacting like he belonged with a rowdy group of kids with almost freakishly wholesome home lives, trying his goddamn best to blend in, because if he faked belonging long enough, maybe one day he would.
The warning bell rang for fourth period and Madden picked up his pace slightly, needing to get to earth science, so the teacher
wouldn’t use Madden’s lateness as another opportunity to tell a story about his senior class trip to Ireland in 2001. Jesus,
he probably would no matter what.
Madden rounded a corner of the empty hallway, drawing up short when he saw her.
Eve Keller.
The serious blond girl he’d met in Elton’s kitchen two weeks prior. He didn’t interact with her much in school, due to him
being a junior and her a freshman, but they were often at the Page household at the same time, whether in the backyard after
classes or colliding in the kitchen. They didn’t speak much directly. It was hard to get in a word with Elton and Skylar’s
nonstop lambasting of each other. Eve and Madden were mainly observers, but in an odd way, their spectator status was what
gelled them.
A traded eye roll or a quiet, sarcastic comment exchanged under their breath. They’d fallen into a quiet sort of . . . companionship
that neither one of them had acknowledged. It just was. And he felt less alone because of it. Still, he’d only been in Cumberland
two weeks. Not long enough to consider himself close to anyone.
Which was why he’d found it so odd that the morning he’d asked his aunt to let him stay, Eve’s face had popped into his head.
He’d been oddly relieved at the chance to see her again.
Though it was very hard to explain why. Even to himself.
Madden was sixteen. Eve fourteen.
Too wide of a gap for him to consider her . . . romantically, right? Yet he thought of her, nonetheless. When they brushed
gazes in the school corridors, an invisible force kicked him in the gut. Pursuing someone two years younger was fucking creepy
and he wouldn’t allow himself to go there, even mentally, but the way she’d been so bold about announcing her father as the
strip club owner . . . that defiance tugged at his chest.
He found himself wanting to ask Elton about Eve.
Is she okay?
He wanted to ask that question, in particular.
Because he knew what a person standing on shifting sand looked like.
He’d seen it in the mirror.
Now he watched as Eve tried to avoid two male students, only to have them step into her path, blocking her from passing. If
someone overheard their laughter from down the hall, they might have deemed it harmless, but coupled with their actions, Madden
could only pick up on the sinister notes in those twin laughs. Especially when he caught the profile view of one of them and
clocked the leering expression. Aimed right at Eve.
Worse, these two were clearly older than her. Closer to Madden’s age.
“Dance for us and we’ll let you pass.” An elbow to his friend’s side. “Or do you even know how to shake it without a pole?”
“Come on. One little flash, Eve. Should be no big deal for you.”
Disgust sent Madden’s stomach plummeting to the sticky linoleum floor. This was what she’d been referring to that day they met in the kitchen. Ask me if I’m going to work the pole one day. I’m sure you’re dying to know. Everyone asks. It’s fine, really.
Christ, the girl was fourteen and this was her everyday reality?
Not anymore.
“Eve,” Madden said, walking into her line of sight and giving her the most reassuring look he could muster while his blood
was boiling, “go to class, love.”
To be clear, Madden hated violence, but in a strange way, he’d grown resigned to the existence of it. After all, there were
three kinds. The type of violence that was perpetrated on the weak and defenseless. An unacceptable, abusive brand of violence
he was too well acquainted with. He found the second and third types acceptable, however. Self-defense and defense of the
underdog.
Eve was clearly the underdog in this situation.
“I’m fine,” Eve said, sounding out of breath, her books smashed to her chest.
“Of course you are,” Madden felt compelled to say—and the sharp way she lifted her chin to study him with something like renewed
respect said it was the right thing. She doesn’t want to be rescued. “I just need to speak to these two for a moment.”
“Fine.” After a brief hesitation, she sidestepped the pair, her shoulders sagging in visible relief when they didn’t block
her a second time. “You’re, um . . . going to be late for class,” she remarked when she drew even with Madden, but he could
tell it was her way of thanking him without having to do it out loud.
“It’s okay.” He jerked his chin in the direction she was heading, reminding her it was okay to leave. “My teacher is chill,
as you Americans like to say.”
Eve tried to replace the fear on her face with a wry smile, but it didn’t quite work.
Still, Madden had to train his eyes on the ground so he wouldn’t acknowledge how that smile made her even more extraordinary.
She’s only a freshman. “I’m glad he’s chill,” she muttered, adjusting her books with a swallow.
“You don’t need to interfere, though. I can handle
them. I’ve been doing it for a long time.”
Madden had to concentrate on not punching a locker. “Then I reckon it’s time you took a break,” he said, attempting to remain
calm. “Does Elton know about this?”
Eve’s lips were stiff when she answered. “He doesn’t know how bad it is. And I don’t want him and Skylar to know.” She hesitated,
as if trying to wrestle back the next part, prevent herself from saying it out loud. “I like the Pages . . . and I don’t have
a lot of friends. I don’t want my only ones to write me off as a hassle.”
Madden wasn’t accustomed to displays of affection, but he recognized the urge to hug Eve in that moment. Somehow, he managed
to refrain, though the impulse never quite left him. Ever. “You’re worth a lot more than a hassle. And we’re friends now too.”
“Friends,” she repeated, hope dawning. “Um—”
“You going to give him a lap dance, Eve?” snickered one of the boys.
Her cheeks flamed red.
Madden’s vision blanketed with the same ruby color.
“Eve, as your friend,” he bit off, “I’m telling you to go to class.”
She sighed, averting her gaze, but not before Madden saw the light sheen in her eyes and it made his chest feel like twisted
metal. “Are you my protector now, or something, Madden Donahue?”
He didn’t even crack the slightest smile. “Yes.”
Something was exchanged between them under the fluorescent hallway lights, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what.
A grudging allowance to let him be somebody to her, maybe, before she sped off toward class.
Madden waited until she was safely inside her classroom and the hallway was empty before he dropped his books to the floor, took the assholes by the collars of their shirts and pounded them up against the row of lockers, satisfied when their eyes bulged out.
You weren’t expecting that, were you, motherfuckers?
“Don’t say another fucking word to her,” he growled through his teeth. “Not about her either. Not even to each other. Or I will beat you both to a pulp. Do you understand me?”
This wasn’t the last time Madden would issue a warning on Eve’s behalf.
Their high school was a big place with equally big mouths and a lot of bravado.
But when he’d called himself her protector, he’d meant it.
That promise didn’t have an expiration date.