Not a problem I have. You need a heart to bleed.
“So, you want to tell me where your head is now?” He doesn’t look my way as he starts the conversation from this morning all over again. I grit my teeth all over again.
“Bloody hell, Maddox.” I throw my hands in the air in frustration. “You leave everyone else to their own shit until they’re ready to deal but me.”
He’s not phased. He is never phased. If he weren’t higher than Air Force One, he’d swing at me. Or, at the very least, snap back, but he only shrugs. I’m getting sick of the shrugging.
“In forty-eight hours, you have seen Margret and Hea —”
“Don’t say her name,” I growl out a warning.
“Why?” He finally turns to me; his blue irises swallow his pupils. It makes my stomach clench. “Not saying it doesn’t change anything.”
“I prefer to pretend she doesn’t exist.”
“How’s that working for you?”
My nostrils flare. My fist clenches. No one sees this side of me. I’ve always been so angry, but the last few years it has grown exponentially. I’ve worked hard to keep it contained. To keep it below the surface with a fake smile plastered on my face.
But Maddox knows all my buttons and he pushes every damn one of them.
I move until I’m nose to nose with him. “Fuck you, Maddox. When you deal with your endless guilt, pain, and anger, then you can talk to me.”
“Heaven broke you,” he grits out, not appreciating me crowding his space. “Everything else may have cracked you, but she’s the one who shattered you. And you saw her for the first time in years.”
I push him a bit, my anger is starting to reach a boiling point. The point that turns me into the son of a bitch I am. “Who broke you, Mads?” I taunt with a smirk. “Zoey and Jax? Jewel? Chris? Need me to keep going?”
The control he’s always seeking but never grasps is fraying. He shoves me hard, making my head crack against the metal bars of the horse stall, then punches me in the face. I grin against the sting in my head and the copper in my mouth. The physical pain is a relief.
He’s in my face, gripping my hair in his fist. He brings his face close to mine, our lips almost touching. “I’m not playing this game with you today.”
“Why not Maddox? I need the pain and you need the control. Tomorrow, when you need the pain, you know I’ll be more than happy to oblige.” My smirk is wide, cocky, and full of venom.
“Why don’t you admit you still love her?” he breathes against my mouth, but it’s his words that throw gasoline on the inferno.
I grab him by the shirt, changing our positions. I wrap my hand around his throat with a growl. “I never loved her. I was just a stupid kid.”
“Liar,” he smirks, grabbing my face, bringing our lips together.
Aggression and fury pass between the two of us. He bites my already bleeding lip, drawing out more blood. I groan against the pain as endorphins flood my veins.
I can feel Maddox is just as hard as I am as he rubs himself against me. I pull away. Our eyes are matching embers of arousal and anger. “I need to feel something besides all this damn anger. I need to feel something besides empty.”
He spins me around with a growl, then grabs my cock, gripping it tightly through my jeans, making my eyes water. “This what you want, Ry?” he hisses.
“It’s what Ineed, Maddox,” I rasp through the pain.
He steps away from me, and I miss the connection. I miss the physical pain, and the relief it gives over all the shit in my head.
I look at him over my shoulder, wondering what he’s waiting for. There’s more assessment in his gaze than usual. I nearly flinch under the penetrating weight, knowing he can see that I amnot all right.
He wants to say something. It’s all right there in his eyes. But he won’t. Not right now.
Over fifteen years of friendship has taught us both when to push, and when not to.
He looks over the enormous space, still deciding if and how he’s going to indulge me. I hope he will. I’m on the edge of losing it. It’s never good when I lose it.
“Over there.” He points to a worktable in the back. “Clothes off. Bend over it.”
