All The Wild Ones | Wildfire Series

Midnight Rhapsody

NESSA

A/N: if you haven't read It Burns Within Us, this chapter will contain spoilers. Just FYI!

Beau really didn't do things half-assed. Like when I asked for him to save me, I didn't expect this.

I didn't expect him to show up at my house with his Range Rover, apologize to my mom for interrupting while she unloaded her Black Friday steals, and then convincingly insist that we needed to check on Bren and Madie. Because he was worried.

Beau wasn't worried.

The only thing he was worried about was whether he would lose fifty bucks because I'd bet him on the way to LA that our roommates would be all over each other by the time we got there.

A few hours on the road, and Beau and I were bursting into his parents' Malibu beach house, with its sleek interior design and floor-to-ceiling windows.

And its busy occupants.

We probably should have given them a heads up that we were coming; they'd undoubtedly been in the middle of something. But I couldn't find it in me to feel sorry, couldn't get the smile to wipe from my face. I'd been waiting for this—for Bren and Madie to finally get their shit together.

Madie Lenertz was sweet in a way I'd never understand, considering what she'd gone through. She should have this tough, hardened exterior that was a challenge to get beneath. But Madie had always been warm and welcoming from the minute we moved in together this fall.

Honestly, I should have done more to prod her soft-hearted soul, to get her to come to her senses. To build up a wall that was sometimes necessary. But I'd been too hesitant to get involved and uncertain of what I should do. We hadn't known each other that well yet.

But still, I'd known she was in trouble.

And soon, it was too late. Before long, I found myself sitting in a hospital room, watching Madie recover from a brain bleed. And it was all thanks to Quinton Reed. Madie's boyfriend. Middle linebacker of the Oakland State football team. Abusive, controlling piece of shit.

I sat next to a half-conscious Madie for days, watching as she looked for the one boy who made her feel safe.

Not Quinton.

Hell no, not Quinton.

Bren.

The guy who I swore dreamed of giving Madie everything she didn't even know she wanted.

Honestly, even though Bren was Beau's roommate, and Madie was mine, sometimes it felt like I knew Bren better. Or at least I understood him better.

Bren was rough around the edges, unassuming and quiet unless it was about how much he hated school or douchey football players. He had an attitude and secrets and walls. Really tall walls with heavy doors and padlocks, all guarding...god, I didn't even want to know what was behind Bren's walls. I probably wouldn't ever know, either. Madie was the only one with a key.

But I understood why he had walls even if I didn't understand what was behind them. Walls made sense to me.

I was pretty sure that Bren had been the one who'd given Madie the final push to leave Quinton. Which had racked him with guilt because Quinton's response to the break-up was to smash her head into a wall. I'd seen the guilt, all-consuming in Bren's dark brown eyes when I'd arrived at the emergency room, and he muttered that Madie needed surgery. He'd had so much guilt that he tried to run away from Madie and Oakland altogether.

But Beau convinced him to come back. Because Quinton had still been on campus, meaning Madie wasn't safe to return to Oakland State when she was released from her hospital stay.