Page 58 of The Vagabond

MAXINE

I step out of the car on unsteady legs. I walk. The long stone path to Brando and Mia’s house stretches before me, neat and familiar and surreal as hell. The sun is warm on my shoulders, but it doesn’t touch the ice curling in my gut.

And then I see my sister. She’s already at the top of the stairs, one hand braced against the railing, her other cradling the swell of her stomach. Her eyes lock onto mine—wide, wet, disbelieving—and then she’s moving.

Waddling, rushing, weeping.

“Maxine!” she cries, voice cracking on my name. “Maxine!”

She half-stumbles down the steps, and before I can brace for it, she flings herself into my arms. I catch her. Her arms wrap around my neck like a lifeline, and she sobs into my shoulder—big, shaking, grateful tears that soak through my shirt like they’re trying to carve their way into me.

“I thought you were—” Her voice chokes. “I thought I’d lost you again.”

I hold her tight, swallowing the lump in my throat, trying to keep the tears at bay. But my stomach turns over, threatening to twist itself inside out. I press my face into her shoulder, fingers clutching the fabric of her dress like it’s the only thing keeping me from hitting the floor.

“I’m here,” I breathe. “I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

The Gatti compound hasn’t changed. Still guarded like a fortress. Still humming with quiet violence beneath polished marble and velvet drapes. The walls breathe power. The air tastes like money and blood. But when I step through the doors this time, I feel it.

A shift. The place hasn’t changed—but I have.

I walk like someone who knows she can survive anything. But inside? I’m a bruised thing, held together by spite and hope and the memory of a man who razed heaven for me.

Mia stays close. She doesn’t pepper me with questions. She doesn’t cry. She just watches me out of the corner of her eye like I’m a ticking bomb and she’s waiting for the moment I detonate.

That moment comes when we reach my old room. She closes the door behind us, slow and deliberate. The latch clicks like the cock of a gun. Every noise now sounds like violence and death to my ears.

“You love him,” she says.

She flings the truth at me like a blade to the chest—sharp, fast, and impossible to dodge. And that’s what guts me the most. Not the words themselves, but the fact that she had to hear them from someone else. That she pieced it together through someone else instead of me. Her own sister.

I should’ve told her. I should’ve owned it. Handed it to her in that way that sisters share secrets. Let her hold the truth instead of forcing her to dig through the wreckage for it. But I didn’t. And now here we are.

I stand there, frozen, breath catching hard in my throat. The guilt chokes me. It coils like barbed wire around my ribs, and I don’t even try to stop it. Because she deserved better than secondhand truth. She deserved me. And once again, I failed her.

She doesn’t blink. “Say it.”

I look away. Because if I say it out loud, it becomes real. Irrevocable. A vow I can’t take back.

“Mia…” My voice cracks.

“You do. Max, you love him. I know it. There’s no way you would’ve left with him otherwise. I see it in the pain in your face.”

I drop to the bed, the mattress dipping under me like it’s swallowing me whole.

I can’t look at her.

I turn toward the window, let my eyes blur as I trace the horizon beyond the estate — the stone walls, the iron gates, the hard line of the trees.

Like maybe, if I stare long enough, I’ll find another life out there.

A life where I don’t have to crawl my way back from the ruins.

A life where I get to keep Saxon. But that’s not this life.

Mia crosses the room, her steps careful, measured, like she’s approaching something wounded and wild.

She sits beside me, the bed shifting with her weight. Neither of us speaks. The silence stretches long and tight between us, a wire strung between ribs.

Finally, she whispers, “Why did he bring you back, Max?”

I close my eyes, a shaky breath shuddering out of me.

“Because he’s trying to save me,” I whisper. “Because he thinks he can’t fix himself if I’m still holding on.”

Mia’s quiet for a moment. And then — softly, gently, like she’s peeling back my skin to get to the heart of me…

“Did you ask him to?”

The breath catches hard in my throat.

“No,” I choke. “I didn’t want to come back. I didn’t want to leave him. ”

My shoulders curl in, my hands balling into fists on my knees. The words spill out, raw and trembling, slicing me open.

“I only ever wanted him .”

Mia slips her arm around me, pulling me in, her forehead resting against the side of my head.

We sit like that, the two of us wrapped in silence, tears sliding hot down my face, carving their own painful path. I’m tired. I’m bones and bruises and this heart that keeps choosing a man who keeps trying to save me.

“I don’t know how to be here without him,” I whisper, the words slipping out like a confession.

Mia nods like she’s been there, like she understands exactly what I’m going to say even before I open my mouth to speak.

“I love him,” I whisper. “I love him. And it’s killing me.”

The tears come then. Quiet. Shaking. Stealing my breath.

She doesn’t interrupt. She just lets me fall apart in the safety of the space between us.

“I didn’t want to leave him,” I say. “But he made me.”

Mia’s voice is gentle. “And you didn’t fight him?”

“No,” I whisper. “That’s the worst part. I made it too easy for him to let me go. Because I understood that it wasn’t about him walking away from me. It was about me walking back to myself.”

I stare out the window like it holds the answers I can’t seem to find in my chest.

“When he found me in Kadri’s palace, I was already in a place where I didn’t care whether or not I woke up the next day,” I say. “I didn’t care if the world burned. I was already dead inside. Just… a vessel. A shadow waiting to disappear.”

Mia’s eyes shine with unshed tears, but she doesn’t interrupt.

“But then he came,” I continue, voice cracking. “Saxon came out of the dark and saw me. Not the body they passed around. Not the name on the ledger. Me. He said my name like it meant something. Like I meant something. ”

The words pour out of me now, sharp, soaked in tears.

“He was the reason I started to fight again. The reason I ate. The reason I tried. The reason I stopped hoping I’d die in my sleep.”

My hands tremble in my lap, and Mia reaches out, steadying them with her own.

“You know,” she says softly, “there was a time I thought I was doing the right thing by staying away from Brando.”

That surprises me. I blink at her through the blur of tears.

“I thought I was protecting him. That he deserved someone better. Someone who didn’t carry the weight I did. I thought I was giving him freedom.” She lets out a small, rueful laugh. “Turns out, all I was doing was torturing both of us.”

“What happened?” I ask, hoarse.

“I realized,” she says, eyes fixed on mine, “that it didn’t matter how broken I was. He didn’t want perfect. He just wanted me. And when you find a love like that—a love that survives the dark, that digs you out of your own grave—you don’t walk away from it.”

I swallow hard, trying to hold it together.

“You think that’s what Saxon feels?”

Mia doesn’t hesitate. “I know it is. I see it in the way he looked at you. Like you’re gravity. Like he’s only breathing because you exist.”

I close my eyes. The weight of her words crushes me in the best way.

“I’m scared,” I admit. “He’s sacrificed so much to protect me. I’m scared I’ll ruin him. That I’ll drag him down with me.”

“You won’t,” she says firmly. “Because Saxon North is already halfway in the dark. The difference is—you are his light. You’re not dragging him down, Maxine. You’re the reason he keeps climbing back out of that darkness.”

I want to believe her. God, I want to believe her .

Mia squeezes my hand and offers me a reassuring smile.“Don’t spend that time trying to convince yourself he’s better off without you. Because he’s not. And you’re not better off without him, either.”

And in the back of my mind, I feel it. The hollow space where Saxon should be. The ache of it. The tearing, unfinished thing between us.

I don’t know how long it will take him. I don’t know what price he’ll pay to come back to me. I only know that I’ll be waiting. No matter how long it takes. No matter how much it hurts. Because I’m his. And he’s mine. Even if the world wants to rip us apart.