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“Don’t be like that, Maddie. We’re great together.”
“We’re great in bed, Dave. We hardly know each other outside of the bedroom.”
“That’s not exactly true. We spent time together in Europe. We saw Paris together.” I finger the gold chain around her neck. Dangling from it is the pearl, sapphire, and ruby pendant I purchased for her in Paris.
She puts her hand over mine. “We did. But before Paris was that awful experience on the plane, and we were both screwed up over that. Now we’re home, and something’s clearly up with your family again.” She sighs. “You’re inside yourself, Dave, and you can’t be with me if you can’t be with me.”
She’s right, of course. But…
“I do want to go there, Maddie. Not yet. I want to give you an orgasm first. I want you to feel good.”
“Dave.” She cups my cheek. “I don’t care about an orgasm. I care about you. Something has you completely troubled. I can’t force you to tell me, but I’m also not going to force you to give me an orgasm if your head’s not in it.”
“Maddie, giving you an orgasm is hardly a hardship.”
She exhales sharply. “You’ve given me plenty of orgasms, Dave. Right now, you seem to need me. What can I do for you?”
I lie back down on my side. “You did it.”
“Damn it.” She moves away from me. “I will not be just a fuck to you. Talk to me. Let me help you.”
I roll over onto my back, cover my eyes with my arm. “I don’t want to lay this on you.”
“Lay it on me. Because if you don’t, this will be the last time you’ll lay me.”
I remove my arm from my eyes. “You’re so much more than a good lay, Maddie. I never meant for it to be more than that, but you are.”
She snuggles into my shoulder. “I’m glad for that. And I’m proving to you now that you’re not just a fuck to me, Dave. I don’t expect you to give me an orgasm when you’re clearly bothered.”
“God, you don’t know the half of it.”
“Tell me. Let me help.”
I look her straight in the eyes. “You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s a lot of things, but the biggest one right now is that my uncle Joe is sick.”
She nods slowly. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope he gets better soon.”
I shake my head, feeling a lump forming in my throat. “You don’t understand. He has cancer. Brain cancer. A glioblastoma, which is pretty much a death sentence.”
She rolls away from me, sits up, slaps her hand over her mouth. “I’m so, so sorry, Dave.”
“You know the worst thing about it? I love my uncle, and I feel so awful for him and my aunt, but the first thing I thought was how glad I was that it wasn’t my own father.”
“That’s not bad,” she says.
“But it is. You’ve probably heard Brianna say this. All of our aunts and uncles are like parents to us. All of our cousins are like siblings to us. We’re that close, Maddie. Joe is the oldest Steel brother. The patriarch of our family. It’s like he’s the base of our house of cards, and without him, we’ll fall.”
“The Steels are built on a much more solid foundation than that,” Maddie says.
Are we though? She doesn’t know everything.
She knows about Wendy Madigan, about Lauren and Jack, and even Pat Lamone. That has all become common knowledge around town. She knows about Brittany Sheraton, that she’s under mental health care now.
She doesn’t know about the human trafficking. She doesn’t know about Dale and Donny and Uncle Talon. About what Wendy Madigan ultimately cost our family.
