Chapter 22 #2
His fingers continued to brush lightly along the bruise, and it felt like his touch had found the timer hidden beneath my skin, the one I had spent years pretending wasn’t counting down.
“I was crying when he came into my room that very first time,” I whispered.
Cade entwined our fingers, kissing my knuckles like a silent prompt to keep going.
“We had buried my mom that day, and everyone who ever knew her was in our house celebrating her life.” I looked at him, tears falling down my face onto the pillow.
“I felt like I was dying, the pain was so intense. I never knew sadness like that. I knew my mom was gone and that I would only ever have fourteen years of memories with her.”
He leaned over and gently kissed the top of my head with a softness I had never seen from Cade.
“She wouldn’t be there to help me get ready for prom, or to adjust my veil when I got married.” I sniffed and just let the tears fall because not once in the seven years since she died had I let myself think those thoughts again.
Until now.
“I miss my mom every fucking day, and it has never—not once—gotten easier. That was what I didn’t know that day. I knew everything I would never have, but I didn’t know how to carry the forever part.”
“Pip—”
“No, I’m okay. Just let me do this my way.”
And when he closed his hand over mine, I just… let it go.
“I left the gathering and went to my room and cried about all the Nevers. I didn’t tell anyone where I went, but they knew.
I just wanted to ugly cry without my aunts and uncles and my mom’s friends whispering about all the Nevers in my future when Luke knocked and poked his head in.
When he saw me crying, he came in and closed the door and locked it. ”
Cade’s entire body went still above mine, and for one second I felt the violence in him rise so sharply I thought it might split the room open.
His jaw locked, the muscle there jumping once, but he didn’t move away from me.
He didn’t interrupt. He lowered himself beside me again instead, pulling the blanket higher around us before threading his fingers through mine like he was giving me something solid to hold while the floor disappeared beneath me.
“Please,” I whispered shakily. “Just let me get this out of me.”
For a second, I thought he might refuse, not because he didn’t want to hear me but because hearing me was visibly destroying him. Cade was tough as nails, though. He just scooted closer, pressing his shoulder against mine, his thumb dragging once across my knuckles.
“Tell me, Pip.”
I swallowed hard against the pressure building in my throat, and the rest came out like blood from a vein. “I remember feeling invisible and angry and completely broken.”
Tears blurred my vision again while Cade’s thumb brushed slowly beneath my eye, catching them before they could fall. His face looked carved from restraint, every line of him held too tight, but his hand stayed gentle on me.
“Everybody else was downstairs grieving, and Luke came upstairs and held me. He told me all the shit a grieving fourteen-year-old needed to hear. ‘You aren’t alone.’ ‘I am always here for you.’ ‘Let me hold you.’”
He started checking in with me daily. Little text messages telling me he was thinking about me or that he missed me.
It happened so fast that my head spun. When he showed up a few weeks later, I was in my room crying because I had been crushing on Drake Jensen since sixth grade and found out he asked Aura to be his girlfriend. ”
Cade’s head lifted like I had personally offended him.
“Fucking. Drake. Jensen.” He said it like saying his name was similar to eating shit.
The laugh ripped out of me so unexpectedly it shocked me. It came out broken and wet and completely ridiculous, but it was still a laugh, and Cade looked so genuinely offended on my behalf that another one followed.
“Seriously?” I wiped at my face with the heel of my hand. “That’s your takeaway?”
“How could it not be? I might need a side quest so I can hunt this fucker down.”
“A side quest?”
“Pip, you’re telling me Drake Jensen—king of the fuckboys—chose Aura over you, and I need a minute to process this new information.”
I laughed harder, pressing my face into the pillow for half a second because it was awful and perfect and exactly the kind of stupid thing my brain needed so I didn’t drown.
“Brace yourself, Cade. He had frosted tips.”
Cade stared at me in mock horror. “Not the frosted tips. I bet he wore a puka shell necklace too.”
I laughed even harder. “Yep, and those fake diamond studs in both ears.”
“Drake Jensen—the blueprint for douchebags—broke your heart.” He paused for effect. “In turn, forcing you into the arms of an even bigger dick?”
“Broke my heart,” I said with mock sadness, nodding.
“Fuck Drake Jensen. He’s lucky I don’t find him and beat his ass. Give me time, Pip. I can find a way to make every bad thing that happened to you his fault.”
“Leave Drake alone, Cade. He probably spends his time singing throwback NSYNC songs at karaoke every Friday. There’s nothing you can do to him that’s worse than that.”
I sighed and stared at the ceiling fan. “Luke snuck into my room under the guise of a friend. I fell for it because I was grieving something bigger.”
He didn’t say anything as that truth settled, but when he did, it hit me in the chest.
“You were vulnerable, Pip. Luke used that because guys like him aren’t capable of human decency.”
The smile slipped before my tears did, and somehow Cade noticed that too. His expression sobered instantly, but the warmth he’d made stayed in the room, small and fragile and enough to let me breathe.
I looked down at our joined hands. “He was Johnny on the fucking spot holding me and wiping my tears,” I whispered. “Telling me I was sexy when I cried.”
The humor vanished from Cade’s face so completely it felt like watching a door slam shut.
“After that, he started telling me it was my fault we couldn’t be together. He was twenty and I was fourteen and too young for anyone to understand. He told me that as much as he wanted to be with me, it would never happen because if Ryker or Knox found out, we would both lose them.”
Cade cursed immediately under his breath, low and vicious. “He got you to promise not to tell.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. The answer was lying between us already.
“I thought it meant I was special the way he wanted me,” I admitted, my voice quieter now.
“And fuck, I was so infatuated with him. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for him and me to be together.
I thought being wanted that intensely meant it was real.
I didn’t understand what healthy love looked like yet.
I just thought without him I would die.”
Cade’s fingers tightened around mine. Not enough to hurt, but enough to remind me he was still there.
“My reality was if I wanted to be with him, I had to wait until I was eighteen or keep a secret I had no business understanding,” I whispered, nausea rolling through me even now. “And by the time I started understanding what it meant to be his, he already knew every way to keep me quiet.”