Caden's Vow

CHAPTER TWO

HE WAS LEAVING. Maddie stood, tucked half behind a flowering pear tree, looking at the buds amid the leaves, feeling her hopes fade even as the trees blossomed. New pears that she’d come to think would signal a new beginning for her. In a few months those small, nondescript bulges would be fruit. She’d planned on picking that fruit for Caden, but he was leaving. Leaving her. Leaving Hell’s Eight. Without even a goodbye. To her, at least.

Just like everybody else she’d ever cared about. The man she’d thought was her father. Her mother. Her friends. They’d all left. And she’d stayed, just as she was staying here because she always hoped things would get better. Ever since she’d made the decision to take Tracker up on his offer to come to Hell’s Eight, she’d been clinging to some sort of hope. Hope that life for her could be better. That she could be loved. That she’d have a husband. A home. Children.

And yet here she was, standing among strangers, treating them like friends, mooning over a man who couldn’t see her as woman or whore. Watching him say his goodbyes to others, bracing herself for his absence, for the awful not knowing if he was alive or dead for weeks on end. She shivered, the cold, sick feeling digging into her stomach. She loved Caden so. But beyond a smile whenever she came into his presence and an occasional offhand endearment that meant nothing, he didn’t know she was alive. But that didn’t change the fact he was her heart and he was leaving. Or that she hated it.

The protest started at the edges of her mind, subtle yet insistent, gathering strength like a storm chasing across the plains, gaining volume as it got closer. The howl dissolved to voices from her past, some kind, most of them cruel, telling her what to do, how to do it, as if her pain was nothing. As if she was nothing. The urge to slip away deeper into the foliage until she disappeared clawed at her nerves.

She dug her nails into her forearms, letting the pain drive back the cacophony. Caden was a strong man. He respected strong women. All the women of Hell’s Eight were strong. Sally Mae with her pacifist beliefs, healing ways and defiance of convention. Desi with her fiery spirit. Ari with her gentleness that belied an inner strength that didn’t ever let her quit. Bella who was just pure life. Fei with her purpose and drive. Those were the type of women that Caden admired. That was the kind of woman she needed to be.

She looked over to where Tia stood beside her Ed, the mantilla on her head fluttering in the breeze, catching the smile in her eyes. Tia, who’d lost her husband and her children, and yet had taken on eight young boys, wild boys, hate-filled boys, and turned them into men to be admired. Why hadn’t God sent her a Tia?

She licked her lips and looked to where Caden had disappeared. Maybe the good Lord hadn’t sent her a Tia when she was a child sobbing into her pillow at night, but He’d given her an escape. But now He was taking that away, and she couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t coincidence that as her escape into fantasy stopped being effective, her love for Caden grew. She was meant to come to Hell’s Eight. She truly believed that God sent her here. But she didn’t believe he sent her here to be alone. He sent her here for Caden. For though he was restless and distant, part of the whole yet somehow apart from it, he was a man who needed love, who needed gentleness, and she’d waited her whole life to give her love to someone. It didn’t matter if he recognized it or gave it back. She’d waited her whole life for someone to love. And now he was leaving.

She shook her head. She couldn’t let it just happen. She heard a noise beside her. She looked up. Bella stood there, for once without her handsome blond, blue-eyed Sam, her belly rounded with child, her smile full of that life that gave Sam purpose. Maddie had spent a lot of time studying what attracted these men to these women and what kept them moving. And for Sam it was Bella’s spirit that he cherished.

“You hide again, Maddie.” It was both an accusation and a question, spoken in Bella’s melodic accent that made music of her words. Even the exasperated ones.

Maddie shrugged. “I’m watching to see what needs to be done.”

Bella shook her head. “There is only one thing you watch, my friend.”

As always, Bella’s use of the term “friend” made her jump inside. Maddie had never had a real friend. She’d been kept alive after her birth for a purpose. For a long time she’d dreamed it had been to be loved, but as the years passed, the truth had become clear, and she’d learned to stop smiling at others and to stop believing. Though the women of Hell’s Eight were kind to her, she never felt comfortable with their caring. She was a whore. She might have run from her life, but all the offers of friendship in the world couldn’t remove the stain. It was easy to pretend that wasn’t true, protected here at Hell’s Eight. Here the world couldn’t touch her, but someday she’d have to leave. And when she did she wanted to be just like Bella. Confident. Sassy. Always ready with a quick response. Never hiding.

But she wasn’t like Bella. Not yet. She didn’t have fire. She didn’t have family. She didn’t have beliefs. She’d been a child lost and now she was a woman lost, but she was going to find her way. The padre said God didn’t put people on this earth with no purpose, which meant she had a purpose, too. When he’d first said it, it’d been a unique idea she couldn’t understand. But over time she couldn’t forget it, and slowly it had grown on her and taken root. Until now, finding a purpose was her purpose.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bella smiled and glanced over to the gate Caden had just passed through. “It is easy to see where your heart lies.”

Maddie licked her lip, feeling that stab of fear deep inside. To love something was to lose it, to cause its death. Instinct had her reaching for make-believe, but she couldn’t find that hazy place where real and imagination blended as easily as they used to. Ari said it was a good thing. Maddie wasn’t sure.

“Hearts and flowers are so pretty at weddings.” The slip into nonsense was only half-faked. It was always so much easier to act as nothing when you felt like nothing.

Bella sighed and folded her arms under her ample chest, resting them on her belly. “You will try this nonsense with others. I know you are not loca.”

Maddie wished she knew that. “Are you so sure?”

Bella shook her head. “There is more to you than nonsense, Maddie.”

Maddie blinked. No one had ever said that to her before.

“I am sweet thighs and soft breasts and pleasure for a man.” She’d heard that so much it was rote.

Bella snorted. “You’re passion and temper, and when you find your feet, the only man that will find pleasure with you is the one that you choose.”

“You think I’ll get to choose?”

Bella, always so insightful, always so blunt, touched her hand, causing Maddie to jump again because no one ever touched her. Touching was bad, painful, death. “Sí.”

She pulled her hand away, immediately feeling bad. She liked Bella. Bella just smiled.

“You are Hell’s Eight now, Maddie. You are not nothing.”

“Tracker just brought me here.”

Bella smiled and looked at the big man talking to Ed. The wind caught his hair, exposing the deep scar on his cheek. “Something brought us all here.”

To Maddie, Tracker was a scary man with that scar down his face and those big muscles and that dark skin, but to Ari he was her sun and moon, which just proved gentleness lived everywhere. Maddie clung to that. Caden wasn’t as big as Tracker, but his hands were strong enough to bruise, break bones.

Bella grunted and put her hand to her stomach. “I swear if this child doesn’t stop kicking me I’m going to let his daddy raise him.”

Maddie looked at Bella. “You carry a girl.”

“How do you know?” It was uniquely Bella that she didn’t dismiss the thought, just asked if Maddie was sure.

It would be tactless to say she’d seen so many pregnant women over the course of her eighteen years in a whorehouse that she knew how a woman carried. So Maddie just shrugged instead and said, “Some things a woman just knows.”

Bella’s brows lifted, and she made an eloquent motion of her hands. “See? Ya está. When you don’t stop to think about how you are going to be received, you say what is on your mind.”

“A woman should be seen and not heard.”

Bella snorted. “Idiots should be seen and not heard.”

Maddie couldn’t help but flinch any more than Bella could help her immediate apologetic touch on her hand. Bella was always touching. It didn’t bother Maddie so much anymore.

“I am sorry, Maddie. You know I do not think you are an idiot.”

So many did, though. Her glance cut to the path Caden had taken. Bella’s gaze followed hers but she didn’t let go of her hand this time, just gripped it tighter when Maddie tugged.

“Maddie?”

“Yes?”

“Do you believe the truth I always tell?”

Maddie nodded, used to Bella’s grammar. It was actually pretty the way she spoke, clear yet a little off-kilter, like a unique music played beneath the words.

“I believe you.” She tugged at her hand again. Bella gripped tighter.

“Do you believe that I would never do anything to hurt you?”

She nodded again.

“Do you believe I am not conventional?”

Maddie nodded. “I believe all that you tell me. You are a good person. You would never lie.”

Bella snorted. “Good people lie all the time. So do I. I would to save someone I love, but I would not lie to someone I love for no reason.”

Maddie understood that. “Yes.”

Bella shook her head. “I will speak plainly now, in words I want you to hear.”

Maddie grabbed a branch of the tree and braced herself. Only bad things started that way.

Bella took a step around until she faced her, her stomach touching the folds of Maddie’s skirt. Maddie wanted to run and hide, but it didn’t really matter what she wanted. Bella was determined to have her say, and she could see Sam searching for his wife. Soon he would be here. Maddie preferred not to deal too closely with the men of Hell’s Eight. It wasn’t that they were bad men; they were just men, and men made her uncomfortable.

“I’m listening.”

“Forgive me my plain speaking, but you are in love with Caden.”

Maddie flinched, clenching the branch in her hand, the leaves tearing and sending a slightly fruity scent into the air. “A man like that isn’t for me.”

Bella snorted. “He’s a man like any other who needs a woman to love him.”

“He has his pick of women.”

“And you could have your pick of men.”

Maddie shook her head. Only the naive believed that. “I am used goods, fit for the bed and nothing else. No man would want me.”

Bella’s nails dug into her wrist. “You will not speak such words again to me. You are my friend. You were there for that time Sam went away and my dreams were bad. You sat with me and made me tea. You run around this place like you are nothing, doing everything, supporting everyone, making sure that Sally Mae had what she needed for the wedding, organizing, finagling—”

“I am good at trading,” Maddie interrupted.

“Trading, then. But everything you do supports those that you love. You are a strong force in the background making everything possible. You have changed so much here at Hell’s Eight since you have come and yet you see none of this. You see yourself as nothing, as bed sport only.”

Maddie looked away. Bella’s finger under her chin yanked her face back.

“If you want Caden, this thinking needs to stop. You need to believe in who you are. You need to believe in the strength that kept you alive all these years. You need to believe in that part of you that makes you the one woman he smiles at whenever you are near.”

Maddie hated the hope that sprang to life in her chest, hated it yet clung to it.

“You don’t know—”

Bella shook her head. “No. I do not know anything for sure, but I know when you are around Caden you smile, and I know when Caden is around you he smiles. This does not determine the end, but to me it seems a good beginning.”

She could see Caine and Ace arguing, she assumed about Caden. No doubt Caine didn’t want him to leave. Caine thought he had a lot of power over the men, but her Caden was a stubborn man, and she understood more than Caine that Caden was also a man who needed to make his own way.

“What would you have me do? A knight doesn’t look for a princess among the garbage.”

“My Sam had no use for me when he first met me.”

That Maddie couldn’t believe. “You are Sam’s princess in the tower.”

“I was Sam’s pain in the—” Bella smiled and tapped her behind, leaving the word unsaid. “He thought I was too good for him, that he would only bring me trauma in my life. He denied our love, our attraction and our potential for joy.”

“But you’re together.”

“Yes. We are. But I had to chase that man across half the state and I had to fight for him.”

“You can’t make someone love you. Sally Mae told me this.”

“And Sally Mae is right. But you can stop someone from running away from the way they feel long enough for the truth of their feelings to catch up to them.”

Who did Bella think she was, preaching such hope to the hopeless? She had no right. “Maybe I’m just too stupid to understand such a thing.”

Bella let go of her hand and took a step back. “Maybe you are too stupid to be with a man like Caden, who has everything except the softness he needs. And maybe you are too stupid to know what is right and wrong and how it should be between a man and a woman. And maybe you are just too stupid for a lot of things because you foolishly believe all the wrong people told you.” Bella made a slashing motion with her hand. “But I do not think so. I have seen how you have changed. How you have grown, so when I tell you this, know that I am speaking to Maddie the woman who has become part of Hell’s Eight, not Maddie who sees herself of no value. It is time for you to leave here.” She motioned toward the gate. “Time for you to follow your heart.”

“Why?”

Bella’s expression softened. “Because if you want Caden, Maddie, then you need to do whatever it takes to make him see you and what could be. Something big. And no one can do it for you.”

She turned on her heel.

Maddie stood where she was anchored by her grip on the tree and the weight of the preposterous idea Bella had put forth. “Wait.”

Bella shook her head and raised her hand. “No. It is time for you to make up your mind who you will be.”

Maddie had the insane urge to chase after Bella, to have her tell her what to do, but what was the point? Bella was right. She had decided herself it was time she stopped being a child.

Caden was leaving as if it was nothing to anyone. The man never understood he was missed when he left. Or maybe he didn’t care. Sometimes it was hard to know. Follow her heart, Bella had advised. Did she have the courage to do something that big?

Caden had told her that he wouldn’t leave without seeing her. The anger that hit her was strong. The determination just as strong. She was done being left behind. Every day when she got up, life happened to her. Tomorrow, she was going to happen to her life.

* * *

MADDIE’S TREASURES WERE packed into a saddlebag along with two changes of clothes before dawn even touched the sky. Caden had left an hour earlier. She’d heard the back-porch step creak as he’d slipped out. Saw the light in the barn. It was time for her to go now, too. Sneaking down the back stairs, she ducked out the same door as Caden, but she avoided the third board on the steps. While no one would protest Caden’s departure, hers would be sure to cause a fuss. Her redbone hound whined and lifted his head. She smiled and made a motion of her hand. He came over immediately. She fed him a piece of meat left over from supper. He wolfed it down and, when another wasn’t forthcoming, drooped his head until the loose folds all but obscured his eyes. He had the look of his father, Boone, but was the despair of Tucker’s pack. Worthless, he’d been named, because while he could track like his father, he wouldn’t bay.

The day Tucker had cut him from the litter, she’d cried for him. When she’d heard his name, that had been the final straw. She’d taken the dog as hers, expecting a protest. No one had said a word. He’d become her “porch hound,” as Tucker called him. She’d tried to change the dog’s name, but he refused to respond to anything else, which just went to prove everything had a meaning to someone, and she had to respect his preference.

It still made her nervous having a friend, even if it was a dog, but there was no going back. Worthless had claimed her as much as she’d claimed him. So far they’d been friends. Tonight, he was going to become her partner. She hoped. Tapping her hip, she beckoned Worthless to her side.

The note and IOU she’d written crinkled in her pocket. Flower was a sweet little mare that Tucker had trained for her. She had a gentle way about her and not a mean bone in her body. Maddie trusted her as she trusted no human. No matter how valuable the horse was, Maddie couldn’t choose another. And not only because her riding skills weren’t that good. She needed things around her right now in which she had faith. She might have decided to happen to her life, but that didn’t mean she had any confidence she could pull it off.

Flower nickered as Maddie approached her stall. She opened the door, her hands shaking. She patted the mare’s neck and took a breath. The only other time she’d taken her destiny into her own hands was when she’d bolted after Tracker out the door of that whorehouse. She still didn’t know what had made her do it, but once done, there’d been no going back. She’d been prepared to beg the big man, but he’d turned and looked at her, appearing so dark and alien she’d almost reconsidered, then with a nod he’d held out his hand. She’d taken it full of fear, only to find beneath that harsh exterior was a good man.

He’d been looking for his Ari then, sympathy for her plight no doubt driving him to collect discarded women along the way. Tracker had brought her home to Hell’s Eight the way he brought many others. Giving them a place to heal. Most had left after a month or two. Moving on. She’d stayed. She hadn’t had any other place to go and she’d been afraid to start over. Or so she’d thought. Truth was, she’d just been slow to be ready.

She looked beyond the open stable door to the fading night beyond. But that was all changing. “We’re going adventuring, Flower.”

She snubbed the little horse to the hitching post and fetched her tack. Worthless flopped by the post. “Caden thinks he can just break a promise to me, but he can’t,” she told the hound. He rolled his big brown eyes at her.

Thanks to Caden’s relentless instruction, she made short work of saddling and bridling the little mare. At the time she’d wanted to curse him, but now, when time was critical, she appreciated every tedious lesson. She couldn’t afford to let Caden get too far ahead of her. She took the IOU out of her pocket and stuck it on a nail jutting out of the post. Stealing a horse was a hanging offense. She wanted to be sure the Hell’s Eight knew she was only borrowing Flower. Over the IOU she put the note she’d written to Tia and Bella. It was short and to the point. A thank-you and a simple I’ve decided to live my life. As an afterthought she’d added, Please, don’t worry. She hoped she’d spelled everything right.