Chapter 230: Madeline
The panic that’s been knocking on the door of my ribs steps through and sits down. He doesn’t know. He took me out and he doesn’t know the way back.
Breathe. In, out. It’s like trying to lasso fog.
I slide back down until I’m sitting on the wheelhouse floor, shoulder to the bulkhead, knees up, wrist cradled against my chest. Every throb is its own small explosion. The boat punches through chop—bang, rise, bang—and each hit rattles my bones and shakes loose the little thread of calm I’m pretending to have.
What can I even do?
Not much. Not against him. Nick is half a twin in weight but still twice me; he broke my wrist with a flick like he was snapping a breadstick. Fighting him head-on would be theater, not strategy. I could maybe grab something—anything—and catch him in the temple when he’s not looking; there’s a handheld radio, a flashlight, a wrench rattling in the cup holder, the metal edge of the throttle guard. And if I got him down, if I could drag him off the helm, I’ve watched Reid, Jake, even Sloane steer a hundred times. I could piece it together, keep us pointed somewhere not-death, crawl the Vigil back toward shore and hope someone finds us there. Because the other options…
I’m an excellent swimmer. And Northhaven taught me cold-water drills and stubbornness. But out here the water is knifed steel; hypothermia would take me in minutes. And how far even is shore? With a broken wrist? I couldn’t swim for more than a few minutes in the cold and without one hand.
Do they know? Do the twins know? Did Finn see the missing boat? He was supposed to be on it, waiting for me... Did he leave to go look for me, or see the twins, and that's when Nick took me to the Vigil? God—if I’d told them everything sooner. If I hadn’t believed he couldn’t find me here. Wait. How did he find me?
“How did you find me?” The words come out small, sandpapered.
“Someone told me,” he says, eyes on the windshield, voice almost bored.
“I didn’t tell anyone.” My mouth is cotton. “No one.”
He smiles like he knows a joke I don’t. “I had to trick her. Your coworker. This Sloane girl—nosy. Really doesn’t like you, you know that?.” His tone warms with satisfaction. “And she talks a damn lot. She said you were causing problems. Flirting with everyone.” He tsks softly. “Without me you’re unruly. Wild. You need to be reeled back into your place.”
Something in me tilts, a wrong-way vertigo. Sloane. Sloane brought him here? The thought is so huge my vision fuzzes at the edges. The boat slams another wave; nausea surges up my throat.
“What are you planning to do with me?” It feels absurd to ask, but I need words to keep him from filling the silence with his own. “Is this—do you want to get back together? Is that what this is? Or...”
He lets go of the wheel and crouches in front of me in one slow fold, the Vigil shouldering herself along without a hand, and for a second I think us going under would be faster than whatever will happen to me under Nick's hand. Up close, his face is a stranger’s map with a familiar mouth. I liked that mouth once. I listened to it tell me we were forever. How did I not see this? Was it always under there? Was I a fool or just young or both?
His fingers take my jaw, a grip that’s almost a clamp. Pain snakes along the bone. “I came here to get you back,” he says, voice soft enough it would sound tender if not for the iron in his hand. “To make you realize we should be together. But now—” he tilts his head, studying me like a specimen “—I’m not sure. This escalated quickly.” A glint in his eye—humor? pride?—turns my stomach. “I’m angrier with you than I thought I’d be. And, well, I don't know if there's any going back from this.”
He smells like motel soap and rain and that cologne I used to fall into. “I stayed at the motel last night,” he continues, almost conversational. “Watched you. You came home late. I was so fucking angry when I saw those twins bring you back. Walk you to your door. Touch you.”
His grip tightens. A flare of pain shoots through my face; for a second I’m sure something cracks. “I loved you so much, Maddie,” he murmurs. “When you broke up with me I realized I couldn’t live without you. And when you tried to run—” his mouth hardens “—it made me so angry I couldn't think straight.”
He leans in. He’s crowding my space like he did in the alley, like walls would be kinder. His other hand moves—roaming—like he’s cataloging me by touch, reminding his palms where I start and stop. He's touching my waist, my hips, my thigh. I freeze so hard I could shatter.
“And these past two months?” he says, a note of wonder twisting the words. “Gone? No calls? No posts? Those drove me mad.” He looks around us at the gray-on-gray horizon like he can show me his thesis. “It’s either you’re with me, or no one at all.”
A shiver crawls up my spine and sets up camp in my jaw. Tears spill without my permission. He wipes them with his thumb like he’s doing me a kindness. “Baby,” he says, coaxing, like we’re in a kitchen, like it’s Sunday and we’re arguing over coffee, “you can just pick me and it’ll be okay.”
He contradicts himself in loops—anger, devotion, threat, plea—like he’s rewriting the script mid-scene. Be with me, I'm angry with you, there's no going back, baby it's okay. There’s no logic in his eyes, just a fever. I look past him, over his shoulder, out the windshield: water and rain and the line where the world ends. No cliffs, no town, no safe geometry of a cove to aim at. If I break his line of sight for half a second… but half a second is a long time when someone can break you with their hands.
Okay. Think. The only power I have is the one he gives me when he believes his own fantasy. Make myself small. Pliable. Be whatever keeps me breathing long enough to find a seam. Talk if he wants talking. Nod if he wants nodding. Watch the water the way Reid taught me without teaching me—count the seconds between the hull slaps, feel the swell angle, notice when the bow swings wrong. Wait for him to make a mistake. He will. He always does.
He strokes my face like a prize he’s reclaiming. His thumb presses the bruise he made. His voice softens again, the way it did in kitchens and doorways and beds before I learned what it meant. “There you go,” he murmurs, like I’ve already agreed even though I didn't say anything. “There’s my good girl.”
Something in me wants to be sick. Something else wants to sink its teeth into the meat of his palm and not let go.
I have no idea what to do. But I have to do something.