Separately Together

Chapter Nineteen:2/2

Maddie excuses herself and I send daggers at the two in front of me. "I told you not to involve her in this mess." I say sternly and Haily smiles through my scolding behavior.

"Harley. She's your woman, we were going to meet her eventually." She says with a smile on her face as she watches Maddie walk outside to join in on the auction. She was mainly just checking on the cakes to make sure they weren't melting. Avoiding everyone's gaze and pathway.

"I like her. You did good." Ben wipes his own mouth ridding it of any of the crust from the apple pie he was eating. A weird feeling lit in my chest one similar to pride, but it made no sense to feel this way. Maddie wasn't really mine and I shouldn't care what Ben thinks.

My chest fills with the warmth of this feeling making me almost feel whole. "You do?" I ask before my brain can catch up with my mouth. I didn't want ben to think that I cared what he thought because he didn't deserve that kind of act, he didn't deserve my respect or my allegiance but since he was promised to him, and it was kind of hard to keep the other from following I guess my brain was simply confused. Not being able to separate one from the other.

"Yes, I truly do. She seems like she would be good for you and despite what you might think, I do want what's best for you." He says before standing up and pushing his way out of the booth. "Be good to her. Keep those pricks from messing with her will ya? Their times coming, just waiting on the right time." He says before he leaves the bakery and Haily follows after him after giving me a kiss of my forehead. She was strangely motherly despite only ever meeting with me a couple of times. I can't say I minded it; my own mother wasn't much of one when I was younger.

~.~.~.~.~

"They are moving me again. A foster home opened up closer to you and my case worker thought it would be good for me to get to see you, soon." Dixons voice was weak and strained on the other end of the line. She says she has a cold but for some reason I don't believe her. Something was off with her story.

I was typically good at telling when she was lying but I hadn't got to spend quality time with her in around a year. I was getting rusty, or she was getting better at lying.

"That's good, Dixon. I'm ready to see you. It's been too long." She sighs on the other end of the phone.

"I have to go. I'll call you tomorrow and let you know how it goes."  She says and before I can even tell her bye the line ends, and my worry grows even thicker. Even if I could get approved to get her now would she be any safer living with me, how long until someone tries to use her as leverage to get to me or to get money? A part of me thinks that even that might be better than the foster care system, maybe I should try again and see if they will overlook the charge I got when I was eighteen. The one I took for Finnic's sake. If I would have known that Dixon would need me in the future and that charge was going to prevent me from taking care of her, I wouldn't have done it.

At the time I didn't think about the consequences and was only thinking about Finnic's dream of playing pro football. I can't say I regret the decision, but Dixon is a priority, she's my sister just like Finnic is my brother but she's just a kid that has seen too much. She needs me now and I can't be there for her. As much as I want to.

"Harley!" Maddie's voice echos from downstairs and I rush down to make sure nothing is wrong.

"Yeah?" I question when I see her just sitting on the couch bundled up in covers.

"Watch a movie with me?" She asks as the titles start to play. "Please? I've had a stressful day. I neeeed this."

I sit down beside her and eye the popcorn she has in a bowl on her lap before grabbing me a handful and tossing one piece into my mouth.

"Sorry about today." I say tensely. "The good and bad news is that you have won over Ben's affection."

Her thick eyebrows pull together causing her to look confused. "How is that bad news?" She doesn't understand all of the workings of The Voiceless, hell I still don't. However, Jared had mentioned that claiming a woman wasn't just something to take for granted, something to be discarded without good reason. Plus, for the things I'm asking Ben to put on the line for Maddie, isn't something Ben was just going to overlook. He thinks this relationship is serious. He thinks that Maddie is his future daughter in law, thinks she is going to be the mother of his grand kids. Thats why he was even considering putting his men's life on the line for her.

"Good because we're not going to have a problem getting him to take care of The Forefathers, but bad because it's going to be harder to get you away from me and them." I explain simply because she didn't need all the stress of knowing the extra details.

She was already stressed enough. She thinks that I don't see how stressed she is. I know that the nightmares have been so bad they have started to wake her up in the middle of the night and how she has to take hour long hot showers just to loosen her muscles, or how she bakes something every day even on days she's did nothing but bake at work. She sings while she cleans, write during the times she's not doing any of those other things.

She is keeping herself as busy as possible trying to not think about the background work of what is taking place.

"Harley, I've been thinking and I'm not up and leaving you after everything is done." I stop chewing the popcorn and stare at her like she had grown an extra head. How could she possibly say something as ridiculous as that, when I have been working towards making this possible for weeks.

"Maddie you'll have to leave." I say not seeing any other option, I don't see where she is going with this at all. if she stays with me, lives with me, Ben is going to be convinced in us being together there will be no changing his mind there will be no getting out of this fake being together. She would be stuck with me, forever.

She would be endangered forever.

"I'm not."

"I'll make you." I say just as quick as she says those words.

"You won't be able to. I've made up my mind and I can be very stubborn when I want to be Harley Walker." She says as she stares back at the movie like she didn't just stop everything I've been stressed over for the past month and alter the plans completely.

"Why? You're going to want to get a boyfriend and have a family one day, Maddie. You're not going to want to be in this fake shit we have going on forever." I explain, trying to make her see reason. Right now, she wasn't thinking straightly she must be thinking about me again and she had to be selfish when it came to this because if she wasn't it could one day cost her, her life.

"Harley. I don't think I could ever ... be intimate with a man again. Just the idea of it ... scares me." She gulps through her words thinking before she speaks searching for just the right word to use. "Plus, your being selfless, saying you have nothing to live for and you're just giving your freedom up for me. That not okay. I'm going to give you something to live for even if it's the last thing I do, Harley. You are going to know what it is like to have something to lose for once. You're going to have someone to fight through the storms with instead of being alone. It just so happens that the only way I can make sure of this is by giving you ... me. All of what I can give you."

Her chest was heaving up and down from her rant letting me know she meant every word. I've never had anyone care for me the way that she does.

I can see it in her eyes that she was in this just as much as I was. It was time for us to start working as a together.

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