“I never meant to lie to you,” she says quietly, her voice carrying a weight that pulls at something deep inside me. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
I feel a spark of anger ignite in my chest, spreading like wildfire. I whirl around, my hands still raised, ready to fight. “What about leaving me? Abandoning me? Did you mean to do that?”
Madeline freezes, her entire body going rigid as if I’ve struck her. Slowly, she turns back to me, her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. It’s only then that I notice her hands are taped, just like mine.
My breath catches in my throat.
Is she here to spar? To practice? Does she fight?
I swallow hard, the image of the sad, distant woman who raised me colliding with this new, fierce side of her. The side that sits in boardrooms, with her shoulders pressed back, while everyone looks to her for answers.
It’s confusing, to say the least.
My memories of Madeline are those of a woman who would sit on the sidelines, reading or staring off into space, while I trained with Miles and Char for endless hours.
As a child, I loved my aunt and uncle, but I blamed them for not letting me have a life. I was never allowed to leave our neighborhood. To go outside the shining steel fences I now know served as a barrier between us and our enemies. I lived a life filled with books and languages, where punching bags and staff were my only friends. I hated it. I hated Char and Miles. And because Madeline was always there, watching, but never stepping in, never intervening—I hated her.
Is that what this is? Is a five year old Skylar twisting with twenty-three year old Ella? Are the hurts mine, or my pasts?
I clench my fists as my heart pounds.
That’s the fucking problem. I don’t know what I feel or why. It’s all just so much…too much.
As a child, I thought she didn’t care, that she didn’t want to pay attention to me. But now, standing here with my fists clenched and my heart pounding, I see things differently. Maybe she was just sad and lonely. Maybe she was giving us space to be a family without interrupting. Maybe she was supporting me from the sidelines in the only way she knew how.
But that doesn’t make the hurt any less real.
Madeline’s eyes flash with a mixture of heartbreak and anger as she takes a step closer. “You have no idea what I went through,” she hisses, her voice trembling with emotion. “I came for you, Isabella. I came for you as soon as I could, but he followed me, he took me, and—” She looks away, her jaw tightening as if she’s fighting back tears.
My shoulders drop as the weight of her words sinks in. “What happened, Madeline?”
She shakes her head, her hands falling to her sides as if the strength has drained out of her. I can see the pain etched into every line of her face, the sorrow she’s been carrying for so long. But she’s still holding back, still keeping me at arm’s length, and it drives me crazy.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice rising with frustration. “I don’t know what you went through because you won’t tell me. I understand how badly some hurt aches, how deeply it festers, but how am I meant to understand if you won’t—” I break off, my arms flailing helplessly as the words stick in my throat.
The silence between us stretches thin, heavy with all the things left unsaid. My mind races with questions, with memories that are only now beginning to make sense. There’s so much I don’t know, so much I’ve been kept in the dark about, and it feels like it’s all crashing down on me at once.
But Madeline is here now, standing in front of me with that same mixture of heartbreak and anger in her eyes. And despite everything, despite the lies and the hurt, I can see the truth in her gaze. She’s here because she cares, because she’s always cared, even if she couldn’t show it the way I needed her to.
I take a deep breath, trying to steady myself, to find the right words. “Madeline, I need to know. I need to understand. Whatever it is, whatever happened… please, tell me.”
She meets my eyes, and for a moment, I see a flicker of something—fear, maybe, or uncertainty. But then it’s gone, replaced by a resolve that I’ve only ever seen a few times before. She nods slowly, as if making a decision, and takes a step closer.
“I’ll tell you,” she says, her voice firm but soft. “But you have to promise me one thing, Isabella. You have to promise me that you’ll try to understand, that you’ll listen with an open heart.”
I nod, my throat tight. “I promise.”
She hesitates, her gaze dropping to the floor before she looks back up at me. “It’s not easy for me to talk about, but you deserve to know. After all this time, you deserve the truth.”
And as she begins to speak, the room seems to close in around us, the rest of the world fading away. It’s just me and Madeline, standing in the gym, with all the pain, secrets, and the broken pieces of our past between us. And for the first time, I feel like we might actually be able to put them back together.
“When you took off that day in the park..” she trails off. “Do you remember?”
I swallow thickly and nod. My finger instinctually comes up to rub the scar across my forehead. “I remember everything up to the explosion. And then there’s nothing until I wake up in the hospital after my second surgery.”
“Surgery?” Her throat bobs.
I gesture to my right leg. “Broken femur.” I lift my left wrist. “Broken ulna.” I point to my head. “Traumatic brain injury. No surgery, just a few repairs.”
