their caring. She was a whore. She might have run from her life, but all the offers of friendship in the world couldn’t remove the stain. It was easy to pretend that wasn’t true, protected here at Hell’s Eight. Here the world couldn’t touch her, but someday she’d have to leave. And when she did she wanted to be just like Bella. Confident. Sassy. Always ready with a quick response. Never hiding.
But she wasn’t like Bella. Not yet. She didn’t have fire. She didn’t have family. She didn’t have beliefs. She’d been a child lost and now she was a woman lost, but she was going to find her way. The padre said God didn’t put people on this earth with no purpose, which meant she had a purpose, too. When he’d first said it, it’d been a unique idea she couldn’t understand. But over time she couldn’t forget it, and slowly it had grown on her and taken root. Until now, finding a purpose was her purpose.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bella smiled and glanced over to the gate Caden had just passed through. “It is easy to see where your heart lies.”
Maddie licked her lip, feeling that stab of fear deep inside. To love something was to lose it, to cause its death. Instinct had her reaching for make-believe, but she couldn’t find that hazy place where real and imagination blended as easily as they used to. Ari said it was a good thing. Maddie wasn’t sure.
“Hearts and flowers are so pretty at weddings.” The slip into nonsense was only half-faked. It was always so much easier to act as nothing when you felt like nothing.
Bella sighed and folded her arms under her ample chest, resting them on her belly. “You will try this nonsense with others. I know you are not loca.”
Maddie wished she knew that. “Are you so sure?”
Bella shook her head. “There is more to you than nonsense, Maddie.”
Maddie blinked. No one had ever said that to her before.
“I am sweet thighs and soft breasts and pleasure for a man.” She’d heard that so much it was rote.
Bella snorted. “You’re passion and temper, and when you find your feet, the only man that will find pleasure with you is the one that you choose.”
“You think I’ll get to choose?”
Bella, always so insightful, always so blunt, touched her hand, causing Maddie to jump again because no one ever touched her. Touching was bad, painful, death. “Sí.”
She pulled her hand away, immediately feeling bad. She liked Bella. Bella just smiled.
“You are Hell’s Eight now, Maddie. You are not nothing.”
“Tracker just brought me here.”
Bella smiled and looked at the big man talking to Ed. The wind caught his hair, exposing the deep scar on his cheek. “Something brought us all here.”
To Maddie, Tracker was a scary man with that scar down his face and those big muscles and that dark skin, but to Ari he was her sun and moon, which just proved gentleness lived everywhere. Maddie clung to that. Caden wasn’t as big as Tracker, but his hands were strong enough to bruise, break bones.
Bella grunted and put her hand to her stomach. “I swear if this child doesn’t stop kicking me I’m going to let his daddy raise him.”
Maddie looked at Bella. “You carry a girl.”
“How do you know?” It was uniquely Bella that she didn’t dismiss the thought, just asked if Maddie was sure.
It would be tactless to say she’d seen so many pregnant women over the course of her eighteen years in a whorehouse that she knew how a woman carried. So Maddie just shrugged instead and said, “Some things a woman just knows.”
Bella’s brows lifted, and she made an eloquent motion of her hands. “See? Ya está. When you don’t stop to think about how you are going to be received, you say what is on your mind.”
“A woman should be seen and not heard.”
Bella snorted. “Idiots should be seen and not heard.”
Maddie couldn’t help but flinch any more than Bella could help her immediate apologetic touch on her hand. Bella was always touching. It didn’t bother Maddie so much anymore.
“I am sorry, Maddie. You know I do not think you are an idiot.”
So many did, though. Her glance cut to the path Caden had taken. Bella’s gaze followed hers but she didn’t let go of her hand this time, just gripped it tighter when Maddie tugged.
“Maddie?”
“Yes?”
“Do you believe the truth I always tell?”
Maddie nodded, used to Bella’s grammar. It was actually pretty the way she spoke, clear yet a little off-kilter, like a unique music played beneath the words.
“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
