Page 4 of Cry Madness
“Always.”
“Good girl,” he praises. “I’m going to light you up.”
Then he’s thrusting forward, inching his way inside and stretching me and filling me. It hurts, and I grip his shoulders against the pain, but my eyes stay open. I keep my eyes wide open, watching Maddox’s exquisitely chiseled face as he relentlessly and gently presses himself deeper. The drag of his barbell doesn’t hurt; in fact, it tickles, which is…strange. The sensation of it gliding against my inner walls is strange and wonderful. When I cry out, he kisses me, swallowing my whimper. He answers with a growl, setting himself fully inside me.
The stretch burns, but not nearly as much as I anticipated.
Nothing that would make me ask him to stop.
“You’re mine, Alice. You always were,” he rasps against my mouth. “And you always will be.”
He pulls his hips back until the tip of him remains inside. I stiffen, expecting a surge of pain, and there is, but underneath it… Underneath the sting is a delicious build edged with pleasure. Squeezing my legs tighter around his waist, I lift my hips to meet every ruthless snap of his pelvis.
“More,” I beg him. “I need…more.”
More of him, deeper and harder.
“That’s my girl.” He rocks his hips, withdrawing, then slamming back inside me. Filling me—again and again and again…
…until all the pain melts away.
Excitement surges through me, encircling every nerve and tightening every muscle. It drives me right to the edge of anabyss, and when I leap, I fall with Maddox, tumbling with him down into the sweet darkness.
“Breathe…” he tells me, his voice gently coaxing me to pull air into my lungs.
Only after Maddox and I claw our way back to reality do I see them—the zillion missed calls and texts from my mother. Dread is a bucket of ice water poured over me as I grab my cell. Each word works to break the hazy spell Maddox had cast over me. I try to deny the truth because,oh, God, I’m not ready.
I’m not ready to live in a world where my father is dead.
TWO
“Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.”
—Alice,Alice in Wonderland
Wonderland
Two Months Later
Every living creature must die.
I understand that’s the natural order of life. After all, no one gets out of this life alive. But my heart and mind aren’t in sync at the moment. The frantically beating organ inside my chest is struggling to keep up with my brain. If I were more in tune with my poetic side, I might even feel that this rain, a rare blessing in Wonderland, is the universe’s way of weeping for what it nearly lost.
What is almost lost.
But I’ve always been awful at articulating emotion. I suppose that’s why I rely on music to do it for me, texting Alice playlistafter playlist of songs packed with the words I don’t know how to say—like now, sitting here listening to “Paint It, Black” by The Rolling Stones. The rhythm beats in time with the rain pounding the roof of my car. When Jagger sings, “I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes,” I comprehend his meaning, as the sight of a group of laughing ladies crossing the parking lot towards the hospital entrance compels me to turn my head away from them.
How can they be happy? Don’t they know my world has crumbled into a well of darkness?
“Malice, what did you do?”
The question quietly tugs at my heart, and as I take in a shaky breath, I can sense Alice’s presence all around me. I can still hear her asking me a million questions as I restored this Charger from a heap of rust to an infamous, Plum Crazy–colored muscle car. Took me nearly five years to bring it back to life, and all the while, Alice was by my side, asking a million questions. Why this and why that? This car is the one thing in this world that feels wholly mine—but for a moment there, I thought Alice was, too.
Wrong.
I confessed my love…
…and then watched helplessly as she slipped away.