Chapter 7 #2
She’d made it through two months of mandatory counseling by giving just enough to satisfy the requirement without actually opening up, keeping everything carefully worded and clinical. But Jade wasn’t satisfied with surface-level anymore, and Maddox was exhausted from maintaining the facade.
Zeus finished drinking and pressed against her legs, his solid warmth familiar and necessary. She reached down to scratch behind his ears, feeling the soft fur there, and he leaned into the touch.
“If I tell her,” Maddox said quietly to the dark kitchen, to Zeus, to no one in particular, “she’s going to want to fix it.”
Zeus huffed a breath that could’ve been an agreement…or just him being a dog.
“And if she can’t fix it—”
The words stuck in her throat. Because that was the fear underneath everything else, wasn’t it? That if she finally let someone in, finally let someone see the full extent of the damage, they’d realize she was too broken to bother with.
Leah had left her. Not because she didn’t care, but because Maddox hadn’t been able to give her anything real after the deployment. She’d shut down every attempt at connection until Leah had finally stopped trying.
Jade was different, though. She was persistent in a way that felt less like pressure and more like patience. And somehow that was more terrifying because it meant Maddox might actually want to let her in.
She looked down at Zeus. “I’m scared,” she admitted, and the words felt too big for the quiet kitchen. “Terrified, actually.”
His tail swished back and forth slowly.
She took a big inhale to steel her nerves. “But I think I have to do it anyway.”
When dawn came to greet her, Maddox was still standing at the counter with Zeus at her feet. She felt the weight of the coming day press down on her shoulders, and she rolled them backward three times and squared them.
The nightmare’s echo still lodged in her chest, heavy and insistent, but Zeus’s warmth against her legs reminded her she wasn’t in the desert anymore.
“Come on,” she said to Zeus, pushing away from the counter. “Let’s get ready.”
He followed her through the house, staying close, and she let herself be grateful for his presence. Whatever happened in therapy today, whatever truths were finally revealed, at least she wouldn’t have to face it completely alone.
Small comfort, maybe, but right now she’d take it.
Her shift started at eight, and Maddox was already counting hours by eight-fifteen.
She’d gone through the motions at home—shower, uniform, Zeus’s breakfast and her own that she didn’t eat—and arrived at the precinct on time as always.
Her body knew the routine well enough to function without her brain fully engaged, which was good because her brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton and static.
The morning briefing passed in a blur of voices and incident reports that she’d have to check her notes on later. Riley caught her eye across the briefing room and raised an eyebrow, but Maddox looked away before the question could fully form.
After, Zeus loaded into the K-9 vehicle without issue, and she went on patrol down residential streets, across the business district, and along the harbor loop.
Maddox drove the familiar routes and responded to dispatch with the appropriate codes, but everything felt slightly off-kilter, like the world had tilted two degrees to the left and only she could feel it.
“Unit 12, respond to a noise complaint, 847 Ashwood Drive,” dispatch said.
Maddox pressed the button on the side of her radio and brought it to her mouth. “Copy. En route.”
Zeus shifted in the back, his reflection visible in the rearview mirror. He was alert and watching her more than the passing streets. He knew something was wrong, had known since the nightmare, and his attention hadn’t wavered all morning.
The noise complaint turned out to be nothing, just college kids with their music too loud at nine in the morning, still drunk from the night before. Maddox handled it in five minutes, kept her voice level and professional, and got back in her vehicle before anyone could make small talk.
She kept driving, and before long, she looked at the clock: ten-thirty. Three and a half hours until therapy.
Riley’s voice crackled over the radio just before eleven. “Unit 12, you copy?”
Maddox picked up the radio handset. “Go ahead.”
“Got time for a coffee stop? I’m buying.”
The offer was casual enough, but Riley didn’t do casual check-ins unless she’d noticed something worth bringing up. Maddox’s hand tightened on the steering wheel. “Negative. Busy route today.”
There was a pause, then: “Copy that. Catch you later.”
The lie tasted bitter and foul, but it was better than trying to deflect questions she didn’t have answers for. Riley would understand or she wouldn’t, and either way, Maddox didn’t have the energy to explain.
Noon came. Only two hours.
She skipped lunch. Her stomach was too tight for food anyway and pulled into a knot that had started forming the moment she’d woken from the nightmare and hadn’t loosened since.
Zeus got his midday water break at the park, and she stood in the spring sunshine watching him sniff around the grass as she counted the minutes.
One o’clock, one more hour.
The last call of her shift was a minor traffic accident—no injuries, just paperwork and exchanging insurance information between two annoyed drivers. Maddox filled out the incident report with mechanical precision, her handwriting steady despite the exhaustion dragging at her bones.
One-thirty, shift over.
She drove back to the precinct and sat in the K-9 vehicle for three full minutes with the engine idling and Zeus watching her from the back seat. The PD building sat in front of her, familiar brick and glass, and somewhere inside was Jade.
“I have to talk about Titan today,” she said to Zeus, her voice quiet in the vehicle’s enclosed space. “Can’t avoid it anymore.”
Zeus’s ears swiveled forward, and his tail swished on the seat.
Maddox cut the engine and took a long breath in before getting herself and Zeus out of the vehicle.
The walk from the parking lot to the building felt longer than usual.
Each step forward required conscious effort, like she was moving through thick water.
Zeus stayed close at her left side, his presence steady and grounding, and she was grateful he couldn’t ask questions.
Inside, the precinct hummed with its usual afternoon activity: officers coming and going, phones ringing, and the low buzz of conversation. Maddox moved through it without really seeing any of it. The hallway to Jade’s office stretched out in front of her, fluorescent lights too bright overhead.
One-fifty, ten minutes early.
That stopped her. She was never early to therapy and had made a habit of arriving exactly on time, a small way of maintaining control when everything else about mandatory therapy felt like an invasion.
But she wasn’t in mandatory therapy anymore, and today her feet had carried her here anyway. Now, she stood in the empty hallway outside Jade’s door with ten minutes to spare and nowhere to hide.
The door was closed and no sound came from inside. Maddox looked at it for a long moment, then moved to the chair against the opposite wall and sat down. The hard, molded plastic was uncomfortable and unforgiving, and Zeus settled at her feet with a soft groan.
She could leave. She could walk back out to the parking lot, drive home, and call to cancel the session, citing exhaustion or that she wasn’t feeling well and promising to reschedule.
She didn’t move.
Two o’clock arrived unceremoniously with the mechanical click of the wall clock at the end of the hallway, impossibly loud in the quiet corridor.
Jade’s door opened. She appeared in the doorway, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.
Jade’s gaze moved over Maddox’s face, taking in what had to be obvious signs of a sleepless night, and her face visibly relaxed.
Not pity—Maddox would’ve walked away from pity—but maybe understanding or recognition.
“Come in,” Jade said quietly.
Maddox stood. Zeus rose with her, and together they crossed the threshold into the office. The door closed behind them with a final click, and there was no turning back now.
Jade’s office hadn’t changed since last week. It had the same angled chairs, soft light, and snake plant on the side table. But somehow it felt different as Maddox lowered herself into the familiar seat. Zeus settled at her feet without needing to be told, his weight on her feet grounding.
“Rough night?” Jade asked, her tone even but her gaze careful as it moved over Maddox’s face.
“Nightmare.” The word came out flat, easier than Maddox had expected. “About my first K-9 partner.”
There was a fleeting change in Jade’s expression, a tiny movement that looked like curiosity. She didn’t lean forward or do any of the obvious therapeutic moves that would’ve made Maddox shut down. She just waited.
The silence stretched between them, but it didn’t feel pressured, just space.
“Titan,” Maddox said finally. His name felt strange in her mouth in this setting, a name usually reserved for the privacy of herself and Zeus alone. “German Shepherd, four years old when he died.”
“How long ago?”
“Eight years.” Maddox’s hand found Zeus’s head, her fingers moving through his fur. “During a deployment.”
Jade nodded once, slowly. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
The question was careful, offering rather than demanding. Maddox could say no. She could deflect, change the subject, or do any of the hundred things she’d done in previous sessions to avoid this exact conversation.
Instead, she started talking.
“It was a building clearance operation. There was a suspected IED inside, possible insurgent activity.” The tactical language came easier to her than emotion, so she stuck with it. “Standard protocol was to send the K-9 in first to detect explosives.”