Page 32 of Mad As Hell

“No!” I could only imagine the hell Gary would rain down on me—and my mother—if I spilled the truth. Besides, it didn’t matter now. Not since I was technically dead.

“Then tell me what will make you happy, Mads. What can I do to prove that I’m with you?” The raw edge of desperation in his voice was matched by the worry deep in his eyes.

“I don’t know!” I exploded out of the chair. “There’s not a manual for how to un-break a heart, Ryan!”

His head dropped, his shoulders heaving with the effort to breathe.

“Don’t you think I want to trust you?” Tears colored my tone, cracking it like brittle ice. “Do you know that every time he hit me, I knew that pain didn’t hold a fucking candle to what you did to me?”

A shudder rippled down his large frame, his hands curling into fists at his temples as he stared at the floor.

“I would rather have Gary kick my ass every single day than give you the chance to break my heart again.” I finished my tirade by choking on a sob. I swiped at my eyes, but it was useless; the tears were falling completely unchecked.

Ryan shot up, his face red and eyes furious. “I won’t let him touch you again, Madison.”

A strangled laugh hiccuped out of me. “That’s what you got out of this? That I need you to protect me? I needed you to protect my heart, Ryan. That’s it. All you had to do was trust me.”

He stormed around the table and grabbed my shoulders. His touch was like being zapped by electric wires. I felt the charge down to my toes.

“Maddie, I want to fix this,” he insisted, blue eyes wild.

I twisted out of his hold with a cry. “You can’t. You broke my heart. You broke… Fuck, Ryan, you broke me.” I slapped a hand to my chest, the sting barely an echo of the agony I felt in my heart.

He looked as devastated as I felt and as utterly helpless as to how we moved on from here. We were both stuck.

So for the second time that day, I ran away from my problems.

I turned on my heel and practically sprinted into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me. I leaned against it and slid down to the floor before drawing my knees to my chest and letting myself cry.

CHAPTER 9

MADDIE

I never finished breakfast. Between that and bawling my eyes out all morning, my stomach was rumbling unhappily by lunchtime. I wondered at my odds of showing up during the last five minutes of the lunch hour to grab my food and not being seen.

Yeah, they sucked.

But unless I wanted to gnaw on the raw carrots in my mini fridge, I needed to go get actual food. Or whatever Gary deemed to be actual food.

I opened my bedroom door and came up short when I saw Ryan, still sitting on my couch. His phone was out, and he seemed to be comfortable as hell as he scrolled through social media while waiting for me.

“Why are you still here?” I blurted out.

He didn’t look up. “Because we have shit to work out.”

I leaned against the doorframe with a heavy sigh, my heart feeling like it had been put through a blender at high speed. “Ryan, can we not do this again?”

“You said you wanted a schedule,” he replied evenly. “Let’s work out a schedule. Sit.” He jerked his chin at the chair.

I walked slowly to the chair before sinking down into it.

His gaze came up, assessing me critically. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” I muttered sarcastically, rolling my eyes.

He gave me a half-hearted shrug. “Would you rather I lie to you?”

I blinked slowly at him. “No, thanks. You’ve lied to me enough for one lifetime.”

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