Chapter 43 #2
He was the guy whose fingers slid into mine without thinking. The way he watched my mouth when I talked too fast. The way he said “Pip” like it meant home. The way he looked at me from the ice like the entire arena disappeared if I smiled at him.
At some point, I stood.
Aura’s hand tightened around mine immediately. “B?”
“I need…” I didn’t know what I needed.
Air.
A miracle.
A world where this wasn’t happening.
“I need a second.”
Charm rose too. “I’ll come.”
I shook my head.
She looked like that hurt, but Aura touched her arm gently. My dad started to move, but I pressed my hand to his before he could stand.
“I’m not leaving,” I whispered.
Dad’s face folded. “I know.”
“I just need to talk to God and ask Him to help me…” My voice broke as I looked at my dad.
“To breathe,” he said.
I nodded even though breathing was the exact thing I couldn’t do.
The chapel was down the hall, tucked behind a corner like the hospital had hidden hope somewhere between vending machines and elevators.
It was small. Warm. Too quiet after the ICU room. Wooden pews. A simple cross on the wall. A table with tissues, prayer cards, and a little battery candle flickering like a tiny stubborn heartbeat.
I walked to the front and sat in the first pew because my legs didn’t trust me to go farther. For a long moment, I didn’t pray. I stared at the cross and cried.
Softly.
Endlessly.
Like my body had become something leaking grief from every seam.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered.
My voice sounded tiny in the chapel. I hated that. I hated sounding small. I had spent so long making myself loud enough to survive that small felt like surrender.
“I know I’m supposed to be strong,” I said, wiping at my face with both hands even though more tears came immediately.
“I know that’s like, the whole thing, right?
Survive it. Keep going. Make jokes. Don’t break where people can see it because then they get scared and then you have to comfort them too. ”
My breath shook.
“But I can’t do this one.”
The words cracked open, and once they were out, I couldn’t stop them.
“I can’t. I can’t add him to the Book of Nevers.
I can’t write Cade’s name in there. I can’t have a Never for him.
I can’t have never kiss him after a game again.
Never hear him call me Pip. Never steal his coffee.
Never fight with him about him being emotionally constipated with cheekbones.
Never wake up with him. Never let him love me out loud because I was scared and stupid and thought we had more time. ”
My chest hurt so badly I pressed one hand against it.
“I have been strong for so long,” I whispered.
“I have been so strong. I buried my mom. I survived Luke. I kept breathing when I didn’t want to.
I smiled through things I should’ve screamed through.
I kept everyone else from falling apart because if they knew how bad it was, they would’ve broken too. ”
The candle flickered, and I looked at it until my vision blurred.
“So, I’m asking You for one thing. Please.” My voice broke completely. “Please don’t make me survive this too.”
The chapel door opened softly behind me.
I froze.
Not because I was scared, but because grief had made me too raw to be witnessed. I wiped at my cheeks quickly and turned, expecting Aura or Dad or Knox.
But two strangers stood just inside the doorway.
No.
Not strangers.
I knew who they were because Cade’s face existed in both of them in pieces.
Harrison Mercer stood tall and severe in an expensive dark coat, silver threading through his hair, his expression controlled so tightly it looked carved there.
Beside him, Elenore Mercer looked nothing like the cold woman I had imagined from Cade’s stories.
She was pale and trembling, one hand pressed against her mouth while tears slid silently down her face.
Knox stood behind them. His eyes found mine first. “Bug.”
I stood too fast, and my knees nearly buckled. Harrison moved like he might catch me, then stopped himself, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed.
That one tiny hesitation wrecked me.
Elenore looked at the MERCER across my chest, then at my face, and whatever composure she had left shattered.
“You’re Bliss,” she said.
I nodded because my voice wasn’t working.
She crossed the small chapel before I could decide what to do and wrapped both arms around me. For one stunned second, I went completely still. Then I hugged Cade’s mother back while she cried into my hair.
It should have been awkward. It should have been strange. I should have thought about the fact that Cade had described his parents as distant and polished and cold enough to turn entire rooms into museums.
But Elenore Mercer did not feel cold.
She felt like a mother whose son was in surgery and fighting for his life.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
That broke something in me all over again.
I clutched her harder. “He saved me.”
Her arms tightened around me.
“He saved me,” I said again, because I needed her to know.
Because if he didn’t wake up, if the worst thing in the world happened and I had to stand in front of this woman with her son’s life having been cut short for me, she needed to know he had not been alone in this story.
He had not been reckless for nothing. “Luke came for him because of me.”
“No,” Harrison said.
His voice was quiet, but it cut through the room with enough force that both of us looked at him.
His jaw was tight. His eyes were red. Not crying, not yet. But close enough that I suddenly understood Cade better in a way that hurt.
“No,” Harrison repeated. “That man came because of himself. Whatever happened tonight, Miss Bennett, it is not because of you.”
Miss Bennett.
The formality almost made me cry harder.
Elenore pulled back enough to touch my face with a shaking hand. “Cade told us about you.”
My heart stuttered. “He did?”
I knew he had spoken with his father for the lawyer and the security, but knowing Cade had mentioned me and knowing Cade had told them about me felt like different doors opening into the same room.
A broken laugh left her. “Not directly enough. He’s very much his father’s son that way.” She glanced back at Harrison, and the grief between them softened into something old and complicated before she looked at me again. “But he said enough.”
I swallowed.
Harrison stepped closer, his expression controlled but not unkind. “We had hoped to meet you under better circumstances.”
A laugh cracked out of me, awful and wet. “Yeah. Me too.”
His mouth moved like he wanted to say something else and didn’t know how. For a man who probably controlled boardrooms and money and entire skylines, he looked completely lost in a hospital chapel under fluorescent lights while his son fought for his life down the hall.
Knox cleared his throat gently. “We need to get back to the waiting room.”
Elenore kept one arm around me as we walked.
When we stepped back into the ICU family room, everyone rose.
Dad first, then Ryker, then the rest of my brothers because Bennett men could be furious, feral, and emotionally constipated in their own special ways, but they had manners beaten into their bones by a mother who believed there was nothing that excused rudeness.
My dad stepped forward. “Daniel Bennett.”
Harrison shook his hand. “Harrison Mercer.”
For one second, the two fathers looked at each other, and an entire conversation passed without words.
Your daughter.
My son.
This nightmare.
Please let them survive it.
“This is my wife, Elenore,” Harrison said.
Dad’s expression softened immediately. “Ma’am.”
Elenore tried to smile, but it collapsed halfway. “Cade loves your daughter.”
The room went silent as my knees almost gave out again.
Dad looked at me, then back at her. His eyes shone. “Yeah,” he said roughly. “I know.”
The tiny room had been cramped before. With Harrison and Elenore inside it, plus my family, the girls, and the team filtering around the doorway, it became impossible.
Too many bodies. Too much fear. Too many people standing because there weren’t enough chairs, too many phones buzzing, too many whispers building in the hall outside as word spread faster than anyone could control.
Harrison looked around once.
Just once.
Then something in him shifted. Not grief leaving, but grief organizing itself into power. He stepped out of the room without explanation. Elenore watched him go, then closed her eyes like she knew exactly what he was about to do.
Fifteen minutes later, he came back.
“We’re moving,” he said.
Knox looked up. “Moving where?”
“To a private family waiting area off one of the secured wings.” Harrison’s voice had changed. Not colder. Sharper. “It’s near the women’s and children’s wing. Fewer public entrances, controlled access, and security can keep reporters from wandering anywhere near us.”
Coach Little, who had been standing near the door with his phone in one hand and fury in every line of his face, looked like he might kiss the man. “Reporters already know a little of what happened.”
“They will know less by the time I’m done,” Harrison said.
No one argued because apparently nobody told wealthy people no when they were in motion. Especially not terrified wealthy people with connections, grief, and a son in surgery.
Hospital staff moved us through a back corridor within minutes.
Two security guards appeared near the elevators.
A nurse with kind eyes led the way, murmuring apologies like any of this was her fault.
The new space wasn’t fancy exactly, because hospitals were still hospitals, but it was bigger.
Quieter. A private lounge with softer chairs, a small adjoining consultation room, its own restroom, a coffee machine no one touched, and doors security could control.