When they love each other. Jade knew that’s what she’d been about to say, but didn’t. Maddox closed her eyes.
“I can’t do this right now,” she said. “I can’t have this conversation while I’m… I just can’t.”
“Then when?” Jade’s voice broke. “When can we talk about this? Because you’re scaring me, Maddox. You sound like you’re already gone.”
Maddox swallowed the lump in her throat. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t make promises she wouldn’t keep, but she couldn’t say that aloud either.
“I need to go,” she said instead. “Shift’s over, and I still need to clock out.”
“Maddox, wait?—"
“I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Please.” Jade’s voice cracked completely. “Please don’t shut me out. Whatever you’re thinking, please just…talk to me first. Let me in.”
It was the same thing Leah had begged for, the same plea Maddox had ignored until Leah had stopped asking and just left.
Her throat constricted. She couldn't speak, couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything but sit there with the phone pressed to her ear and Jade's broken "please" echoing in her head.
"I have to go," she whispered.
She ended the call before Jade could respond, but the phone immediately started ringing again, Jade’s name and photo flashing. Maddox turned the phone off.
The sudden silence in the locker room was deafening. No ringing or buzzing, just the distant sound of officers talking in the hallway and the hum of lights overhead.
She knew Jade would keep trying to reach her. She’d probably show up at her house if Maddox didn't answer by tonight and would fight for this relationship the way Maddox couldn't let herself fight.
Which meant she needed to end it before Jade could talk her out of the decision that was already calcifying in her chest like scar tissue.
She grabbed her duffel from her locker and headed out. The parking lot was mostly empty now, most officers already gone home to their families or their lives or whatever waited for them outside these walls.
Maddox had nothing waiting. Just an empty house and a decision she'd already made and the knowledge that in a few hours, she'd execute it. She'd go to Jade's apartment. She'd walk through that door and say the words that would end everything.
The drive home passed in a blur. Streets she'd patrolled for years, neighborhoods she knew by heart, all of it meaningless background noise to the static in her head. At home, she wentthrough the motions of taking a shower and changing her clothes.
Her hands were steady as she tied her boots. Her breathing was even, and the panic from earlier had crystallized into something cold and hard and manageable.
She could do this. She just had to remember that when Jade looked at her with those bright eyes and asked why.
She just had to remember that destroying this was the only way to survive and keep what she had to keep.
Even if it meant destroying everything else.
Zeus was waiting by the door when Maddox came out of her bedroom.
He'd been following her around the house since she got home, his nails clicking against the hardwood. Now he sat directly in her path, dark eyes locked on hers.
"I have to go out for a bit," Maddox said.
His ears flattened.
"You're staying here, buddy. This is something I need to do alone."
Zeus didn't move. Just sat there, blocking her exit and radiating disapproval in every tense line of his body.
