Chapter 24 #2
I looked at him then, and the ache in my throat nearly closed around the words.
“At the top, my number one was that I could be with Mom.”
His expression changed so fast I almost looked away.
“And the rest?” he asked, even though I could hear what it cost him.
“Every vile thing Luke Dempsey ever did to me.” My fingers curled into the blanket. “But at the bottom, I wrote something so simple. I didn’t even think it was deep when I wrote it. I just wrote, ‘a thousand no’s ignored.’”
Cade stopped breathing.
I knew because I was close enough to feel it.
“And in that instant, when I read it on my pros for dying list, I recalled every single no I screamed. Every no I begged. Every no I cried before every intrusion. Every no ripped from my soul that he ignored. My whole world just crashed down on me, and there wasn’t another fucking lie I could tell myself that would ever convince me Luke Dempsey was a man I couldn’t live without.
There were no lies left to tell if they were going to cost me my life. ”
The room went quiet around us, and for once, I didn’t try to fill it with a joke.
“I was going to trash my Nevers,” I whispered. “Burn my Never book. Burn the whole thing to ashes. I thought maybe if I destroyed all of it, I could destroy the girl who had made it. The girl who kept collecting proof that she needed her mom and had to keep surviving without her.”
My eyes drifted toward the lamp beside my Nevers, even though it wasn’t the same one from back then.
“And then a fucking dagger moth flew over my lamp.”
Cade looked at me in this confused but trying-to-follow way, and I let out a tiny, broken laugh because even now, after everything, that part still sounded ridiculous.
“I know. Very cinematic. Very emotionally unstable Lifetime movie of me. But it landed on my lampshade like it was trying to decide whether my lamp was worth burning its little moth feet on. I just sat there staring at it. It was beautiful, Cade. Its wings looked like wood, but softer somehow, all these strange little patterns that made it look fragile and ancient and completely unbothered by the fact that I was sitting there wondering if a world with Luke Dempsey in it was worth staying alive for.”
His thumb moved over mine.
“I watched this moth struggle to decide if it wanted to land and chill or keep throwing itself around the room like a tiny winged lunatic. After about the thirtieth time it flew itself recklessly at the bulb, I was enthralled. I was watching this little badass fight for the light and felt more peace than I had since I was fourteen.”
I looked down at the marble still resting in his hand.
“Those two dagger moths saved my life. One of them was trapped in my last Never with no way out. Beautiful and perfect and frozen forever inside glass. Safe, I guess. Untouchable. But dead.” My voice shook as I looked back at him.
“And the other one was no bigger than the marble, full of life, reckless and far too energized, with nerves of steel, fighting its ass off for a little bit of light.”
Cade’s eyes stayed locked on mine.
“I realized I had a choice,” I whispered. “I could be the moth in the marble, and my dad only got seventeen years of memories with me, or I could be the idiot on the lampshade burning its ass for warmth.”
A faint, shattered sound left him, almost a laugh and almost something else entirely.
“So, I kept the marble,” I said, tears slipping down my face again.
“Not because it reminds me I almost died. Because it reminds me I didn’t.
It reminds me that every hard day after that is survivable.
Glass cage or light. Frozen or fighting.
And I have chosen the light every day since, even when it burned.
Even when it hurt. Even when I wanted my mom so badly I thought it would split me in half. ”
I reached for the marble in his hand and closed his fingers around it.
“That’s why I carry my last Never everywhere I go.” My voice broke completely then, but I kept going because he needed to understand this part. Maybe more than any other part. “It reminds me to keep burning my ass for the warmth.”
I looked at Cade, sitting there with my last Never in his palm, staring down at the tiny dagger moth trapped inside like it was sacred to him too.
His face changed, and I could see him fighting it in real time.
His jaw locked. His throat moved as he tried to force the emotion back down, but his eyes were already shining.
He looked away before the tears could fall, leaning forward to hide them from me.
“Fuck,” he whispered, scrubbing both hands over his face. “Fuck.”
My chest squeezed as I watched him fight it. I stood to give him a second because I knew pride was important to him, but as soon as I stepped in front of him, he reached for me.
I climbed onto his lap without hesitation, straddling his hips as his arms wrapped around me so tightly, I felt every uneven breath punch through him.
He didn’t say anything, and I understood what it cost him to let me see this.
He held me with one hand buried in my hair and the other locked around my back, his mouth pressed to the side of my head while he worked through whatever he was fighting.