36. Thirty-Six
Dane stalks down the hallway, not meeting my eyes as he passes through the dining hall. Every one of his muscles is taut, and I feel the deep seeded instinct to shrink away from him. An innate urge to avoid his gaze and drop my eyes to the papers spread out in front of me, letting the wave of his anger crash somewhere else.
I haven’t felt that fear since I was a child. An angry, vicious child. It’s so jarring feeling my body react this way to Dane’s presence, but I tamp down the anxiety and remain in place until he’s closed himself away in his room, shutting the door with a nearly silent click.
His demeanor is so at odds with what I would expect, especially after hearing the sounds leaving the training room and reverberating through the bunker. It doesn’t make sense, and it raises the hair on the back of my neck.
Why is he so riled up?
I wait a few moments, expecting that Madeline will head out after him, but I don’t hear any movement coming from the direction of the training room. Nothing to indicate she’s even in there.
It would be more than irresponsible of me to not check on her, to see what she’s waiting for, or why she hasn’t left. When I pass through the open doorway, I don’t see anything. I almost walk past her, but out of the corner of my eye I see her pale skin.
She’s on the floor, sitting cross-legged. So close to the table that she’s nearly beneath it. Her eyes are unfocused, and her face is covered in blood.
She’s naked and covered in blood.
There’s blood on her, and she’s naked.
My thoughts clash and clatter against one another, and the cacophony is accompanied by a silent siren. Panic and rage roil within me. When her eyes meet mine, my stomach twists.
Something is horribly wrong.
There’s no fire, just an empty, exhausted stare.
If he hurt her, I’ll kill him myself. I don’t care what he’s done for me, I’ll throw away everything we’ve been building towards if I have to. My hands shake at my sides, and my fingers ache from how tight I’m clenching my fists.
I pick up her shirt and bra from the floor as well as the torn shorts discarded beside them. My ears start to ring and my vision narrows down to the torn fabric in my hands.
“Madeline. You need to tell me what happened. Now.” I can’t keep the rage out of my voice.
I don’t want to scare her, but I’m so pissed off it’s taking everything in me to make sure she’s okay before I go after Dane myself. The anger lining each of my words pales in comparison to the torrents I’m feeling. If I let it out, I could destroy the whole bunker.
“What?” Her eyes clear at my question, no longer staring off into space, but focused and alert.
“Baby, you’re covered in blood. What happened?” I crouch down to her level, reaching out to touch the offending substance smeared clean across her face. I hold out my hand in front of her face, the tips of my fingers now sticky and red.
“Oh. That’s Dane’s.” Her brows draw together, her head tilting like she’s confused, unsure why I’m asking any of this. Her answer doesn’t make me feel any less certain I have to kill him, though.
I’m trying. I really am. I’m doing everything I can to stop from going completely nuclear before I can get complete and total confirmation. My nails bite into my palms hard enough to center myself, to clear my mind enough to force out another question.
“Why was he bleeding, Madeline?”
“I cut him during training. We started on knives today.”
“And these?” I hold up the ruined pair of shorts and she blushes, actually blushes, at them.
“It just kind of happened,” she mumbles, averting her eyes, the redness on her cheeks deepening beneath the streaks of blood.
“So, you’re okay?”
“Yeah, Silas. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
It feels like my body falls away from me, the relief crashes down so hard I have to wrap my arms around her to steady myself. I pull her tight, resting my chin on her head and force myself to breathe.
Despite the instant flood of relief washing over me, I”m stuck with an intense mix of grief and guilt. I”ve spent the better half of my life doing everything short of worshiping Dane. Yet, here I am, clearing my mind of murderous rage at the possibility he hurt the woman in front of me.
In that brief moment of terror, my worldview came crashing down, destroying the compass I use to direct my life. I was ready to kill him and run off with her. Abandon everything my life has become.
Screw Tucker. Screw Ray. Screw Dane’s job. Madeline’s the only thing that mattered in that moment.
She pulls away from me, just far enough to look into my eyes. She’s sitting in my arms, naked as the day she was born and she looks concerned for me. My heart squeezes and I take another deep breath, my lungs shaky as they draw in the air. Whatever she’s going through right now, I know my frantic energy isn’t helping.
”Silas. Are you okay?”
God, I think I love her.
Or I’m falling in love with her.
It”s the only explanation I can think of. The only rational explanation for my instantaneous need to go to war for her.
”I”m fine, baby. I just thought…” I can”t say the words, won”t say them. Won”t give weight to the doubt that sank its talons so deeply into me. ”I don”t know what I thought.”
A smile ghosts across her lips. ”I like when you call me that.”
”Baby?”
”Yeah.” She dips her gaze away for a second, as if, despite her nakedness, this is what she’s feeling shy about. “It makes me feel, I don”t know, special? Special in a way that isn”t about what my body can do.”
I pull her closer, doing my best to send her everything I”m feeling right now. The positive stuff anyway.
I kiss the top of her head and release her to tug off my shirt. She blanches a little and I have to smother the lingering anger, remind myself that she’s okay.
That she wasn’t hurt.
”I can”t do anything right now. Still coming down, still a little too tender.” That blush flares again, and I”d be lying if I said my body didn”t react to the thought of her being fucked so hard she was left reeling afterward. Sure, I”d love to be the one who did that, but the realization it was someone else, someone from my team, isn”t jarring in the way I would expect.
”Looks like you”ve had more than enough for now. I”m just trying to get you decent.”
She nods and flashes me a grateful smile before accepting the shirt and shrugging into it. She”s more careful than she needs to be, pulling the collar widely over her face to avoid smearing any blood onto it. I couldn’t care less if she ruined everything I owned, a shirt isn’t going to upset me.
”Let”s go get you cleaned up.”
I pick her up, banding one of my arms under her knees, the other around her torso. When she nuzzles closer against me that same flare of primal possessiveness snakes its way through me.
I feel like I have the whole world in my arms when I stride to the bathrooms, with only one thought on my mind.
I”m done for.
I lean against the counter, trying to give her privacy while she showers, but she doesn’t let me fade into the background like I expect. Every few seconds she reestablishes conversation, and I’m happy to oblige, but I’m feeling drained from hitting the peak of my emotional capacity just a few minutes ago.
“You know, he came to my room drunk last night.”
Her voice is clear and steady, the slight roughness of it echoing through the empty space of the showers.
“What did he want?” I ask, studying the smear of Dane’s blood still on my fingertips.
For a while the only sound is that of the water slapping onto the tile in sheets, like she’s cupping her hands to catch it only to dump it out and catch more.
“He told me he was worried I’d ruin everything.”
The softness of her voice, the way it barely breaks over the sound of the water, forces me to move. I rock away from the counter and take the few steps to the stall. When I lean against the threshold she’s staring directly at me, like she’s been waiting for me to show up.
“What do you mean everything?” She doesn’t step towards me, so I don’t advance any further, but she seems comfortable enough for me to see her so vulnerable, both physically and emotionally. She’s free of her clothes, but she’s weighed down by a tension that seems to cling to her skin.
“Everything. The job. Your dynamic. His life, too, probably.”
I shake my head, trying to make sure I heard her right. Dane’s not an open book, and for him to tell her all that, he must have been beyond fucked up. I believe it, though. I believe all of it, even if he hasn’t said the words to me himself.
“How does he think you’re going to ruin everything?”
She drops her gaze, now focused entirely on the wet tiles beneath her toes.
“He said when I go…” she trails off, her voice uncertain. “He said when I go, you’d all follow me.”
Something clenches in my gut.
Is she afraid?
Somehow in all the time we’ve all been together, I hadn’t really thought about her leaving.
What’s going to happen when she does?
I think I might follow her, but if she’s worried about being hunted down and dragged back because we can’t control ourselves, clearly we’ve given her the wrong impression.
“I don’t want you to worry about that.” It’s the most honest thing I can say to her. I never want her to worry about how we’ll behave around her. I never want her to feel unsafe with us.
She nods in response, but she doesn’t look up, doesn’t show me whatever emotion has settled on her face. The face that makes my chest seize every time I see it.
My hand cupped under her chin finally pulls her eyes to mine, and I see just a shutter of emotion before she schools her features into a pleasant smile.
“You and Dane have been close for a while?” She throws the question out before I can figure out what that expression was.
“Feels like forever,” I admit, and another pang of guilt sours my stomach.
How could I think he’d do that to her?
“How did you meet?” She looks so open and earnest, her face painted only in hues of curiosity. There’s no judgment, no apprehension, just a desire to understand.
“He, uh…” Now it’s my turn to hesitate with my words, to tell the story I’m realizing I’ve never shared out loud. “He found me when I was a kid.”
She nods slightly, an encouragement to continue. The movement telling me the space is mine to control as long as I want to.
My eyes focus on the water falling onto her, tracing the drops as they cascade down her face. She’s done cleaning herself. She’s just been standing there in the spray, waiting for me, but I don’t want to have this conversation like this.
I step away to grab her a towel and I can feel her eyes on me, on the scars across my back. A phantom tingle sets in, the ridges and grooves making themselves known in excruciating detail. It’s the same every time I think too much about it, about how I got them. Every cell in my body refusing to let me forget, refusing to let me move on.
When I turn back to her, I wait for the apprehension to settle in, to feel my body shut down the conversation for me.
She turns off the shower and grabs the towel, but I don’t release it, opting instead to wrap it around her shoulders and pull her closer against me. She settles in, drawing from my heat in the same way I’m drawing strength from her presence.
“My parents weren’t good people. Didn’t feed me, didn’t… protect me when they should have.” The muscles in my back tense at the memory of the lashings, the kicks, scores of beatings I received through my childhood. Always for acting out of turn, for failing to live up to some impossible standard.
She doesn’t pull away, doesn’t stop me from continuing, but she also doesn’t give me pity. I would never expect it from her, but it would crush me entirely.
“I ran off when I was thirteen. I was an angry kid, bitter and always looking for a fight. Dane found me on a particularly bad day. He took me in. He’d already…” I trail off, unsure of how much of his story I should be telling her. How many of his vulnerabilities I want to betray. “He was on his own, too, at that point, but he was an adult. Just barely. He took me in, taught me how to be a person. Taught me that to get what I want in life, to truly succeed, I needed to channel my rage into something concrete. I needed to build discipline.”
She wriggles slightly against my chest and I realize just how tight my grip has become around her shoulders. When I release her, she takes a single step back and drills me with a determined look.
“What do you want in life, Silas?”
The question hits me in the chest, reverberating throughout my body for far longer than it should.
“I’m not sure,” I whisper, meeting her eyes despite every atom in my body begging me to look away. I want to be safe, I know that. I want to be fed and healthy and comfortable.
But beyond that?
“I’ve never really given it much thought.”
She nods but stays silent.
“What do you want beyond your freedom?” I ask.
She seems just as struck by the question, her mouth opening and closing, unable to form whatever thoughts might be in her mind.
“You never had any big dreams for when you got out?”
“I never thought I’d be out. Not really anyway,” she mumbles, shifting on her feet.
My stomach sinks at her admission, and again, I’m hit by the gravity of her situation. She was trapped in that place with no way out. No hope she would ever truly experience the outside world again. Selfishly, I want to push more. I want to get more out of her. I want to figure out what is buried so deeply inside of her.
I want it all.
I wish I could see them for myself, her deepest desires. I wish I could give her everything she ever wanted.
Her stomach growls loud enough to break the silence building between us, and I can’t help but chuckle alongside her giggle.
”Let’s get you dressed and fed.”
Her eyes sparkle when she looks up at me. Despite everything she’s been through, she still manages to look like this. So beautiful and open, it feels like the world is shifting around her. The only thing I can do is lean down to kiss her, and breathe that life back into myself.
Maybe this is what I want.