Page 86 of Between Dusk and Dawn

"Mommy?" I cried out, but the roaring flames were so much louder than my little voice. There was so much fire all around me, and I couldn’t seem to get out.

"Get out and hurry. We can use her life insurance policy and show it was an accident," my mother said as the front door slammed shut.

I stared around at the blankness surrounding me. The smoke fogged the room, making it hard for me to see what was in front of me as I jumped out of bed. There was no way I would be able to save anything in this room. I covered my mouth with my hand because the smoke was burning my lungs as I made my way to the window.

I propped it open as fast as I could and jumped out, thankful we lived in a one-story home.

Then I ran. As fast as my little legs would take me, I ran to the neighbors’ house where I pounded on their door. The woman came to the door in rumpled pajamas and her hair tied up in a bow. I never knew their names, but I was grateful they answered the door. The moment their eyes looked at the house next to them being engulfed in flames, she grabbed my hand and ran me inside.

But all I could do was stare at my room that was completely burnt. All the things I had hoarded—my books, my stuffies—were gone. My parents were the ones who were supposed to save me. They birthed me, so weren't they supposed to raise me?

I’ll never forget the generosity the neighbor gave me that night. The way she sat with me while the police came and encouraged me to tell the truth. How she gave me something hot to eat—the first thing I’d had in over a year. I yearned for that type of love again. I’d spend the rest of my life trying to recreate that feeling.

As I layin bed with Walsh's protective arm enveloping me, I shared the painful story of my family. Walsh, listening attentively, questioned, "What happened afterward? The reports said that you never spoke." I shook my head, recounting how I never divulged the truth to the police, still clinging to the desire to protect my parents.

"My parents ditched me after the fire, and I went to live with a temporary foster family before my grandmother was located." I laughed, remembering when I met her for the first time. She hugged me as she sobbed. "Neither of us knew we existed."

"Madison—"

"Let me finish." He nodded but shifted me so we were nose to nose. "After I moved in with my grandmother, we found out my mom OD’d and my dad ran away. I found him eventually. He’d cleaned up his act and pretended like I never existed, raising a family out in Joshua Tree."

"You’ve never reached out? You know I can…"

"No. I don’t want to contact him. His family doesn’t know I exist and I want to leave it as such. He made that choice. Maybeone day I will, but it was my grandmother who taught me to create the barrier I’d developed over the years."

I paused before speaking again. "I wish she never taught me. I became obsessive about being the person I wasn’t when I was a kid. I wanted people to love me, desperate enough to fit in that I did anything I could to get to the top."

"Hence, Cagen," Walsh added.

"Yeah. I was so close, or at least it felt like it, before you told me that the whole group she hung out with hated me. I had no idea until you blew it up in my face." He frowned. "But I am glad you did. I don’t regret anything about it, Walsh, aside from what a horrible person I was to your sister.

"And the bonfire." I got choked up. "The bonfire was one of the worst nights. I blamed myself for it all. When you guys were having the fire outside, I couldn’t stand to be around the warmth. It terrified me and reminded me of the fire that took my entire room down."

"Madison…I had no idea." Walsh brought a hand up to brush a tear off my cheek.

"You wouldn’t have known." I offered a tight-lipped, sad smile. "I blamed myself for her death because I left. Maybe if I was brave enough to deal with the fire, we would have stayed inside and she wouldn’t have tried to save you."

I paused. "But then, you weren’t there to protect me, and I knew that we could never be together. Because you reminded me of the people and memories I was running away from. I just needed someone to protect me."

"I tried." His voice broke as he spoke. "I ran over to you that night and tried, but you were…"

He shook his head, his hair falling onto his forehead as he did.

"You were lost…" he murmured, pressing a small kiss to my nose. I pulled the cream comforter over our bodies as we laid in the stillness of the night. "I should have been there."

"I read and learned a lot in my psychology classes."

"Yeah?" He pulled away so his deep-brown eyes gazed right into mine. "What about?"

"I learned that people who bully others do it because they are so broken on the inside and feel as though the wall they built so tightly around them is being threatened."

"When I met you, I was so broken and didn't realize it, but you had threatened to ruin my entire wall. I never would have dared hurt Cagen by hooking up with you, but I was a hurt person, hurting people. You terrified me, not because of who you were, but because of what you meant to me."

He inhaled deeply, struggling to speak. I propped myself up on my elbow to see his face as I bared my vulnerable and raw self.

"I was really fucking lost for a long time without you there. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or what my purpose was. When you came back into my life, I was terrified because of what my heart felt for you."

He stared at me in comfortable silence for a while.

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