“I believe you.” She tugged at her hand again. Bella gripped tighter.
“Do you believe that I would never do anything to hurt you?”
She nodded again.
“Do you believe I am not conventional?”
Maddie nodded. “I believe all that you tell me. You are a good person. You would never lie.”
Bella snorted. “Good people lie all the time. So do I. I would to save someone I love, but I would not lie to someone I love for no reason.”
Maddie understood that. “Yes.”
Bella shook her head. “I will speak plainly now, in words I want you to hear.”
Maddie grabbed a branch of the tree and braced herself. Only bad things started that way.
Bella took a step around until she faced her, her stomach touching the folds of Maddie’s skirt. Maddie wanted to run and hide, but it didn’t really matter what she wanted. Bella was determined to have her say, and she could see Sam searching for his wife. Soon he would be here. Maddie preferred not to deal too closely with the men of Hell’s Eight. It wasn’t that they were bad men; they were just men, and men made her uncomfortable.
“I’m listening.”
“Forgive me my plain speaking, but you are in love with Caden.”
Maddie flinched, clenching the branch in her hand, the leaves tearing and sending a slightly fruity scent into the air. “A man like that isn’t for me.”
Bella snorted. “He’s a man like any other who needs a woman to love him.”
“He has his pick of women.”
“And you could have your pick of men.”
Maddie shook her head. Only the naive believed that. “I am used goods, fit for the bed and nothing else. No man would want me.”
Bella’s nails dug into her wrist. “You will not speak such words again to me. You are my friend. You were there for that time Sam went away and my dreams were bad. You sat with me and made me tea. You run around this place like you are nothing, doing everything, supporting everyone, making sure that Sally Mae had what she needed for the wedding, organizing, finagling—”
“I am good at trading,” Maddie interrupted.
“Trading, then. But everything you do supports those that you love. You are a strong force in the background making everything possible. You have changed so much here at Hell’s Eight since you have come and yet you see none of this. You see yourself as nothing, as bed sport only.”
Maddie looked away. Bella’s finger under her chin yanked her face back.
“If you want Caden, this thinking needs to stop. You need to believe in who you are. You need to believe in the strength that kept you alive all these years. You need to believe in that part of you that makes you the one woman he smiles at whenever you are near.”
Maddie hated the hope that sprang to life in her chest, hated it yet clung to it.
“You don’t know—”
Bella shook her head. “No. I do not know anything for sure, but I know when you are around Caden you smile, and I know when Caden is around you he smiles. This does not determine the end, but to me it seems a good beginning.”
She could see Caine and Ace arguing, she assumed about Caden. No doubt Caine didn’t want him to leave. Caine thought he had a lot of power over the men, but her Caden was a stubborn man, and she understood more than Caine that Caden was also a man who needed to make his own way.
“What would you have me do? A knight doesn’t look for a princess among the garbage.”
“My Sam had no use for me when he first met me.”
That Maddie couldn’t believe. “You are Sam’s princess in the tower.”
“I was Sam’s pain in the—” Bella smiled and tapped her behind, leaving the word unsaid. “He thought I was too good for him, that he would only bring me trauma in my life. He denied our love, our attraction and our potential for joy.”
“But you’re together.”
“Yes. We are. But I had to chase that man across half the state and I had to fight for him.”
“You can’t make someone love you. Sally Mae told me this.”
“And Sally Mae is right. But you can stop someone from running away from the way they feel long enough for the truth of their feelings to catch up to them.”
Who did Bella think she was, preaching such hope to the hopeless? She had no right. “Maybe I’m just too stupid to understand such a thing.”
Bella let go of her hand and took a step back. “Maybe you are too stupid to be with a man like Caden, who has everything except the softness he needs. And maybe you are too stupid to know what is right and wrong and how it should be between a man and a woman. And maybe you are just too stupid for a lot of things because you foolishly believe all the wrong people told you.” Bella made a slashing motion with her hand. “But I do not think so. I have seen how you have changed. How you have grown, so when I tell you this, know that I am speaking to Maddie the woman who has become part of Hell’s Eight, not Maddie who sees herself of no value. It is time for you to leave here.” She motioned toward the gate. “Time for you to follow your heart.”
“Why?”
Bella’s expression softened. “Because if you want Caden, Maddie, then you need to do whatever it takes to make him see you and what could be. Something big. And no one can do it for you.”
She turned on her heel.
Maddie stood where she was anchored by her grip on the tree and the weight of the preposterous idea Bella had put forth. “Wait.”
Bella shook her head and raised her hand. “No. It is time for you to make up your mind who you will be.”
Maddie had the insane urge to chase after Bella, to have her tell her what to do, but what was the point? Bella was right. She had decided herself it was time she stopped being a child.
Caden was leaving as if it was nothing to anyone. The man never understood he was missed when he left. Or maybe he didn’t care. Sometimes it was hard to know. Follow her heart, Bella had advised. Did she have the courage to do something that big?
Caden had told her that he wouldn’t leave without seeing her. The anger that hit her was strong. The determination just as strong. She was done being left behind. Every day when she got up, life happened to her. Tomorrow, she was going to happen to her life.
* * *
MADDIE’S TREASURES WERE packed into a saddlebag along with two changes of clothes before dawn even touched the sky. Caden had left an hour earlier. She’d heard the back-porch step creak as he’d slipped out. Saw the light in the barn. It was time for her to go now, too. Sneaking down the back stairs, she ducked out the same door as Caden, but she avoided the third board on the steps. While no one would protest Caden’s departure, hers would be sure to cause a fuss. Her redbone hound whined and lifted his head. She smiled and made a motion of her hand. He came over immediately. She fed him a piece of meat left over from supper. He wolfed it down and, when another wasn’t forthcoming, drooped his head until the loose folds all but obscured his eyes. He had the look of his father, Boone, but was the despair of Tucker’s pack. Worthless, he’d been named, because while he could track like his father, he wouldn’t bay.
The day Tucker had cut him from the litter, she’d cried for him. When she’d heard his name, that had been the final straw. She’d taken the dog as hers, expecting a protest. No one had said a word. He’d become her “porch hound,” as Tucker called him. She’d tried to change the dog’s name, but