Emotion clogs my throat as I try to suck in a steady breath, but my chest feels like it’s split open.
“If that was true, you would have never let this go on as long as it did. You fucking humiliated me, you betrayed me, and sorry isn’t enough. I can’t do this.”
She cries harder as I speak, only breaking my fucking heart more.
I wrench the door open and walk out, forcing myself not to look back.
I find myself out on the very dock that I sat with Maddison, just over a year ago. The sun’s setting behind the clouds, the shadow cast on the lake. There’s a stillness around me, a quiet that I haven’t felt in a long time and I’m truly alone with my thoughts.
I’m trying to process what I’ve learned, but it makes me sick to even think about it. Maddison is The Puck Bunny, and no matter how hard it is to accept, I have to.
Fuck, she might as well have ripped my heart from my chest.
That means when I think of the anonymous blogger who made my life a living hell for the past three years, I have to think of Maddison. The woman I love, with every fiber of my being. The mother of my child. The woman who has changed me in more ways than I can even say.
She's taught me patience. She’s helped me become a man I can be proud of. The one who doesn’t act in anger, who thinks things through before making decisions. She and Olive both, they’ve changed me.
And I knew that before now. I knew the moment that I saw Olive that my life would never be the same, and it hasn’t been. It’s been fucking amazing.
Having a family. Having two girls who are the center of my universe. Knowing that at the end of the day, even when shit’s gone all wrong, I have them to come home to.
Why would she lie? Why couldn’t she just have told me. If she did, everything would be different.
I wouldn’t feel like I barely know her, or like every single thing thus far has been a fucking lie. Do I even know the real Maddison?
Part of me wants to believe that I do, that I know her better than anyone, inside and out, but right now, I feel like I’m doubting everything.
Us. Our relationship. Every damn thing she’s touched feels stained with her betrayal right now.
Sitting here on the same dock where I unknowingly began to fall in love with Maddison, my heart feels like it’s in pieces, and I don’t know how to put it back together.
I don’t know what’s going to happen, but what I do know is that I need to put space between me and everything that reminds me of Maddison To think this shit through with a clear head, without every little thing that I’m surrounded by being a piece of her.
I sit on the dock for so long that the sun has set, and dusk is settling around the lake and my ass is numb from sitting still. I stand, shoving my hands in my pocket and walk back to the Brickside. Even though my stomach is in fucking knots, I take the stairs back to our suite.
* * *
Opening the door, I find Maddison asleep on the bed, curled on her side. Even in the pale moonlight, I can still see how red and puffy her eyes are, meaning she must have cried long after I left.
I fucking hate this. I hate that it’s come to this, that because of the secret she hid from me, that I can’t trust her.
That I have to walk away from her, to clear my head.
Careful not to wake her, I find my duffle bag and use the notepad and pen that has the Brickside’s logo on the top.
I quickly scrawl a note on the paper and take one last look at her before walking out the door and shutting it behind me.
This time, it’s me that’s leaving, and like only one year before, when Maddison left me with just a note, it hurts.
This time, I’m the one leaving, but no matter what happens, I’ll never leave my daughter behind.
Thirty One
“You know, this feels eerily familiar,” Reed says.
I glance over at him, narrowing my eyes. “What do you mean, familiar?”
He shrugs, taking another pull from his beer. “I mean, I’m pretty sure this is the same shit I did when Holland and I went through everything. Pretty sure I didn’t shower for a week and I survived on leftover burritos and beer.”
I grunt in response.
Three days have gone by that I’ve been camped out in Reed’s guest room, wallowing in misery. Three long, miserable, torturous days that I haven’t seen Olive… or Maddison.
Yet every waking moment I’ve thought of them both. Still so fucking angry and still so goddamn hurt that every time I close my eyes, all I feel is the pain.
Even Holland took pity on me and slid a pop-tart under the door. Evan even gave me his stuffed octopus, and it almost made me fucking cry.
I’m a goddamn mess.
And all of this has done nothing but dreg up the past, rearing its ugly head, beckoning me to give it another second of thought. To let it consume me, once again.
My brother. Conrad.
Two people who I trusted with fucking everything, literally every aspect of my life, who betrayed me. And then I think about how far I’ve come in the past three years, and how even though I’m a better man, I still feel so goddamn angry that I’ve found myself in a situation like this again.
Lied to by someone I love.
Betrayed by the person I trusted.
I stopped being angry at Beau a long time ago. More like I accepted the fact that because of his lies, and his betrayal, that we’d never have a relationship again. One, because I had no desire to, and two, because I could never trust him again.
But, lately? It’s been easier to think about forgiving him for fucking up because, in the end, he did me a favor. He helped me, even if it was in a shitty way, to realize that I never really loved my ex. Not by a long shot. She was never who I was meant to be with and we had fooled ourselves into believing that what we had was real.
All Beau did was wake me up and force me to realize that I wasn’t happy, I was just… breathing and not really living.
It took falling from grace to realize how much more there is to life than partying and wasting my time with someone who was never meant for me.
He led me to Maddison and Olive.
And, well, Conrad… He’s just an asshole and letting him go was the best thing I ever did. I couldn’t have someone with such shitty morals and standards on my team, and even though I still want to punch him in the dick for what he did, I’m glad that what happened in the dark came out in the light.
But still, fuck him.
I couldn’t take another day away from Olive, so tomorrow morning, Maddison and I will be meeting up, so I can see her. I went to Reed’s to give us both the space we needed, even though she chose to stay with Ty and Kyle.
The truth is, I couldn’t imagine coming home to an empty house where every corner I turned reminded me of my girls.
My girls.
Olive will always be my girl, no matter what happens. She’s the reason that I wake up each morning and breathe. She's the reason I want to be a better man, to make her proud, to be the kind of dad that stands on the sidelines and cheers his baby girl on in whatever she decided to do. The kind of dad that stands by her side, no matter what.
I want to be better, better for her.
“Fuck, I just hate this man,” I say, “I feel… empty.”
Reed nods. “I know. Kinda feels like your heart is living outside your chest, huh?”
It does, and I hate it. I hate missing them, I hate being apart from them. It doesn’t feel right.