Hush - Anne Malcom Page 0,64

feelings about him, but when she did mention Maddox, she made it clear he was no longer the boy from before, no longer carefree.

Then again, none of them were the kids they had once been.

It interested her, the butterfly effect her disappearance had had on them. She hadn’t thought she’d change the course of their lives. She thought she’d just be a dark mark on a tiny part of their childhood, that they’d soon forget about the girl they used to know who went missing. They’d continue on their paths full of light and privilege. Instead, they had both plunged themselves into different kinds of darkness.

“You hungry?” Maddox asked.

Orion jerked, realizing at some point she’d stopped crying and they had started driving again. She looked around, surprised they had made it back to her apartment already.

“Hungry?” she repeated.

He nodded. “It’s getting toward dinnertime, and I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. There’s a great Italian restaurant not far from here. No one really knows about it but the true Italians.”

“You’re not a true Italian,” she returned with a raised brow.

His eyes twinkled, and he smiled. Smiled. With teeth. Like before. “Ah, but I know many of them, and they trust me enough to let me in on the secret. Which means, of course, you have to promise to keep quiet.”

Orion gritted her teeth and didn’t answer. Not just because she was angry that he thought he could fall into old patterns, but because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to do the easy back and forth. She was furious with herself for being so fucking broken.

Maddox’s smile faltered just a bit. “It’s worth it, I promise. The lasagna is my personal favorite. The carbonara is awesome too.”

Orion’s stomach grumbled ever so slightly. The thought of doing something so normal like going out for dinner terrified her because it wasn’t normal for her. She looked toward her apartment building, thought of having to go through the effort of making dinner, or ordering takeout yet again, and she groaned.

“Come on. You gotta be hungry,” Maddox deduced, as if he was now reading her thoughts.

“Ah, I knew there was a reason they made you detective,” she said, snark heavy in her voice.

He chuckled, unaffected by the tone or the stare.

“Yeah, my skills know no bounds.” He paused. “They do takeout too. So, we could—”

“No,” she interrupted, the thought of him inside her apartment even worse. “I want to go.”

She didn’t. Not really. Inside her heart of stone, she wanted to go home, make herself something to eat, work out for an hour, and do some more research. Some more planning.

Eating Italian food with the very man she should be staying away from wasn’t going to do anything. It wasn’t going to help her rebuild herself into a strong, unfeeling woman.

But she said yes anyway.

Because she wanted a taste. Not of lasagna, but of what life might’ve been like if she hadn’t spent ten years in a cell. If she’d made it home that night and continued to be Maddox’s girlfriend.

“Let me just take a quick shower and change,” she said, opening the door. “You’re alright out here?” It came out more like a statement.

“Of course.” Maddox smiled. “Take your time.”

At first, it was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other.

The restaurant was unassuming, on a quiet street. The sign was a scrawl above the door, lit faintly. There were flowerboxes in the windows.

Orion wondered if Maddox brought women here on dates. If he had a girlfriend. It was the first time she’d wondered that. First time she’d let herself. She’d always been very good at controlling where her thoughts went. That was the only thing she’d been in control of for ten years.

But everything was coming unraveled. With Mary Lou gone, with Adam gone, with the weight of her chain gone, she felt as if she might just float away.

Walking on the street with Maddox beside her did nothing for that feeling. She was exposed, despite the fact her sweater was thick, her coat was expensive, and her boots were kick-ass. She was happy to have showered and changed while she was at her apartment, to put on a new skin, to wash away the day’s earlier events.

Maddox didn’t seem to clock her anxiety, or he was pointedly ignoring it to try and make her feel better. He opened the door for her.

It was meant to be a gentlemanly gesture, but that