Chapter 19
C H A P T E R1 9
Cold Hard Truth
Ella
The Present
2:02 a.m.
I was reaching the end of my rope.
Cold and bleeding anguish from every orifice, I walked back into the school with my very own grim reaper trailing behind me. A constant stalking shadow that never, ever left me alone.
Dark energy swirled around Cade. He seemed perturbed by his thoughts. I didn’t ask him what was on his mind. Not when my own was a graveyard filled with ghouls feeding off memories that were best left forgotten.
I increased my pace, but my whole body protested, tired from tonight’s events and turbulent emotions.
I shouldn’t have come to Initiation Night, making history be damned. I was safer in the perimeters of my home, drinking wine at that stupid dinner party and playing the good girl high society daughter. Anything was better than being here.
All my scars were ripped open again. Cade left me unbalanced; my armour fully shattered. The only thing keeping me held together were the strings of my pride. The universe was having an enormous laugh playing the puppeteer to my puppet.
I felt like a queen on a chessboard forced to retreat from the opposing king’s pressure. Halfway through conquering my desires—my healing and freedom—yet now I receded back to square one. Scared and bone-weary.
The bronze key in my hand, akin to the one we found in the library, weighed me down. Keeping me hostage. Telling me to finish what I started and not run away like a coward. Regrets would eat me alive later and I wasn’t about to submit to anymore maybes and what-ifs .
To avoid looking at the presence behind me, I read the paper threaded through the key’s bow with the next dare again.
Blind as a bat, but the truth lies in front of you…
SW-3-208
South wing, third floor, room 208. I deciphered the coordinates and Cade followed me wordlessly like a lost puppy. Still desperate. Still obsessed. Still lovesick.
The moment in the woods replayed in my mind on an endless loop, his despair-fused voice resounding in the chamber of my heart like a lonely echo.
“No one can give you the feeling of euphoria like I did. And that’s what kills you. You search for me in all those men, don’t you, baby? You want to feel the way I used to make you feel—like a fucking goddess—when I worshipped the ground you walked on.”
Yes. I searched for him in every single guy I encountered since our breakup. I tried to find his dimples, his warm smirks, his serene blue eyes, his protective streak, his devotion . The tarred edges of my heart curled on themselves, birthing a big hole in my chest the longer I searched…to no avail.
“Why would I cheat on you when you were all I ever wanted?”
I asked myself that question a million times. If Cade loved me the way he claimed, why did I catch him in the act with a random girl, his mouth, jaw, and neck lavished with red-stained kisses?
I meant it when I said I gave him everything and he threw us into the flames.
Room 208 on the third floor was strategically hidden behind a row of portable lockers. I knew every nook and cranny of this school. But weirdly enough, I’d never seen this room. We rolled aside the portable lockers and entered an old student lounge of sorts, the door already unlocked.
“What are we looking for?” Cade’s voice lacked animation.
“‘ Blind as a bat, but the truth lies in front of you, ’” I whispered without looking at him. “That’s what the dare says. I think we’re looking for a bat, or something with an imagery of it.”
Or anything else, really. This particular one was very cryptic.
And truth be told, I was ready to get this night over with. I no longer felt optimistic about winning this competition.
The exchange from the woods had deflated us both.
Nail-biting silence ensued between Cade and me. He went over to one side of the room while I stayed planted in my corner, searching quietly. The room had three walls laden with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, one grey brick wall with various frames, three sofas with a pattern reminiscent of the ’70s surrounding a swanky coffee table, and work desks with frosted glass lamps. It was a pleasant, cozy room, harbouring the same musty smell that was prevalent in Balthazar Building.
Eleven minutes later, hopelessness spread in the chilly atmosphere. It was inching closer to 2:30 a.m., and there was a strong possibility that another team had finished before us. Last year, Darla and I completed the competition in under two hours.
Speaking of another team…Except for that Initiator who attacked me, I hadn’t seen anyone else. It was a rare occurrence not to see others throughout the competition.
Unease bloomed in my chest. Something felt cataclysmically wrong. Nothing about this Initiation Night had gone according to plan.
I peeked over my shoulder and spotted Cade crouching near the brick wall…removing bricks? My lungs inflated, ready to give him the speech of how we’re not supposed to destroy anything on campus, but immediately stopped short.
I marched towards him. “What are you doing?”
“My foot accidentally collided with one of these bricks. Then I realized they were protruding and loose. Got my suspicions going.”
Cade continued removing a series of bricks, his flashlight resting on the ground.
I squatted beside him and angled my torch to offer more light. Cade reached his hand into the wall’s crevice, brows furrowing in concentration.
I tried not to focus on the endearing way his wet hair was slowly drying with a hint of a wave, the way his tongue ran over the inside of his inked bottom lip, the way his eyes rose to meet mine and flared with wonderment at my nearness.
My God. It should be a sin to be this handsome.
It had been months since we were intimate. Would screwing him one final time get him out of my system and give me the closure I needed? Then again, wasn’t there a saying that closure was a myth? And fucking him one final time would only be a slap in the face of my self-respect.
Cade yanked out an object and smirked at me. “Well, would you look at that? Just like old times, huh, Ellie?”
It was a baseball bat with the final dare tapped along the barrel’s surface.
I blanched, convinced tonight was a long-awaited punishment for all my past sins.
The baseball bat was an eminent symbolism of our frenetic relationship. Cade and I both knew what it stated.
The will to continue this game suddenly left me. Why was I putting myself through this suffering? For a crown and title I had already won? It wasn’t worth it.
Feeling defeated, I whispered, “Why do you keep bringing up the past?”
“Because I can’t let go of it,” Cade returned ardently. “I can’t let go of you, Ella. You’re the other half of me. Don’t you get it? I’m stuck in the past because I can’t move on from you, mo chuisle .”
Mo chuisle.
It was beautiful, the way Cade caressed the term of endearment on his tongue. It had been so long, I almost wept at hearing it twice tonight.
If only his sweet nothings could fix everything broken between us.
Old memories resurfaced, reminding me of the physical pain I felt after catching Cade in the act. The helplessness echoing inside of me while I sat on the bathroom floor, tears streaming down my face as I accepted my loss.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” I felt numb as I stood up, almost robotically. “I can’t , Cade.”
Perhaps running away was the cowardly route. But when the next stop ahead was a dead end, turning around was the best solution.
My ex-boyfriend dropped the baseball bat and it rattled loudly against the floor. Mimicking me, he stood up and chuckled without humour. “This isn’t about the competition anymore, eh? This is personal.”
I placed a hand over my stomach, feeling another old wound rip open. “It was always personal.”
Cade ran a palm over his mouth and jaw, shaking his head like he was seeing something inside of me he wished he could unsee. “I don’t know why I bother with you, Ella. You’ve got so much pride. I’ve been trying for goddamn weeks to get through to you, yet you refuse to give me an inch. I’m at a crossroad, baby, and I really need you to see beyond the pain of our past and hear me out.”
Did he not understand? Hearing him rehash that night would transform me into the shell of a girl I was over the summer. I would never be that version of me again. I refused to.
“You have no right to talk about my pride, when you stripped me of mine. You’re the very reason for my humiliation.” Vehemently, I confessed, “You broke me, Cade.”
I watched as he jerked back like I shot him.
Cade’s face fell and he rolled his lips into his mouth, as though physically holding himself back from saying something he shouldn’t.
He said it anyway.
“You saw what you saw at the party and branded me a cheater.” Barely concealed fury plunged through his frame as he pinned me with harsh eyes. “There’s always two sides to a story, but you played judge, jury, and executioner before hearing mine.”
“The evidence was there.” A bitter chuckle escaped me. “What was there to say?”
“What was there to say? We were together for three years! You were my best friend before my girlfriend! You were supposed to listen to me! You were supposed to give me the chance to fucking talk! I’ve always been there for you,” he barked incredulously, voice cracking as he pointed an accusing finger at me. “Through thick and thin, I was your pillar. Any fucking thing you needed, I gave to you.” In his rising anger, he knocked a glass world globe off a work desk. It shattered into little pieces on the floor. Neither of us flinched in the aftermath. It was no worse than what already lay broken between Cade and me. “So why couldn’t you have given me the one thing I needed?”
To be heard.
That’s all he wanted.
I silenced him and he hated me for it.
“You’re out of your mind if you thought I’d give you the time of day after you cheated!” I shouted back. “Did you expect me to sit down, offer you tea and cookies, and listen to your explanation when I found you in bed with another girl, drunk and high as a kite? Be so fucking for real, you asshole! I don’t give second chances! Especially to two-timing scums!”
Innumerable individuals watched me get humiliated at that party. They watched me get betrayed in the worst way possible and then filmed it for hundreds to see, laughing at my expense like I was a toy for their amusement.
I could never forgive him for the sheer desolation I experienced in that moment. I wanted to die. I wanted the earth to swallow me whole so I could disappear forever.
Next thing I knew, Cade flung aside the work desk and it crashed against a shelf with a jangling noise, causing a few books to fall.
The air rippled with weeks’ worth of pent-up tension and the long-awaited confrontation. It was suffocating and I could taste its flavour on my palate like a foul substance I was forced to choke down.
“Fuck you, Ella!” Cade seethed and advanced towards me, a vein protruding in his neck. “You’re so sure of what you saw, huh? You think you have it all figured out, but did you stop to think, for one second, how out of character it would be for me to cheat on the love of my life? Did it ever cross your mind that betraying you is the last thing I’d ever want or do?”
Glass crunched under the weight of our steps as he backed me against the brick wall.
Cade talked like he wasn’t guilty and it didn’t settle well with my gut. Doubt crept in my mind, making me question small details from that night.
“It may have been the last thing you wanted, but you still did.” My hand reached up to clutch the necklace at the base of my throat…only to remember it wasn’t there anymore. I took it off after we broke up. Now I missed it like a vital organ. “You hurt me, Cade. You hurt me so much.”
“And you hurt me too, Ella.” One final step and he was back in my orbit where I could not evade him. “You were supposed to trust me…love me. Instead, you cussed me out, slammed the doors in my face, and all but pushed me out of your life like I was trash.”
Trust and love. I always thought those two words were synonymous.
While some part of me still loved Cade, I no longer trusted him.
And I could never be with someone I didn’t trust.
The faster he got that tidbit through his head, the better.
It was finally time to rip off the bandage and tell him the truth of why his betrayal burned so deep.
Cade claimed he was there for me through thick and thin, but there was one instance where he wasn’t—though he had no clue—and my irrational mind could not forgive him for it.
“I was in no condition to hear you out that night, Cade,” I said. “Or the days and weeks that followed.”
“Why?” He gritted his teeth.
“I came to Josh’s party because I had something important to share with you.”
“What?” Cade’s blue eyes darkened as he sensed the change in my tone. “Spit it out already, Ella.”
I snaked a hand between our bodies and pressed it to my stomach. “I was pregnant.”
There are certain moments in your life where you feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. You’re physically there, rooted in your spot, but your mind and spirit have drifted away and are watching the entire scene unfold from a different view.
That’s what it felt like right now.
The wind knocked out of his sails, Cade faltered back a step. “ No .”
“Yes,” I confirmed, feeling bleak, fatigued, and way past done. “I was five weeks pregnant.”
Cade was frozen, but the haunted quality veining over his features, twisting them into something utterly broken, spoke volumes. “ No . Goddammit, no , Ella.”
“I miscarried the night of the party.”
I’d seen Cade tormented once when he recounted the story of his past. But it was nothing compared to my revelation, which seemed to physically crush him. His posture sagged and his hands twitched, reaching out for me until they decided against it. “Ella, I’m so sorry…”
I smiled wryly, tears stinging my eyes. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“But it does.” He stepped up to me again, a light trembling taking over his body. Up close, his own eyes held a sheen of moisture. “I’m so sorry.” His hands cupped my face and I let him. “I’m so fucking sorry you went through that, Ellie. You didn’t deserve it.”
I didn’t realize how badly I needed to hear those words. My own self-destructive thoughts had chanted that I’d deserved it—that it was karma for all the shit I’d done.
In my book, there were only two things I wished for: a happy ending with my princepin and a family of our own. I always wanted to be a mother. Cade knew it too. Although nineteen was young, I’d already loved the little life growing inside of me and I was ready to protect and raise it. Despite knowing my parents would disapprove of a teenage pregnancy.
When I miscarried our baby, I was devastated.
“Who knows about this?” Cade urged.
“Only you,” I whispered. “I couldn’t tell anyone.”
“Fuck, Ella, you were completely alone.” His deep voice shook with pain. “You should have talked to me. I would have been there for you.”
I knew he would have, but he was the last person I wanted to see. “It’s all right. I found ways to cope.”
“Like what?”
My throat worked with a rough swallow and my fingers curled into the lapels of his leather jacket. “I knitted a onesie for our baby.”
Raw ache splattered over his expression. Cade released a strangled noise and pressed his forehead to mine, tucking my hair behind my ears and holding on to the strands like an anchor. “God, Ella. I’m so sorry, baby.
I sucked in a choppy inhale and to my mortification, a tear swept down my face. I didn’t cry often. It made me feel weak. But sometimes the strongest souls cried, not because they were weak, but because they’d been tough for too long, right?
Cade followed the trail with his lips, ending it by pressing a kiss to my right eyelid. My imperfectly, perfect eye. That singular gesture caused another tear. Until a small waterfall cascaded down the slopes of my cheeks.
My querido wrapped his arms around me and I melted into his embrace, needing his touch now more than ever. His uneven breaths matched mine as my tears soaked his collar.
For the first time in weeks, my heart calmed down in the presence of its companion, its erratic fluttering slowing until Cade’s and my rhythm beat in unison. A lulling symphony that could only be heard by us.
“When did you realize you were pregnant?” he murmured.
“A few hours before the party. I took a pregnancy test to confirm. My periods were late and I was suspicious.”
“Five weeks you said, right?”
I heard the question in his voice.
“Yes, we conceived in June…on prom night.”