Meet Me Halfway (Learning to Love Series)

Madison’s lush, pink lips wrapped around the neck of my bottle, and she threw her head back, letting the liquid pour down her throat like a fucking siren sent to lure me straight to hell.

I took in those lips, perfectly sealed around the bottle’s mouth, took in the way her fingers held the base in a firm grip, and shuddered. She’d look fucking glorious swallowing my cock.

Her legs hovered over me, an inch or less from touching mine. The urge to grip her thighs and slam her ass down on my lap so she could feel exactly what she was doing to me was too much for me to bear. I lifted my hands, more blood rushing south at the thought of—

Riiing. Riiing. Riiing.

I groaned, lifting my head off the pillow and squinting my eyes at the small device that dared to pull me from sleep. I glanced at the clock next to it and cursed, rolling over. Whoever was calling at this hour could fucking wait.

What—or more accurately who—was waiting for me just on the other side of my consciousness was far too tempting to risk waking up any further than I already had. When the incessant ringing ended, I readjusted myself and sighed only for it to immediately start back up.

I flopped onto my back, patting my hand across the side table for my phone. I yanked on it, letting the charging cable fall to the floor with a dull thunk. If this was a drunk dial from Sarah, I’d put a damn snake in her car.

Caller ID: Maddie

I launched into a sitting position, my pulse already picking up even before I hit the answer button. It wasn’t uncommon for Maddie to be up late studying, but she’d never called me before. That fact alone had me halfway to panicking by the time I raised the phone to my ear.

“Maddie?”

“Garrett!” The voice broke, hitting a higher pitch at the end of my name.

“Jamie? Is that you?”

“Garrett, he’s here! He’s here and he’s angry and I’m scared.”

I threw the comforter off my lap, twisting to lower my feet to the floor to stand. “Jamie, calm down. Who’s there? Where’s your mom?”

“He has her! Please, Garrett, he’ll hurt her, don’t let him hurt her. No, no, no, he’s yelling now. Please, Garrett!”

The world stopped. Every feeling, every sensation, every thought I’d ever had frozen in time as I moved. I didn’t feel my shoulder slam into the wall as I hurled myself out of my room. Didn’t feel the bite of the air against my naked skin when I leapt from the porch, nor the loose gravel digging into the pads of my feet as I ran.

Nothing mattered but her. Getting to her and making sure she was okay. I’d barely made it up her steps when something crashed, and my heart left my chest. It shot straight through my throat, splattering across the door between us like blood on a blank canvas.

My fist wrapped around the knob just as I slammed my foot into the wood and kicked it open with every bit of desperation coursing through my soul.

Movement to my right caught my attention, and my veins turned to ice when my eyes latched onto the scene before me. The red-haired, stick of a man I’d met once before stood in their home. The same man who’d gotten in my face and sneered as he told me Maddie was his wife. The same man who’d been the cause of every record of pain in her drawer.

Aaron motherfucking Walsh, and he currently had his hand around Maddie’s jaw.

My Maddie.

She was dressed in her pajamas, a sweater hanging loosely over her shoulders. Her thick curls were wild and untamed, framing her face and accentuating her wide brown eyes.

I was going to kill him.

The piece of shit went off, but I didn’t take in a word. All I saw, all I heard, was motherfucking red. Like a bull after a flag, I was on him. The feel of his nose crunching under my fist was one of the most satisfying moments of my life, a fucking high I wanted to keep chasing. I wanted to do to him every single thing I knew he’d done to her. I wanted to make him beg.

I snatched him up from the ground, smashing my fist into his face a second time, but a voice behind me speared through my narrow-eyed vision. A voice that would reach me from the bowels of hell itself. I whipped my head to look at her, spotting Jamie standing in the hall, and immediately dropped the unconscious man.

“You all right, J-man?”

He nodded but didn’t move.

“I’m proud of you.” And I was. It took a lot of guts for him to call me, and I knew how hard it had to have been for him to not be able to help his mom. The kid was going to be one hell of a man one day.

His face relaxed at my words, and it was all I needed. Curling my arms under the man’s shoulders, I dragged Aaron Walsh toward the door.

“What are you doing? Garrett!”

It took every ounce of determination in me, but I ignored her voice, continuing out and down her porch. I couldn’t see her right now, not with this fucker’s body between us.

She followed me, continuing to call out as I shoved his body in my backseat. I couldn’t take it, couldn’t take the goddamn despair in her voice. I knew, before she even uttered her next words, I knew she was about to apologize, and it tore me apart.

I leaned my head on my Nova, breathing in deeply. “Don’t stand there and fucking compare me to him, Maddie. I am not him.”

“What are you talking about, I’m not!”

The worst part was she truly didn’t see it. She couldn’t see the broken lens with which she viewed men. She was so used to the scratches and cracks; she couldn’t remember what it was like to have clear vision.

The thought only made me angrier, and I lashed out, spearing her with verbal arrows because I wanted to fix it. Not fix her but fix everything that had ever been done to her, and I couldn’t.

“This is a little more than fixing my dishwasher or cleaning my fence, Garrett. You have a body in the back of your car, and you’re obviously upset with me. You won’t even look at me.”

Jesus, I was going to throttle this woman. I shoved off my vehicle and moved to her, pressing my body firmly against hers. I tangled my fingers into her hair, forcing her head back and ignoring how the act called to my baser instincts. How it made me want to pummel the waste of a man in my car, and then take Maddie home and fuck her until she forgot he ever existed.

I ripped more of my heart out for her, telling her exactly where I stood and what would happen if I looked at her a moment longer. I nearly convulsed when she responded by placing her hands on my chest, but I didn’t give in.

“As long as that piece of shit is within arm’s reach of me, I can’t keep fucking looking at you, or tonight’s story is going to have a completely different fucking ending.”

I pulled away, swallowing a growl when her first words after that were to ask about her ex.

“He’s not your concern,” I snapped. And with that, I walked away, leaving her standing in the driveway. I knew exactly what I was going to do, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it naked.

It was almost pitch black out, the surplus of trees around the park keeping most of the natural moonlight from seeping through. I parked as close to my goal as possible, the dirt path illuminated by a single, dull light pole.

Grabbing a half-empty water bottle from my cup holder, I stepped out, tucking it into my back pocket and pushing my seat forward. I stared down at the prone form sprawled across my backseat, thankful he at least hadn’t vomited during the drive.

Just the sight of him had me raging again, and I wished I had a fucking cigarette. I’d quit smoking when I realized Jamie lived next door, and I didn’t regret the choice, but moments like this sure as hell made quitting harder.

I leaned down, digging through his pockets until I found his phone and pocketed that as well. Then I yanked him out, not at all gently.

He grunted when his body dropped to the asphalt but didn’t start to wake until I’d already hauled him several feet over onto the path.

“You know,” I said, speaking calmly as I stopped next to the structure and stripped him of his pants. “I didn’t get it. When Maddie told me about the shit you put her through. I didn’t understand how any man could enjoy humiliating and hurting someone.”

I gripped the hem of his shirt, ripping it up and over his head. His arms twisted violently, and one of his shoulders popped from the sudden movement. He cursed, his words slurred as he kicked out and nailed me in the shin, but I didn’t care.

I welcomed the pain, welcomed even the smallest bite of agony from this piece of shit because Maddie had taken worse. Survived worse. Grown from worse.

I clutched a fistful of his thick hair, yanking him up to my level and staring at him through empty eyes. “I didn’t understand it then, but I get it now,” I said before whacking the side of his head against the dirt-spattered blue wall next to us.

He cried out, dropping to the ground and vomiting liquid bile all over his naked legs and hands. I stepped away, flinging open the door and propping it with a stone. Then I snatched his ankles, avoiding the spots where puke-drenched leg hair stuck to his skin.

At this point, he was barely conscious again. I heaved and maneuvered his limp body inside the porta-john, smacking my elbows against the plastic walls and biting back my urge to gag when something squelched as I dropped the douchebag’s feet into the hole. I leaned the upper section of his body to the side, his head lolling against the back wall.

I removed the water bottle from my pocket, throwing the lid on his lap and pouring the frigid liquid on his face. He heaved in a breath, spurting, and whacking his cheek against the wall.

Letting the empty bottle fall, I removed both our phones from my other pocket. I swiped on the camera on each and started duplicate videos of his face as I leaned down. I waited to make sure he was at least halfway focused on me before I spoke.

“Aaron Walsh, this is your only warning. I have documentation, both written and photographed, of your physical and emotional abuse of your ex-wife, Madison. It is thorough and graphic.”

I ground my molars together, fighting the desire to punch him in the face again as those pages flipped through my memory on repeat. The bruises, the threats, the fear. Fuck, if it didn’t kill me every time I thought about it.

“If you so much as think of her again, tonight will seem like a frat-house prank compared to what I will do. If you return to her home, you will have thicker medical records than she does. And if you ever lay a finger on her again, you won’t even make it to the hospital.”

I clicked the videos off, tucking my phone back in my pocket and throwing his next to him, the echo of it against the plastic loud in the enclosed space. “Do you understand me?”

“I hear…I hear you, man.” His words mumbled out through his swollen lips, and part of me reveled in it. The part of me that had come alive the second I’d seen his motherfucking hand gripping Maddie’s face.

“That’s not what I asked,” I said, grabbing and twisting his arm. “I said, do you understand me?”

“Jesus fu—fuck! I understand.”

I released him, brushing the smear of blood across my knuckles on my jeans, ready to ditch this piece of shit. I wanted to go home and check on the little family that was intent on stealing my goddamn heart.

“Madison Hartland does not exist for you. She never has and never will. She was never fucking yours.”

And then my fist met his face again.