Nineteen
He couldn’t believe he had her here like this. Those ice blue eyes of hers had cracked him open. His soul had seeped out and now lay bleeding on the couch downstairs. Or maybe she’d devoured it along with his heart. In either case, they no longer resided inside of him.
God, he hoped this was the right thing to do.
He couldn’t live in fear of getting hurt again.
He couldn’t live without his Maddie.
Entwined on the big bed upstairs, a warm breeze blew over MJ’s bare chest. He twisted a piece of Maddie’s hair at the back of her neck around his finger. He watched her chest rise and fall as she slept, her skin a silky shimmer in the moonlight.
Above them, he could barely make out the etchings in the wooden beam that ran the length of the room. Two hearts with two different sets of initials inside. M.R. + R.D in one. A.W. + I.B. in the other. Even if he didn’t know Rachael’s last name, who the first set was in reference to was obvious, Merrick and Rachael, but he had no clue about the second set.
Maddie murmured in her sleep and rolled over to her side. She’d been out cold for a couple hours, but MJ couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t believe she was here beside him again. He couldn’t stop the fear he kept swallowing back. Fear that this was only one night and she’d leave him again.
MJ rubbed his eyes trying to clear his mind. He couldn’t lie there awake any longer with his thoughts running rampant. He needed air. Slipping out of bed, a flash of light outside caught his eye.
It was a round orb deep in the trees, like a flashlight in the distance. MJ moved close to the window and pressed his palms against the pane. The circle of light was moving, getting closer, making a jagged path through the brush.
He padded silently across the room, down the spiral staircase and out the front door. Under his feet, the wooden deck was still warm from the sun even though the moon cast long, obscure black shadows across it.
At the side of the deck, he pushed his fear of heights aside in favor of curiosity and leaned over the railing. His mind kept yelling, curiosity killed the cat, and giving him visions of lying on the ground below with a broken neck for being so stupid. He told his mind to shut the f*ck up and tracked his eyes through the trees, straining to find the light.
There it was, even closer, but completely still.
Abruptly, it was gone, but MJ caught the sound of branches snapping underfoot and a flash of long, dark hair in the moonlight.
“Hello?” he called. “Rachael, is that you?”
He had no idea why Rachael would be walking through the trees, alone, in the middle of the night with a flashlight. If she had such an inclination, she’d stick to the path.
Against his better judgment, or maybe because of poor judgment, he jogged down the tree house stairs to the ground below and trod across the dew-damp grass to the tree line. “Hello?” he said, too low for anyone too far in the trees to actually hear.
A rustle in the brush a few yards in and to his right prodded his curiosity. With measured, deliberate steps, MJ followed the noises hoping to catch a glimpse of light or the mystery woman again.
Reaching the spot where he thought he’d heard the noise, he bent and leaned forward to peer through a grouping of saplings.
Two wide dark eyes stared back at him.
The woman gasped and bolted through the trees.
“Wait!” he yelled. “Who are you?”
She didn’t answer, and he chased after her, sticks and rocks prodding and poking the soles of his bare feet. She wasn’t far ahead. MJ wove his way through the trees and ducked under low limbs. Brambles scratched his legs and snagged his shorts. He heard her panting as she ran, each of her footfalls cracking branches on the forest floor.
Sweat glazed his face and chest. Gnats buzzed around his head. Why the hell did she keep running? Who was she and why was she hiding?
There was a loud snap under his feet and his ankle twisted. He fell with an oomph of air being knocked from his lungs. He rolled through two dense bushes into a clearing and stopped flat on his back on the ground. The woman scrambled to the far side and backed against a tree. In the shadows of the moon, she appeared like some wraith-like being his imagination dreamed up. Her long hair snarled around her face, a white dress torn along the hem from traipsing through the woods.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said holding his hands up in front of him. “Who are you? Are you supposed to be here?” He didn’t think so, or she wouldn’t be running around in the dark hiding in the woods.
“You can’t trust her,” she whispered, her voice deep and raspy. “Everything she says is a lie. Don’t believe what she tells you.”
Her words were a wrecking ball crashing through his mind. “Maddie?”
The woman’s hands moved along the tree bark behind her like she was looking for a secret trapdoor to make her escape. “Don’t believe her,” she said again, and disappeared around the tree into the darkness.
MJ’s ankle throbbed but it wasn’t swollen. He could walk on it just fine, if a little slowly as he made his way back to the tree house and up the stairs. At least it was a distraction from his fear of heights.
A distraction from the mutterings of a stranger—who might have been a delusion conjured by an emotional breakdown—in the woods. God knew the past few days had taken their toll on his mental stability. Not that he was all that stable to begin with.
Why the hell would some lady in the woods on a remote island be here to warn him against Maddie?
Christ, he was losing his mind.
“What are you doing out here?” Maddie’s voice startled him. He jumped back with his hand to his chest.
“Jesus. Don’t do that.”
She laughed and rested her hand over his pressed against his heart. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her hair was tousled from sleep, her lips were red and puffy from being kissed. “Why are you awake?” he asked, brushing thoughts of mistrust from his mind.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “I got cold.”
He knew she meant she woke because he wasn’t there. It was hot and muggy, there was no way she was actually cold.
“So why are you out here?” she asked.
He gestured behind him. “I thought I saw a woman in the woods with a flashlight.” He’d skip the embarrassing details of chasing a woman whom he was ninety-nine percent certain was imaginary, tripping and twisting his ankle.
She furrowed her brow, skeptical. “Who would be out here in the woods at…” she glanced at her wrist where she habitually wore her watch, but wasn’t wearing it. “At whatever time it is right now?” She gave him a playful smile. “You’re seeing things.”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
Maddie stepped past him and leaned against the railing gazing out into the trees. “A flashlight, huh?” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Like a glowing orb of light?” She spun around. “Are you sure it wasn’t a ghost?” She launched at him, grabbing his hips to try to scare him.
Maddie had always been addicted to everything paranormal. She read books and watched TV shows about vampires, werewolves and ghosts. For the longest time when they were little, she was even convinced that there was a ghost living in the west wing of the Rocha Estate.
She probably still believed it. “No,” he said, pulling her in close, “it wasn’t a ghost.”
She kissed his chin and trailed her lips along his jaw, standing on tip toe to reach his ear. “Whoever it was, she’s gone now. Come back inside with me.”
At her sultry voice, a flame of lust licked low in his groin. He swept an arm behind her knees and scooped her up, parting her lips in a deep kiss. Whatever his subconscious was warning him against could wait until morning.
When Maddie opened her eyes to MJ’s mass of tussled hair and dark stubble on his jaw, she had to fight back bittersweet tears.
More than a year had passed, wasted, and still Maddie knew she couldn’t have a future with him.
She gazed at MJ’s beautiful, sleeping face again. This would be the very last time she lay next to him while he slept. The last time she’d be exactly where she belonged. Her life would always be off-kilter without him, but she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t hurt him like her mother had hurt her all those years ago. Maddie knew first-hand that a wound that deep never completely healed. She would be the last person on Earth to inflict that upon MJ.
She’d sacrificed his love. There was no turning back now no matter how much it tortured her. After seeing MJ tear his shirt off last night and tell her how much she’d hurt him, she knew she’d keep Enzo’s secret until she died. Maddie would never hand over the huge amount of pain and hurt she held back from MJ. Not ever.
Maddie ran her fingers through his hair. He stretched and a smile sprawled across his lips before his eyes slowly opened. “Morning.”
She touched his sleep-puffy lips with her fingers, and he kissed them. “Morning,” she said.
Maddie knew he wouldn’t take her if she didn’t belong to him. No matter how much she wanted MJ to make love to her last night, she didn’t dare ask. She couldn’t do that to him.
“What are you thinking?” MJ asked.
She turned her head and gazed up at the twin hearts etched in the beam that ran across the ceiling. “Nothing.”
“I don’t know what came between us, Mads,” he said, stroking her arm with the back of his fingers. “You used to tell me everything.”
Maddie wanted to bury her head under her pillow and hide from him. She didn’t have an answer, not one she could give that would satisfy him.
A knock on the door made Maddie jump. “Get the hell up you two!” a man shouted.
“Is that Beck?” She sat up and shimmied out from under the blanket. “I think it is.”
“F*cking Beck,” MJ muttered, tossing back the blanket and standing. He strode toward the open window. “What do you want?” he yelled out.
“Get your asses down here. I’ll take you back before you miss brunch.”
“We’re not hung–”
“Good. I’m starving!” Maddie hopped out of bed even though leaving the tree house was the last thing she wanted to do. She wished time would stop and she could stay here alone with MJ for all eternity, but when he started talking about why she left him, why she wouldn’t tell him the reason, she needed an escape.
“We’ll be right down,” MJ called to Beck, then rubbed the back of his head. “I will get answers,” he told her. “Before I let you leave this island.”
“Before you let me?” she said, surprised at his demanding tone.
He nodded, his expression severe. “You’re not the only one with everything at stake here. I let you walk away last time and didn’t chase you down. I won’t make that mistake again.”