Maddox
“You should have told us about these,” Odessa holds the letters up. They’re all in plastic baggies now, courtesy of the dark-haired beauty. She shakes her head and drops them on the table. Then she hurries over to Piper and gives her a hug. “I didn’t know, honey. You should have trusted us. We could have helped you.”
“I know,” Piper admits, hugging her friend. Any embarrassment about the nightie I chose for her is completely forgotten. “And I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I didn’t. I…I was scared.”
I wrap my arms around Piper from behind, and she leans against me. She feels so tiny, so angelic, and for a brief moment, I think about forgetting that Odessa is here and just ravaging Piper. Surely Odessa would understand. She’s seen dirtier things before. Hell, she’s done dirtier things before.
Odessa just shakes her head.
“Piper, I didn’t know it was this bad.”
“I guess I just don’t know what to do,” she admits. “I didn’t want to talk to the police because he hasn’t actually done anything to hurt me, so they can’t really do anything to stop him.”
Odessa glances at me, and I nod in confirmation.
“You’re right, Piper, but there are other options besides the police now. You have us now.”
“And friends stick together,” Odessa points out. “Even when things get hard.”
“I know,” Piper sniffles, and I realize she’s tearing up. “Thanks for taking care of me, you guys.”
Odessa comes forward and pries Piper from my arms in order to offer her own hug.
“All right, girl. I made you food. Eat it. Kiss the man. Do all the dirty things he says. I’m going to go home, okay?”
“Okay,” Piper whispers. Then she turns back to me. “Will you...”
Stay with her?
Make love to her?
Adore her?
I will gladly do any and all of those things.
I will do all of that and more if it means Piper keeps looking at me like she’s drowning and I’m the only one who can rescue her from the sea.
She swallows hard.
“Will you stay with me, Maddox?”
I press an easy kiss to her forehead.
“With pleasure.”
“You really don’t mind?”
“I really don’t mind.”
Odessa grabs her purse and then comes back to Piper.
“You call me if you need anything,” she says. “I know you probably want some time alone with your boy, but call me anytime, day or night. Tomorrow, when you go to the police station with those,” she jerks her head toward the letters. “I’ll come along if you want me to. You know, for moral support.”
“What about work?” Piper asks carefully, and I realize that she’s the most selfless person in the damn world. Here she is, struggling to make it through the day, and she’s worried about her friend’s job.
“I’ll figure it out, Piper, but you come first, okay?”
She nods. “Thanks, Odessa.”
Odessa gives her friend one last hug, and then I walk her to the door. When we reach the front of the house, Odessa turns to me.
“You’re a good man, Maddox.”
“I wouldn’t make that promise,” I tell her. I’ve done plenty of bad things in my life, hurt plenty of people, of women. I’ve had my lows and my highs and I’ve had the in-betweens. I’ve messed up, but I won’t screw things up with Piper. I’ll do anything for that woman, even if it means staying up all night so she can sleep. Even if it means sitting guard at her house until Tad goes right back to jail where he belongs.
“You don’t have to,” Odessa says. “I can see it in her eyes.” She reaches up and plants a soft kiss on my cheek, and she offers me a hug. It’s not anything sexual. She’s not making a move on her friend’s man. She’s just showing love because Odessa is kind to everyone she meets. She’s like Piper in that way. She’s caring, and she’s kind.
Then Odessa pushes past me, walks to her car parked on the street, and leaves the house. I watch for a second as she drives away, and then I close the door, lock it, and return to where Piper is sitting in the kitchen.
“Did you drive here separately?” She asks. I head behind her to one of the counters and grab a plate of food Odessa prepared while we were showering.
“Eat, and I’ll answer all of your questions,” I tell her, placing it in front of her. I take a seat next to her at the table.
“Deal,” Piper says, and picks up a fork.
“I thought you would protest more.”
“I’m very hungry, and Odessa is an incredible cook. She works at a daycare full of picky eaters. She can make anyone eat anything, and her food is delicious.” She grabs a forkful of egg and begins to chew, and then she turns back to me.
“I followed Odessa here,” I tell her. “I was going to ride with her, but this seemed just as well. I parked down the street.” I don’t tell her that if her abuser is already watching her house, I don’t want him to know I’m here. He may have seen me at the door, but if he hasn’t, I don’t want to do him any favors and let him know I’m here. If he comes for Piper – and he’d better not fucking come – I’ll be ready, but he won’t.
The bastard won’t know what hit him.
“You didn’t have to come,” she says. “But I appreciate it.”
“So you’ve actually never had a regular Dom,” I comment, and she chuckles.
“That would be the bit you’d focus on,” Piper points out.
“Of course it is. I like to know I’m the first.”
“That’s it, then? You’re just going to rush in here, sweep me off my feet, and declare yourself to be my Dom? Don’t I get a say in this?”
“You had a say before you stopped taking care of yourself, Piper.”
“Hey,” she says quietly, but she looks embarrassed. “I still got out of bed every day, didn’t I? I still went to the post office to check my mail.”
“Did you go to work, Piper?”
“Well, no, but I was working from home. I’m not behind on any of my projects. In fact, I’m ahead by a few months. They can handle things without me.”
“Love, you’re letting this guy ruin your life, and he’s not even here. For all we know, he’s back in Cherryville.”
She looks at me, and her gaze is wary. Yeah, we both know he’s not in Cherryville. That’s not how these abusers work. He’s just biding his time, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.
Piper reaches for the toast on the edge of her plate and picks it up. She begins to eat it slowly.
“You were a cop before, weren’t you?” She asks, shooting me a glance out of the corner of her eye.
“I was,” I tell her.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Politics.”
“What do you mean?”
“Being a cop was fantastic. I loved the men I worked with. They truly were my brothers, but they were more than that. They became part of who I was, Piper. We lived, breathed, and fought together. We did everything together. We saved the world together.”
“Sounds like you really loved it.”
“It was all I’d ever wanted.”
“So what happened? Something must have prompted you to walk away,” her voice is gentle, quiet, and I realize that Piper really has this way of drawing me out of myself. I like that about her. She’s sitting here, terrified and scared, and her wet hair is hanging in her face, but she’s the most gorgeous, most courageous thing I’ve ever seen.
Piper Queen is incredible, and I’m suddenly hit with the realization that I want to marry this woman.
I’m never going to meet anyone else who’s quite like her.
I’m never going to get to know another woman who makes me laugh, who makes me think, who makes me feel the way she does.
I want Piper Queen to be in my life forever.
I want her to become Piper Blake.
“There was a woman,” I tell her. I can tell her this. I can trust her with this. Piper has trusted me with so much already. I can trust her with this one issue. It’s not that this is embarrassing, and it’s not even scary. Not anymore. It’s just sad, and it’s not something she really needs to know.
But something in her eyes tells me that she does need to know.
She needs this.
Piper needs a little bit of raw honesty between us, and I can give that to her. I can and I will because Piper is a little fighter.
“She’d been abducted.”
Piper lets out a little gasp, but I keep going. It’s all or nothing at this point. I have to tell her the truth, to get this story out. Piper seems to know I’m struggling because she reaches for my hand and she gives it a little squeeze.
That small gesture makes me feel like I can soar.
“We’d been searching for her for hours. It had been nearly two days. Everyone thought she was dead, but my partner and I, we didn’t.”
“You didn’t give up home.”
“Never. Long story short, after a media circus and a lot of fighting, a lot of struggling, we found her. She was bruised and she’d been hurt. She had a broken arm.” A shiver shoots through Piper, and I wrap my arms around her, planting a soft kiss on her head.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It just hits kind of close to home. Tad broke my wrist once. That was the end of it for me. It was kind of like, a wake-up call, I suppose.”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” I tell her.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she whispers.
“Well,” I take a deep breath. I just want to get this over with. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of Theresa James. “We saved her. We were so happy, so excited she was safe. Dylan and I had done what no one else thought was possible. We’d saved Theresa from her abductor. We’d rescued her, and everything was going to be fine.”
“That must have been an incredible feeling.”
“It was, and we locked her kidnapper away for a long fucking time. There was literally no chance of him getting out. We had more than enough evidence to put him in prison and throw away the key.”
“What happened, Maddox?”
“Two months after it happened, I got a call.”
I’ll never forget that day.
It was bright out, sunny. It was hopeful. It was a beautiful summer morning over a year ago. It was the kind of day you spend at the beach or in the park with your friends. It’s the kind of day where you lay out and just look at the clouds, but instead of any of that, instead of relaxing, instead of enjoying the weather, I got that phone call.
“She had killed herself,” I manage to say. “Her note said she couldn’t handle knowing he was still alive. She couldn’t move forward with her life with the fear that he would come back for her. She said it was better to be dead than to have to face him even one more time.”
“Maddox…”
Piper wraps her arms around me and pulls me close. I realize suddenly that I’m crying. Tears are streaming down my face, but I’m not embarrassed. I’ll never be embarrassed to care. I’ll never be ashamed of who I am. Not with Piper. I can be raw around her, vulnerable. I can be who I am and Piper? She’s not going to turn me away.
“I’m so sorry, Mad,” she whispers.
“I’ll protect you,” I promise her.
“That’s why you walked away from the force, isn’t it?” She asks. “You couldn’t stand to see it anymore. You couldn’t handle dealing with people dying and being hurt and all the bad in the world.”
“I still keep in touch with Dylan,” I tell her. “But I walked away after that. I work in a boring administrative office now, and it’s perfect.”
It’s boring as hell. The work is dull and meaningless and it doesn’t inspire me at all, but that’s not important. What’s important is that I’m not seeing people die every day. I’m not meeting people on the worst day of their lives. I’m not dealing with the pain, the anger, the hatred.
“Maddox,” Piper says, and suddenly, I realize she’s not eating anymore. She places one of her hands on my cheek and turns me toward her, and then Piper Queen kisses me softly.