Chapter 7 #3
Zeus shifted under her hand, and she kept her eyes on him instead of Jade. It was easier that way.
“I gave the command, and he went in.” She kept her voice level, the way it had been during incident reports. “Seven steps. I always counted. And then…the explosion.”
The office was quiet except for Zeus’s breathing and the distant hum of precinct happenings beyond the walls. Maddox forced herself to continue.
“The IED was triggered. He was caught in the blast.” Her throat tightened, but she pushed through it. “I ran in. Someone tried to stop me, but I got to him.”
The memory played behind her eyes: smoke and blood and Titan’s labored breathing. Her hand stilled in Zeus’s fur.
“There were massive injuries, internal bleeding. The medics couldn’t do anything.
” The words came faster now, like they’d been building pressure for eight years and finally found an outlet.
“He died in my arms. Took two or three minutes, but it felt longer. He kept looking at me to fix it, and…I couldn’t. ”
“You were with him,” Jade said quietly. “At the end.”
Maddox’s teeth ground together. “I sent him in there.”
“You followed protocol.”
“He died.”
“Yes.” Jade’s voice was steady, not arguing but not backing down either. “He did, and that’s not the same as you killing him.”
The words hit harder than Maddox expected. She looked up and met Jade’s eyes for the first time since starting the story.
“I gave the command,” Maddox said again, but it came out weaker this time, almost a question.
“You did your job. He did his.” Jade shuffled in her chair and leaned forward slightly. “K-9s are trained to go into danger. That’s what they do. It’s why they’re partnered with handlers. Someone has to make the call, and it can’t be the dog.”
“But if I’d—”
“Done something different?” Jade’s tone gentled. “What? Sent yourself in first? Violated protocol and maybe gotten yourself killed along with putting your unit at risk? Or refused the mission entirely and faced a court-martial?”
Maddox didn’t answer. She’d run those scenarios a thousand times in eight years and never found one that ended better.
“You made the right call with the information you had,” Jade continued. “The IED was there regardless of who found it. Titan was trained to detect it, and he did exactly what he was supposed to do. His death was a tragedy, but it wasn’t your failure.”
The logic was sound, intellectually Maddox knew that, but the guilt sat in her chest like it always had: heavy and immovable.
“He trusted me,” she said, her voice cracking. “Right up until he died, he trusted me completely, and I got him killed.”
“He trusted you to do your job, and you did. He trusted you to be with him at the end, and you were.” Jade paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“You’ve been carrying this alone for eight years.
That’s what I’m hearing. Not just grief, but guilt that you think you’re not allowed to share because you believe it’s your fault. ”
Maddox felt something crack open in her chest, sudden and sharp.
She pressed her hand harder against Zeus’s head, needing the anchor.
“Zeus,” she managed. “I’m terrified of losing him the same way.
Every call, every time I give a command, I’m back there with Titan dying and thinking it’ll happen again. ”
“Is that why you hold back with him?”
The question landed like a gut punch because it was true, and Maddox had never said it out loud before.
“If I need him too much—” She swallowed hard. “What if needing someone gets them killed?”
Jade held her gaze, and something in her eyes softened further. “What if not needing anyone kills you instead?”
The words settled in the space between them, quiet and devastating in their simplicity. Maddox felt tears prick at her eyes and blinked hard against them.
“I don’t know how to do it differently,” she admitted, and the vulnerability of it made her feel stripped bare.
“That’s why you’re here.” Jade’s tone was gentle but firm. “Not to fix everything overnight, but to start learning, to stop carrying eight years of guilt alone, and maybe let yourself grieve without blaming yourself for loving him.”
The session time must’ve been close to ending, and Maddox realized she’d lost track of time for the first time. Zeus shifted at her feet, and she felt exhausted down to her bones but also somehow lighter. Like she’d been holding her breath for years and finally let it out.
“This was brave,” Jade said finally. “Sharing this. I know it didn’t feel like it, but it was.”
Maddox nodded because she didn’t trust her voice, and she stood, her legs unsteady.
Zeus rose with her. At the door, she hesitated and turned back.
Jade was still in her chair, watching with a look that was professional but also something more, like she’d been affected by the story in a way that went beyond clinical distance.
“Thank you,” Maddox said quietly.
Jade’s small smile was sad at the edges. “Same time next week?”
“Yeah.”
Maddox left with Zeus by her side, and for the first time in eight years, Titan’s memory didn’t feel quite so much like drowning.
The drive home passed in a blur of familiar streets and spring sunshine that felt too bright after the dimness of Jade’s office.
Zeus sat in the passenger seat of her truck, quiet and watchful, and Maddox kept both hands on the wheel even though her body felt like it was vibrating at the wrong frequency.
Home was exactly as she’d left it that morning: empty coffee mug in the sink, Zeus’s water bowl half-full, the silence pressing in from all sides. She should’ve felt worse, should’ve felt raw and exposed after spilling eight years of guilt in a single session.
Instead, she felt like she could breathe.
Zeus followed her through the house as she moved without purpose from the kitchen to the living room to the back door and out onto the small porch.
The May afternoon was warm, the kind of weather that made Phoenix Ridge feel alive after the long damp spring.
She sat on the top step, and Zeus settled beside her with his head on her thigh, his tail thumping against the weathered wood.
She’d expected the telling to break something open that couldn’t be closed again, but instead it felt like settling something down that she’d been carrying too long.
The guilt was still there—she wasn’t naive to think one session would erase that—but it sat differently now.
Less suffocating, more like grief than failure.
Jade had done that. She’d listened without judgment, had challenged the guilt without dismissing it, had seen the worst thing Maddox carried and hadn’t looked away.
The thought settled in her chest, warm and complicated.
This wasn’t about the therapy. Or it was, but not only that. The trust she’d felt in that office, the safety to finally speak Titan’s story…that was professional. Jade was good at her job, no doubt about that.
But the rest of it—the way her pulse kicked up a notch when Jade had leaned over, the awareness of her presence, the coffee shop moment that had been simmering underneath everything—that was something else entirely.
She’d been conflating them. Thinking that opening up meant she was just transferring feelings, that the draw she felt was gratitude dressed up as something more.
But sitting here in the afternoon sun with Zeus warm against her leg and her chest finally able to expand more, she could see the distinction clearly.
She trusted Jade as a therapist, yes.
And she wanted her as something more.
Both were true; both were separate.
The realization sat in her stomach, equal parts terrifying and clarifying. She could stay here and let this remain theoretical, show up next week for another session, and keep everything in its proper box.
Or she could get in her truck and drive to Jade’s apartment and see if this thing between them was as mutual as that coffee house moment.
Zeus lifted his head, looking at her with those dark eyes that always seemed to understand more than they should.
“Yeah,” Maddox said as she stood. “I know.”
Jade’s apartment building was modest, tucked into a residential neighborhood close enough to downtown that Maddox had driven past it a dozen times without really seeing it.
The address had been easy enough to find in the PD directory, and now she stood outside the main door with her heart hammering in her chest and no clear idea what she was going to say.
This was stupid. This was probably a terrible idea. Jade was still technically her therapist, even if the mandatory sessions had ended, and showing up at her home crossed about fifteen different professional boundaries.
Maddox pressed the buzzer for apartment 2B before she could talk herself out of it.
The intercom crackled. “Hello?” Jade’s voice sounded surprised and slightly wary.
“It’s Maddox.”
A pause, long enough that Maddox wondered if she’d made a massive mistake, then the door buzzed open.
The stairs to the second floor felt steeper than they should’ve been. Jade’s door was already open when Maddox reached it, and Jade stood in the doorway with her hair down and wearing jeans and a soft gray sweater that Maddox had never seen her in before.
“Is everything okay?” Jade asked, concern etching her face. “Did something happen?”
“I’m fine. I just…needed to see you.”
Jade’s expression morphed into something more complex. She stepped back from the doorway. “Come in.”
The apartment was small and warmly lit, still bearing signs of a recent move-in: a stack of boxes in the corner and books waiting to be shelved. Plants thrived on almost every surface, and the space smelled faintly of coffee and something herbal.
They stood in the living room, neither quite sure what to do with their hands.
“Is this about the session?” Jade asked, and Maddox could hear the therapist in her voice. “Because if you’re feeling overwhelmed after what we talked about—”