Page 10 of Psycho

And then there they were.

Like he was in my head somehow.

That morning, I sat in the center of the massive recliner, wearing just an oversized band tee, eating directly out of the jar of pickles as I watchedYou’ve Got Mail. It was that day that I realized what he was doing.

Maddox was taking care of me, just like he said he would. Even though I’d essentially told him to shove the offer up his ass that first day.

The day after that a cell phone was laying there waiting for me. I half hoped it would be a regular phone, like those used by regular people, but two seconds after powering it on, I realized someone had changed it for a prisoner.

I could only call out three phone numbers. Peyton, Dane, and Maddox.

As if I’d ever use the last one.

But it was nice to talk to my sister whenever she wanted to. Which was every day.

The days after that were even more spoiling. And every single day when Peyton would either come over to visit for a few hours in my solitary confinement or call and video chat with me for the entire afternoon, she’d giggle and excitedly ask what the gift of the day was, like it was the cutest thing in the world.

Because it was.

I just couldn’t figure out why he was doing it. One, it wasn’t like he was the most romantic guy in the world; I was sure. I mean, the man looked far more wild than housebroken, for one.

And two, I was pretty sure he had more than a few screws loose, thanks to my extensive history with insane men in the last few years.

Yet every day, more and more gifts came, like clockwork.

Blankets in the softest fabric I’d ever felt before.

Neon lights to decorate the space with, that suspiciously matched the ones I had around my apartment before it was taken away from me.

But the gift waiting for me this morning had set every alarm bell off in my head and my anxiety through the roof.

A pamper basket.

And it wasn’t just the basket itself that was alarming. The luxury bubble bath and soaking salts were incredible and when I first saw them, I almost ran straight to the huge soaker tub in the primary ensuite to jump right into a hot bubble bath with them. Hell, even the moisturizing face masks made my girly side tingle a little as I took them out of the basket.

But the item at the very bottom of the basket made my skin feel like it was on fire as I stared at it.

Cocoa butter lotion.

For stretch marks.

He knew.

Jesus fuck, how did he know? Howcouldhe know when I never uttered the words out loud one time since finding out myself?

Maddox knew I was pregnant.

And I was totally fucked.

A loud knock on the apartment door scared me and I stood frozen in the middle of the living room, staring at it.

I hadn’t put my homemade lock back when I grabbed my gift, which meant if someone knew the lock code, they could—.

“I’m coming in, Olivia.”

A second later the door opened, and Maddox walked in, eyes scanning the space until he found me in the dimly lit room. Why did he have to look so feral and so sexy, all wrapped in one?

His massive body was always in black. Black pants, black shirts, and black boots, without fail. They hugged his muscles like a second skin, and I found myself more than a few times wondering if his skin was soft and bare under the clothes, or if his manliness trailed under the fabric with a thick coating of hair. Was his chest hairy in a forty-year-old virgin way, or dusted in a rugged highlander kind of way?

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