37. Chapter 37
Chapter thirty-seven
I thought ending the relationship with Marcus was bad—the worst emotional pain I’ve felt. I haven’t slept in two days. I can’t drink coffee to wake myself up. I tried to pour myself a cup the morning after I got home and ended up crying into it.
Turns out, Cade Deans breaking your heart is much more painful than when another guy does it.
I knew it would end like this. And yet, I did it, anyway. I let him set me aflame, and didn’t try to put the fire out when it got to be too much to handle. Silly me.
I knew better. I couldn’t resist burning myself. And it hurts, like everyone said it would.
“I’m happy to see you looking nowhere near dead this morning,” Mom says when I come into the kitchen. “Feeling better?”
“Gee,” I say, sitting at the kitchen island, “thanks.”
“Sorry.” She smiles apologetically. “I really am worried about you. You’ve been a zombie since you got home.”
“I’m fine, Mom.”
“You’re not, though. I know my daughters, Gigi. And you are never like this. You’ve never been like this .” She creates a circle with her hand to emphasize.
“It’s nothing.”
“You said no to ice cream yesterday.”
“Well.” I look away from Mom. “I wasn’t in the mood for it.”
“That has never happened,” my mom says. “Ever.”
“I know.”
“Oh!” she jumps, rushing to the kitchen table and retrieving an envelope. “This came for you, from your—From Belinda.”
“Belinda sent me mail?”
Mom waves a hand at me after handing over the tiny envelope. It looks just big enough for a thank you card. “I don’t know. Just open it.”
“Now?”
Mom looks guilty. “If you don’t want to do it in front of me, you don’t have to.”
Too late. I’m tearing it open. All I find inside, folded in half, is a check.
For twenty thousand dollars. And it’s made out to me.
“Oh!” Mom exclaims as she peers over my shoulder. “That’s—Oh.”
“I know.”
“What is it?” she asks. Then, “I mean, I know what it is, I just… Why?”
I wrack my brain. I surely didn’t make even close to this amount at the diner this summer. Belinda didn’t even do something this out of pocket when I graduated high school. That would have made more sense than this.
“Cade… The guy I was—Wasn’t dating. He—Gah. I can’t stop relating everything back to him. I sound crazy, don’t I?”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Mom asks. “The tattoo shop guy or this windfall you just came upon?”
“No,” I snap. “I don’t. I just…” I move my hair away from my tattoo, so Mom can see. “I got a tattoo for him, Mom.” My eyes are welling before I can stop them.
“Oh, sweetheart,” my mom says, and pulls me into an embrace as I break into sobs. “It’s okay.”
“I miss him,” I whimper. “I miss him so much.”
“I know, baby.”
“He—He was such an asshole.”
“But you loved him even though,” Mom realizes, pulling me in tighter. She starts stroking my hair. “I’ve been there. I’m so sorry.”
“He was so difficult.” I choke back more sobs. “He was so—”
“You don’t have to convince me, Gigi. I hate him already because he hurt my girl.”
My girl. Oh, no.
I’m sobbing again before I know it.
I have to get out of the house. Or at least have a reason to shower so I can force myself to do it.
And watching people fall in love via The Bachelor is not the best choice right now.
“Gigi?” I look away from the TV. Mollie stands in my doorway. “You okay?”
“Catching up on The Bachelor ,” I tell her. “I’m still appalled at that second rose ceremony. How insane.”
“I know you’re not doing well,” she says, coming into the room and shutting my door. “You can lie to me if you want. But I don’t like seeing my sister not act like my sister.” I sit up in bed, ready to protest. “And don’t get mad, but I totally told Mom about your tattoo the second you told me.”
I roll my eyes. “I regret it now. I kept telling myself I was doing it because I wanted it, because I wanted to do something daring and kind of unlike me.”
“You wanted to impress that guy with tattoos,” Mollie says.
“Yeah, I did. And look where I am now. Exactly where I was meant to be the whole summer, anyway. Just crying over a different man that can’t manage his feelings, so he crushes mine.”
“You need ice cream.”
My shoulders sink. “I don’t know if I can eat,” I confess.
Mollie looks at me with doubt. “I’m not giving you a choice.”
We get back home as the sun is setting. There’s a random car parked in the driveway.
“Probably a coworker of Dad’s,” Mollie says. “He’s been having work meetings in his home office all summer.”
I know that truck. But it can’t be. There’s no way Cade is here right now, all the way from South Carolina. There’s no way.
“It’s funny,” I say as we pull into the driveway, “because that guy from South Carolina? That smashed my heart into bits? He drove a truck like that, dark blue and everything. I’m losing it, obviously, because I thought it was him.”
Mollie smiles sympathetically, reaching over to squeeze my hand. “Heartbreak is a bitch, dear sister.”
“That it is,” I say as I get out of the car.
When I open the front door, I hear laughter from the living room. Specifically, my dad, his chuckle booming so loud it’s reverberating off the walls.
“Oh man, Cade,” he exclaims. “You’ve got some stories. Man.”
Cade. My dad just said Cade.
I’m losing my mind. My father didn’t just say—
“Gigi!” Mom says. “You didn’t mention he was funny and cute! It almost makes me not hate him.”
Oh, my god. No way.
Cade Deans is sitting on my living room couch next to my mom. Sharing jokes or something with my dad. He flashes a dimples-popping smile at me.
Son of a bitch.
My mind is racing, thoughts whirling around so fast I’m getting dizzy. I wordlessly sit down on the sofa next to my mom. Then I get antsy, stand up, and head outside, plopping down onto the front porch.
My head in my hands, shaky breaths spilling out. I hear the door open, then shut.
“I brought an ‘I’m sorry’ coffee,” Cade says as he sits next to me. “It’s from the gas station up the road, though. Best I could do.”
I don’t take the coffee as he tries to hand it over. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Apologizing,” he says as he sets the coffee at his side. “You’re the greatest woman I’ve ever met, and I treated you just like everyone else. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s the epitome of a dick move, because you aren’t like everyone else, Gigi. No way.”
“Did you come up with that?” I ask. “Epitome of a dick move?”
“EJ,” Cade admits with a humorless chuckle. “EJ did.”
“You are the king of mixed signals,” I tell him. “You know that? You spend all summer wanting to sleep together. And then you decide you don’t want me in your life at all just because I wanted to celebrate your—”
“I know,” Cade says, stopping me. “I know. I was, I am, the world’s biggest asshole.”
“And the fact that you can’t even come up with your own apology and have to use a quote from EJ about how much of a—”
“Asshole, I know.”
“And the worst of it is that I was falling—”
“You loved me,” Cade says. “I know. And I took advantage of that without even knowing it. I’m sorry, Gigi. I don’t know what I can say or do to make you believe me, if anything at all. But—” He stands, pulling at the hem of his T-shirt until it’s off his body entirely.
“What are you…” And then I see it. A heart, bright red, tattooed where his heart would sit under his skin. If he had one. “What is that?”
“You told me that first night at the bar that I should tattoo a heart where mine would be.” Cade slides his shirt back on and resumes his spot with me on the porch. “When I found out you left town the other day because of me, before I could apologize… It made me realize you actually took my heart with you when you left. I’ve had one the whole time. It’s just that you were the one who made me realize it was there.”
I shake my head. My thoughts are processing in slow-motion. I’m still registering that he’s here, now, actually standing in front of me saying the words I never thought I’d hear.
And he got a tattoo for me. Cade Deans, the man who refuses to feel anything, did that gesture for me.
“You got a tattoo for me,” I say with a chuckle. “Cade.”
“You did it first,” Cade challenges. “Princess.”
I roll my eyes.
“But I mean it,” Cade continues, taking my hands in his own. I look down at our intertwined fingers beside myself. “I will never make you feel bad about anything ever again. You can celebrate every birthday. We can have dinner every Tuesday to celebrate being together another week. I don’t—I don’t care about any of it, Gigi. I don’t care about the little love fests because… I only want them with you.”
I sigh. “That’s impossible, Cade.”
“It’s not!” he promises. I stare at him, blinking, confused. “I decided the other night that I’m not drinking anymore. I hated that I was so mean to you about my birthday. I will never talk to you that way again. I can promise that. I had my last beer, and I will never drink another.”
“I was going to tell you I loved you,” I say with a chuckle. I drop my hands from Cade’s and place my head in my hands, the weight of my words embarrassing me yet again. “At your birthday picnic. I was going to tell you how I felt and hope you realized over our time together that you felt the same way. That you loved me, too.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to say that,” Cade says softly, not meeting my eyes. “I didn’t realize I felt the same way yet.”
I furrow my brow at him.
Then he explains the past seventy-two hours. He says he quit working at the diner, but not before telling Belinda off and making sure she knew what a horrible person she was.
“You did that?” I say, skeptical.
Cade nods. “Sure did. Nobody talks about or to my girl that way.”
My girl. My heart flutters.
“Then what?” I ask as our knees knock together. I want to hear everything, know everything. I don’t want him to ever stop talking.
He tells me he had a heart-to-heart with Eddy over his last beer he’ll ever drink. “And then,” Cade says, “he told me something that I know you’ll like.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask. “What’s that?”
“He told me,” Cade clears his throat, gearing up his best gravelly Eddy voice, “Cade, kiddo. Life is short, and things go south real quick all the time. If you feel anything for that girl, you tell her. I promise she’ll want to hear it. If you don’t, you might regret it when you’re fifty and have ball cancer.”
I laugh. “I’ll have to thank him, then, huh?” Cade nods once, smiling at me, all dimples. “Who was his regret? And is it really in his balls, the cancer?”
Cade shakes his head, chuckling. “Lung. But he’ll keep telling people otherwise. That’s what he does. The thing is, Eddy doesn’t have any regrets. That’s what he told me—when he started feeling a certain way about my aunt, even though it scared him shitless, he told her. He didn’t deny it or try to pretend the feelings weren’t there. He just said it. They were married a few weeks later.”
“I’m not marrying you,” I tell Cade. “And definitely not within weeks of knowing you. By that logic, we should have been married a few weeks already.”
He laughs, his fingers tracing on the skin of my thighs. “Does that mean you forgive me?”
I swallow, a wave of nausea coming over me. “I don’t know what to do with these, Cade,” I whisper.
“With what?” he wonders.
“These feelings,” I say, louder now. “The way you make me feel the best anyone ever has, and the worst anyone ever has, all at once. What do I do with these feelings for you? Where do I put them?”
Cade’s brow furrows, his eyes darkening. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t want them,” I rasp, “so where do I put them?”
Cade swallows harshly, his thumbs brushing tears from my cheeks. “Can you look at me?” he asks. My eyes find his, warm and gentle. “I love you, Gigi,” Cade says. “I love you a whole hell of a lot, girl. And—and if you want me to put my feelings somewhere else, I’m choosing to hold on to ‘em. I’ll wait until you’re ready to love me back, and give those feelings back to you the second you are. I didn’t know what love even felt like until I realized I was in love with you.”
My heart clenches. “Cade.”
“You are everything to me. Somehow, in one summer, I discovered my life doesn’t mean anything without you. None of this does.”
“I am so in love with you.” I sniffle, my chest heavy. “But that doesn’t mean we can be together.”
“What are you talking about?” Cade says. “I came all this way, Gigi. We love each other. Of course we can.”
“What do we do when you go back to Texas?” I ask.
It’s like he never thought of this with the way his forehead creases. “Oh, shit.”
My stomach somersaults with anguish. “See? Even a hopeless romantic like me is able to consider the logistics.”
“And there’s no chance you’ll come back to South Carolina?” he asks, painfully optimistic.
I shake my head. “Everyone I love is right here.” When Cade feigns a pout, I shove him gently. “You’re right here for now, too. Asshole.”
“Speaking of,” Cade says, “I forgot to tell you.”
My brows knit. “Tell me what?”
“Belinda wrote me a check. When I quit. She wrote me a check and told me that she loved how ambitious I was, and was sorry to hear about the shop.”
My blood freezes at the mention of her name. “She did?”
Cade nods. “She did. But I ripped it up right in front of her and let the pieces fall on the floor as I walked out. She can’t even treat her own kid right, but she’s going to financially support a stranger? A stranger that she tried to groom? Lady’s nuts.”
“I think I have your check in my kitchen,” I tell him, realizing. “And it’s yours. If you still want it.”
Cade chuckles, taking my hands. “The only thing I want is you, Gigi. That’s it. Nothing else matters to me if you aren’t part of it.” I smile as he kisses my forehead. “So, let’s make the most of right now,” he says. “Can I at least go formally introduce myself to Mom and Dad?”
“You’ve clearly met them already,” I say as we stand. “I need to know what you talked about.”
“There wasn’t much talking once Mom brought out those baby pictures,” Cade tells me. “Can’t say that’s ever happened before.”
“She didn’t.” I feel like puking as I slip under Cade’s arm into the house. “Oh, god.”
“She’s smiling, Brady!” Mom says when she sees us. “They’re both smiling! ”
“How ‘bout that,” Dad says as he looks at us over his reading glasses. He sets down his book. “Glad to see everyone happy.”
“I think it’s time I introduce myself officially,” Cade says as he extends an arm out to my dad, hand open. He shakes my father’s hand, and then Cade Deans says something I never thought I would hear:
“I’m Cade, your daughter’s boyfriend.”
“Nice to meet you,” Dad says with a chuckle. “Am I supposed to pretend we didn’t talk before my daughters got home?”
“He just wanted me to hear him call himself my boyfriend,” I tell Dad. I wave a dismissive hand, which Cade captures tightly in his own, interlocking our fingers. “He’s an idiot,” I say, my eyes finding Cade’s as we smile to one another. “Feel free to ignore him.”
“I’d rather not ignore him,” my mom says. “I’m starting to like him.”
“You told me you hated him this morning,” I shoot back. “Pick a side.”
Next to me, Cade’s eyebrows fly into his hair.
“I hated you because she did,” Mom tells Cade. “And that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”
I smile up at Cade, bemused. “She’s got a point.”
“This is the part,” Cade whispers, bringing his forehead to meet mine, “where you’re supposed to love me despite my flaws, princess.”
“I do love you,” I say with a laugh. “But the accepting of compliments part? We’re going to work on that.”
I let Cade kiss me, right then and there, in front of my whole family.
“And I hate to crash the moment,” my mom cuts in, her voice high. “But, um, Cade, honey, do you have a place to stay while you’re, you know…” Mom waves her hands around to encapsulate the space, the moment. “Here?”
Cade pulls back from me, and I can’t fight the feeling of longing that courses through my system. He shakes his head. “I don’t have a plan, per se.” I roll my eyes. Cade. “But I can figure something out.”
“No way, mister,” my mom says, her voice coming down in octaves. “You’re staying here.”
“Seriously?” I say, because I really can’t believe it.
At the same time, Mollie says, “You never let Jason stay over.” And gives me a death glare. “Why does she get everything?”
“Mollie,” Mom hisses, “this is like The Bachelorette is happening in our living room. Don’t fuss about it.”
“But Cade,” my dad says, “let’s get something clear, son. You are not sleeping in my daughter’s bed.”
My entire face goes red. There’s probably steam flying from my ears. “Dad. Oh, my god.”
“Of course not, sir.” Cade flashes a charming smile at Dad, and his storm cloud eyes flick to me. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Then he winks.
I bite back a smile as my whole body heats. Asshole. The world’s biggest, most annoying man—
“Such a respectful young man,” Dad decides, and this time I don’t try to fight the eye roll.
“I saw that wink,” my mom says. I flush even redder. “Now you’re definitely confined to the couch, my daughter’s boyfriend.”
Cade bends down, his lips at my ear. “Would you believe me if I said I am really starting to like being called that?”
“Someone’s daughter’s boyfriend?” I challenge. “Kind of generic.”
“ Gigi Knox’s boyfriend,” Cade says, planting a kiss on my forehead. “I think that’s a nickname I never want to get rid of.”
THE END