Maddison's POV

The city air was wet and chilly, as if it was going to rain, the biting cold hurt on her hot flesh. It reeked of car exhausts and wet pavement. It was already very late in the evening and car horns were blaring, loud music sounded from the car driving by while the voices far away all blended together.

She didn't have anywhere to go, no plan and just felt this overwhelming compulsion to run and get as far away as she could from Brooke's shiny, proud smile so she just continued running in pain.

Her stilettos, which she wore during her graduation, pounded the ground hard on the streets, and they seemed as if they would break with each step. Maddison's graduation gown was supposed to be for walking gracefully across a stage, but now it was difficult to run and the hem of the gown caught at her ankles, tripping her up and making her stumble as she ran. Tears blurring her vision flowed from her eyes and made it difficult for her to see, and the familiar streets now became an unfamiliar and intimidating world.

She hurried right past a couple taking their tiny, yapping dog out for a walk that evening, and the man pulled his wife back as Maddison went past. "Hey, watch it!" he yelled, his voice cutting through the rest of the noise.

"My God, Frank, she's crying," the woman whispered. Maddison could still hear her words as she ran down the sidewalk. "Is that a graduation gown?"

Maddison's wild run took her around the next corner, just then, the warm smell of grilled onions and hot dogs filled the air. A dirty white-aproned man stood next to a metal cart draped with a big yellow umbrella, and he was carefully inserting a sausage into a bun when he looked up and spotted her.

He froze, his tongs suspended mid-air. The man looked worried, and Maddison nearly stumbled over by his cart and put out a hand to catch a lamppost to balance herself.

"Hello there, miss," the man said in a deep, soothing voice. "Are you alright? You look as though you've just seen a ghost."

Maddison's head lifted, and she looked at him, but it felt as if she was looking straight through him, and instead of the man, all she saw was a sofa, a green dress, and a victorious smile. The man was talking, but his voice sounded like a low humming noise.

"Hello," he said again, louder and more worried-sounding before he put down the tongs on his cart with a clinking metallic sound. "Are you in trouble? Do you need the police called?" He moved forward to look at her better. "You're hurt."

She looked down at her extended hand, the one not wrapped around her rumpled diploma. A bright red scrape ran along her knuckles where she'd hit the wall in the stairwell, and a drop of blood well up and roll down her finger. She looked at it as though it weren't even her hand, like it was just something else peculiar happening in some sort of world that didn't seem real.

"No," she finally breathed. Her voice sounded harsh. She shook her head, not at him, but trying to shake away her own cloudy mind. "No, I just... I have to leave."

Not even looking back, she shoved away from the lamppost and kept running, stumbling and panicked.

The guy just stared after her, baffled. He picked up his tongs, slowly shook his head, and headed back to his grill. "Some evenings in this town," he muttered to himself as he flipped the sausages over, but he caught only a glimpse of part of her tragic story as she ran away.

Maddison charged into the crowd. The man's words were forgotten immediately, lost in the noise of her own pain.

She arrived at a busy street intersection. The walk signal was a red hand that told her to stop and although her head knew that she should stop, her feet kept going. A shiny new silver vehicle gave a loud angry blast on the horn as it swerved to avoid hitting her but Maddison never even registered it. She just kept on running and jumped off the curb onto the road.

Her degree was still held in her right hand, the single item she had retained from her old life, one where hard work and loyalty were supposed to mean something. Her mind considered Grant Harrison's face and his pitiful expression. She had refused him proudly when he had held out the possibility of a job but now, how was she supposed to know then that her life was going to be completely devastated?

She made it to the other side of the road, taking brief, painful breaths. She sped past an outside café, where people stopped and stared. They gazed as the woman in a graduation gown frantically sprinted down the city. Maddison could feel them staring at her, but she was in too much pain to care, and it was as if she was a ghost that they could see but were unable to hear her suffering.

At another corner ahead of her, the traffic light was green for cars but she never stopped or even glanced, she just ran with all her might and did not care about anything else but escaping the pain inside.

She ran into the intersection, right into the path of incoming cars and from her left side, she saw a flash of bright light in her side view, then a quick, scared cry.

"Hey! WATCH OUT!"

The voice was young and sounded really scared, so Maddison turned her head quickly. A bike delivery man was moving directly towards her, moving very quickly, he seemed startled under his helmet, the man leaned back as hard as he could, trying to brake. His brakes screeched as the wheels skidded across the wet sidewalk but for a moment, everything occurred in slow motion. Maddison saw the terror in his eyes and the sweat on his brow as he was grabbing the brakes, but it was too late.

Then they smashed into one another.

It was a solid hit of his bike into her body. The bike's front wheel hit her hip with a muted thud, and it launched her off the ground as her diploma fell from her hand and flew through the air. The world spun around her in a mad whirl of streetlights, dark sky, and the scared face of the bike rider.

She was weightless for a second, and then she hit the unyielding concrete street. The impact was harsh; her hip landed on the pavement with a dull thud, and she saw a flash of light. There was a burning pain that shot through her body, but then it quickly turned into a strange numbness.

When she could see again, everything was fuzzy. She was lying on her back, with her cheek on the cold, gritty pavement. She looked up and saw the face of the bikeman looking down at her, his helmet crooked, and his eyes wide with terror.

"Oh my God," he cried out, his voice shaking. "Oh God, I'm so sorry! Are you okay? Miss?" He looked around, growing more frantic. "Someone call 911! Please!"

Maddison tried to speak, to tell him it wasn't his fault, but she couldn't say anything, and her vision started to blur at the edges. She saw her diploma on the ground in a dirty puddle near her. The rider's scared voice and the voices of other individuals who were now surrounding her became less distinct, until she could only hear a ringing in her ears.

There was a thick darkness that covered everything, and one last, clear thought came to her before she fainted. Not of her boyfriend's deception, nor of her pain, nor of her broken life, but of the voice of some other guy, deep and confident, at the reception at her graduation ceremony.

Then, there was total darkness.

Maddison's POV

Far away, in the quiet, leather-scented black car, Grant Harrison looked over the last business statistics on his tablet, and the statistics were good but his mind was elsewhere. They were back on a face from earlier that day, a flame-smart face of devotion, he had seen marvelous things in Maddison Carter, a hidden deep strength most people lacked. He had offered her an offer, and she turned it down, the reaction was dismal but not a defeat because Grant Harrison never conceded defeat.

"There is a crash ahead, sir. It seems like the traffic has come to a halt," declared his driver, Charles, speaking clear and composed.

Grant looked away from his tablet, his eyes focusing on what was in front of him; strobes off of a police car who had pulled up just lit the wet road with moments of red and blue, then he noticed the crowd of people, the overturned bike, and something small and white on the ground.

"Pull over, Charles," Grant spoke fast and firm. Something was wrong. He had a sharp instinct and it was the same instinct that helped him through many tough business battles that told him to watch closely.

The car stopped, and Grant opened the door first and got out into the night. He walked with determined strength through the crowd, and as they saw his costly suit and heavy muscles, they moved aside in silence.

He reached the center of the small circle and his breath caught and on the pavement, her pale face lit by the street lamps, was Maddison Carter. Out across the pavement lay her black hair and by her side, half in a dirty puddle, was her diploma, the red ribbon fading bit by bit in the water, and it was the same red ribbon that he had seen on stage a few hours before.

The shaken bikeman was trying to describe to a police officer what happened. "She just ran out, I couldn't stop."

Grant bent down on his knees, not caring about the dirty ground spoiling his pricey pants, he brushed a strand of hair back from her forehead. Her skin felt cold and he checked her pulse on her neck. There was the beat, muted but persistent, and then in an instant a flood of protective feeling came over him. He would not let her life be taken like this, he would not let someone so gifted as she was be lost over a single misstep on a city street at a bad moment in the night.

"I know her," Grant responded, his voice above the noise, deep and authoritative before anyone moved to look at him. "I am going to take her to the hospital. My car is right here."

The officer looked at him, calculating the nice car and the powerful man. "Sir, we need to wait for the ambulance."

Grant's eyes narrowed. "The ambulance can follow us to Harrison Private Medical Center. She will be treated well in the city, and she will be treated immediately." He nodded toward Charles who was already by his side with open hands. "Charles, help me.".

They both gently picked up Maddison's unconscious form, and as they held her, Grant sensed how delicate she was, so unlike the tough individual he recognized. He noticed the life she had run away from and the life he had wished to provide for her, and now it was no longer about a job offer anymore, but a rescue effort.

The Next Day...

The first thing to break through the heavy, soft darkness was a smell; It wasn't a bad smell, it was quite clean and bright, smelling like bleach and medicine. Next came the pain, an ache in her right hip that throbbed in time to a slow, rhythmic beep to her left, and Maddison's eyes were heavy and stuck shut, but she forced them open. Light filled her sight, so she closed her eyes once more, then squinted once, twice, trying to shake her head.

The ceiling was white and bare and the sheets on her were very white and tight against her, a small tube taped to the back of her hand extended up to a clear bag suspended on a metal rod. The beeping was from a small device on her bedside table, its screen flashing up and down with her pulse in a green line. It was a hospital room, but one unlike any she had ever experienced since it contained no other beds, no sounds of corridors, no blaring fluorescent lights. The air was quiet and light poured in through a large window that let in a gray morning sky.

Her head snapped on the firm pillow, leaving her with a stiff neck, and then she saw him.

A man in a chair next to the window, his figure was black against the brightness, he sat still, one leg crossed over the other, his arms resting on the chair arms. Even in the dim light, she knew the sharp shape of his jaw and the fancy style of his dark suit. It was Grant Harrison; the billionaire from her graduation, the man whose business card she had thrown away.

A shiver ran through her, one stronger than the ache in her hip, and her body stiffened beneath the blankets. He wasn't her hero. He was a warning sign, why had he shown up? How did he find her? The questions ran around in her head that was already filled with confusion and building fear. Since Tyler, having a confident, dominant man watch over her when she was weak felt like danger.

He tilted his head slightly, and she was aware that he had seen her waking up but he did not get up, he just looked at her with his face not showing his thoughts from the opposite side of the room.

"Maddison," he said. His voice was the same voice she had remembered in the school yard, deep and smooth, but here within the silence of the hospital, it was different. It was peaceful but took over the room entirely.

She tried to talk, but her throat was dry and only a rough sound came out. She swallowed hard, it hurt. "Where... where am I?" she said at last, a soft whisper.

"You're at Harrison Private Medical Center," he said, his tone flat. "You're safe."

Safe? The term seemed out of place because at that time, she did not consider herself safe, she felt caged like a specimen on a microscope. Then, she rocked up on her elbows, gasping as pain went through her hip again.

Grant was on his feet in a flash, walking rapidly across the room, he loomed above her, looking down. Now she could see his face clearly. His dark eyes were focused, intently only on her and from what she could sense, there were no smile lines around them, it was completely a serious look.

"Don't get up," he said to her, his voice relaxing but firmly. "You have a little dislocation and concussion. The doctors said that you were fortunate."

Fortunate. The recollection hit her hard, like a blow; the apartment door, Brooke's proud smile, Tyler's ugly laugh, running down the cold street, the rider's horrified eyes, and the wrinkled diploma all flashed through her mind. Her life had collapsed and this was not good fortune for her, this was what came next. Scorched tears rose up in her eyes but she decided that she would not weep before him.

"What exactly happened?" she asked, her voice shaking slightly. "How did I get here?