Page 37 of It's Never Not Been You

The poor woman looked like she might faint, and I was solely to blame for that. Caspian was known as the ‘nice’ brother. People would rather speak and deal with him than they would me. I wasn’t as personable as I used to be, but it also wasn’t anything that kept me up at night.

“You…you told me that…uhm, if a Ms. Madison Amber ever stopped by to come get you-”

“Madison’s here?” I asked as I stood up from my chair.

Drew nodded. “Yes, sir,” she answered. “She’s…uhm, waiting in the reception area.”

“Send her to my office and inform her that I’ll be right there,” I ordered.

When I looked back at the table, Troy had a smirk on his face, whereas Caspian was outright grinning like a loon. Both men knew that I was going to blow off this meeting, but I also wasn’t going to be a dick about it. I had no idea why Madison was here, but whatever her reason, it was more important than this meeting and everyone else in this fucking building.

“Forgive me for having to do this, but I’m going to have to leave due to an unexpected arrival,” I told them. “I have every confidence that Caspian and Troy can answer any questions that you might have for this meeting. We can always reschedule at your convenience if you’d rather, or we can also schedule a follow up if you feel like it’s necessary.”

“Can’t Mr. McKay or Mr. Bentley handle this unexpected arrival?” Nancy asked, raising my hackles and embarrassing her team. “I mean, this meeting was scheduled for the purpose of-”

I threw my hand up to stop her. “Mrs. Dickerson, with all due respect, Caspian and Troy are more than capable of handling this kind of meeting without me. Though my title might be CEO, I run McKay Engineering alongside these two gentlemen.”

She bristled. “I just meant-”

I put my hand up to stop her again. “And even if they weren’t capable of conducting this meeting, I’d still leave and reschedule. Madison Amber is the single most important person in my life, Mrs. Dickerson. She could be here to tell me that our house is on fire, or she could be here to tell me that she chipped her nail polish. Either way, whatever she’s here for, it’s more important to me than anything else that I might have going on at the moment.”

“Of course,” Arnold spoke up. “Our apologies, Raddix. No one-” He shot his wife a look. “-meant to suggest that we weren’t in good hands with Caspian and Troy.”

“Not at all,” Geno remarked, sounding none too pleased with Nancy himself.

“Thank you for understanding,” I replied as cordially as I could before sliding my paperwork towards Caspian, then walking out of the room, practically racing towards my office.

Ignoring everything and everyone around me, I raced up the stairs, not daring to wait for the elevator. I had no idea what Madison was doing here, but I wasn’t going to wait to find out. Though things had felt tense this morning when she’d left the house, she hadn’t seemed angry or anything like that. I also couldn’t think of anything that I could have done between this morning and now to have her storming McKay Engineering.

When I finally got to my office, I opened the door to see Madison standing next to the floor-to-ceiling window that faced west. She was staring out at the city’s streets, her arms wrapped around her waist. She was so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t even heard me open the door, and if that wasn’t a bad sign, then I didn’t know what was.

Chapter 24

Madison~

“Baby, are you okay?”

I closed my eyes as Raddix’s voice washed over me. After we’d all gone our separate ways after lunch, all I’d done was picture Raddix’s future with another woman. Now, while it’d been hard to sit and do, the issue hadn’t been him moving on. Not really. I’d found myself asking myself if I was going to regret not trying to work it out with him. Would the rest of my life be plagued with ‘what ifs’ as I watched Raddix live a new life without me? Anger had driven me through this past year, so I hadn’t really given any thought to Raddix being with someone else. Honestly, I hadn’t wanted to think about it. I’d been too busy nursing my heartbreak and feeding my anger, and so I hadn’t seen anything beyond what I’d been going through at the time. Our different futures hadn’t even been on my radar.

However, after speaking with Eris, Pierce, and River, I couldn’t ignore what my future might look like anymore. I also couldn’t pretend that Raddix wouldn’t find love again. So, after hours of soul searching, I asked myself if I could be happy seeing him with someone else when I hadn’t given us a second chance at all. Giving Raddix the chance to make it up to me didn’t automatically equal success or failure, so that wasn’t what this was about. It’d really be just to see if he could make this ache in my chest go away for good. If he couldn’t…well, I’d already left him once, so I was sure that I could do it again.

So, here I was.

Scared out of my fucking mind.

With all the bravery that I could muster, I turned away from the view of the city to face the only man that I had ever loved and will probably ever love. His brows were drawn in, concern written all over his face, his different-colored eyes regarding me like a wounded animal, ready to strike out. Which, let’s face it, that’s exactly what I was. Or what I’d been acting like.

All the words that I had rehearsed got caught in my throat as Raddix walked towards me, his gorgeous face the most precious thing that I’d ever known. I had allowed one mistake to erase fifteen years of how this man had proven his love to me every day, and though I wasn’t sorry for handling things the way that had worked best for me, I knew that I couldn’t be happy if I didn’t let him try to make up for what had happened.

“Baby?” His hand came up to rest on the side of my neck. “Madison, are you okay?”

I wasn’t.

Since the day that I had walked out of that church, I hadn’t been okay.

I shook my head, the simple movement opening the floodgates of the past year. I started crying, and I couldn’t stop. When Raddix’s arms wrapped around me, I just cried harder. It felt like my pride and anger were stepping aside, so that all the emotions that I’d been ignoring could finally free themselves. If not for crying in his arms, the entire building could have probably heard my anguished cries.

Raddix’s arms tightened around me. “Baby, what’s wrong?” he asked, his voice sounding gutted. “Talk to me, Madison. Please. Tell me what the fuck is going on.”

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