31. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
M addie
Waking up in space is weird. There are no windows. There is no sunrise. You have to look at the clock to tell what time of day it is. I lie perfectly still. I don’t want Stryker to know I’m awake. I need time to think.
I’m pretty sure my secret’s out. That’s almost funny. How could he not know? I blubbered for an hour last night. His t-shirt was sopping wet by the time I was done. He’s such a good male to not have run screaming from the room.
My depression’s back in full force. I have all the symptoms: lack of energy, inability to concentrate, irritability, and desire to isolate. The scariest symptom of all? The sadness of yesterday is gone. In its place is the nothingness, the no-feel place, that’s so much worse.
I should redouble my efforts to convince him not to hang around. It’s my cabin. He could just open the door and walk away, telling everyone I won’t give us a chance. Frankly, though, I don’t have the energy to argue anymore.
He wants to hold me when I need it? I’ll let him. He wants to make certain I’m fed? Fine by me. There is one good thing to come out of this—I don’t have to spend the inordinate amount of energy it takes to keep my secret.
I flip over and look at him. I’ve never asked about the scars. They give him such deep shame he jokes about them to keep the shitty feelings at bay. To him, they’re his defining feature. To me, I barely notice them anymore. They’re just Stryker, my Stryker. In my mind, I can call him that now.
How ironic that the day I decide I love him is the very day he sees the true dark monster inside me and decides he doesn’t want me anymore. I know, he hasn’t left me yet, but he will.
I pet his arm and chest, allowing my palm to say the things I’ve hidden from him for a year. My touch is tender and . . . loving. Yeah, loving. As loving as a depressed person can be.
“I like that Mads,” he says without opening his eyes. Maybe he’s afraid looking at me will jinx it and I’ll quit being sweet to him.
Uncle. I give up. I don’t have the energy to keep him at arms’ length anymore.
“I like you, Stryker,” I tell him. I used the wrong “L” word, I know. It’s a copout, but then again, I’m full of copouts. It’s as close as I can get. I don’t want to let him too far in, and I want him to be able to leave without guilt.
My palm is on his chest, so it’s very apparent when I feel him stop breathing, literally. I guess my admission that I like him took him by surprise, hit him like a freight train. He turns on his side, pulls me close, and hugs me tight. It’s full of all the warmth and affection a person can jam into a wordless hug.
After last night’s crying fest, I wonder if he’s still treating me with kid gloves because he says nothing. Smart male.
Finally, he pulls away enough to get a good look at my face. A small smile tilts the corners of his mouth, he kisses the tip of my nose, and he burrows his arm under my head until I’m resting on his bicep.
“What do you want to do today?” he asks.
This male has such good instincts. I half expected, after my admission that I like him, that he would comm the bridge, ask them to open the door, and then march down the hallway shouting to one and all that we were now mates. He realizes, though, that my admitting tender feelings wasn’t even half the battle. Although I doubt he knows what the battle truly is.
Today is spent much like yesterday: eating almost-edible food, four, maybe five minutes of half-hearted exercise, vid watching, and snoozing. If I wasn’t so deeply in my depression, I’d have the energy to teach him how to play gin rummy with the deck of cards one of the women made. But that would be too much of a brain strain.
I know what we’re waiting for. After dinner Stryker gets his thirty minutes. He’s waiting with optimistic expectancy. I’m waiting with dread.
After an abysmal meal of . . . I don’t know what to call it. I always name my creations with interesting or fanciful names to give the finishing touch to something I worked hard on. When Anya brought this, though, she said no one had named it. And for good reason. I doubt anyone wanted to take responsibility for it.
“I hereby dub this brown mass of gravy and meat ‘glop’,” I announce. A whole day of doing nothing gave me the strength to be clever and pretend to be happy for the eight seconds it took to say that sentence. I believe I’ve hit my limit for the day.
Stryker stacks our plates, puts them on the tray, and sets them on the floor near the door.
“Those are going to reek by morning. I’m not going to run, Stryker. You can have them open the door so we can set that in the hallway.”
He gives me a visual inspection, making sure I’m telling the truth, then nods, comms the bridge, and puts the tray outside the door after we hear the lock click off.
As he palms the door closed, he tells the computer to set a thirty-minute timer.
I’m so tired. My body hurts and my head is fuzzy—two of the relatively minor symptoms of depression. They certainly don’t compare to the relentless sadness. But I don’t know if I can talk for half an hour. I get the brilliant idea to ask him a question.
“So Stryker, we’ve never really talked about your childhood. Tell me about it,” I just strung two sentences together in a row, and almost managed to sound like my normal perky self.
After sliding into the chair across from me, he grabs my hand and rubs his thumb in slow circles on my palm. If I wasn’t depressed, just this touch would be sending sexual sparks through my body. But my nerve-endings are mostly dead, so I try to allow his loving intent to seep through my skin.
“Our world was primitive. Not even as advanced as Earth from the way you females have described it.”
That’s a shocker—to have Earth described as relatively primitive. In the vast scheme of things, as I sit in a spaceship hurtling through the stars at the ass-end of the galaxy, I guess it is.
“My father was a fisherman who died at sea shortly after my mother had their third child, my sister Medra. It was rough for a time. I was eight. Too young to help, but too old not to try. I attempted to step into my father’s shoes. Of course, I failed, but my mother never let me know I wasn’t as helpful as I thought I was.
“She went through a bad patch after poppa died. Now that I’m older, I can only imagine how hard it must have been for her to carry on with three children, one of whom was an infant. No income. It must have been overwhelming.
“I don’t remember her complaining, though. And after a period of time, her sadness was replaced by her fierce determination to make a better life for her kids. She loved us a lot. I never doubted it.”
I picture an older, female Stryker. After feminizing the features, I can see a pretty female and her little brood of kids. She has a straight spine and proud chin. If that’s what he grew up observing, his mom recovering after such adversity, how could he possibly understand me and my depression?
I have no husband who was lost at sea. I have no children who depend on me. I do not need to find a job without having a skill. What must he think of me? This lazy Earth female who can’t get her shit together? Who wallows in sadness and self-pity? Who spits in the face of a loving male?
Our relationship now feels more hopeless than it was a few minutes ago.
“She loved us kids. Somehow her love taught me how to love. Unconditionally. I never squabbled with my younger sisters, never considered them a burden, never resented them. I just cared for them without question or complaint.”
His little story explains so much. This is how he grew up to be the male who was content to sit with me through my slobbering tear-fest last night, and even now is drawing calming little figure-eights on my palm with his thumb.
“Later, when I was abducted, trained as a gladiator, and forced to fight, I adapted quickly. Just as my mother modeled for me —how to be strong in the face of adversity. But I remembered my mom and sisters every evening and dreamed of them every night.”
“You’re a good male,” I tell him sincerely, then focus on a scratch in the metal tabletop.
“I allowed myself to dream of one other thing, Maddie.” He pauses, perhaps waiting for me to ask. I think I know what’s coming, though, and don’t want to hear it.
“I laid in my bunk hoping that one day I’d find a female to love.”
Could I just sink through the floor right now? Maybe just disappear? His words are so poignant. This big, beautiful warrior’s only desire was to love a woman, with the unspoken hunger that she love him back, and he has the galaxy’s worst luck of winding up with me .
He lifts my hand to his mouth and brushes a soft kiss across my knuckles. Neither of us speaks for long minutes.
Please don’t ask me a question , I silently beg.
“I probably shouldn’t ask,” he begins.
You’re so right. Don’t ask.
“If you could just explain what makes you so sad, I could help you fix it.”
When I pause for way too long, my eyes downcast as my sluggish brain casts about for a way to explain clinical depression, he tries to help.
“Did someone say something to you? Do something? Do you need something?” He’s lost, not even talking in complete sentences. I understand he’s walking the razor-thin line of probing without pushing—at least he’s trying to.
I flick my gaze in his direction, silently communicating that I’m trying to answer. This buys me more time, but I still don’t know how to explain.
“It’s called clinical depression,” I start, then pause. “It’s a medical condition. It’s not sadness.”
When I gather the nerve to look at him, I see one eyebrow quizzically raised, but he’s smart enough not to say a thing.
“Sadness is a symptom, but it’s more than that. It’s sadness and low energy and losing the ability to concentrate, and when it gets really bad it’s not even sadness anymore, it’s more like . . . they call it flat. That kind of explains it. It’s worse than sadness, it’s like you’re hardly even there anymore. Just a robot walking through life.”
He nods, but the expression on his face indicates he has no comprehension at all.
“I’ve fought it since my teens. It waxes and wanes. It was improving when I was abducted, and Dr. Drayke formulated something that’s kept it at bay. The medications on Earth always lost their effectiveness after a while. The depression always lurks in the background, threatening to return. I knew it would come back with a vengeance, just like on Earth. Last night? That signaled its return.”
His eyes scan my face. I can tell he has a hundred questions to ask. He doesn’t voice even one of them. He’s waiting for me to continue.
“Some people think I want to feel this way. That I’m lazy. That I don’t try hard enough. That if I just did more fun things or thought more happy thoughts it would go away. That would be like trying to think away being pierced with a sword. It’s a condition.”
His facial muscles tighten for the quickest second. I know what the emotion is that he’s trying to hide—fear. This good male is afraid he can’t help me. Yay! I think he might have understood my explanation. It’s more than I’d hoped for.
“Dr. Drayke is brilliant. He’s a good doctor. What did he say?”
“I haven’t told him I’m slipping back into my dark hole.”
The relief I read on his features is palpable. Mr. Fix-It thinks he’s found the magic to make his female better. I won’t argue. First of all, I don’t have the energy. Second, maybe he’s right. Maybe the doc can concoct something else to fix it. Perhaps I should have mentioned months ago that I might need a different formulation when this one inevitably quit working.
“Can I call him? Ask what he can do?” his voice is so hopeful.
I nod, although I have close to zero hope that intergalactic medicine can make this better in the long run.
Stryker
If this is a medical problem, Dr. Drayke can fix it. He brought Braxxus back from death’s door. He reattached his mate Nova’s arm. He gave Shadow a new mechanical eye. He’ll fix my female and she’ll be happy again. She admitted she likes me this morning, making me the happiest male in the galaxy. After he cures her, certainly she’ll agree to be my mate.
You deserve to be loved, Stryker , I tell myself. Like isn’t enough .
I know that, but it’s a start.
I don’t let on how thrilled and relieved I am that she’s agreed to be with me, to try to work things out, and that maybe the doc can cure what’s wrong with her. Somehow, I sense she isn’t optimistic. I’ll just let her be pleasantly surprised when he gives her the right medicine and makes her better.
When he arrives, she explains her relapse differently to him than she did to me. She uses words like Serotonin, Norepinephrine, and Dopamine. He nods and scribbles notes on his pad. He scans her brain and takes a blood sample.
“I’m sorry, Maddie. I should have checked in with you. I thought you were doing well. Frankly, it’s not that difficult. You’re telling me your physicians never came up with long-lasting medications.”
“They have. There are dozens of them, good ones in fact. They help a high percentage of the humans who need them. I’ve just been diagnosed with what they call ‘treatment-resistant depression’. Nothing they tried worked. Not in the long run anyway. I guess that’s why I didn’t come to you sooner.”
They’re seated at the table on the two chairs in the room. I’m standing. He reaches out and almost touches her hand to reassure her, then glances at me and thinks better of it, snatching his hand back.
“I’ll come up with something and bring it for you to try as soon as I find a solution.” He stands to leave, then says, “Everyone on board knows you two are locked in here.” He glances at me as if I’m not a nice male. “Is everything all right?” he whispered this last question.
“The door’s unlocked, Drayke. Stryker is kind and loving. I couldn’t ask for a better companion.”
My heart clenches with pride as I swallow in surprise. This feels even better than when she said she liked me this morning. Perhaps I should ask her to be my mate as soon as the doctor leaves. Surely, she’ll say yes.
“That’s reassuring. May I tell everyone on board that you two are doing well?”
Dr. Drayke is a kind male, always trying to make everyone feel better. You can see his face fall when Maddie replies, “Don’t get everyone’s hopes up.” She was answering his question, but she was looking straight at me.
Maddie
After a brief discussion, Stryker and I decide to change the rules. We agree to leave the room if it sounds fun and we can still be alone. ‘Fun’ is a relative term when you’re depressed. For me, it will mean ‘less relentlessly depressing than staying in the room another minute’.
At dinnertime, when everyone else is guaranteed to be in the dining room eating crappy food, he takes me to the ludus . It still baffles him that I don’t like to exercise, but he doesn’t push. He just escorts me to a weight bench, and I sit and watch him go through his paces.
This wasn’t a bad idea. Even though I’m depressed, I can appreciate his body—I’d have to be dead not to notice how hot this male is.
He’s using one of the machines to pull down a prodigious amount of weight from above his head to below his waist. First, he does it facing me, and I get to watch all his chest muscles dance beneath his red skin. Then he faces away, and I watch with fascination as his back muscles bunch and move.
He adds even more weight and grunts with the effort; sometimes his whole body quivers as he strains. Is he doing this to impress me? Because it’s working. His body’s beautiful. Wide muscular shoulders taper to a trim waist. He’s in his loincloth, and his thighs are like sculpted tree trunks.
“You’re a hunk,” I tell him when he’s between sets.
“Hunk?”
Did his translator not get that one right, or is he fishing for more compliments? It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t cost anything to make him feel good.
“Handsome, hot, good-looking, easy on the eyes. You know, attractive.”
Instead of making him smile, his eyes narrow, and his nose flares. I’ve known him for a year, this is his extremely not happy face.
“What did I say?”
“I thought you knew me well enough not to tease me about . . . that.”
He turns around, shows me his back, adds even more weight, and struggles with the first rep. What he’s doing probably isn’t safe. Even I know enough about working out to know you shouldn’t strain that hard.
“Stryker?” I realize the depth and breadth of how angry he is when he doesn’t acknowledge me, just keeps moving that prodigious amount of weight.
I rise and stand in front of him.
“Stryker.” I wait through another excruciating rep until his gaze flicks to mine. He focuses on a spot on the floor and starts his next rep. “I’d like to have our thirty minutes now,” I finally insist.
I’ve pitched my voice low, so he had to quit exercising to hear me. He pauses mid-rep, his muscles quivering as he stares at me deciding if he wants to argue about this, then lets the weights rest back on their stack.
After grabbing a nearby towel and patting his face dry, he sits on the weight bench opposite where I’d been sitting. I sit across from him and try to grab his hand, but he snatches it from me. Was it just yesterday I thought he’d never been mad at me? I stand corrected. He’s pissed. A muscle in his jaw is leaping, and he barely looks like the Stryker I know because his face has that hard look you give your enemies.
“Talk.” I don’t know where I found the nerve to give that order.
He breathes for a while as he wipes sweat from every nook and cranny of his body. My eyes can’t help but follow every movement from the cords of his neck to the bulges at his shoulders, to his firm pecs. There isn’t an inch of him I don’t want to lick. This is shocking in itself because usually in the depths of my depression I have no sexual desire whatsoever. I guess even the deepest level of depression is no match for Stryker’s charms.
“What is there to say? It’s not nice to tease your lover.”
He’s still so mad he can’t give me eye contact. He’s focused on a point over my right shoulder.
“I wasn’t teasing,” I say as I watch every muscle on his face go on lockdown.
“This is our thirty minimas ? Perhaps we should have made it a rule that during our thirty minimas only truth is to be spoken.”
“Okay. New rule. Only truth,” I agree.
“Good. I don’t like lies.”
“Nor do I. So, let me repeat—I wasn’t teasing.” I have more to say, but I won’t continue until he looks at me. I’ll wait. This is important.
His gaze finally lifts to mine.
“To me, you’re the best-looking male on the ship. Bar none. I was sitting watching you and couldn’t restrain myself from telling you how hot you are. So, sue me.”
He lifts a quizzical eyebrow, then spears me with such a hard look, if his eyes were lasers, I’d be burned alive. He takes one finger and touches it unerringly to the top of his longest facial scar. Without tearing his gaze from mine, his finger follows the jagged flaw from top to bottom.
“Did you fail to notice this?”
Wow, he’s pissed. ‘This’ came out as a hiss. Even though the hard shell of depression around my heart makes it hard for me to feel much of anything other than sadness, I feel compassion. Warm tenderness suffuses my chest. I knew on many levels he had issues about his scars, but here it is in the cold light of day. His hurt and anger are like a living thing shimmering between us. I need to slay it once and for all.
I walk the few feet separating us, even as the anger in his brown eyes intensifies. Of one thing I’m certain, he’ll never hurt me. I invade his space, then move even closer. Grabbing his wrist, I yank his hand away from his face, then replace it with my own.
“I noticed this,” I say as I trace it exactly as he did. “And this,” I trace another, following every twist and turn. “And this,” I mark another. I grab his chin and tip his head toward me. He needs to see my face, to see the sincerity of my expression.
“I failed to notice none of these scars. Because they’re part of you, Stryker. You. The best male I’ve ever met. The kind male who cradled me in his arms last night when I was breaking. The male who let me drive us both insane with the slow pace I’ve set for the last year. The handsome ,” I stop here so the word reverberates around the empty air of the ludus , “male whose looks take my fucking breath away.”
The harshness has disappeared from his face. His gaze is questing as he tries to discern truth from lie.
“Those scars may be ugly to you because whatever caused them brought you pain. I get that. Don’t assume for a minute, though, that they’re ugly to me. They’re who you are, Stryker, and you’re beautiful to me.”
His lids slam shut as he takes a huge breath, then he opens his eyes and grabs my shoulders so hard it shocks me. Nudging me toward him, he pulls me onto his lap. I straddle him so we can fit together as he hugs me tight.
“You wanted the lights off when we were in your cabin. Because you couldn’t bear to look at me.” His words are half statement, half question.
My guts squeeze in pain a thousand times worse than depression.
“Is that what you thought?” I palm his cheek again. “God, no, Stryker. I couldn’t bear the thought of you seeing me .”
His eyes pop open in surprise. “But . . . you’re so dracking beautiful, Mads.”
“I didn’t think I deserved a male as perfect as you.”
His fingers slide through my hair as he presses me against his chest, then he sets me apart to examine my face again. It’s as if he’s checking my veracity one final time.
“This. This is why I love you, Maddie. I’m sorry a wonderful person like you suffers. I wish I could fix it. But whatever you have, and however you need to deal with it, you’ll never be alone unless you force me away. Because you’re worth it.
“Do you hear me Mads? I am here for you because you are here for me. I’ll stay through the months of bad times because deep inside your shell is the best person I’ve ever met. If I can provide you the slightest comfort, it will be my pleasure. I’m yours, Maddie. Forever. Even if you’ll never be mine.”
Perhaps the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life is to keep my eyes open and not run away inside myself. I force myself to stay present, to let that soak in.
Clutching him tighter, I focus on my breathing, then his. It’s our breathing, since we’re in sync. My mind breaks free of its depression-induced lethargy and sprints. All at once it thinks things through and connects the dots and extrapolates and slingshots forward in time.
I picture Stryker and me years from now in little flashes, just like a music video. Only this isn’t only the good times like they show on MTV. This is all times. I see myself in the fetal position on the floor like I get sometimes, only in this future picture I’ve let him in, and he sits with me to remind me that even in the darkest times I’m not alone.
I see myself in the stands of an arena watching the male I love risking his health and safety for the good of all the people on this ship. And as hard as it is to watch, I’m there to support him, because he’s mine.
I see us sharing a cabin and exercising together. Well, him exercising and me watching. I see him helping me in the kitchen. There are fights and making up and wow, there’s a lot of sex. And then it circles back to me in tears. But instead of fighting my demons alone, I have Stryker.
“Have I mentioned how much I love you, Stryker?” I ask as I look at him and cock my head.
“I can’t remember,” his voice is ragged and husky. It’s usually the voice he reserves for the bedroom.
“I love that voice. I love you , Stryker.” I cup his cheek on his worst side to underscore my point.
I kiss him hard and fast, then pull away to ask, “Do you think we can do this? You saw me at my worst last night. Well, that’s not true. There’s another stage worse than that. You think you can handle me?”
“Only if you let me in, Maddie. Let me know what’s going on in this brain of yours.” He taps my forehead. “Let me try to make things better for you. Even if I can’t, let me try. Not being able to try will kill me. Even if Dr. Drayke has no magic, if you stay open with me, stay honest, I’ll be by your side forever and consider myself lucky.”