Page 33 of It's Never Not Been You

“You don’t consider that creepy?” she asked, her voice becoming more alive.

“Maybe,” I replied, shrugging, not really caring if it was.

Madison propped herself up on her pillow a bit, still laying on her side as she looked at me. “Afraid I might disappear into thin air?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I remarked, trying not to start another fight, but also refusing to lie.

“What happened to you, Raddix?” she asked, and not for the first time.

Knowing that the truth was the only thing that could help me, I said, “When it finally became clear that no one was going to help me find you, I didn’t know what to do. There was no harnessing my thoughts or feelings. I’d never been in such a rage before, and the only thing that could settle me down was lots and lots of liquor.” Her whiskey-colored eyes widened a bit. While I’d always been a social drinker if the occasion had called for it, I hadn’t ever been into the hard stuff. “I found myself drunk almost every night for…” I let out a humorless laugh. “God…it’d felt like months. If I didn’t pass out from drinking, then I wasn’t able to sleep. All my regret, fears, loss…all of it would beat on me all night long.” I gripped my hands together to keep from reaching for her. “Every thought was of you, and…and I couldn’t handle it. I felt alive but soulless. I felt empty, which was a hell of a lot better than when I was feeling too much.”

“Do you still drink?” she asked, warming my heart with the concern in her voice.

“I do,” I admitted. “Not like…not like before, but…yeah, when it’s hard, I do.” Straightening in the chair, I knew that I needed to tell her everything, less she think me an alcoholic. “When it was obvious that I was spiraling out of control, my parents, Caspian, and Troy finally stepped in to put a stop to it. However, that emptiness was still there, and if I couldn’t drink it away, then I had to do something else with it before…before it really dragged me under.”

“What’d you do?”

“I spent every waking moment turning McKay Engineering into what it is now,” I answered. “I traded in the booze for twenty-hour workdays, seven days a week. Now, while Caspian and Troy hadn’t kept up with my work pace, I couldn’t have done any of it without them.”

“No wonder you’re worth millions now,” she remarked quietly.

“We’re worth millions, Madison,” I corrected. “Don’t ever get confused about that.”

She let out a tired sigh. “Raddix-”

“Don’t,” I ordered. “Just don’t.” I let out a deep sigh of my own. “Except for these past twelve months, our incomes have always been a joint effort. In fact, your name is on everything that I own, Madison. Yeah, the documents are forged with your signature, but that doesn’t change anything.”

Madison finally sat up in the bed. “That’s illegal, Raddix.”

“Ask me if I give a fuck,” I replied, annoying her all over again.

“Look, I…as much as I’d like to blame the world’s problems at your feet, I’m not going to,” she said. “I’m also not going to blame you for me being here. For my pride’s sake, I could accuse you of being manipulative and all that, but I’d hate to think of myself as that weak. Unless it’s criminal, no one can force you to do anything that you don’t want to do.” She nodded to herself like she was finally coming to terms with her choices. “I can own that. I can…I can take responsibility for being in this bed.”

“But…?”

“Sex doesn’t change anything, Raddix,” she said. “It doesn’t fix a goddamn thing.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed. “But like I already told you, what we do isn’t just sex. I feel like ripping the world apart when you’re not with me, Madison. So, when you let me slide inside you…when you let me use you until you can’t take it anymore, that’s a Heaven on this planet that I will not give up. Ever.”

“I’m still hurt,” she repeated, her words slicing me down the middle all over again.

“I know, baby.”

She shook her head tiredly. “No, Raddix,” she sighed. “I don’t think that you do.”

“Then tell me,” I practically begged. “Without yelling at me, without starting a fight, without the need to make me pay…tell me what I don’t know, Madison.”

Her warm gaze started to shine with unshed tears, and it killed me to see her like that. “No matter how much I still love you, I will never be able to trust what you say you feel for me, Raddix. Do you really want to tell our children that we’re not married because Mommy’s not sure that Daddy loves her?” Whatever was left of me, Madison had just successfully obliterated. “Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with someone that is always going to have one foot out the door for the sheer sake of self-preservation?” Her shoulders sagged. “C’mon, Raddix. No one wants to live like that.”

“If that’s my punishment for how I made you feel, then I’ll take it,” I told her honestly. “If I have to spend the rest of my life worrying that you might get up and leave me at any moment, then I’ll do it. If I have to spend every fucking day of my life talking you into not leaving me, then I’ll fucking do it, Madison. I’ll pay any price that you put on my fuck-up.”

“I don’t want to live like that, Raddix,” she said, reminding me that this was about her, not me. “I don’t want to be with a man that has to spend every night convincing me not to leave him. I don’t want to have kids with a man that…” She shook her head. “I don’t want to have kids with a man that I can’t trust to take care of us, and I don’t mean financially. When life gets tough, you’re not the man that I’m going to feel comfortable running to, and that’s fucked up, Raddix. That’s not a…that’s not what a healthy relationship is about.”

“Fuck a healthy relationship!” I yelled as I stood up from the rocker, feeling eviscerated with each word out of her mouth. “I don’t care about what the textbooks say, Madison! I only care that I have you!”

“I’m not fighting with you about this again,” she said as she pulled the covers back to get up and get dressed.

“If you leave that bed, I will lose my shit, I swear to God, Madison,” I snarled. “I will burn this fucking house to the ground with both of us in it.”

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