Page 10 of The Vagabond

MAXINE - FOUR MONTHS AGO

T he chairs in the trauma circle creaked if you shifted too much. That was something I had learned over the last few months—be still. Don’t draw attention. Don’t let your discomfort become someone else’s trigger. We all had enough of our own.

Tayana’s voice drifted across the room, steady as always. She was the only person who could say you’re not broken and make it feel like maybe that was true. Like maybe survival hadn’t turned me into a shell in my own skin.

I stared at the floor as she spoke. The carpet was the color of dust. Worn flat.

Standard issue in institutions and halfway houses, meant to endure damage.

Nothing about the room felt like healing.

But then again, maybe healing didn’t give a shit about aesthetics. Maybe it just happened in the cracks.

It had been seven months since I got out.

Seven months of trying to remind myself I was safe.

That I didn’t have to count the seconds between footsteps or brace for hands that didn’t ask.

Seven months of trying to reclaim a body that still flinched when someone shut a door too hard.

Seven months of pretending I was home when I still felt like I belonged to someone else.

After group, Tayana met me by the vending machine. She handed me a bottle of water and that soft, steady smile of hers.

“You did good today,” she said, like it was that simple.

I nodded, even though my palms were sweating and my throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper. I wanted to believe her, but there was a static hum in my chest that said otherwise.

Like something was building. I chalked it up to nerves. Lingering dread. Trauma leftovers. I didn’t know yet that it was a warning.

Later that afternoon, Mia insisted I come with her to visit Uncle Mason.

He had been locked up—for what, I still didn’t fully understand.

A misdemeanor traffic offense? After decades of murder, bribery, and mafia empire-building?

It was laughable. Or it would have been if the idea of prison didn’t make my skin crawl.

Still, I went. Because being alone felt worse. Because Mia needed me, and I didn’t know how to say no to her when she said please with that quiet hope behind her eyes.

So we checked in. Passed security. Got the badges. Then we were led into the visitation room with its yellow-tinged lights and cracked vinyl chairs and that sound—that muffled, institutional silence I would never get used to.

I couldn’t sit still.

I perched on the edge of my chair. Then stood. Then paced. Sat again. My fingers drummed against my thighs, then twisted in my lap.

Mason’s eyes stayed locked on me, his brows pulled tight, a deep furrow carving between them.

He watched me like he was trying to read something beneath my skin, like every breath I took was a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.

His jaw worked, tense and silent, the kind of quiet that hummed with unsaid words.

His gaze didn’t waver, heavy and unflinching, as though by sheer will alone he could figure out what was unraveling inside me.

“You good, Max?” he asked quietly.

I nodded. A lie. The door swung open and I glanced up, expecting another guard. But it wasn’t. It was a man. A tall one, dressed in a fitted suit with not a single wrinkle in sight.

He walked like the room belonged to him—like he wasn’t there to visit, but to command.

His tie was perfectly knotted. His shoulders squared. His hair—dirty blonde and neatly parted—gave him the kind of all-American wholesomeness that was too polished to be real.

But then—then I saw his eyes. Green. Vibrant. Ruthless. Familiar. Too familiar.

The air punched from my lungs. What the actual fuck? I froze, halfway between breath and blackout. My arms fell slack at my sides.. My lips parted. I couldn’t speak.

He glanced up. And his eyes landed on me.

And just like that—just like that—the floor fell out from under me.

Devon. No. Not Devon.

Him.

The man who had held my life in his hands and whispered lies into my ear that had felt like truth. The man who had touched me with gentleness while the world tried to break me. The man who had vanished.

His eyes flickered. Just for a second. Then he looked at Mason like I wasn’t even there.

“Good to see you again, Ironside.”

That voice. That low, calm, perfectly measured voice. It sliced through my skull like a razor. I exhaled sharply. My back straightened like I had been shocked.

Mason didn’t miss it. He followed my gaze. Saw the man. His eyes narrowed. And then his face hardened like stone .

“Saxon fucking North,” he hissed under his breath.

Saxon. Saxon North.

His real name. The man who had played my savior and my captor all at once. The one who had left before I could figure out whether to hate him or worship the ground he walked on.

My legs moved before my mind caught up. I stumbled into the hallway, away from the glass and the guards and him. My breath came in short, sharp bursts. My vision tunneled. My knees hit the tile floor and I curled over them, arms tight around my ribs.

I didn’t cry. I just shook. Violent. Silent. Internal. Because even now—even after seven months of therapy and healing and pretending—I was still his. And even after all this time, the man still had the power to detonate something inside me.

I don’t remember the drive home. Nothing registers. Everything after him is just white noise.

Saxon North. Devon Walsh. Both names sit like broken glass in the back of my throat. I can’t swallow around them. I can’t spit them out.

He was there. Real. Not a hallucination.

Not a dream. Not some figment my trauma dragged out of the dark to punish me.

He stood in that room like the months between us never happened.

Like he didn’t disappear without a word.

Like he didn’t leave me with a thousand questions and a body I still don’t recognize when I look in the mirror.

I lay on the couch in Tayana’s office for hours. I didn’t move. I didn’t eat. I just... existed. Barely. It was dark when she finally came in, her soft footfalls echoing louder than they should have. She didn’t say anything at first. Just sat on the floor in front of me, cross-legged and waiting .

And then, gently, “You want to tell me what happened?”

My lips parted, but the words didn’t come. They were stuck. Somewhere deep. Somewhere sacred.

“I saw him,” I said finally, my voice barely above a whisper.

Her brow furrowed. “Who?”

I didn’t answer, and she didn’t push. I took a breath, but it was shaky. Shallow. Like everything inside me was resisting being spoken.

“He was at the prison,” I said. “Tall. Blonde. Green eyes. He called himself Devon when I was... there. But Mason called him Saxon. Saxon North.”

Tayana stilled. She knew the name. Of course she did. A side effect of her line of work.

“I thought I was prepared,” I whispered. “Thought I’d moved past it. Past him.”

Her voice was careful. “Did he hurt you, Maxine?”

I closed my eyes. And the answer was so complicated, it made me want to scream.

“No,” I said, and it was the truth. “Not in the way you think.”

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because he didn’t hurt me like the others did.

He whispered that he was FBI. That he was there to save me.

He touched me like I was something sacred, even while pretending to be one of them.

He made me feel like I mattered in a place designed to destroy me.

And then he vanished. Left me with nothing but memories I couldn’t shake and a name that never belonged to him in the first place.

Tayana waited without speaking. She knew the kind of silence that stemmed from trauma. The kind that teetered on the edge of a truth so ugly, you almost wanted to swallow it before it escaped.

“I let him touch me,” I said finally, and the shame curdled in my gut the second it was out.

“I wanted him to.” Tears welled in my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall.

“I knew it was a game. I knew we were being watched. But when he looked at me, I felt... human. For the first time in months. And I hated myself for it, Tayana. I hated myself because part of me didn’t want it to be pretend. ”

She just sat there, eyes soft, hands folded. Like she understood.

“I still think about him,” I said. “All the time. I hate that I do. I hate that after everything, after all the men who touched me without permission, he’s the one I remember most.”

Her voice was quiet when she spoke. “Because he made you feel like you had a choice.”

My breath caught. Yeah. That was it. Exactly that.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” I whispered.

“You don’t have to do anything with it,” she said. “You survived. That’s already more than anyone expected of you.”

I wiped at my face, hating how raw I felt.

“I thought I hated him,” I said. “But when I saw him today... it felt like the ground dropped out from under me.”

She nodded. Understanding. Patient.

My chin trembled.

“I don’t know how to let go of him.”

“Who says you have to?”

We sat in silence for a while. Not the heavy kind. Not the kind that presses on your ribs. The kind that lets you breathe again.

And when she took my hand, I finally let myself cry—not because I was broken.

But because maybe, just maybe, I was starting to heal.