Cassidy Williams. My high school ex-girlfriend who I haven’t seen in years, and who just up and left me with no backward glance, is here. What the fuck is she doing here?
She looks somewhat the same, only older. Heart shape face, slightly chubby cheeks with a slim neckline. Slim enough to squeeze. She’s always been petite and slender, and that hasn’t changed. She still seems all of five foot one. Tight jeans and a loose knit cardigan.
“Hi, Dux,” she whispers huskily. That fucking nickname.
“What are you doing here?”
“Ah.” Her eyes shot to mine with urgency. They glass over. “Can we talk?”
Six years. It has been six years. I healed over losing her, only just, and now she strolls back into my life like I didn’t spend a whole year buried in pussy, drugs, and bad decisions to get over her. Fuck.
I nod, then start walking toward her. Fuck. Amethyst is watching our exchange. I retreat backwards and bend down, kissing the top of her head. “I won’t be long, baby.” I stroll out of the dining room and gesture to the formal room.
AMETHYST
My stomach flips around as I watch Maddox leave the room. Everyone is silent, no one has so much as made a sound.
Mom sits back in her chair, giving Elliot a strange look. “Anyway, so what were we talking about?”
Typical Mom. Trying to run away from the issues at hand. Her chit-chat dies out into the back of my brain and I pick up my glass of wine, taking a long swig.
“Why is she here?” Wolf asks, finally breaking through whatever my mom thought was more important.
Talon comes around the table and sits in Maddox’s seat. I don’t look at him. I can’t. I’m panicking. I can slowly feel my nerves work themselves up. Why is she here? What could be so important that she waited how many years it had been to come and make an entrance into Maddox’s life again.
Talon’s finger hooks around my chin and he tips my head up to face him. My eyes search his.
“Hey, cut that shit out. She doesn’t mean anything to him anymore.” I smile softly. He drops his grip and gives me my wine. “I promise. It’ll be some stupid bullshit.”
“Yeah, only it’s Cass. I doubt it,” Wolf answers smoothly. His head whips around to Leila suddenly. “Ouch.” She must have hit him under the table. His tone is dry, just like him as a person.
“No nicknames, please. Her name is Cass-idy,” Leila exclaims.
Mom sighs.
Elliot clears his throat. “Ame, I want you to know that you are a part of this family now. So whatever happens, it doesn’t matter—ok?”
I gulp. Shit. What if he is still in love with her?
“Nice, Dad. Real nice. Just go freak her out.” Talon shakes his head, leaning over the table to grab his plate and move Maddox’s away so he can continue eating. I like this dining room. It sits just off of the kitchen, and the whole back wall is one big glass window so you can overlook the backyard. There’s a glass chandelier that falls delicately over the table. Art is hanging on the walls—and fuck.
I hate this fucking room.
I hate this house, I want to leave. The room feels like it’s shrinking and clinging to my skin.
As soon as Maddox walks back in, my head whips straight to the entrance. I’ll know instantly if it’s good or bad. I’ll know by what his eyes do. I suck in my breath and allow myself to focus on him.
I blow out my breath when I see his eyebrows pulled in and his knuckles are bleeding. His pupils are dilated, and his chest is heaving in and out.
Oh no.
This isn’t good.
“Amethyst,” he says, his voice dripping in anger. Then his eyes finally come to me, and his features soften a little. He licks his lip. “We need to talk, baby.”
“Okay.” I shoot off the seat and make my way to him. He watches me for a few seconds. His eyes going from my mouth to my eyes, as if he’s trying to memorize something.
“Stop it,” I grind out, getting annoyed with how he’s looking at me. I shove past him and make my way to the living room. No sign of Cassidy. Thank fuck. Maybe he killed her. I’m probably not that lucky.
My eyes fly to the hole in the wall and I flinch. Something has happened. Something bad.
He closes the open doors to block out any other noise, then I feel him take a seat beside me. My eyes remain on the pool out the back and the bright blue neon that lights up the water. I want a swim.
“Amethyst…” Maddox says, but he doesn’t touch me.
Why isn’t he touching me?
“I—I—fuck…” he breathes out, seemingly frustrated with himself.
“Just say it, Maddox.” I fight the tears that threaten to surface, swallowing past the giant rock that feels as though it’s lodged in my throat.
“I have a kid.”
Everything stops. I whip my focus to him, my hair slapping against my face. “What!”
He exhales and stands from the couch. He starts pacing back and forth. His hands go from his hair to his face back to his hair.
“I didn’t know. Cassidy, she—” He exhales, pauses and looks straight at me. “She ran away when she found out she was pregnant. Not to get away from me, but to get away from her parents who would have made her abort. Her kid—” He pauses and I feel like I’ve been smacked over the side of the head with a brick. He continues. “Our kid, she’s a girl. Her name is Kennedy. She’s a little over five, and she has kidney failure, Amethyst. She needs me.” He pauses, and I can’t fight the tears anymore. They’re rolling down my cheeks. It’s not that I’m upset that he has a child, not at all, and that wouldn’t change my mind on wanting to be with him, but I have a feeling it is an issue for him.
“I—I’m sorry, Maddox…” Because I am, and I’m speechless. What more can I say.
He continues, taking a seat on the leather sofa opposite me. “Cassidy isn’t a match because she’s A-. Kennedy is the same as me, she’s O-. Cass tried to get in contact with her parents again, but they apparently died in a car accident not long after she ran away.”
I want to scream. My insides feel like they’re cracking, and my brain is running off of white noise. “Wh—um. What are you going to do?” I tuck my hair behind my ear and wipe the tears off my cheeks.
He buries his face into his hands.
Reality hits me at full force, he’s obviously conflicted with what he wants. He wants to be with her, even if it is for his child, he still wants it, and who can blame him. I come from a split home, so I know how much they really do work and the dynamic can be great, but that’s only if both parents share the same understanding. I get the feeling that if I fight for him now, and force him to stay with me, he might later resent me for doing it and maybe missing more time with his child. No, he needs to choose on his own. I need to leave before I beg him to stay with me and that I’d raise their child like she was my own.
“Don’t worry,” I answer, going to stand on shaky legs. “You don’t have to say anything.” My voice breaks in the end, and I feel my legs shake under my weight.
Two steps to the door, and then I can run. Run where? I don’t know. I can get Leila to take me home. Only she came with Maddox too.
Run.
“Amethyst,” his voice interrupts my erratic thoughts. I freeze with one hand on the door handle. Had I already made my way across the room? “Please, I don’t—God I don’t know what to do.”
I swallow and take two breaths to try to compose myself. I slam my eyes closed.
“She’s my child, and I have already lost five years, I don’t want to lose another five. Cassidy, she’s been getting by but she’s struggling to pay the bills, and I don’t want to be like my father and abond— fuck!” Maddox must stand and come straight to me, because he grabs me around my arm and spins me around until my back slams against the door. He searches my eyes frantically. “Tell me what to do, Ame! Fuck, I can’t…” He is physically shaking, so I wrap my arms around the back of his neck, pulling his forehead down onto mine.
“It’s not our time, Maddox. Maybe in another life, maybe in another realm, but it is not our time right now.” I step back, already missing his flesh under my palm. I want his scent in my space and his sweat dripping on my body as he rides my pain away, but I can’t, and I won’t ever again. My heart feels like it literally breaks inside my chest. It hurts, everything fucking hurts.
“No.” He shakes his head, searching my body up and down. “Fuck!”
Because he knew. We both did. Deep down, we both knew what he has to do. We have to let each other go and hope that one day, when he has enough time to ponder and make a rational decision, we will find each other again.
“You know what you need to do, Maddox. As much as I—”
His knuckles come to my cheeks and my stomach clenches at his touch. The walls feel as though they’re caving in on me. “Please don’t.” My eyes slam shut to stop him from seeing my emotion.
His lips come to mine and I almost throw my restraint out the window. I let them sit there for a few seconds as tears pour over my face and into the crack of my lips, into each of our mouths. I take a deep breath.
“I loved you.”
He flies backward, his eyes flaring with a fresh round of anger, but it’s too late. I quickly pull the door open and sprint out.
“Amethyst!” he roars from the living room, but I pounce back to the dining room. Everyone is already standing, probably because they heard the beast be unleashed in the other room.
“We going?” Leila asks.
I nod my head frantically, my face wet with tears and my hair a disarray all over my face. I have no doubt that my mascara is smudged all over.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I whisper without meeting her gaze. “But I really need to go. Now.”
Elliot gestures out the door. “Take her, Talon.”
Talon doesn’t miss a beat, he and Leila are following me out the door, leaving Wolf behind.
“Amethyst!” Maddox yells, launching for me.
Elliot and Wolf grab him, holding him back and I pick up the pace as Leila’s arm hooks around mine. Talon has his hand on the small of my back as we hit outside and start jogging to Talon’s parked pickup. I must have been in a hurry, because it isn’t until we’re pulling out that I see Cassidy sitting on one of the steps, tears in her eyes.
She catches me in the window, and then just when I’m about to somewhat feel sorry for her, her lip curls up in a smug grin.
I spin around to look at her but it’s too late, Talon is flooring it down the driveway, kicking gravel up in our retreat.
“Okay!” Leila screams out. “Now someone tell me what the fuck is going on!”
Talon looks at me every two seconds.
My mouth dries. I have nothing. Nothing. I came here with Maddox, with a future, and I leave without him. I feel empty and alone, and every single inch of me aches from his absence.
I keep my head forward, tears still pouring down my cheeks.
“He has a kid.”
Leila sucks in a breath. Talon curses.
“Her name is Kennedy, and she has kidney disease.” I swipe at my tears angrily. “She has the same blood type as Maddox. And—and—”
“—and Maddox doesn’t want to be like our father and bitch out on his kid by shitting on the mother,” Talon declares, finishing my sentence.
Leila’s hand comes to my arm. “It’s going to be ok, Ame. We’ve got you.”
One month passes.
Two months.
Three months.
Four months.
Five…
AMETHYST
One Year Later…
“And that! Is how it’s done!” Leila pulls me in for a hug. “Can you believe it?” I look out to the crowd of people who are here. Families, friends, all mixed together. Amongst everyone else’s loved ones, I see Talon towering over the masses of people with Wolf standing beside him and my mom and Elliot waving at me from the stage.
Leila squeals and jumps off the stage, tossing her hat into the air. She spider jumps on Wolf and he catches her by her ass.
Seriously.
I shake my head and laugh. As sour of a bitch as I am, I’m happy for my best friend. She helped me through some of the roughest days of my life…
Six Months Earlier
I shot back my—I lost count how many. Everything just needs to turn numb. Fuck feelings. Maddox once owned every part of my heart, but when he left, he took that part with him, so now all that sits in his replacement is a sack of void. A void I tried to fill every night with alcohol and sex. The sex was good while it was happening. I never saw their face, or their body, instead, I relished in the feeling. The great wave of euphoria that would wash over me as I reached my orgasm. That was what filled Maddox’s space. For like, the few seconds that it lasted for, and then the thumping of loneliness would seep in again. That was how it circled and how it started. Every night after studying, I’d either get drunk or get laid—or both.
“Ame!” Leila barged into the bar, taking the glass from me. “Do not give her any more drinks, Trin!” Trin. Siiiggghhh. Trin was my bartender-slash-obvious new best friend.
Leila looks back at me, hooking her arm in mine. “I’m taking you home.”
“No.” I shook my head, trying to pull myself away from her. “I don’t want to go home, I want to stay here and drink and look at pretty Trin!”
Trin winks at me. “Text me, princess.”
I pointed at him. “I will!” I thought he was gay when I first met him—wrong. He was bi-sexual, and ever since we had come into the bar with—he who shall not be named—I have been coming back, and Trin had a lot to do with that.
“Come on,” Leila gritted through her teeth. “Unless you want Wolf and Talon to drag you out of this club, I would obey my orders.”
I ran ahead of her and barged through the doors.
“Ame!” Bryce hollered, reaching for me. Bryce was one of the bouncers here. He was beautiful. Dark skin that I just wanted to bite into and big broad shoulders.
“I could climb him for sure.” I paused, my hand going to my mouth. “Shit, did I just?” I looked up at Bryce doe-eyed. He smirked, and Leila shoved me from behind toward Talon’s parked pickup.
“Come on, my sluterous, we’re taking you home.”
She opened the passenger door and pushed me inside. It took three tries because this truck was hard enough to get into sober, let alone drunk. I looked at the raptor label on the fresh leather dash. “Rawr.”
“Jesus, how much have you had to drink?” Talon slapped my hand away when I went to touch his face. Marilyn Manson’s “Third Day of a Seven-Day Binge” starts playing and I lean forward, turning it way the fuck up. Love. This. Song. We all have stripper songs, well I have about ten and they’re all Manson songs.
“Your beard has grown. Why has your beard grown?” I yelled loudly at Talon, tilting my head.
“Someone shut her up,” Wolf muttered from the backseat.
“Sorry, seems the only person who could do that or control her is—”
“—Don’t!” I snapped, turning in my seat to face Leila. It was a sobering moment—the only sobering moment I had. My eyes connected with hers. Her eyebrows pulled in together.
“I’m sorry,” Leila whispered.
I swiped the tear off my cheek and turned back to face the road. “I can’t believe you called me ‘Sluterous.’”
The boys burst out laughing. “You did?” Talon looked at Leila in his rearview mirror.
Leila shrugged.
I flipped them all off.
This was the last night I spent getting shit-faced or having sex. I was upset that I didn’t get one more hoorah in before coming to my senses, but I was glad that I had. Maddox left me. I meant nothing to him. The nights I sat crying on an empty street with a bottle of Johnny Walker clutched between my hands? Yep. For nothing. The night two creepy guys were trying to lure me into their car late at night while I was curled up drunk and yep, you guessed it—c
rying on the pavement, was for nothing. Thank fuck for older brothers. Only, not Maddox.
Present
“I know…” I whisper, squashing the bad memories that haunt me from the past year. I put the mess in hot mess during that time, but the one thing I gained through all the mess, is two brothers. I have noticed that the family doesn’t speak of him while I’m around, which I’m grateful for. There’s a raw wound with no cure that is stabbed into my heart where he’s concerned. I’m just handling it a bit better now. A little…well, as long as no one says his name, I’ll be fine. `
“My girl is moving to LA.” Talon pulls me under his arm. I relax.
“Amethyst, are you sure this is the right thing to do?” my mom asks, pushing her hat lower to shade the beaming sun from her eyes.
I go to answer her, but catch Mason in the corner of my eye, and he gives me a little wave. If only. I bet things would have been different had I taken his path instead. I wave back, smiling, and he disappears with his family.
“Yes, Mom.” I reach out and touch her hand reassuringly. “I promise I’ll be fine.”
“Well.” Elliot puts his hand in his pocket. “If you ever need anything, you know where home is.”
I give him a warm smile. “I do and thank you.” For a year now, this has been my family. I feel a little guilty for it because it is his family more than it is mine, but I have continued to go for Sunday dinners every week, he hasn’t. No one talks about what he is doing, but I know they must all talk with and to him, it’s just never announced around me.
MADDOX
“Dux, I really don’t like it…”
“Cass, you’ve always known that this was going to be my life. You walked away and then walked back in with my kid. You can’t expect me to change all of what is me.” My eyes go to Kennedy, who’s sitting on the sofa with headphones on playing with her iPad. “Why is she playing on that bullshit?” I gesture to the iPad.