Chapter 29 #3
“I’d call her,” I whispered. “I would call her and tell her about him. I’d tell her he’s great, and infuriating, and too hot for society’s safety, and that he sees me in a way that makes me want to run and stay at the same time.
” My voice trembled. “I’d tell her he’s important to me. That I think I’m falling for him.”
Charm made a tiny broken sound and pulled me into her arms so fast coffee almost went everywhere.
“Oh, baby,” she whispered into my hair.
Aura folded into us from the front, and for a second we were just a tangle of limbs and tears and perfume and college-girl grief on a couch that had seen more breakdowns than any piece of furniture should be legally required to witness.
When Charm finally pulled back, she cupped my face in both hands, thumbs brushing under my eyes with dramatic tenderness. “Then that’s a Never.”
My breath caught.
“No.”
“Yes,” Aura said immediately.
I looked at her. Her face was steady, even with tears in her eyes. “He is what your Nevers are supposed to be. Your way of sharing your life with your mom in your weird Bliss way, beautiful and tragic all at once.”
My chest squeezed so hard it hurt.
“The Nevers were never supposed to belong to Luke,” Charm said. “They started because you loved your mom and wanted to honor all the things you couldn’t share with her. He took up too much space in them, but he doesn’t get to keep them.”
Charm nodded, her own tears spilling now.
“You’re finally at a place where you can add good back in, B.
Cade deserves a Never because he’s one of the things you would tell her about.
One of the beautiful things. That was the whole point before everything got so ugly and you were adding Nevers because of pain. ”
I stared at them, and something inside me shifted, not healed or fixed, but turned toward the light.
A tiny reckless moth throwing itself at warmth because the alternative was staying frozen forever.
“I need to buy a Never,” I whispered.
Charm shot to her feet so fast she almost knocked over the coffee table. “Mall emergency.”
Aura wiped her face and stood too. “Trinkets and Things?”
I nodded, and the tears turned into the strangest laugh because for the first time all day, the fear in my chest was not bigger than the want. “Trinkets and Things.”
Charm clapped once. “Perfect. We’re getting you a Cade marble, then we’re getting you dressed like the main character of a country song where you call your mom and tell her about the boy.”
I laughed through the ache in my throat. “A Tennessee Orange moment?”
“Exactly,” Charm said. “Except pink, black, and emotionally dangerous.”
Aura’s mouth curved. “Very on brand.”
And somehow, an hour later, I was standing inside Trinkets and Things beneath warm pendant lights and hanging glass ornaments, staring down at a velvet tray of handblown marbles like my entire future had been narrowed to one impossible choice.
The shop smelled like cinnamon, old wood, and the kind of floral candle that made every mall boutique feel like somebody’s aunt had strong opinions about throw pillows.
Shelves crowded around us with crystals, tiny figurines, wind chimes, weird ceramic frogs, handmade jewelry, and enough trinkets to financially endanger Charm if Aura stopped supervising.
The front window reflected the three of us standing shoulder to shoulder, my eyes still a little swollen, Charm vibrating with purpose, Aura quiet and watchful beside me.
I saw it almost immediately.
A small crystalline blue marble sat near the back of the tray, half-hidden between a green swirl and a deep purple one flecked with gold.
It was not the biggest. Not the flashiest. Not even the weirdest, which usually mattered to me because I was the marble girl and I respected drama in all artistic mediums.
But the second the woman behind the counter placed it in my palm, I knew.
It was Cade.
Not literally, because that would be creepy and possibly grounds for an intervention, but the glass held the same impossible blue as his eyes when he looked at me in the dark and told me the truth whether I was ready for it or not.
Icy at first glance, almost sharp, but when I tilted it beneath the light, silver threaded through the center and turned the whole thing bright.
Cold until it wasn’t and beautiful either way.
“Oh,” Charm whispered.
Aura’s hand found my back. “That’s the one.”
I curled my fingers around it, and for something so small, it felt like one of the biggest things I had ever bought.
A good Never.
Cade Mercer was going in the good.
By the time we got back to the apartment, the three of us were moving like a glam squad with emotional stakes.
Charm cropped one of Cade’s Fury hoodies with terrifying confidence while Aura directed her in making sure it was just shy of too short, and I stood in the bathroom staring at the tiny blue marble on the counter beside my makeup bag, trying to wrap my head around the fact that I was about to hand Cade a piece of my grief and call it love-adjacent without spontaneously combusting.
Charm paired the cropped hoodie with my skinny jeans and white Nikes, then made me turn in a circle like she was presenting me to a panel of judges.
“Hot,” she said. “Approachable. Slightly unstable. Very college romance heroine finally accepting her fate.”
Aura nodded from the doorway. “Hair down.”
“My hair is always the deciding factor in major life choices.”
“It’s a good hair day,” Charm said seriously. “Use your resources.”
I laughed, and this time it came from somewhere bright.
By the time I was ready, I looked like myself, but happier.
Cade’s hoodie cut to hit at my waist, blonde hair loose over my shoulders, lashes dark, cheeks flushed, the blue marble tucked safely into the small zip pocket inside my purse like a secret with a heartbeat.
I stared at my reflection and barely recognized the girl looking back.
Not because she was different. Because she looked like the version of me I had been trying to crawl back to for years.
Sunny.
Scared, yes, but sunny anyway.
Charm stood behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder. “You’re going to tell him?”
I nodded.
“What exactly?”
I swallowed, and the nerves fluttered hard in my stomach, but they were good nerves. Normal nerves. The kind girls got before telling a boy he mattered, not the kind my body had learned from parking lots and locked doors and footsteps behind me.
“I’m going to tell him I bought a Never for him,” I said.
“And when he asks why, because he will, because he’s Cade and he never lets me get away with being vague, I’m going to tell him…
” My throat tightened, but I smiled through it.
“I’m going to tell him that if my mom were here, I would have called her about him.
Told her we are more than friends and maybe not the benefits part. ”
Aura’s eyes filled again, but she blinked fast and lifted her chin like she was personally offended by moisture. “Good.”
“Very eloquent, counselor.”
“I’m proud of you,” she said.
That almost got me again.
Charm wrapped her arms around my waist from behind. “We’re both proud of you. And after you tell him, please kiss him in a way that honors the emotional growth we contributed to this moment.”
Aura sighed. “Charm.”
“What? I said please.”
I laughed, turning to hug them both because I couldn’t not.
They held me tightly, my girls, my armor, my first home outside my family, and for once, I let myself believe that maybe the beautiful things were allowed to come back.
Maybe Luke had taken up enough space. Maybe I could start gluing good things into my life again without waiting for fear to approve it.
When I pulled back, Charm brushed one last piece of hair off my shoulder. “Go get your emotionally devastating hockey man.”
Aura handed me my keys. “Text us when you get there.”
“I will.”
“And when you talk to him.”
“I will.”
“And if he reacts in a way that makes you happy, send details.”
Charm lifted a finger. “Specific details.”
“Goodbye,” I said, walking backward toward the door.
Charm blew me a kiss. “We love you.”
Aura smiled. “Go be brave, B.”
Halfway to the door, my phone buzzed, and every muscle in my body locked instantly.
When I looked down, my soul went cold.
Luke.
The name glowed across my screen like a threat, with three missed calls already.
Luke: You fucked up
Cold swept violently through my stomach as another text appeared immediately.
Luke: You have ignored me for the last time
My hands started shaking.
Not tonight.
Please, not tonight.
Tonight was supposed to be different. Tonight I was finally going to choose myself and stop this madness.
I started to shove the phone face-down into my purse before either of them noticed the color draining from my face, but Aura noticed anyway because Aura noticed everything.
“You okay?” she asked immediately.
I forced a smile so fast my cheeks hurt. “Yeah. Just my crazy ex boarding the texting train.”
Charm’s expression dropped. “Bliss.”
I handed Aura the phone before I could talk myself out of it.
Her face went terrifyingly still as she read the messages. Then she screenshotted the thread and sent it to herself and Charm without asking permission, because sometimes best friends knew when permission was just fear wearing manners.
“No way is this continuing,” Aura said, voice calm in a way that made it sharper. “We’re giving anything he’s sent you to Knox. These alone show escalation.”
Charm stepped closer, eyes bright with fury. “And when you get home tonight, we’re sitting down and putting together everything. Messages. Screenshots. Dates. Every time he showed up somewhere he shouldn’t have.”
I nodded, my throat tight. “Okay. Yes. We have a plan, and he is not derailing it tonight. I’m coming clean about everything. Nothing he sends me is stopping this.”
Aura’s eyes held mine. “Good.”
“He’s fucked,” Charm said.
A shaky laugh slipped out of me. “That felt very legally sound.”
“Assault is assault in any language,” Charm said, chin lifting. “And once he knows he can’t touch you, scare you, or threaten you without consequences, he can crawl back under whatever rock raised him.”
I knew I had mountains of evidence in my Never book.
Screenshots of texts. Pictures of bruises.
Dates. Pages full of things I had written down because I needed somewhere to put the fear when my body couldn’t hold it anymore.
My Book of Nevers was years of abuse documented in a way I never intended to see the light of day because I never planned on anyone knowing the truth.
It was my trauma-dumping journal, my grief archive, my survival record, and somehow, without meaning to, I had turned it into evidence.
Aura handed my phone back to me. “Go to Cade.”
Charm moved behind me and opened the door. “Go get your man, then come home so we can bury this creep in paperwork and consequences.”
For the first time all night, Luke’s name on my screen did not send me backward.
It pushed me forward.
I tucked my phone into my purse beside Cade’s tiny blue marble, took one breath, and let my girls shove me out the door toward the good thing waiting for me.
By the time I climbed into my Jeep, I could barely breathe normally.
Luke knew something. I felt it in the growing distance between us, in the way his attention had sharpened lately because of Cade, and in the increasingly dangerous silence that followed whenever I avoided his calls too long.
Avoidance always brought his inner stalker out and usually ended with me sprinting into whatever building he was waiting outside of.
He noticed emotional shifts the way predators noticed weakness in prey, and lately I had stopped pretending.
I had let Cade shove it in his face.
Luke knew my feelings for Cade weren’t surface level, and that was why he was spiraling. He had seen the way I relaxed around him. Welcomed him. Saw the way fear didn’t have a chokehold on me when Cade stood beside me.
And Luke hated me for it.
Fear clawed deeper into my chest as I gripped the steering wheel, my thoughts spiraling hard enough to make my hands shake.
Maybe I should just go to Hockey House and wait there.
But I couldn’t.
If I delayed this, if I let fear reroute me one more time, I might lose the nerve. I was telling Cade everything, and then we were going to Knox. If I couldn’t look my brother in the face, I knew Cade would help me find the words.
The thought barely existed before anger rose up stronger beneath it.
No.
Damn it, no.
Every single time I chose fear over truth, Luke took another piece of me with him. Another year. Another memory. Another part of my soul sacrificed just to keep him calm enough not to spiral into something worse.
And tonight, for the first time in years, I was finally angry enough to fight that instead of just surviving it.
This was me choosing myself.
Choosing Cade.
And I was pretty certain Cade would choose me back.
The little blue marble sat tucked safely in my purse while I pulled out of the apartment lot and headed toward The Furnace, where Cade would be finishing practice. My hands trembled on the steering wheel, but my chest felt full in a way that had nothing to do with panic.
I kept imagining his face when I handed it to him. The way his brows would pull together first, suspicious of anything emotionally sincere coming from me. The way his mouth would soften when he understood. The way he would probably say something dry to keep us both from drowning in it.
I bought a Never for you, because if my mom were here, I’d tell her about you.
The thought made me smile so hard my cheeks hurt.
And for once, I let it.
I let myself be happy.
I let myself want.
I let myself drive toward the boy who had somehow become one of the good Nevers.