6. Chapter 6
Maddox
Everywhere I look is filled with smiling faces with the words "happy father's day" printed above them in big mocking letters. I can't escape it no matter how hard I try. I give up scrolling social media and throw my phone across the room.
I fucking hate this day. I don’t care that any of these people have dads that they love or husbands that they need to celebrate. I don’t want to acknowledge this day. I have nothing to celebrate.
All I have are memories of my dad lying in the floor at my feet, his neck twisted at an unnatural angle—my hands are trembling as the memories start to cloud my vision, dragging me back to that miserable fucking day—his skin a deep shade of wine from the trauma, the way it only got worse when I finally returned to the scene of the crime.
How I screamed and clawed at the paramedic when they zipped up the body bag catching his hair.
I can still hear the broken sound ripping out of me as I begged and pleaded for them to fix it.
That they were hurting him and pulling his hair—my throat is tight, caught swallowing an immovable lump—the pitiful look the male paramedic gave me as the female one rolled her eyes at my outburst. Eyes that I should have gouged from their fucking sockets for treating me like that.
Before I know it my whole body is slumping to the floor, violently shaking in silent sobs.
I can hear Rylen moving around the kitchen past my door but I can’t bear to have him see me like this—puffy eyes, snot pooling above my lip, mixing with my tears.
I feel an aching hollowness in my heart that was torn from me the day I watched my father die.
The floorboard creaks, but it doesn't fade away toward the kitchen like I'd hoped. It stops just outside. I hold my breath waiting for the shadow to pass my bedroom door. Please don’t knock. Please don’t knock. Please don’t knock.
The silence that follows is heavy, thick with the smell of the toast he was just making and the suffocating weight of my own grief.
I try to choke back a sob, pressing my face into the carpet, but a jagged, pathetic sound hitches in my chest. The door flies open, giving way under the heavy pressure of someone who knows exactly what’s going on behind it.
"Mads? Oh, fuck." Ry's voice is garbled with dispair, as if seeing me like this causes him physical harm. I can’t look at him in the eyes. I can’t let him see the wreckage in my soul. I scramble backward, trying to push myself off the floor, my limbs feeling leaden weights .
I make it as far as the edge of the mattress, collapsing against the side of the bed, my lungs suddenly deciding they don't know how to process oxygen anymore.
The room is spinning, the memory of that body bag zipper loud enough to drown out the world.
I feel the bed dip and I try to bolt; to shove him away, to hide in the closet, to crawl into a hole and disappear—except my coordination is gone, I can't move my body fast enough. Rylen’s arm hooks around me before I can slip away, dragging me against him, chest to chest. His bare skin feels warm beneath my touch, the kind of heat that shouldn’t be allowed.
I can’t catch my breath. It keeps coming in ragged bursts, like I’ve been sprinting but the finish line keeps shifting further and further away.
“Oh god,” I choke out, fingers clawing at the sheets behind Ry.
My vision’s tunneling, the walls bending in around me, tears welling up that threaten to fall. “Oh god, oh god—”
“Hey.” His steady voice cuts through it, a low hum completely unrattled by the desperation in mine. “Maddox. Look at me.”
I try, I really do, except my head’s somewhere else, back in that looping reel of everything that went wrong starting the day my dad was slain before my eyes.
Rylen takes my hand and presses it to his chest. His heartbeat thuds steady against my palm, grounding me like a metronome of safety.
I try to drag my mind away from the blood, the sound of his lifeless body hitting the ground with a thud, the deafening sound of the bullet piercing my dads skull.
“Feel that?” he murmurs. “That’s real. You need to match it. C’mon Mads, just breathe.”
I swallow hard, but the air still stings going in.
“I–I can’t.” The words feel like they’re ripping a burning hole in my lungs.
“You can,” he counters, voice firmer this time.
“In and out. Keep your hand here.” The rhythm beats against my palm, a steady thump, thump, thump, and I start trying to sync to it.
In when it hits, out when it fades. It’s embarrassingly simple, being taught how to breathe again.
“There are no bears,” Rylen adds quietly, almost like he’s telling a secret. That pulls an animalistic sound from me, something caught between a laugh and a sob. I pinch my eyes tighter, nuzzling in closer so the curve of my nose is pressed against Ry’s throat as his grip around me tightens.
My hand slides up his back, over the divot in the flesh of his right shoulder, threading into the hair at the nape of his neck. My fingers begin absentmindedly twisting and twirling the soft locks. This is… nice. The kind of soothing that makes me feel safe and comforted, and loved.
“No bears,” he repeats in a whisper. “You’re safe.
It’s just you and me, always.” And it’s stupid how fast that sinks in.
The noise in my head dulls, the shaking eases.
His chest rising and falling beneath my hand, and I follow the rhythm because it’s easier than fighting it.
I’m too tired to keep fighting everything.
His thumb starts tracing slow circles into the back of my hand, the movement pulls me closer to the surface, out of the static.
My chest still trembles with aftershocks, but the edges of the panic start to blur and lose their bite.
His skin smells faintly of shampoo and cigarette smoke and enough cologne to make me dizzy.
He keeps talking, the sound of his voice works better at soothing me than anything else does.
It’s the tone that matters really, the steady hum of it.
I can feel it vibrating through his ribs into my body, merging us together like we’re one.
My fingers twitch against him, and he tightens his grip a little anchoring me there.
“That’s it,” he says quietly. “You’re okay. ”
“I hate this,” I manage. My throat’s raw, the words scraping out like shards of glass. “I hate when it gets like this. I hate being like this ," I admit, using one hand to gesture down at myself, to my current state.
“I know you do," he sighs, and his hand finds the back of my neck, thumb rubbing there too. “It’s okay . You’re not broken, Maddox. Your brain’s just running too fast for your body to catch up.”
I want to argue. I always want to argue.
Although this time I don’t have the strength for it.
I’m so tired of my brain being this way.
Some days I think it would just be easier for everyone if I just died.
All I do is cause pain. I’m the reason people want to leave.
I’m too much; Too angry. Too violent. Too fucked up.
There’s nothing redeemable about me so why am I even bothering to keep on going.
It’s painful to be alive. To have this molten lava of grief and rage wash over my brain until I blackout.
It’s like watching yourself be dragged away from the steering wheel of a car going 100MPH and being helpless to avoid the crash.
My chest feels so heavy that it could cave in on itself.
Maybe it should, I’m a fucked up charity case anyway.
My head’s broken and it makes me do fucked up things, like a corrosive poison in the veins of everyone I love, eating away at them until there’s nothing left.
I shouldn’t be with anyone, let alone the person I want most.
I break out into a sob again, the more I try to stop the tears, the harder they fall.
My body’s so tense, every nerve alert, and yet he doesn’t let go. Rylen just holds me like he’s pretending I’m not some ticking timebomb that might go off again at any moment.
After a while, the panic stops trying to claw its way out.
It just kind of… sits there, quiet and worn out.
I lie in the wreckage of it, hand still over his heart, letting his pulse prove I’m still here in the present.
Eventually he slips from my hold, stepping quietly from the room.
My body instantly feels the loss of heat, the aching dread that this is the thing that was finally too much for him. The one that pushes him away for good.
When he returns a few agonising minutes later, the world feels as though it’s finally loosened its grip on my throat.
I can breathe now, mostly, except my hands won’t stop shaking, and I hate that Rylen can see it.
He doesn’t acknowledge it though, just brushes the hair off my forehead, pulls me up off the bed like a ragdoll and says, “come on,” with a tilt of his head towards the door.
The house is quiet, except for the soft pad of his footsteps ahead of me.
My body moves on autopilot, following down the dim hall.
When he pushes open the central bathroom door, the warmth hits me immediately.
We step inside and are enveloped by the thin steam curling over the glass shower wall, and the faint, familiar melody of The Legend of Zelda trickling from the little Bluetooth speaker on the shelf.
He did this… for me? It’s all so ridiculously perfect.
Rylen tests the water with the back of his hand, adjusts the knob a few times until it’s just shy of too hot, then turns back to me. “You’ll feel better after this,” he states firmly, leaving no room for argument.
His face lights up with a thought and he turns to rummage through the bathroom cabinet until he finds what he was searching for, a small amber bottle with a yellow label.