Page 27 of The Vagabond

MAXINE

I t’s nearly midnight, and I have no business being out here.

The streets are empty, the air’s too cold, and I’m walking in the dark like it’s routine.

My hoodie is up and my keys are jammed between my fingers like brass knuckles in my pockets.

A shudder skids up my spine as I start to second guess my choices.

Self-preservation? It left me days ago—packed up and vanished right around the time I started waking up screaming with Saxon’s scent still in my lungs.

I tell myself I’m going to the gym to burn off the restlessness. But that’s a lie.

I’m walking because the apartment feels too tight. Because I can’t sit still without feeling like I’m going to crawl out of my own skin. Because when the silence hits, it hits hard , and it sounds like his voice in my head, over and over:

“I was trying to protect you.”

Well, he failed. And so did I.

So now, I walk. At midnight. In the dark. Because part of me wants to feel something .

Anything. Even fear, danger; that adrenaline spike that comes with not knowing what’s around the corner.

My shoes echo off the pavement, each step louder than it should be. My heart’s racing, but it’s not anxiety—it’s defiance. Or maybe it’s desperation, when I just want to stop feeling so much.

The gym’s six blocks away. I tell myself that’s reasonable. That I’ve walked this way before and nothing happened. That I’m fine.

But the shadows stretch longer tonight. The streetlights flicker like they know something I don’t.

I round the corner into the alley—a shortcut I’ve taken a dozen times before.

And that’s when I hear them. Footsteps. Fast. Heavy. Purposeful. I freeze. Then start to spin. And someone slams into me from behind.

I go down hard. Knees to the pavement. Keys skittering across the sidewalk. My palms scrape raw as concrete rips into my skin.

Then—there’s pain. Sharp and sudden.

There are fingers in my hair, yanking me back. My breath snags as I arch involuntarily. My vision tilts, nausea hitting me like a sucker punch.

I twist and catch a glimpse of him. Black mask. No logos. No eyes. Just emptiness.

“Stay down,” he growls, breath thick with alcohol. “You’re prettier when you don’t fight.”

Fuck that. I kick. Hard. Trainers to thigh. He stumbles. I scramble to my feet, lungs burning, blood racing.

“You picked the wrong girl,” I snap.

But my voice is trembling, and I know he hears the shake, because he laughs, low and ugly.

“Nah. I picked just right. ”

He lunges at me again. I duck. My fist connects with something soft. He grunts but grabs the back of my hoodie and throws me into the wall.

Pain ricochets through my shoulder. My vision goes white around the edges. My elbow scrapes brick, blood soaking the sleeve.

Still—I fight. Because I’m not just scared. I’m furious. Furious at him. At myself for being the kind of girl who can’t stop walking into fire just to feel the burn.

The man slams me back a second time, forearm across my throat. And I lose it. I’m full of havoc as I claw at his mask. I drive my thumb into his eye.

“You don’t get to touch me!” I scream.

He reels back with a snarl. And then there’s a gunshot. It’s close, echoing like thunder between the buildings. My heart stops. He freezes.

“Step the fuck away from her.”

That voice.

That fucking voice.

Saxon.

He steps out of the dark like a ripple, and the man stumbles back.

Then Saxon’s on him like a warrior descending from the shadows—fast, brutal, unrelenting.

Fists flying. Blood spraying. A blur of violence and vengeance.

And when it’s over, the man doesn’t get up.

He’s not breathing. His face is a ruin. His limbs a tangle.

He looks less like a man and more like an avenging angel.

He stands over him, chest rising like he’s still trying to shake the wrath out of his lungs.

His knuckles are slick with blood, his jacket soaked through at the collar.

There’s a slash across his jaw—shallow, but still bleeding.

But he doesn’t wipe it away. He just turns to me.

And the second his eyes find mine—those storm-tossed green eyes that always see too much— something in him shifts.

Like the fight drains out of him all at once.

“Max…”

It’s barely a whisper. A breath. A prayer.

And I break. My knees buckle beneath me, the shock finally catching up.

I hit the ground in a graceless collapse—sobbing, shaking, folding in on myself like a body in mourning.

Because I am. Mourning what almost happened.

Mourning what keeps happening. Mourning the fact that I can’t outrun the damage in me.

Saxon drops down beside me without hesitation, his arms catching me before I completely fall apart.

He pulls me in, cradling me like I’m made of glass.

He makes me feel like I’m still something worth saving.

And maybe I am. Maybe that’s why I keep walking into the dark.

Not because I want to be saved— But because I want him to be the one to find me.

Even when I don’t call. Especially when I don’t.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper against the blood-stiff fabric of his shirt, my words nearly lost in the sound of my own wreckage.

His hand finds the back of my head, gentle as it skims over my hair. “My beautiful, reckless Maxine.”

“I don’t want to need you.” My words come out strangled. Half a cry, half a confession.

“I know,” he says, voice hoarse. Wrecked in a different way.

“I hate that I do.”

“I know,” he repeats, softer this time, like it hurts him to agree.

And then he does the one thing I wasn’t ready for.

He holds me. Not like a possession, not like something he earned or took or owns—but like I’m a secret he’s been keeping.

A wound he refuses to let close. His arms are steel and safety.

His hand moves slowly, rhythmically, down the length of my hair.

As if he’s trying to calm the storm with nothing but touch.

And I don’t let go. I can’t let go. Because I’m tired. Of pretending. Of running. Of acting like I don’t crave the one man who keeps showing up—in alleys, in nightmares, in the bleeding cracks of my soul.

Saxon North finds me in the dark. Every damn time. Even when I’m too broken to ask for help. Especially then.

Saxon saved me tonight.

Just like that—he stepped out of the dark like a knife from its sheath, sharp and sure, violence in his fists and devotion in his eyes.

He didn’t hesitate. He moved through the chaos like it was built for him, like he was born to meet monsters in the alley and bury them for having the nerve to look my way.

And for one fleeting moment, I let myself feel it.

The warmth of his arms wrapping around me like armor. The weight of his hand cradling the back of my skull like I was made of porcelain. The steady thrum of his heartbeat, fierce and real beneath my cheek, like proof that I was still alive. Still breathing. Still his.

But it doesn’t erase what he did. What he didn’t do. He left me. Not metaphorically. Not in that dramatic, emotional distance kind of way that poets write about and girls survive. He literally left me.

And now he’s back. With blood on his hands.

Fury in his eyes. Love burning in his bones like it excuses everything.

But there are some absences you don’t come back from.

Some silences so loud, they fill every room you’ll ever enter again.

And no matter how many times he shows up now—haunted, breathless, ready —he can’t undo the damage of vanishing when I needed him the most.

He abandoned me when I was at my lowest. And even if he hadn’t…

even if I was weak enough to want him anyway— to let him stay —the rest of my world would never allow it.

Lucky Gatti made sure I knew that. The warning was in his stillness, in the weight of his stare.

Cold and final. The kind of threat you don’t come back from if you’re dumb enough to test it.

Saxon doesn’t belong. In my life. In my future.

He doesn’t belong anywhere near me. And Lucky knows him better than anyone.

Their history is long—schoolyard secrets, a trust forged from blood, and a thousand shared silences that should mean something, but doesn’t.

Because there’s one man who’d kill Saxon without a second thought.

Brando Gatti. My brother-in-law. My family.

My own walking threat assessment with a trigger finger and no tolerance for threats to what’s his.

And if he found out Saxon touched me—held me—shielded me with his body like he had any right?

Brando wouldn’t just warn him. He’d snap his neck.

Clean. Brutal. Quiet. No jury. No chance to explain. Just a shallow grave and a memory.

That’s the reality I live in—the jagged, blood-stained truth. A chasm carved between Saxon and me, too wide to leap, too deep to climb. He can’t fill that space. Nor can he win this war. He can never have me.

So yeah, I felt safe tonight. Safer than I’ve felt in years. But safety is a luxury I can’t afford. Not with him. Because no matter how strong his arms are… No matter how soft his voice gets when he says my name like a prayer he forgot how to stop repeating...

This? This can never happen. Not in this lifetime.