survived hell. He wanted to get to know her, to help her, protect her. Fuck, he probably wanted it all for selfish reasons. To see her make a semblance of a life so it didn’t feel like he’d failed her. Or maybe just to torture himself with her presence because he deserved that punishment.
She had grown up beautiful. Anyone could’ve seen that. Even in the hand-me-down clothes she’d worn as a child, even with the last name that seemed to stick on her like gum. She was beautiful. It was that simple.
But her beauty now was nothing but simple. It was warped. Stained with pain, with death, with a kind of hollowness that Maddox hadn’t known could exist.
He had tried to tell himself that it would dissipate with the weeks of freedom. Once she had time to adjust to her new life. When he had time to either rid himself of his guilt or learn to live with it. He thought he was ready to let her go, to let go of any hope or notion that they could ever know each other again. He was alright with a future without knowing Orion Darby, or so he told himself.
But her opening that door had proved him wrong. He’d known deep down that he was wrong anyway. He knew that shit didn’t just fucking float away into oblivion. She wasn’t dead, and behind her cold eyes and blank stare, he saw the old Orion was in there too.
“Maddox,” she said, her tone dipped in annoyance, rigidity.
The way she said his name made him want to flinch. He half-thought that’s what she wanted. Her nose furrowed ever so slightly in what he could guess was irritation. Nothing else on her face betrayed an emotion. Betrayed their history. Then again, it was buried under years of torture and abuse.
Fuck, she was beautiful, but in a way that was really hard to look at. In a way that made him hate himself because he shouldn’t be thinking that shit right now. He came for a purpose, and that’s where his mind needed to be.
But he was thinking about her, and the hell she’d lived through, and he was thinking about the news he was about to drop on her. Whether the words would hurt her or help her, he didn’t know. She looked beautiful, the way the morning light lit her face, made her eyes come alive, if only for a moment.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, her eyes darkening again. Her voice was soft, in volume at least. Everything else about it was a hard edge. Cutting at him. Scarring him.
He cleared his throat. “Can I come in?”
She moved closer to the door frame, pulling the door with her, physically barring him with her small body. It wasn’t as small as it had been before, he noted. Then he silently scolded himself for checking her out.
In the hospital bed, she’d been a slip of a woman, a ghost. She had been at least twenty pounds underweight, signs of malnourishment clinging to her like her skin to her bones.
She’d added weight now. Muscle. She was wearing a simple tank and leggings. Her face was slightly flushed, a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead and upper lip. She was barely breathing hard, but she was working hard. You only needed to look at the sculpted muscles of her arms to see that.
She’d been taking care of herself too. Her face was brighter, her skin looked healthier. Her hair looked full and vibrant.
Since he was not allowed to visit or keep in contact beyond what was required for the investigation, April had been filling him in on whether she was eating—fancy stuff that was really fricking good, according to April. Whether she was drinking too much—she wasn’t drinking enough, according to April. And finally, if she was showing any signs of significant clinical depression.
“Of course she’s showing signs of depression, dip shit!” April had snapped when he’d all but pounced on her walking in the door from yet another visit with Orion. He was jealous of those visits though he’d never tell her that. She’d been there nearly the entire night. It must’ve been progress. “She was held captive for ten fucking years, Maddox. She’s going to be fucked up for the foreseeable future. Most likely forever.”
Her words stung him in the way she had intended.
She must’ve seen it on his face because she went off the attack immediately and leaned in to grasp