Page 18 of Between Dusk and Dawn

Walsh and I stared for a moment before I tried to continue with my charade. "Don’t be silly."

I went in for a big hug, pushing my red hair back and looking at her dad behind her.

Ember was beautiful. Her brown eyes were so big and lit the entire room with a warmth I wasn’t expecting.

"We will work on that." I laughed, trying to cut the tension.

"My name is Madison, but my besties call me Maddy," I said, turning to Mr. Solis. I went in to give him a hug.

Ember looked around at the living room before turning back toward me. I needed to fill the silence.

"I can’t believe you were able to score this apartment as a freshie!" I exclaimed, not daring to look at Walsh brooding in the doorway as if we didn’t have a serious conversation in my closet.

"Thanks for setting everything up for me. That was really nice of you." Ember offered a tight smile, and I burst into the kitchen, threw on the light, and grabbed a beer from the fridge.

"Want one?" I asked her before offering her dad one. I even looked at Walsh and twisted the corners of my lips up.

"You know she's—" her dad started to say.

"I am good, thanks," Ember cut him off, glaring at him.

"Anyway, we gotta get going, but Maddy, you and Ember are always welcome to come over to the Alphas at any time. I’ll make sure to put your name on the list," Walsh said, and my eyes went wide. I tried so hard to make sure it was more like an excited surprise, but Walsh would see through that.

Why would he invite me there? Was this the game we were playing?

I had to play my role, too. "You a-are part of the Alphas?"

"Yeah." Walsh fucking smiled, but his lips were pulled tightly.

"That is so fucking cool and an invitation that I absolutely will be taking you up on…so will Ember." I gave him a shit-eating grin; I wanted him to eat his own words.

"Mm-hm. See you guys soon, then." Walsh gave Ember a quick pat on the shoulder, then walked out the front door.

Opening a seltzer after finishing my beer, I listened to Ember and her dad talk amongst themselves. I would make sure to go over to the Alpha house. He needed to know I would not cower away from him.

Chapter Seven

Senior Year – Spring

Ifound myself in a deep abyss, immersed in my quest for revenge. I had poured so much of my vindictiveness into this charade that I lost sight of the role I was playing for the world. Ember, her dad, and especially Walsh—I resented them all. Walsh stopped coming around, vanished without a word. No more muse. Not even a glimpse at the Alpha house parties. Even though he extended the invitation to Ember a few times, she was too wrapped up in what had happened with the Den to take him up on it. He'd take one look at me and veer in the opposite direction. Whatever connection we had, had unraveled, and I was disintegrating beneath the void of his absence.

The amiable Maddy my friends once knew was gone. Bitterness, anger, and exhaustion replaced her; after years of wearing a disguise, it was unraveling.

When Ember lost her boyfriend, Ash, I felt nothing for her. That's how the game worked in Isles, a game her brother taught me. You came here, and by the spring bonfire, someone was bound to die. I lost Cagen last year, and no one checked onme. She never turned up and was pronounced dead. They had a funeral for her and everything.

After walking out of that house sophomore year, I went home to nobody. No family, no friends. I thought Walsh would check in on me, but I heard nothing. So, when I’d concocted this plan to get close to his sister, I thought it would draw him out. It didn't. It did the opposite, and he retreated deeper. I messed up morally, and now that my mask was gone, revealing the cold-hearted bitch I was, I was utterly empty.

After Cagen went missing and was eventually pronounced dead, a deep depression set in. Fear of the fire led to selfishly putting personal safety first, and now the consequences of those actions were painfully clear. Ember was roped into a grand scheme thought to be perfect, but it only pushed Walsh further away.

I was living, but it was as if I was already dead. There were times earlier in the year I thought about killing myself. Ember’s boyfriend had taken his life last year. For a moment, I almost envied him because as much as I wanted to die and not live anymore, I couldn’t come up with a plan to actually do it.

The life I was living was not really living at all. I trudged through the year as a shell. If I went to a doctor, they’d tell me I was depressed. Maybe it was because my parents abandoned me when I was a child and left me with my grandmother who passed away the day I started at Isles. Maybe it was because when I had to leave campus for breaks, I had nowhere to go and often spent weeks living in my car in the city with the little money I had saved from my inheritance. Or maybe it was because I was drinking five to six days a week and fucking strangers all the time which was likely not helping my mood.

The only family I had was my stepbrother in Joshua Tree where my dad had remarried to some rich lady. We had no contact, and honestly, I wasn’t sure his family even knew Iexisted. It was just me up here, all alone in Dansport and at the University of Isles.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved living in Isles. It was gloomy, rainy, and moody every single day. The town’s weather was like living in a high school emo girl’s Tumblr every single day.

It was always just me, which was the reason I craved fitting in so much. At the end of the day, I was just the kid version of Maddy, and all I wanted was to feel loved and have the warmth of a family around me.

---