One session at a time, six total, then done.
Resolved to prove everyone wrong, Maddox climbed out of the vehicle and opened Zeus’s door. He jumped down onto the gravel and shook himself, water flying from his coat in all directions. She grabbed her go-bag from the back seat and headed for the front door with Zeus close at her side.
Inside, the house wrapped around her with its familiar quiet. She dropped her bag by the door, kicked off her wet boots, and Zeus headed for his water bowl in the kitchen. Maddox followed more slowly, her body starting to register the exhaustion she’d been pushing down all day.
She should eat something, change out of her damp uniform, and shower. All the normal things people did at the end of a 3890work shift. Instead, she stood in her kitchen and listened to Zeus lap water while the rain continued its torrential downpour outside and her mind kept circling back to the same thought on repeat: Tuesday, two o’clock, Jade Kessler’s steady gaze and voice trying to empathize with her.
Maddox closed her eyes and pulled in a deep breath that still didn’t quite fill her lungs as much as she needed it to. She was fine. Shehadto be fine. Because the alternative—acknowledging that maybe everyone else was seeing something she’d been working very hard not to look at—wasn’t something she could afford to consider.
Not tonight.
Maybe not ever.
Zeus padded back over to her and pressed against her leg, exactly where he always was when she needed him. Maddox rested her hand on his head and let herself stand there in the quiet for just a moment longer. Then she made herself move. One foot in front of the other, the same way she always did.
That’s what worked. That’s what had to keep working.
2
The apartment still didn’t feel like home.
Jade set down another box—books, this time—and surveyed the living room with the critical eye of someone who had moved too many times in too few years. Six weeks in Phoenix Ridge, and she was still living out of cardboard. The couch faced the wrong direction, the bookshelf stood half-empty, and three pothos plants clustered on the windowsill, their leaves reaching toward the gray afternoon light like they weren’t quite sure they belonged here either.
She could relate.
The kitchen counter held the remnants of dinner: takeout container, wooden chopsticks, and a mug of green tea long since gone cold. She’d meant to unpack tonight, really unpack, not just shift boxes from one corner to another. But the case files Chief Marten had given her sat on her coffee table, and Jade had made the mistake of opening one.
Now, it was past seven, the spring rain drumming against the windows, and she was three files deep into the Phoenix Ridge Department’s officer roster.
Jade carried her cold tea to the microwave, reheated it, then returned to the couch. The files were organized alphabetically, each one a neat summary of service records, incident reports, and psych eval notes. She’d read through Thorne, Riley, a solid officer, handling stress well, recently engaged to a firefighter. Then Kowalski, Brianna, a veteran of twelve years, steady as they came, no red flags.
And then Shaw, Maddox.
The file was easily twice as thick as the others.
Jade flipped it open, though she’d already skimmed it twice. Maddox had multiple commendations, excellent performance reviews stretching back five years, and specialized training certifications in K-9 handling, crisis negotiation, and active threat response. Every incident report was written with the same careful precision. Maddox was thorough and emotionally airtight.
No cracks visible in her armor.
But the underlying pattern was there, clear to anyone who knew how to look for the clues. The frequency of weapons-involved calls had increased over the past four months. There were three domestics with firearms in the last month alone, two barricade situations, and an active shooter response that had gone textbook-perfect but still must have cost her something.
Everything cost something.
Jade turned to Chief Marten’s handwritten note that was clipped to the inside cover of the folder.One of my best. Worried she’s burning out. She won’t admit it or ask for help but needs it anyway.
Yeah. Jade had met a hundred Maddox Shaws in her career. They all wore the same expression: controlled, competent, and generally fine. They handled their calls and filed the reports, and they showed up on time and did the work and never once admitted that the work was tearing them apart from the inside.
She’d been one of them, once.
Jade closed the file and reached for her tea, letting the warmth seep into her palms. Outside, the rain picked up, wind rattling the loose window frame she had kept meaning to ask to be fixed. The apartment felt too quiet, too empty. She should finish unpacking. She should call her mom, who’d been leaving concerned voicemails about whether Jade was settling in okay. She should do anything other than sit here thinking about a woman who clearly wanted nothing to do with therapy.
Instead, she thought about the meeting in Chief Marten’s office.
Maddox had walked in like she was bracing for ambush, her shoulder set and expression neutral. Military bearing, obvious even in the Phoenix Ridge PD uniform. She’d assessed the room in seconds, noting the exits, occupants, and threat level. Jade had clocked it immediately because she’d done the same thing for years after coming home.
Then Maddox had sat down, spine straight, hands resting on her thighs, and Jade had seen the control it took to stay that still, the effort behind the calm. She’d been beautiful, too, in that hard-edged way that made Jade’s stomach tighten. Dark hair cropped short, sharp jaw, eyes that tracked everything. Attractive in a way that Jade had learned not to notice in professional settings, except she’d noticed anyway.
And then Maddox had opened her mouth claiming she didn’t need debriefing and the call went fine, and Jade had recognized the script. The same lines she’d heard from a dozen other officers who thought needing help meant failing at the job.
