Chapter Seven
CADEN
I’ve seen her scared before.
Years ago, when her sister first slipped into that coma and the doctors stopped pretending optimism wasn’t the same thing as lies. Back then she’d shake, quietly, like she didn’t want anyone to notice how much of her world was cracking under her feet.
But this—
This is different.
This is fear sharpened into something raw.
She stands just inside my doorway, eyes too wide, breath too shallow, like she’d run here without stopping. Like something chased her all the way to my door.
My grip tightens around my phone. My heart drops hard enough to bruise.
“Hey,” I repeat, stepping closer but slow enough not to spook her. “Honey, what happened?”
Her throat works. Her lips tremble but don’t form a word.
And I swear—swear—I feel something inside my chest crack open. That same protective instinct that used to blindside me years ago when she’d cry into my shirt after long shifts, when she’d lose hope over Anna, when she’d force a smile so no one saw the way she was dying inside.
The instinct I thought I buried.
The one I thought I didn’t deserve to feel anymore.
I reach her gently, brushing my fingers against her arm.
She flinches.
Not away from me.
Away from memory.
My jaw locks. “Who touched you?”
Her eyes snap to mine, startled, wet at the corners.
“Caden—nothing, I’m okay, I just—”
“No,” I cut in softly but firmly. “Someone hurt you. Tell me who.”
Her breath stutters, and for a second I think she’ll deflect again. But then her face cracks—just slightly—and a single tear slips down.
She shakes her head. “You’re already doing more than I can ever repay. I—I don’t want you involved.”
Too late for that.
I lift her chin with two fingers. “I’m already involved.”
Her eyes squeeze shut, and she steps forward—just an inch, maybe less—but it’s enough to break the last barrier between us.
I pull her into my arms.
And she collapses.
Not physically—she’s still standing—but emotionally she folds into me like I’m the only thing keeping her upright. Her forehead drops to my shoulder, her fingers clutching the back of my shirt, desperate and trembling.
My throat tightens so painfully I have to shut my eyes for a second.
God, she feels the same.
Small. Warm. Familiar in a way that shouldn’t still hit like this.
Four years and her body still fits against mine like it never left.
Four years and I still know the shape of her grief by the way she breathes against me.
I wrap my arms fully around her, one hand sliding instinctively to the back of her head, the other around her waist, anchoring her.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur into her hair. “Whatever it is, I’ve got you.”
She shakes harder.
And then, in a voice so thin it almost breaks, she whispers, “My aunt. She was there. And Damian.”
Ice floods my veins.
Her aunt.
Damian.
“Did he touch you?” My voice is too low, too controlled. The kind of control that keeps me from putting my fist through the nearest wall.
She hesitates—just long enough to confirm what I already know.
“Yes,” she whispers. “He grabbed me. He—he told me I’d ‘learn to fall in line.’ Like… like I belong to him.”
Rage detonates in my chest so violently I have to loosen my grip on her or risk squeezing her too hard.
He touched her.
He threatened her.
And her aunt helped orchestrate it—because of course she did. The same woman who weaponized Anna’s care to control her. The same woman who, I now suspect, made Kamiyah vanish from my life without a word, leaving me to assume I hadn’t mattered at all.
I swallow the bitterness that still tastes like abandonment.
It wasn’t Kamiyah’s fault.
The more time she spends with me. The more she looks at me with heated glances when she thinks I’m not looking, the more I begin to think it wasn’t her decision to end our relationship before I really got started.
“I’m going to kill him,” I breathe before I can stop myself.
She jerks back, eyes wide. “No. You can’t—Caden, please. I don’t want this to escalate. My aunt—she—she’ll use it against me. Against Anna.”
I stiffen.
Anna.
Her sister is always the lever her aunt pulls—the chain she wraps around her neck. And the worst part? It works. Because Kamiyah will bleed herself dry to keep Anna alive.
I close my eyes for a beat, forcing down my temper. Because she’s right. If I go after Damian, her aunt will retaliate. And she controls the funding for treatments Anna desperately needs. All the more reason the engagement has to work. All the more reason I said yes in the first place.
But Jesus—how much has she been carrying alone?
I lift her chin again, more tender this time.
“You listen to me,” I say quietly. “That man will not put a hand on you again. Not while you’re under my roof. Not ever.”
Her breath trembles on the exhale.
She nods. Barely.
And then her gaze flicks to my mouth before darting away.
My chest tightens painfully.
Don’t do that, sweetheart.
Don’t look at me like that.
Not when I’ve spent years trying to convince myself you didn’t choose me because you didn’t want me. Not when I found out the hard way that people can leave without explanation. Not when I finally—finally—started accepting I am meant to be alone.
I release her gently, giving her space she clearly needs. Her arms fall from around me reluctantly, and I step back before my self-control snaps.
“Sit,” I tell her softly, motioning to the couch.
She perches on the edge, shoulders tight, hands twisting in her lap. I grab a glass of water and set it in front of her.
“Drink.”
She obeys.
Because she always does when she’s shaken.
I sit on the coffee table in front of her, close but not touching. “Start from the beginning.”
She swallows, then tells me everything—visiting Anna, running into Damian, her aunt’s voice echoing down the hall. Her panic. Her escape.
I don’t interrupt. Not even when my hands curl into fists so tight I feel my nails cutting skin.
When she finishes, she looks up at me. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
That—right there—that breaks me.
“For what?” My voice comes out harsher than intended.
“For bringing this into your life. Into your home. For causing trouble. I know you only agreed to the engagement because you—”
Because of the promise of a child. My child. “That’s not why.” The words slip out before I can cage them.
She blinks. “What?”
I exhale slowly, dragging a hand through my hair.
“Yeah, I never realized how much I wanted to be a father until I lost my baby girl,” I admit. “The engagement gave me…you. But I didn’t agree because I needed something from you. Not just that.”
Her brows pull together. “Then why?”
I should stop.
Don’t say it. Don’t dig up old graves. Don’t risk confusing the lines. Don’t risk wanting something I know I can’t have.
But she’s sitting there looking at me like I’m the only safe place she has left in the world.
And the truth claws its way up my throat.
“Because I wasn’t about to let you walk back into my life for the first time in four years just to walk out again scared and alone,” I say quietly.
“Because someone needed to stand between you and the people who’ve been hurting you.
Because you mattered to me then. And whether I like it or not… you matter to me now.”
Her breath catches.
Every part of me goes still.
We stare at each other—charged air, frayed nerves, all the ghosts between us waking up and stretching.
She whispers, “Caden…”
And something in her voice is so soft, so broken, so familiar that it nearly drags me forward.
Nearly.
I stand abruptly, putting a few steps between us before I tie her to me forever. Because whether she acknowledges it or not, once I get a taste of her, I’ll never let her go.
Think, Caden.
She’s vulnerable.
She’s scared.
She’s here because she has nowhere else to go. I face away from her, toward the window overlooking the water.
The silence stretches.
She stands behind me. I feel her presence before she speaks.
“You don’t have to protect me,” she says softly.
I turn my head slightly. “I know.”
“Then why do you?” Her voice breaks. “Why still?”
Because I loved you.
Because I never stopped.
Because I waited for you for months, thinking you’d walk back through those facility doors, only to find out you’d left the country without a word.
Because losing you felt like losing my mother all over again—silent, sudden, unforgiving.
But I can’t say any of that. So I say the only thing that’s safe. “Because I made a promise once,” I answer quietly. “To look out for you. To look out for Anna. That doesn’t change.”
Her breath hitches. “I remember.”
I clench my jaw. “Good.”
Silence falls again—heavy, complicated, filled with all the things we’re both pretending not to feel.
“I’ll sleep on the couch tonight,” she says suddenly. “I don’t want to invade your space more than I already am.”
That yanks my head around.
“No,” I say firmly. “You’re staying in the guest room. You’re not sleeping out here alone where anyone can get to you.”
Her lips part. “Anyone? Caden, we’re in your penthouse. No one can—”
“You’d be surprised,” I mutter.
Because Damian strikes me as exactly the kind of man who doesn’t respect boundaries. And her aunt is the kind of woman who knows how to bypass them.
She hesitates. Then nods.
“Okay.”
I exhale slowly. Some of the tension bleeds from my shoulders.
“Go get some rest,” I say. “I’ll take care of everything else.”
She lingers a moment—just long enough to make my chest tighten—before turning toward the hallway. But as she passes me, she stops.
Close.
Too close.
I feel her breath on my arm when she whispers, “Thank you.”
I swallow hard.
She leaves the room, footsteps soft, hesitant. I wait until I hear her door shut before letting out a breath I’ve been holding since the moment she walked in shaken and terrified. Then I pull out my phone. And dial a number I never planned to use again.
When the voice on the other end answers, cold and authoritative, I don’t waste time.
“It’s Caden West,” I say. “I need a full background sweep. A man named Damian Kane.”
A pause. “Relationship?”
“He threatened someone under my protection.”
Another pause—longer this time. “Understood. You want the quiet package?”
“Yes.” My voice drops, steel replacing the earlier softness. “And I want it fast.”
“Done.”
I end the call and stare at the shimmer of moonlight against the water for a long moment. No one is going to hurt her again.
Not while she’s mine to protect.
Not ever.