Page 11 of Cross To Bear

Chapter 7

Razor

“Maddie’s on the move,” I said, whacking Bjorn in the chest, but when my brother went to snap back at me, my words sank in. I was watching her, couldn’t stop watching her, the whole fucking day. I’d caught the bullshit conversation between her and Jesse by the pool, saw when she pushed his hand away at the food table and experienced a brief flash of hope.

And how fucking sick was that?

I hated this, the situation we allowed to happen. I’d wanted to just lay the whole shitty situation on Maddie the moment we realised what she was to us.

But Bjorn said no.

I looked over at him now, wondering how he’d respond. Because our girl? She was making a beeline for the backdoor, with a head full of steam, it appeared.

“You guys go after her,” he said. “I’ll keep things locked down here.”

“Operation Maddie is in play?” I looked past him to Crash and Hawk. Crashie grinned then, a wicked thing that was the spitting image of my own, while Hawk just looked like a grumpy cunt as per usual. “We’re on it.”

Beers were left, food no longer having any appeal for us, not while the taste of honey was in sight.

But not really.

We’d talked long and hard about this, because what else could we do while our girl was with another guy? If she showed signs of wanting out of the relationship with Jesse, serious signs, we’d help her through every step, then when she was ready…

We’d work damn hard to make sure she saw just how good life could be with real men.

The lot of us rose as one, tracking Maddie’s steps at a distance, like bears would their prey, stepping away from the party, ignoring the people that called out to us. They didn’t matter, not right now. I caught the sharp slap of the screen door against the frame, my hands feeling the tiny spots of warmth her fingers had left on the frame as we followed her inside. I watched her hair bounce, the dark brown locks shining as she hurried down the hall and out the front door, only for us to follow.

“Hey…”

She spun around at my voice, eyes flashing, real fucking passion breaking through the careful mask she wore all the time, before she blinked and realised who’d called out to her.

“Oh, hey… Look, I’m gonna go—”

“Where, Maddie?” Crash came to stand beside me, arms crossed.

“Home.” I hated those fake smiles she used as a means to keep people from seeing what she was really thinking. “There’s a huge mess…” The three of us surged forward as we heard her voice break, our hands rising, wanting to tug her closer, hold her through whatever the fuck Jesse had done this time, but we didn’t. That wasn’t what she wanted, not yet. “I need to clean the kitchen again and the rest of the house. I didn’t even know the party was on until first thing this morning, and I…”

She blinked, blinked, her eyes filling with tears, and she looked so fucking fragile right then my fangs ground against each other.

“And I have to break up with Jesse.”

Fuck it. Rules, schmules, I didn’t care anymore. They went out the window the minute I saw she was crying. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close, her little hands sliding over my chest. God, her scent filled my nose, delicate and floral and the feel of her… I wanted to hold on and never let go, but I couldn’t. I drew back and looked down at her.

“Hey…” All I got was a sniffle, then a little sob in response. “Hey, you’re gonna be OK.” Gods, was there a sicker pleasure than stroking the girl you loved’s hair, as her heart broke for another man? I didn’t know, but I did it anyway. “It’s OK, Maddie.”

We’ve got you, I wanted to say. Because the others moved closer, unable to stop themselves, and while my arms tightened around her, it was to give her their hugs as well.

“No, it’s not…” She sighed that out, that iron control that always had her emotions locked down tight reasserting itself. “I’ve got to finish up the cleaning for an inspection, or maybe I can delay it. It’s so last minute.” Maddie shifted restlessly. “And I… I…”

“Need to move Jesse’s shit out of your place?” Hawk was always the blunt one, so he just said what we were all thinking. “Because you know he can’t cover the rent by himself.”

He pissed all his money away on weed and beer, and we all knew it.

“I need to tell him it’s over first.” Her voice was a sharp warning to us to not overstep. This was about Maddie, not us. “And how the hell do I do that? We’ve been together for three years and I’m going to what?” I let her go when she started to move more insistently, watching her start to pace. “Break up over potato salad?”

“It wasn’t the potato salad.” They called me Razor because I was pretty sharp, but that came with its downfalls. I could see into people sometimes, cut through all the bullshit and into the core of the matter. “No one breaks up over something like that. Something happened when he tried to make it.” I reached up, daring to brush my knuckles down the side of her cheek, her skin like wet satin. “Something that made you think you don’t have a future anymore.”

And that was the problem with being too sharp. Sometimes I cut through to shit people weren’t ready to face. Her eyes filled with tears now, ones she couldn’t keep back, and then her beautiful lips quivered as the sobs came. I moved in. We all did, surrounding her, providing a safe space for her to cry, sheltered away from the house, from everyone. I stared over the top of her head, my brows creasing as I took the others in. Because that was the problem. It felt like we’d waited our whole lives for Maddie and Jesse to break up, but now it’d happened… The thing that was left out of Operation Maddie was this. If you really care about someone, their pain becomes as important as your own, and you don’t ever want them hurting, even if it might benefit you in the long term.

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