My Maddie (Hades Hangmen 8)

Flame took a deep breath and placed himself between my legs. He locked his eyes with mine as he pushed all the way inside. I gasped at the feeling, the one I could never describe as anything but perfection. Healing perfection. Loving perfection. Convalescing souls colliding into an impossible bliss. It healed us both from the ghosts of our tormentors, ridding them of any power remaining over us. It was a communion in its purest form. Flame and me and love.

Our personal holy trinity.

Flame’s breathing became labored as he rocked back and forth inside me, out of rhythm at first as he fought the voice in his head. But he triumphed over the degrading words it spoke and gradually found a steady tempo.

He ran his hands through my hair, caressing and loving me. I did not need the words to be spoken. I love you. He did tell me on occasion, but even if he never could, I would have known instinctively it was true. I was cherished. I had found my soul’s other half. “Flame,” I moaned as butterflies began to build inside me.

Flame did not speak. He simply absorbed our connection, this moment purely for us two. As he framed my head with his arms, Flame’s eyes began to close. I was enraptured by his delicate protective hold, by the flush on his cheeks. Pleasure built and built at my core. Just as Flame stilled, his lips parting in silent ecstasy, I was wrapped in sensation too. Broken apart into fragments of light, only to be placed together again by the feel of Flame’s forehead against my own—we were magnets, pulling together even when shattered apart. Silence stretched as we caught our lost breaths. Flame slipped to the side, and I curled to look at his flushed face. I took his hand that was lying in the space between us.

“You’re not sick?” Flame asked again, still breathless. Even now, he was worried. He needed conformation that I was okay. I saw the worry on his face, in the way his cheeks twitched.

I swallowed. I had to tell him the truth.

The warmth I felt from our joining quickly dissipated as I became racked with trepidation.

“Maddie?”

Taking a deep breath, I guided his hand to my stomach. A thick lump of emotion grew in my throat as I placed his palm on my abdomen. I could see by his blank stare that Flame did not understand the significance, did not even feel the small, telling bump. I cleared my tight throat. “I am not sick.” Flame watched me so closely, so affectionately, it gave me the confidence to add, “I… I am pregnant.”

I stilled, awaiting his response. Flame blinked, but otherwise did not move. His hand did not even tighten in mine. I shifted closer until we shared the same pillow, and I read his face. He did not understand… or worse, he was frozen with shock. “Flame,” I prompted. His black eyes burned into mine. “I am with child. Our child. We have made a baby.”

It took a few minutes, but I knew when the information had struck home. I saw his face pale to a deathly white. Flame’s hand slackened in mine, and his gaze fell to my stomach. Flame began shaking his head, his eyes lifting. They were so wide and filled with fear that it destroyed my heart. “Flame,” I whispered.

“No.” His voice was laced with shards of glass. “No!” he echoed louder, wrenching his hand back from my stomach as though it were a deadly poison. Flame scrambled off the bed. “No!”

“Flame, baby, listen, please,” I begged, moving ever so slowly to a sitting position.

Flame backed away to the wall behind. “I can’t have a kid,” he stated, and I felt a million daggers being plunged into my heart in one swift blow. He could not keep still. He paced, his hands pulling violently on his dark hair, which was mussed by our joining. “Maddie.” His face contorted as if he were in agony. “I can’t, we can’t…” He sucked in a quick breath. “I’ll hurt it.”

“No.” I disagreed and moved off the bed. Flame fled to the door. His hand fumbled on the doorknob. Tears built in my eyes as I watched him coming so undone. The door opened as a deep moan of pain poured from Flame’s mouth. He staggered into the living area. I pulled on my nightgown and followed him through. I found him at the back of the room, pacing. “No, no, no, no,” he mumbled, over and over again. But that was not what had me hurt. It was where he was standing.

I held out my hands. “Talk to me, Flame. Everything will be okay. I promise.” I stretched my hand out farther. “Please…” My throat was thick with emotion which inhibited my voice. “Everything will be okay.”

Flame raised his arms and studied his wrists. His breathing was labored as though he had run many miles. Sweat beaded on his skin, droplets tracking down his back and over his brow. “They killed him,” Flame said, his quiet confession a fatal bullet wound to my soul. “They killed him, Maddie.” Flame’s gaze moved to mine. But he was not with me in this room. He was transported to his past, back in the shack in which he was raised. My blood cooled when it struck me where Flame was standing. A rug was there now, extra coverage on what used to lie underneath. I opened my mouth to tell him to move away, to come to me, to flee the haunting vision I knew would be swirling in his mind. But I saw in his face that he was already gone, trapped in the past, the voices shackling him to the worst moment of his life… the moment I had feared would be repeated once he knew about our baby.

Flame’s arms were trembling, but they lowered an inch as if something had been placed on them. He was there, back in that time, in that hell. “He started screaming… The noise hurt my ears. But he didn’t stop. He never stopped crying.” The tone in Flame’s voice changed. He no longer sounded like the formidable man most people saw. Now, in this tortured moment, he was the little boy who was starved by his father and imprisoned in a cellar. He was back with Isaiah, the baby brother who died in his arms. A sob ripped from my throat, and I covered my mouth to silence my cries.

“When I leaned over, he was looking at me, but his breathing had changed. It was deep and slow, but his eyes, dark eyes like mine, were looking up at me. His arms were reaching out.” Flame’s head tilted to the side as if he were studying his brother’s sick tiny body. He said, “I can’t touch you. I’ll hurt you. But he kept on crying.” Flame’s face scrunched in agony. “He kept screaming until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I fought the flames inside… prayed to God that they didn’t hurt him.” Flame’s chest rattled with the emotion building in his voice. People thought he didn’t feel emotion or express it. But it was the opposite. He felt so much that at times it paralyzed him. Like this very instant. “I had to hold him. He was scared and hurt… like me.” Flame choked as he tried to search for breath. I cried as I watched him, for once not knowing what to do. I did not know how to bring him around. I had to let him process this memory. He had to feel it, so he could then talk to me. So I could calm him once more, bring him back to me and our new life, one far from this pain and helplessness.

“I picked him up and cradled him in my arms.” Flame stared at the ghost of the baby brother in his arms. I stepped forward as Flame dropped to his knees, the heavy burden of reliving this moment making his body weak and exhausted. “He wasn’t hot now; he was freezing cold. His eyes were strange—glazed over. But he kept looking at me.” I had heard this testimony before. It had destroyed me then, knowing the man I loved suffered such a trauma at such a young age. And poor Isaiah, losing his mother, and his neglectful father not getting him the help he needed. But hearing it again, my stomach rounded with our baby, made it feel so much worse. I felt it deeper in my heart than ever before. I looked at Flame on the floor, living out his nightmare. My knees were weakened by the sadness that enveloped me in its crippling hold. Sitting down on the cold wooden floor, I looked at my husband with new eyes. No one should ever have gone through what he had to endure. Flame was different. I had known that from the first time I met him. Everyone at the club understood that. He did not see the world the same as everyone else. He did not understand people most of the time. But rather than being cared for and nurtured for who he was, he was abused and made to feel unworthy.

Made to feel evil.

Flame, the man, still lived with

the pain of his childhood. Before me now was Josiah Cade, the little boy confused by the world, suffering from the loss of his mother, sexually abused and hurt over and over by a father he could not hate, rather he loved unconditionally.

“I began to rock him back and forth like I’d seen Mama do,” Flame said, as he mimicked the motion. Then my heart completely shattered when he began to sing. I was frozen on the spot as Flame sang, in the most broken but gentle voice, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” He stared at what would have been his brother in his arms and sang each line, gently rocking his body back and forth. And that was when I knew. Despite his paralyzing fears, Flame’s conviction that he would hurt our child was untrue. Seeing him like this, singing so sweetly to his dying brother, demonstrated to me that he would love our baby with such intensity it caused my chest to ache. Flame was love. This scarred and tattooed man could be the best father, if and only if he could forgive himself for a crime he did not commit.

My vision blurred as I listened to the soft cadence of his voice. My chest was racked with pain seeing how he had looked in that moment. He had even sat on top of the covered-up hatch in the floor. Where he used to cut and relieve himself of the flames he thought were in his blood. The same flames had risen again. Flame’s personal Armageddon, the place his demons gathered to do battle.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Flame whispered, his voice softening as he imitated speaking to the baby. “I heard a crackle in his skinny little chest, rattling. But Mama had asked me to look after him, to protect him. My little brother.” Flame stopped rocking, and I braced myself for the final part of this reenactment. “I counted his breathing. One… two… three… his breaths were slowing… four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten… Isaiah’s arms had dropped, his skin was ice-cold, but his eyes were still open and looking at me. I waited for him to breathe again… eleven… and I waited. Nothing was happening. I moved my arms.” Flame did. Carefully, with the utmost care, he moved his arms as though trying to stir a sleeping baby. “Twelve…”

Flame’s voice changed. It was pleading. Pleading Isaiah’s breaths to reach twelve. He rocked back and forth. I felt sick at the desperation on my husband’s face as he tried to rouse his brother. “Twelve… please… get to twelve…” Then he stopped. Flame grew completely still. “His arms fell to the side. His head tipped back, eyes still wide, but he wasn’t staring at me anymore. Isaiah had gone. Just like Mama.” Flame left his arms up, still cradling the ghost of his deceased baby brother. “He’d left me too. I’d hurt him. I’d made him leave me too…” I wept as Flame remained motionless, just watching his empty yet strained arms for so long I lost count of time. It was not until Flame moved that I wiped my eyes.

As gently as possible, he laid the ghost of his brother on the ground, then curled up over the old boarded-up hatch, legs and arms tucked into his stomach. The room was still. The wind blew a quiet melody outside, Flame’s heavy breathing its accompaniment. Silently, I crawled toward where he lay. The wooden floorboards creaked under me, but Flame was numb. Moving before him, I laid my cheek to the cold ground, mirroring his position. Flame’s eyes were glazed as he stared unseeing at the floor. His cheeks were wet with tears and red with sadness.

“You did everything you could,” I whispered, my voice breaking the thick, heavy air that had surrounded us.

I did not think Flame had even heard me until he lifted his eyes and said, “If you die, I will die too.” I stilled at the depth of devastation in his voice. But more disturbing was the conviction. He meant it. And I knew it was true. I knew it was true because I felt the same way. How did one live with half a heart?

I inched my fingers closer, leaving them just a fraction from his. His fingers twitched as though he wanted to take my hand and pull me close. But he was exhausted. I could see by his deflated body that the visit to his past had discharged the last morsel of energy he had.

“I will not die,” I promised.

Flame exhaled. Intense relief flickered in his eyes. But then his gaze fell to my stomach. “Mama died after she had Isaiah.” He choked on his words. “After she reached into the cellar and took my hand, my poppa told me not to touch anyone or the evil inside me would hurt them. I let her down. I took her hand when I shouldn’t have. Then when she died. I held Isaiah.” A tear fell from Flame’s eye and dropped to the floor. His face did not move. I did not believe he even realized he was crying. “I sang to him, Maddie. I tried to make him better.” My face crumpled with sorrow, and I desperately wanted to embrace my husband. To relieve him of the guilt that still lay heavily on his heart. “I rocked him.” His eyes grew wide, and with a lost soul’s innocence he asked, “What if… what if I sing to our baby? If I rocked them… and they died because of me?” Flame shook his head, his midnight hair dusting the wooden floor. “I can’t be a papa, Maddie. I don’t know how to be one.”

This was where we could share a fear. “Baby?” I said gently. My lip trembled. I needed to hold him. No, this time I needed him to hold me. “I… I need you.”

Flame froze. Watched me. I let a tear fall too. Flame’s hand followed it to where it had landed. The salty drop coated his fingertip. “You’re sad,” he stated. He moved his head so close to me I could feel the heat from his cheeks. “You’re sad because of me? Because I’ll hurt the baby?”

“No,” I countered as sternly as I could manage. “I am sad because I want your touch. I want you to hold me.”

Flame’s jaw clenched, indecision played out on his face—a cheek twitch, the widening of eyes, his tongue licking his pierced lips. “The baby,” he whispered.

“Is safe.” I took in a deep breath. “Our child is safe within me. Nothing will hurt him or her, baby. Especially not you.” I smiled through my sadness, a ray of warm sun through a storm cloud. “You are its papa.” Flame’s breathing sped up, his chest rising and falling in quick movements. “He or she already loves you.”

Flame completely stilled. “How do you know?” His voice shook with uncertainty.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “I feel it, Flame. Since the moment I realized I was with child, I’ve felt an abundance of love.”

Slowly, Flame’s hand moved toward my stomach. Palm on the floor, he lifted his index finger and, as gently as could be, ran it over my nightgown. I could not remove my eyes from him as he waited, breath held, for something to happen. When nothing did, when he saw I was still breathing, still retained color in my face, he gently touched my nightgown that covered my stomach. It was not his hand cradling my naked bump, but it was a start. Flicking his gaze to mine, he said, “I heard my mama when she had Isaiah. She screamed. It hurt her.” Flame shook his head. “I can’t hear you in that much pain.”

“It will be worth it,” I said. “After the pain, comes our baby. Our baby, Flame. Ours. A miracle we never knew we would be blessed with.”

Flame was silent, and I knew he was absorbing those words. “I need you,” I repeated, but this time failed to hold back the tears that threatened to consume me.

“Maddie.” Flame reached for my hand. The moment our hands met, I felt a rush of warmth infuse my body. With Flame’s touch I breathed easier. I felt complete in a way I never had until I let my heart open to this man. “Don’t cry,” he begged.

I held on to his hand like a lifeline. Shifting closer, I absorbed his warmth and the smell of leather that always stuck to his skin. It was as comforting to me as the sound of a crackling fire on a cold night. “I am scared too,” I confessed. Flame searched my face. I knew he needed more. “You fear you will not be a good father. I fear I will not be a good mother.”

“You will,” he said, and I knew he believed it with all that he was.

“I had no parents that raised me. I was hurt from childhood, just like you.” I sniffed back my wrought emotions. “Some days I feel as though I will never be normal. Some days the memories of the past, of Brother Moses and how he hurt me, are so heavy that they consume me.” Flame shi

fted from sorrow to rage in a second. Just the mention of Brother Moses brought him so much anger he found it hard to contain. I pressed my palm to his cheek, and his erratic breathing calmed. “I do not say this to incite anger or to gain pity.” I pushed Flame’s hair back from his forehead. His eyes closed at my touch. It still floored me. Still overwhelmed me how much he trusted me. How much he loved me. Only I saw this Flame—my perfectly broken boy. “I wanted to tell you this, so you know that you are not alone.” I smiled as his hand squeezed mine in solidarity. “We are one and the same, you and I. Two halves of one soul. What you fear, I fear too. But I know, together, we can achieve whatever we wish… and I wish us to be the parents we never had.”

“I never want you to be scared.”

I pressed my forehead against his. “With you beside me, fear will never triumph.”

“I feel the flames again, Maddie. They’ve woken up. They get stronger every day.” Flame released my hand and, never taking his eyes off mine, placed his nails on his arm. “Every day, they tell me you will die. Now they tell me that the baby will die too. They tell me I will kill you. The flames I have in my blood will try to kill you.” Flame’s jaw clenched, and he dug his nails into his flesh, hissing and rolling his head back in pleasure. And it broke my heart. I had thought it shattered as I watched him on this hatch, reliving his brother dying in his arms. But this, seeing him back in this place… He fought this every day, I knew that. Right now, I could not stand watching him in such distress. With our bodies so close, I felt his arousal against my leg. The bloodletting caused this. Flame cut himself again, blood forming in small drops on his tattooed skin. He hissed and groaned, but his brow was pulled down and filled with tension. I knew why.