not knowing if he was alive or dead for weeks on end. She shivered, the cold, sick feeling digging into her stomach. She loved Caden so. But beyond a smile whenever she came into his presence and an occasional offhand endearment that meant nothing, he didn’t know she was alive. But that didn’t change the fact he was her heart and he was leaving. Or that she hated it.
The protest started at the edges of her mind, subtle yet insistent, gathering strength like a storm chasing across the plains, gaining volume as it got closer. The howl dissolved to voices from her past, some kind, most of them cruel, telling her what to do, how to do it, as if her pain was nothing. As if she was nothing. The urge to slip away deeper into the foliage until she disappeared clawed at her nerves.
She dug her nails into her forearms, letting the pain drive back the cacophony. Caden was a strong man. He respected strong women. All the women of Hell’s Eight were strong. Sally Mae with her pacifist beliefs, healing ways and defiance of convention. Desi with her fiery spirit. Ari with her gentleness that belied an inner strength that didn’t ever let her quit. Bella who was just pure life. Fei with her purpose and drive. Those were the type of women that Caden admired. That was the kind of woman she needed to be.
She looked over to where Tia stood beside her Ed, the mantilla on her head fluttering in the breeze, catching the smile in her eyes. Tia, who’d lost her husband and her children, and yet had taken on eight young boys, wild boys, hate-filled boys, and turned them into men to be admired. Why hadn’t God sent her a Tia?
She licked her lips and looked to where Caden had disappeared. Maybe the good Lord hadn’t sent her a Tia when she was a child sobbing into her pillow at night, but He’d given her an escape. But now He was taking that away, and she couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t coincidence that as her escape into fantasy stopped being effective, her love for Caden grew. She was meant to come to Hell’s Eight. She truly believed that God sent her here. But she didn’t believe he sent her here to be alone. He sent her here for Caden. For though he was restless and distant, part of the whole yet somehow apart from it, he was a man who needed love, who needed gentleness, and she’d waited her whole life to give her love to someone. It didn’t matter if he recognized it or gave it back. She’d waited her whole life for someone to love. And now he was leaving.
She shook her head. She couldn’t let it just happen. She heard a noise beside her. She looked up. Bella stood there, for once without her handsome blond, blue-eyed Sam, her belly rounded with child, her smile full of that life that gave Sam purpose. Maddie had spent a lot of time studying what attracted these men to these women and what kept them moving. And for Sam it was Bella’s spirit that he cherished.
“You hide again, Maddie.” It was both an accusation and a question, spoken in Bella’s melodic accent that made music of her words. Even the exasperated ones.
Maddie shrugged. “I’m watching to see what needs to be done.”
Bella shook her head. “There is only one thing you watch, my friend.”
As always, Bella’s use of the term “friend” made her jump inside. Maddie had never had a real friend. She’d been kept alive after her birth for a purpose. For a long time she’d dreamed it had been to be loved, but as the years passed, the truth had become clear, and she’d learned to stop smiling at others and to stop believing. Though the women of Hell’s Eight were kind to her, she never felt comfortable with their caring. She was a whore. She might have run from her life, but all the offers of friendship in the world couldn’t remove the stain. It was easy to pretend that wasn’t true, protected here at Hell’s Eight. Here the world couldn’t touch her, but someday she’d have to leave. And when she did she wanted to be just like Bella. Confident. Sassy. Always ready with a quick response. Never hiding.
But she wasn’t like Bella. Not yet. She didn’t have fire. She didn’t have family. She didn’t have beliefs. She’d been a child lost and now she was a woman lost, but she was going to find her way. The padre said God didn’t put people on this earth with no purpose, which meant she had a purpose, too. When he’d first said it, it’d been a unique idea she couldn’t understand. But over time she couldn’t forget it, and slowly it had grown on her and taken root. Until now, finding a purpose was her purpose.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bella smiled and glanced over to the gate Caden had just passed through. “It is easy to see where your heart lies.”
Maddie licked her lip, feeling that stab of fear deep inside. To love something was to lose it, to cause its death. Instinct had her reaching for make-believe, but she couldn’t find that hazy place where real and imagination blended as easily as they used to. Ari said it was a good thing. Maddie wasn’t sure.
“Hearts and flowers are so pretty at weddings.” The slip into nonsense was only half-faked. It was always so much easier to act as nothing when you felt like nothing.
Bella sighed and folded her arms under her ample chest, resting them on her belly. “You will try this nonsense with others. I know you are not loca.”
Maddie wished she knew that. “Are you so sure?”
Bella shook her head. “There is more to you than nonsense, Maddie.”
Maddie blinked. No one had ever said that to her before.
“I am sweet thighs and soft breasts and pleasure for a man.” She’d heard that so much it was rote.
Bella snorted. “You’re passion and temper, and when you find your feet, the only man that will find pleasure with you is the one that you choose.”
“You think I’ll get to choose?”
Bella, always so insightful, always so blunt, touched her hand, causing Maddie to jump again because no one ever touched her. Touching was bad, painful, death. “Sí.”
She pulled her hand away, immediately feeling bad. She liked Bella. Bella just smiled.
“You are Hell’s Eight now, Maddie. You are not nothing.”
“Tracker just brought me here.”
Bella smiled and looked at the big man talking to Ed. The wind caught his hair, exposing the deep scar on his cheek. “Something brought us all here.”
To Maddie, Tracker was a scary man with that scar down his face and those big muscles and that dark skin, but to Ari he was her sun and moon, which just proved gentleness lived everywhere. Maddie clung to that. Caden wasn’t as big as Tracker, but his hands were strong enough to bruise, break bones.
Bella grunted and put her hand to her stomach. “I swear if this child doesn’t stop kicking me I’m going to let his daddy raise him.”
Maddie looked at Bella. “You carry a girl.”
“How do you know?” It was uniquely Bella that she didn’t dismiss the thought, just asked if Maddie was sure.
It would be tactless to say she’d seen so many pregnant women over the course of her eighteen years in a whorehouse that she knew how a woman carried. So Maddie just shrugged instead and said, “Some things a woman just knows.”
Bella’s brows lifted, and she made an eloquent motion of her hands. “See? Ya está. When you don’t stop to think about how you are going to be received, you say what is on your mind.”
“A woman should be seen and not heard.”
Bella snorted. “Idiots should be seen and not heard.”
Maddie couldn’t help but flinch any more than Bella could help her immediate apologetic touch on her hand. Bella was always touching. It didn’t bother Maddie so much anymore.
“I am sorry, Maddie. You know I do not think you are an idiot.”
So many did, though. Her glance cut to the path Caden had taken. Bella’s gaze followed hers but she didn’t let go of her hand this time, just gripped it tighter when Maddie tugged.
“Maddie?”
“Yes?”