30. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
M addie
Interminable. That’s what this day has been, and it’s not even dinnertime.
Zar arranged for my cooking duties to be taken care of, and several of the women are taking turns bringing us our meals. Stryker and I agreed neither of us would cross the threshold until next Sunday.
When Anya brought breakfast, she offered to come in and talk; Stryker even said he’d leave the two of us alone. I didn’t take her up on her offer.
“Tomorrow,” I told her. “I just need some time to think.”
She brought us every game on the ship along with enough breakfast for three gladiators. It’s a good thing she brought so much food because most of it was inedible and I had to hunt to find enough to eat. The toast was burned—how do you even do that? Burned and cold, what a yummy combination.
The eggs were hard—I like them runny. What passes for coffee in outer space, bad on its best day, was so bitter I couldn’t finish it, and that’s saying a lot. I usually love my coffee, even outer space coffee.
“They need me,” I grouse.
“They’ll do fine without you, Love.”
He really likes that word. I guess it’s because he spent a whole year repressing his urge to say it. Now that he’s been freed, he’s going to use it in every other sentence.
We watched vids all morning until we were interrupted by lunch. I didn’t have to even look under the cloches, I could tell by smell alone that it wasn’t going to taste good. It was edible, but it was the intergalactic equivalent of canned soup and sandwiches.
“They need me to make home-baked bread,” I complain. “Where did they even find this shit?” I wave the flaccid piece of white bread between my fingers.
“Cold box I suppose,” he says around a huge mouthful.
“You don’t think it tastes like ass?”
“I was a gladiator for a long time, Love. If you had any idea what they fed us, that is when they fed us at all, you’d realize why none of us are picky.”
With lunch came other gifts to keep us occupied: Grace’s electronic musical instrument, some leatherwork projects, and some exercise weights.
“Great. You get weights,” I complain. “I couldn’t lift that if my life depended on it. Why didn’t they bring something for me?”
“You’d lift weights with me, Maddie?” He looks excited. Like ‘oh boy here’s something I get to share with my female’. “I’ll comm them to bring you some light ones.”
“No! That isn’t the point.” I hate weightlifting. I hate exercise in general. That’s why I’ve been twenty pounds overweight since sixth grade. “If they keep me locked in here with inedible food, maybe I’ll finally lose a few pounds,” I grumble.
“Why would you want to do that?” He cocks that adorable head at me and his gaze slides up and down my body as if I’m Marilyn Monroe and Angelina Jolie all rolled into one.
A spike of anger flies through me, and then I allow myself to feel a small fraction of the melty feelings I usually keep at bay when he does sweet things like this. Look at those caramel eyes of his. He’s so kind. Why can’t he just be an ass? Then this would be so much easier.
“Want to work out with me?” he asks after we finish our crappy lunch.
“I can’t lift those,” I glance toward the barbells in the corner.
“We’ll have some fun.” He smiles at me.
I know he’s self-conscious about his face. His scarring bothers him more than he lets on. I’ve heard him and Dax kid each other about their scars, but deep down it hurts him, I know it does. When his face lights in a smile, though, he’s so handsome. I have to admit to myself, he’s handsome all the time, smiling or not.
I may have issues and I may have broken up with him—for good reason I might add—but I never deluded myself, not for a moment, that I wasn’t attracted to him.
“Come on,” he says. “I came up with some ideas of things we could do while we’re locked in this room together.” He lifts an eyebrow in a sexy way, hinting at so much more than exercising.
“Show me, big guy.” I’m trying, I really am, even as my depression lurks just around the corner, yanking my chain, warning me it’s coming, like the shark music you hear in Jaws .
He gets on the floor in the plank position and tells me to crawl under him.
“Dust bunnies!” I announce once I’m down on the floor and glance under the bed.
After I’ve crawled under the Stryker bridge, feeling his cock brush against my left shoulder, he instructs, “Now run around my feet and do it again.”
I’m already out of breath, and he’s acting as if he could hold the plank for another year or two. That male is in shape.
“Five,” I say as I sag onto the bed.
“You know that was only four, right?”
“I never knew you liked to play ‘gotcha’,” I snip although I knew I couldn’t fool him.
“You don’t like to do things like this, I get it. You’d rather be standing all day in a hot kitchen experimenting with . . . what did you call it? Flavor profiles.”
“Yep.”
“I—” He stops himself just in time, but by the appealing look of yearning on his face, I know he was going to say something amazingly sweet that would make me feel guilty and want to cry.
There’s only one way for me to stop feeling this way and what do you know, the antidote is locked in this room with me.
“Stryker, let’s go to bed.” I tell myself there’s no reason for me to feel bad about my blatant invitation. It’s not like I’m using him, although I am. He enjoys it as much as I do.
“Rules, Love.”
“That’s not a rule,” I protest and pout even as I remember not only is it a rule, it’s one I made less than twenty-four hours ago.
“It is now, Maddie. I want us to be together for the long term. I don’t want to jump into meaningless sex.”
Did he just say that? Did he just use the term ‘meaningless sex’ as if he were a puritanical tenth-grade sex-ed teacher?
“Is that what we’ve been having?” I gripe.
“ I haven’t,” his tone is a deep rumble. He pierces me with his gaze. “Why don’t we take a nap? We can cuddle.”
It’s alternate universe day. My big strong red gladiator is actually a high school girl requesting snuggles. I don’t want to argue, though. Maybe once we’re horizontal I can trick him into sex. You know, burrow close, wiggle my tush, ‘accidentally’ thrust my breast into his palm. It could happen. Then the awkward hell of this situation could be pushed into the background while we burn up the sheets.
He lies down fully clothed. I’ve only seen him dressed in anything other than a loincloth a few handfuls of times since I’ve known him. Today, however, he’s wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. I’m on to you, big guy, I think. You’ve turned the tables and now it’s you who’s keeping me at arms’ length. I, on the other hand, strip down to my bare skin.
Half an hour later, I’ve wiggled, snuggled, and cuddled all to no avail. He’s too muscular for me to be able to force his hand to cup my breast. Finally, I fall asleep.
“Maddie?” he calls, his voice low as it appears he’s trying to wake me without making it too abrupt.
Someone must have already brought food; I smell it.
“Did I sleep through to breakfast?” I ask.
“No, it’s dinner.”
When I pull on my clothes and join him at the table, I see why I was confused.
“Pancakes? Seriously?”
“I love pancakes.” He heaps a small mountain of them onto his plate.
“Who doesn’t?” I ask, taking a generous serving myself. I’ve barely eaten all day. “Pancakes are for breakfast, though.”
“Who says?” he asks around a mouthful of food.
I make a very judgmental ‘tsk’ noise, then dig in.
When we’re done, he tells the computer to time us for thirty minutes. I guess it’s fair, it’s been about twenty-four hours.
“Have you given more thought to talking to Zar about getting you help in the kitchen?” he asks.
“But I like staying busy,” I say as if this explains everything.
“It’s just that . . .”
Interesting. Stryker is many things. He’s big and strong and calm and caring. He’s nice as the day is long, unless of course he’s trying to beat the shit out of you in the arena. Luckily, that’s never been part of our dynamic.
In addition to all those wonderful aspects to him, and the way he fills out a loincloth—quite nicely I might add—he does have some less appealing aspects. The most obvious is his complete lack of self-control when it comes to the words that fly out of his mouth.
Usually, if he thinks it, he says it. So, the fact that he’s taking the long pause, which is getting longer by the minute, is concerning me. Is he handling me ? This is new.
“It’s just what?” I prod.
“Sometimes you seem really unhappy.” He tips his head and spears me with his penetrating gaze.
I freeze. I am the great Maddini. The magic I perform is the ability to hide my depression in plain sight.
I’ve kicked him out of my cabin three-hundred-and-twenty out of the last three-hundred-and-sixty-five days for a reason; I don’t want him to see the sad part of me.
I sing my words instead of saying them. I wake up early and go to bed late and I cheerlead every single fucking person on this vessel because I am nice ! And I refuse to act sad in front of anyone.
How did he figure it out?
“I am not unhappy.” To add veracity to my little comment, I stare right into his caramel eyes.
I’ve got to give him credit. He doesn’t argue. Even more impressive, although he’s trying to convince me to let down my guard and fall in love with him, he doesn’t cave to me either. He doesn’t say ‘yeah, I guess I misunderstood’.
No, what he does is double down in the nicest way possible. He says, “I wish you’d open up to me, Love. Maybe if we put our heads together, we could fix whatever makes you sad.” He grabs my hand in one of his big warm ones and holds it tenderly. Then he just looks into my eyes with all the love he holds for me.
A normal woman would choke up and tell him every secret in her heart and ask—no beg—him to be her guy forever and always. Me? I cry.
It starts as little tears that just fall from my eyes. Nothing big. No snotty nose or hiccupping. The kind of tears you get at a moderately-emotional chick flick.
Then my sadness hits me like a tsunami. I’ve seen the pictures, the wall of water racing at you that’s like, what, a hundred feet high? And you can’t stop it, you can’t even run from it.
Only my tsunami isn’t H 2 0. It’s sorrow, heartache, and anguish.
And oh-so-sadly, I’m in familiar territory. My depression didn’t sneak up on me this time. I knew it was coming. But it didn’t start at a one and work up to a ten. It kicked down the door at full fucking strength.
Those little chick flick tears? Gone. I’m crying buckets now. Rivers. And yeah, the pretty, use-a-tissue-to-gently-wipe-the-corner-of-your-eye tears are ancient history. I’ve passed that line and am at the snotty-blubbery-gasping-for-breath stage.
Maybe he’ll comm the bridge to get someone to open the door so he can escape the cabin. Anyone with half a brain would flee. Instead, he lifts me in his strong arms, sits me sideways on his lap, and hugs me.
Big, burly Stryker is crooning to me. It’s like that old story, the little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike to stop the flood. How could a puny weapon like a hug work against the powerful force of my depression?
And he can’t stop it. Not for a millisecond. But it doesn’t faze him. He just keeps hugging and rocking and humming. And although it doesn’t cure me, it sure speaks volumes about who he is. This male who has loved me probably within days of our first shitty meeting and the soul-crushing order to copulate with a stranger.
The second tsunami of the evening hits when I realize I love him. I fucking love the big scarred warrior who is cherishing me in his embrace.
This makes me cry harder. Because even though he loves me, and now that I know I love him, none of it means a thing. Because neither he, nor I, nor the power of our love holds a candle to the power of this little quirk of chemistry that makes my brain feel like death would be a blessing.
Stryker
I love my Maddie. I’ve loved her since that first day. I love her strength and purpose and courage. I’ve never seen her like this. It scares me for a moment. Her emotions seem so . . . powerful.
It takes me all of five minimas to realize this is my Maddie, too. This is the side of her she’s hidden from me for an annum . It must be an important part of her for her to have kept it secret so well and so long. I resolve to learn about this part and to find a way to love it too.
Her head is hot from crying. She tries to speak a few times, but the words don’t come out right. My translator can’t do its job. I just soothe her with a shushing sound, like my mother shushed my younger sisters when they cried.
“It’s okay, Mads. It’s okay. You don’t need to talk or explain. You don’t need to do anything. Just be .”
She cries for a long time. Until she doesn’t have enough moisture to cry or produce more snot. She’s taking in those quick gulps of air that mean she’s calming.
I kiss her forehead and keep humming and rocking. After a while, I peer over her head to inspect her face and although her cheeks are still red and her skin is blotchy, I confirm she’s asleep. Good.
I don’t want to wake her, so I wait a bit longer, then carry her to bed and pull off her leggings. Then I strip off my soggy shirt and tuck her next to me.
For the first time since I met her, I lie next to her without my cock getting hard. I feel good. More mature. It reassures me that I’m not just interested in her for the sex. I love all of her. It’s a comforting thought.
I don’t know what made her so very sad. We have six more days. Perhaps I’ll understand better by the time that door opens.