Chapter 35 #2
“I have cracked ribs. I wince when I breathe, when I laugh, when Briggs talks too loudly, and when somebody mentions stairs, and I just want you to fuck me on them!” My voice rose on every word until I was fully shouting.
He stared at me with equal amounts of shock and need.
At least we were getting somewhere.
Briggs huffed a sigh and rolled his eyes, not even attempting to read the room. “My volume is a public health issue?”
“Out!” Cade barked.
The word cracked through the kitchen so hard even I froze as everyone else moved instantly.
Briggs abandoned his cereal like the house was on fire.
Rider grabbed him by the back of his hoodie and dragged him toward the hall.
Ryan pushed away from the fridge without arguing, but he gave Cade one long look on the way past. Easton stepped into the living room, holding out one hand toward Aura like he was asking, not ordering, and the fact that she actually took it said more about the tension in the room than anything else.
Charm hesitated, eyes on me.
“I’m fine,” I said, glaring at him.
Cade didn’t look away from me. “She’s fine.”
The rough edge in his voice sent heat straight through me.
Holy shit.
Aura paused near the living room entry. “Door stays open.”
“No,” Cade said, eyes locked on mine. “She wants my attention, she gets it.”
I looked at Aura and softened my voice, my eyes telling her to leave. “Aura.”
She held my stare for a second, reading everything I wasn’t saying because that was what she did. Then she nodded once and let Easton guide her out with Charm behind them.
A few seconds later, the kitchen belonged to us.
Just Cade standing across from me with his shoulders tense and his eyes dark, and me gripping the edge of the counter like I hadn’t spent four days imagining exactly what it would take to make him stop being so careful.
He stared at me. “What the hell was that?”
I laughed once. “Which part?”
“The part where you pick a fight with an entire kitchen because you’re too stubborn to admit you’re hurting.”
“I am hurting.” My voice cracked around the words, and I hated that.
Hated that the anger was already letting other things bleed through.
“I know I’m hurting. Everybody knows I’m hurting.
We have all established I’m injured. There are professionals outside this house with earpieces because I’m injured and Luke is psycho and apparently my life is now a true crime documentary with better lighting. ”
His jaw flexed.
“But that’s not all I am,” I said, the words coming faster now. “And everybody keeps looking at me like it is.”
Cade’s expression shifted. “Bliss.”
“No, don’t you dare use your reserved voice and call me Bliss with it.
” I shook my head, and the movement pulled at my neck enough to make me wince.
His body reacted, just a small step forward, but I threw a hand up.
“See? That. Exactly that. I make one wrong movement and you look like you’re about to wrap me in bubble wrap and install me in a climate-controlled room. ”
“You were beaten unconscious.”
“And I’m still me.”
The words flew out of me harder than I meant them to.
They hit him. I saw it.
Good.
I wanted them to.
“I’m still me, Cade.” My voice shook now, but I refused to stop.
“I’m still annoying. I’m still dramatic.
I still want coffee I shouldn’t have to file paperwork to obtain.
I still hate your emotionally manipulative cheekbones.
I still want to sit on counters because chairs are boring and spiritually oppressive, and I want that even more when you’re there taunting me. ”
His mouth barely twitched.
“And I still want you.”
The air changed instantly. That thing underneath all of it, where I went from being his obsession to his patient and not in the fun roleplay way.
Cade went very, very still.
My heart started hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.
“I know you’re busy,” I said, because now that I had opened the door, apparently my dignity had decided to sprint directly into traffic.
“I know the opener is Friday. I know you have two-a-days and press and film and team meetings and whatever weird hockey stuff you do where everyone smells like tape and the soap in the shower dispensers.”
Nothing.
He didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. He just watched me, and it made me reckless.
“But when you’re here, you’re so gentle.” I swallowed hard. “So careful. You kiss me like I’m somebody’s auntie you’re being forced to kiss on the cheek at Christmas.”
His eyes flashed.
I kept going because if I stopped, I was going to lose my nerve.
“You kiss my forehead. You hold me like I’m going to shatter. You help me with meds and pillows and water and stairs and everything else. And I know that should make me feel loved. It does. It does, Cade. But it also makes me feel like you don’t see me the same anymore.”
His expression hardened. I saw it happen.
I used the wrong words.
Maybe they were dangerous words.
But they were already out.
“Maybe hearing everything changed it,” I whispered. “Maybe seeing what he did, knowing what he did, maybe now when you look at me, you just see—”
“Stop.”
The word cracked through the kitchen.
I flinched, not because I was afraid of him, but because his voice had gone raw enough to scrape.
Regret flashed across his face for half a second, but the anger underneath it swallowed the softness whole.
“No,” he said, dragging both hands through his hair as he turned away from me like he physically couldn’t stand still. “No, you do not get to finish that sentence.”
“Then what am I supposed to think?”
He swung back toward me. “Not that.”
“You barely touch me!”
“You have cracked ribs!”
“I know!”
“You had a concussion!”
“I know that too!”
“Your throat—” His voice broke off, jaw locking so hard the words looked like they hurt. “Your fucking throat, Bliss.”
The way he said my name made my chest ache.
But I was too angry to stop. Too embarrassed and too needy. Too tired of being treated like every part of me had become untouchable.
“So that’s it?” I shot back. “He gets to mark me up and now suddenly I’m some sacred recovery project you can only handle with forehead kisses and medication alarms?”
His face went blank and then lethal so fast I knew I had hit something. Whether it was a good or bad thing, I didn’t know.
But I had hit it.
“You think I don’t fucking want you?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse and furious. His words went straight through me.
My breath caught.
Cade laughed once, but it wasn’t amused. It was sharp and ugly and full of four days of things he’d apparently been swallowing until they turned into poison.
“You have got to be kidding me right now.”
“Cade—”
“No.” He pointed at me, eyes blazing. “No, because I need you to hear me really carefully right now, Pip.”
My stomach flipped at the nickname, at the roughness in it, at the way he looked like he was two seconds from losing every inch of control he’d been clinging to.
“I haven’t slept right since that night,” he said, pacing once toward the island before turning back.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see you in that hospital bed. I see blood on your face. I see you looking at me like I was the only thing keeping you from falling apart, and I get to live with the fact that some part of me still thinks I gave him the excuse he wanted. I punched him. I drew the monster out and rubbed his face in it. I let you pretend we were just fucking around instead of demanding the truth from you sooner, and then the one time you were finally coming to me, he got to you first.”
My throat tightened.
“And every morning, I leave this house for practice and tell myself it’s because the season matters, because the team matters, because the opener is Friday and everyone expects me to be Cade fucking Mercer.
” His laugh came out bitter. “Captain. Cool, calm, collected. Steady under pressure. All that bullshit.”
I stared at him.
“But all I think about is you in my bed upstairs and whether Luke is stupid enough to come here while I’m gone.”
Emotion burned behind my eyes.
“And when I come back?” He stepped closer, voice dropping into something rougher, more dangerous.
“When I come back, you’re there wearing my clothes, sleeping in my sheets, looking at me with those eyes like you want me to remember you’re not just bruises and doctor’s orders, and I do remember. Every damn second, I remember.”
My fingers curled against the counter behind me.
“You think I don’t look at you?” he asked.
“I look at you constantly. I look at your mouth and remember exactly what it feels like under mine. I look at your legs in those tiny shorts you keep wearing around my room like you’re not trying to ruin me.
I look at you standing in my bathroom trusting me enough to let me shower you, and I have to keep my hands gentle while every part of me wants to put my mouth on every inch of you and remind you exactly who you belong to. ”
My thighs pressed together before I could stop them. His gaze dropped, and the heat in his eyes sharpened.
“Cade,” I whispered.
“No, you wanted honesty? Fine.” He moved closer again, close enough now that I had to tip my head back to hold his stare.
“The problem isn’t that I stopped wanting you.
The problem is I haven’t stopped wanting you for a single fucking second since last year.
It’s gotten worse. It’s gotten so much worse I can barely think straight when I’m in the same room with you. ”
My breath came shallow, and everything hurt, all while nothing hurt because I couldn’t tell anymore.