Chapter 29 #2
I tried to explain it without sounding insane and failed before I started.
“Luke hurt me. He damaged me. He took things. But Cade matters in a way that would destroy me differently. If I let him all the way in and he leaves, or changes his mind, or decides I’m too much after all…
” My voice cracked, and I looked down before they could see too much.
“There’s no rebound from him. I can feel that already. ”
Charm’s eyes filled.
Aura slid off the arm of the couch and knelt in front of me like she had been waiting for my fear to finally say its real name.
“Luke controlled you and abused you,” Aura said, her voice quiet but brutally steady.
“And just because he dressed it up as love doesn’t mean it ever was.
You were fourteen, Bliss. Fourteen. You didn’t have the tools to understand what he was doing, and he made sure of that.
He was older, smarter, and fifty steps ahead of you because he knew exactly what he was doing.
He set it up to protect himself before you even understood there was something to protect yourself from. ”
My throat tightened, but she didn’t stop.
“You have beaten yourself blue over wanting him once. Over believing him. Over thinking he mattered. But you were a kid with a crush, and he was a predator who saw that and used it. That’s not love.
That’s not a relationship. That’s not some complicated tragic romance you need to keep punishing yourself for.
There is nothing he has done to you, not one second of it, that makes him redeemable. ”
“Aura,” I whispered.
“No.” Her eyes flashed. “You need to hear this. What you’re feeling with Cade is normal.
It’s exciting and scary and messy, but it’s honest. You deserve the butterflies, B.
You deserve the giddy, stupid, smiling-at-your-phone part.
You deserve to think a guy is hot without comparing him to the monster who taught you wanting someone was dangerous. ”
She squeezed my hands tighter.
“Luke is not the standard for men. He is not the shadow Cade has to keep outrunning. Luke is a predator, not a man. Cade is nothing like him, and deep down, you know that. You’re not scared because Cade feels wrong.
You’re scared because for once, you want someone enough to stand against Luke and live your life. ”
I pressed my lips together. “Is he worth the backlash from Luke, though?”
“Luke has needed a wake-up call for years,” Aura said. “And we have watched you live around his control long enough. We know he still scares you, Bliss. We have been waiting for you to finally say enough.”
Aura’s words hit something I had spent years keeping sealed shut.
Because she was right.
She was so right it made my chest ache.
Aura and Charm knew more than anyone else, but even they didn’t know all of it.
They knew Luke scared me. They knew I avoided certain parking lots, certain hallways, certain family events unless Ryker was there.
They knew my phone could light up with one name and ruin my whole night.
They knew enough to hate him, but not enough to understand he still found ways to punish me when I stepped too far out of the invisible lines he had drawn around my life.
I swallowed hard and reached for the collar of Cade’s hoodie.
“Bliss?” Charm asked, her voice changing instantly.
I pulled the fabric aside just enough to show them the bruise near my neck, the ugly blue-purple bloom Luke had left behind when he pinched me hard enough to remind me that he still thought my body was something he had rights to.
Charm went completely still, and Aura’s face changed in a way I had only seen a few times in my life.
Not shock exactly.
Something colder.
Something sharper.
“He still hurts me,” I whispered.
The apartment went quiet around us. The neon lips on the wall glowed pink over Charm’s pale face and Aura’s clenched jaw, and for one horrible second I wished I could take it back, shove the hoodie higher, laugh it off, make it smaller than it was.
But I was done doing that.
“Not always like this,” I said quickly, because the silence felt too big.
“Sometimes it’s little things. Pinching.
Grabbing too hard. Getting close enough to scare me when nobody’s looking.
Showing up where he knows I’ll be. Saying things that sound normal if someone else hears them, but I know what he means.
” My fingers trembled against the hoodie, but I kept the bruise visible because hiding it now felt like handing him one more piece of me.
“He’s still controlling me. He’s still punishing me.
He has videos and texts and pictures he threatens me with.
One wrong move and he can ruin my life. My family.
I play by his rules, and I am really good at making it look like nothing. ”
Charm’s eyes filled with tears. “B.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I know. I should have told you.”
“No.” Aura’s voice snapped hard enough to make me look at her. “Don’t do that. Not here.”
My throat tightened.
“You told us now,” she said, softer but no less fierce. “That’s what matters.”
I nodded, but tears slipped down my cheeks anyway.
“I told Cade last night. Not every detail. Not the whole horror-show director’s cut, because nobody needs that, including me. But I told him enough. I gave him the truth, I’m telling you guys the truth, and I refuse to put it back where it was.”
Charm reached for my hand, and I let her take it.
“I’m done letting Luke control me with fear,” I said, and the words shook so badly they almost fell apart before they made it out.
“I’m done letting him use threats and shame and all the things I was too scared to say out loud as a leash.
Cade and I are going to talk to my family later this week.
I’m going to tell Dad. I’m going to tell Knox enough that he can help me figure out what to do legally.
A restraining order, police report, whatever has to happen next. ”
Aura’s eyes shone, but her voice stayed steady. “Good.”
“It doesn’t feel good.”
“It won’t yet,” she said. “But it is.”
Charm squeezed my fingers with both hands. “And we’re coming with you if you want us there.”
I gave a watery laugh. “Obviously. I can’t trauma dump on the Bennett men without my emotional support glam squad.”
Charm sniffed, then smiled through her tears. “Finally. Respect for the brand.”
Aura’s mouth twitched, but her eyes stayed on the bruise. “B, he doesn’t get to keep doing this.”
“I know.” My voice cracked, but underneath it, something steadier held. “That’s the thing. I actually know now.”
For a second, neither of them said anything. They just sat there with me in the pink glow of our ridiculous apartment while Cade’s hoodie sat warm against my skin and Luke’s bruise darkened beneath my fingers.
Then Charm wiped under her eyes and lifted her chin like she had decided the entire universe was personally on notice.
“Okay,” she said. “Then we are adding good back into your life immediately.”
I blinked. “What?”
Aura looked from Charm to me, understanding landing in her face before I got there.
Charm pointed at the hoodie. “Cade is a good Never.”
My breath caught.
“No.”
“Yes,” Aura said quietly. “He is.”
Charm’s voice softened. “Luke doesn’t get to be the only reason you add marbles, baby. Those started because you loved your mom and wanted to honor all the things you couldn’t share with her. The good things count too. Cade counts.”
I stared at them, tears still wet on my face, the bruise still exposed, Cade’s hoodie still around me like a confession I hadn’t said out loud yet.
And for the first time in a long time, the thought of adding a marble didn’t feel like grief.
It felt like taking something back.
Aura rested her hands over mine. “Cade is not a safe choice because he can’t hurt you. Love is never safe like that. He’s safe because he doesn’t want to own you. He wants to be yours, and that is a significant difference.”
Her words hit me deep, so deep I had to close my eyes.
Charm was quiet for a moment before she asked, “If your mom was here, would you call her about him?”
My eyes opened and the apartment blurred as Aura’s hands tightened around mine.
Charm watched me carefully, like she knew she had just touched the nerve beneath every single joke I had made all day.
“If Cindy Bennett was sitting in this room right now,” Charm said softly, “would you be scared of Cade? Or would you be pacing around the kitchen telling her every weird, gorgeous, impossible thing about him while pretending you weren’t falling for him?”
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it. I tried to answer, but nothing came out.
Because I could see it.
I could see my mom at the kitchen table in our house, one hand wrapped around coffee, hair piled messy on her head, smiling that smile she got when she was trying not to laugh too early and ruin my dramatic delivery.
I could hear myself telling her Cade was bossy and impossible and looked at me like he had already decided I was a problem worth solving.
I could imagine her asking if he made me laugh.
If he made me feel safe. If he looked at me when I was talking or only when I was pretty.
If I trusted him with the parts of me I tried to hide.
“I wouldn’t be scared of him,” I whispered.
Charm’s face softened.
“I’d be scared of me,” I said, wiping at my cheek with the heel of my hand. “Of how much I want him. Of how fast it feels. Of the fact that he walked into my life like some emotionally repressed hockey vampire and started rearranging my organs. But I wouldn’t be scared of him.”
Aura’s eyes shone.