Chapter 3
MADISON
I’ve been living in New York since I first came here for college. I went from a small residence hall room to a tiny apartment to a studio that I lived in up until my attack. After that, I didn’t want to be alone.
Sure, I still storm out of my apartment into the night, refusing to allow the past to rob me of my freedom. But getting hit over the head with a bat, robbed, and left for dead in an alley will make even the bravest person think twice about independence.
I wouldn’t ever say this to Avery, but I don’t feel safe anymore, not anywhere. I’m always nervous, even if I refuse to let anyone see it, even if I refuse to change my behaviors in deference to that fear. I’m still afraid.
But as Scott and I wander through the city, I’ve never felt so safe. It feels amazing to hold hands with the man who saved your life.
The doctor said if another hour or two had gone by without medical intervention, I might have had brain damage or lost significantly more blood. Instead, I was kept in an induced coma for a few weeks after surgery while my body did some work to heal itself, and I only had minor cognitive issues for the first several months after I left the hospital.
Now, I’m completely back to normal—minus the fear—and the fact that I get to wander through the East Village with him fills me with a surge of something I can’t name. Joy, maybe. Excitement, certainly. But something else.
Maybe it’s not that I can’t name it; it’s that I don’t want to.
Because the word flitting around in my head is desire, and that can’t be right.
Surely not.
His hand is warm and reassuring in mine, and that should be it, but when his thumb strokes gently against the inside of my wrist, a shiver races through me, pooling low in my belly.
I let out a long, steady breath. He’s incredibly attractive, and I want to know what it would be like to press my lips against his, to feel his tongue ring as he traces the inside of my mouth.
Another shiver ripples through me.
“Are you cold?”
he asks, his voice low as he leans close.
I shake my head, but he’s already pulling off his jacket and bringing it around my shoulders. Part of me wants to decline, but I change my mind once I’m wrapped in the smell of him—something warm and spicy and uniquely him.
We don’t go anywhere specific. There’s no end point in mind. We just stroll aimlessly, sharing our histories, our lives, for hours, and it isn’t until we end up at The Battery that I realize we’ve wandered miles, something I haven’t done in this city for three years.
Sure, I’ve walked to work, to run errands, to meet up with friends, but I haven’t wandered. Not really. Not without a care, not without a purpose or a place to be. And the fact that Scott has given that back to me, tonight of all nights, makes me more emotional than I would ever admit.
Eventually, our feet begin to protest. After I call my sister to give her a brief update and reassure her that I’m okay, we call an Uber to take us to wherever Scott’s staying in Brooklyn. He holds my hand as we drive, both of us quiet in the darkness, the city lights fading away as we cross the Brooklyn Bridge, and I realize he has barely let it go since we left R&B hours ago.
Not that I’m complaining.
“Our management company asked if we had opinions about where we stayed for the couple days we’re here,”
Scott tells me as we walk down the hallway on the 8th floor of a boutique hotel facing the East River. “Growing up in Bushwick, I always wanted a nice city view. So that’s what I asked for, and they delivered.”
He swipes a key card at the end of the hall and pushes inside. I can’t help the way my jaw drops when I see what he means.
“A city view? That is the city view,”
I tell him, laughing.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows is the iconic skyline, lit up in all her glory. There are only so many places you can get a vantage point like this, and they are almost all way above my pay grade. Getting to see a sight like this is something special.
“And it gets better,”
he says, smirking as he leads me through the hotel room that’s almost as big as my entire apartment and over to a door leading out to a balcony.
We push outside into the cool air of the late spring evening, each of us stepping up to the railing and leaning against it, just taking in the beautiful night and the view in front of us.
“This is amazing,”
I say, shaking my head.
“It really is.”
After a few minutes, I turn and look at Scott, finding him already watching me. I know instinctively that we’re going to talk about that night, and I’m relieved. I have so many questions.
“Do you remember anything?”
he asks, his voice gritty but gentle.
I shake my head. “Nothing. The whole day is a blur, and then I was in an induced coma for several weeks, so once I woke up, that was kind of a blur, too.”
“That must be hard.”
Shrugging, I turn my back on the city and cross my arms as I lean against the rail behind me. “Sometimes. For months afterward, I would lie awake and try to will myself to remember something. A sound or a smell, anything. But there was nothing.”
I pause. “Except for music.”
When I look at Scott again, he’s looking at his hands where they’re dangling over the railing.
“My family tried to convince me I was hearing music from someone’s phone or on the overhead speakers, but that never felt right to me. It was so close, and I could hear the words and the voice.”
I tilt my head to the side. “Your voice, though I didn’t know it was yours because I didn’t know you.”
Scott nods then turns to face me.
“Will you tell me what happened?”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Shawn and I were walking to the station when two guys blew past us, almost knocking me over. When I looked down the alley they came from, I could see a pair of pink high heels on the ground next to a dumpster.”
“It was 80s night,”
I tell him, though I only know because my friends told me once I woke up.
“Makes sense.”
His face darkens slightly as he continues. “I assumed they were trash, but I wanted to double-check, just to be sure. When I approached the dumpster, I found you lying on the ground behind it.”
Scott shakes his head. “Shawn called 911, but once I knew you were still alive, I picked you up and ran to the street. We flagged a cab and took you to Bellevue.”
My heart pangs at the picture of this man holding my bloodied and beaten body in the back of a cab.
“I waited for a long time, both of us did,”
he continues. “Eventually, the doctor sent us home. They wouldn’t give us any information, but I came back a few days later at night and slipped one of the night nurses a twenty. She let me sit in your room for an hour because you were right next to the nurse’s station so she could watch me.”
At that, I smile. “Was that Taryn?”
Scott nods. “How’d you know?”
I shrug. “She just seemed like the soft-heart type who would let you in against the rules.”
“Well, I’m glad she did. I came back as many nights as I could. I didn’t want you to be alone.”
I was alone. I’d been robbed and had no ID on me. The only reason the hospital knew my first name was because of the necklace I was wearing with my name on it in silver script. The friends I’d gone out with were people I didn’t see often. None of my family lived in the city, and I normally led a very busy life, only calling occasionally. So, apart from Scott visiting, I was completely alone. I was Madison Doe until I woke up and could give them my information.
Of course, my family was mortified that I’d been in the hospital for several weeks and they hadn’t known. The next year when my sister started grad school at NYU, we got an apartment together. So now, I’m almost never alone. I rarely go longer than a day without hearing from a family member. Sometimes I joke that they have me on a scheduled rotation for check-ins.
Knowing Scott was there, knowing he took the time to come back and make sure I was okay, day after day…warms something in my chest. I wasn’t alone after all.
“And the music?”
I ask, still unsure about that part.
At that, Scott blushes slightly, looking back out to the city across the water. “I read something about music helping with brain function, so I brought my guitar and sang to you a little bit.”
He shrugs.
I let out a long breath, feeling like this information is giving me a kind of closure I didn’t know I needed, a kind of resolution to the trauma I went through. It’s wild how connected I feel to Scott and, if I’m reading him right, how connected he feels to me. Just the way he introduced me to his brother, the way he emphasized my name—clearly, they’ve talked about me plenty.
Though that leaves one more question.
“Why didn’t you come when I woke up?”
I turn so I’m facing Scott fully, leaning sideways against the rail, then reach out and take his hand in mine. “I would have loved to meet the man who saved my life.”
His face pinches. “Shawn and I went out of town for a few days—family stuff—and when I got back, you were gone. You’d woken up, and your parents had you moved somewhere else. I didn’t even know your last name, and Taryn wouldn’t budge. Said she could lose her job if I went looking for you and mentioned anything about her.”
Scott shakes his head. “But I wanted to. I wanted to talk to you, wanted to know you were okay.”
I didn’t know anything about Scott until tonight. All I was told was that a good Samaritan brought me to the hospital, and that was why I walked away mostly unscathed. I wish I had known. I wish I’d known he sat vigil at my bedside whenever he could, even knowing he could get in trouble.
And I wish I could have met him back then. Talked to him. Thanked him.
Though, I guess I can do that now.
“Thank you,”
I say, squeezing his hand in mine.
But he shakes his head. “You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do, though.”
I inch closer to him, dipping my head to catch his eyes. “You quite literally made the difference between me standing here, completely healthy, and something that could have been much, much worse.”
He squeezes my hand back. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
We watch each other for a beat, and then I take a step closer, tucking myself into his side. As if it’s the most natural thing in the world, his arm wraps around my shoulder, pulling me close.
His warmth seeps through my clothes, embedding itself into my skin and nestling beneath my bones. I wasn’t cold before, but the feeling of being next to him, wrapped in him, warms me just the same.
Our embrace grows long, and I rest my face against his chest, my hands rubbing gently against his back. Scott holds me like I’m precious, and the caring way his fingers stroke down my spine sends that shiver through me again. I tilt my head back, gazing up into his eyes and breathing out a sigh of relief when I think I see the same look mirrored back at me.
Desire.
That idea is back again, and before it can dissipate or be explained away or dismissed, I rise up onto my toes and press my lips to his.