Chapter 14
CADE
Steam curls form under the bathroom door from Lex’s shower.
I’m lying on top of the bed in a pair of gray sweatpants, the skin of my back hitting the cool duvet just watching the ceiling go blurry.
My heartrate syncs up with the trickle of the shower.
It’s the kind of quiet that feels heavy.
A perfect, drowsy loop I don’t want to break.
Knock. Knock.
I sigh. “Of course.”
I drag myself up, slowly crossing the room to open the door.
Haley. Red hair in a loose braid, wearing an oversized Trifecta sweatshirt and black leggings. She’s holding a pillow under one arm and a plush teal blanket tucked under the other.
“Knox thought of another angle and went back downstairs,” she says, her words breaking on a wide yawn. “Can I crash here again?”
I step aside and open the door wider. “Yeah, Hales. Come on in.”
She pads in barefoot and climbs onto the bed, fluffing her pillow and wrapping herself up in the blanket.
I plop down on the edge and rub the back of my neck.
“You okay?” she asks gently, her voice barely audible over the roar of the shower.
I shake my head. “Not really.”
She waits silently and doesn’t push for an explanation.
“I could barely do it,” I whisper. “The sketch. Every time I put down a line, I heard her scream. Heard him—” I cut myself off and try to breathe through it. “It was like my brain couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to draw or throw up. I almost collapsed, Hales. More than once.”
She reaches out from under the blanket and rests her hand over mine, squeezing delicately.
“I got sick after. Twice,” I admit, the sour taste of bile ghosting the back of my throat.
“I’m so sorry, Cade.” Haley swipes at her cheeks, her movements jerky. She lets out a long, shuddering breath. “If this was just the first trial, then what the hell is the rest of it going to be like?”
“Hey,” I blurt out, the muscles in my chest constricting. My stomach coils into a million knots and sends a cold, greasy sensation that tells me I’m about to be sick all over again if we keep down this road.
“Can we just not think about that right now? Talk about something else?”
She nods, her eyes red-rimmed. “Yeah, okay.”
“How’s your Gramps?” I ask, pivoting the conversation as fast as I possibly can.
Her hand flinches in mine, fingers going rigid.
“Haley?”
“He’s fine,” she whispers, but she’s always been a terrible liar. I can feel her sudden, frantic pulse against my thumb.
“Hales.” I squeeze her hand. “Talk to me.”
“It’s okay,” she says, trying to shake it off. “You’ve got enough going on with Bella and the—”
“Just tell me,” I cut in, tipping her chin up to me.
Her eyes meet mine and she nods. “He’s starting to forget me, Cade,” she whispers. “Knox and I went and saw him the other day and he…” A single tear tracks down her cheek. “He looked right through me.”
“I’m so sorry. What’d the doctors say?”
“That this is normal for Alzheimer’s,” she huffs. “But nothing about this is normal. I hate it so much. Gramps practically raised me and I always thought that—” She cuts herself off, clamping her jaw tight.
“Hales?”
“I always thought that one day I’d get to dance with Gramps at my wedding.” She sniffles, another tear falling. “But I guess that’ll never happen.”
“How long did they say?”
“They can’t be certain. But they think less than a few months.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, wishing that I could find better words.
“Ugh!” she sighs, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Now I need a change of subject.”
“I got you,” I say, forcing a small, weary chuckle. I shift to lie back on the mattress beside her, arm tucked behind my head.
“How was practice?”
She groans. “Awkward as fuck.”
I give her a side glance. “How?”
“Closed session at Ashmoor. Think Javi’s Refinement Week with a lot more tears,” she explains.
“That bad?”
She nods. “And on top of it all, Rez kept pacing in front of the mirrors like a damn wolf.”
“No he didn’t.”
“He did. Totally freaked the freshmen out. Oh! Get this,” she gasps, laughing as she slaps me in the chest. “Rico and Javi wouldn’t stop swooning over Mac.”
“Mac?”
“Cormac,” she clarifies, shooting me a pointed look. “O’Malley?”
“Rico and Javi were swooning over O’Malley?” I chuckle.
“Oh hell yeah.” She grins, her sage-green eyes losing their red-rims. “I don’t know if it’s Mac’s red hair or his whole brooding fighter vibes, but they’re obsessed. Rico told Mac he was giving him ginger-death-daddy with a grudge.”
I laugh harder, the tension in my chest finally easing a little. “What did O’Malley say?”
“Oh he ate it up! He’s actually really funny when you get to—”
“Hey babe,” Lex’s voice booms, cut with a low, cocky rumble that usually makes my blood heat up and my dick strain against my pants.
Steam curls behind him as he struts out of the bathroom completely and shamelessly buck-ass-naked.
Water clings to the hard ridges of his abs and traces the deep lines of his V before disappearing lower.
He has a towel slung over his head, scrubbing at his damp, black hair.
His face is obscured as he marches toward the bed.
“I know it’s nowhere near the right time for this with everything going on,” Lex continues, still oblivious behind the towel, “but I’ve got a boner the size of—”
“Lex!” I choke out, my face igniting with a heat that has nothing to do with the steam from the shower. “Towel!”
He yanks the towel down, snapping it over his crotch with a panicked rustle that barely covers his growing erection. His eyes go wide with genuine horror.
“Jesus Christ, Haley!” he barks, his ears turning a shade of red that probably match my own.
Haley’s eyes are like saucers. Her mouth hangs open as she stares at my very naked, very well-endowed boyfriend. For a second, the room is deadly silent. The only sound in here is the dripping water from Lex’s hair onto the floorboards.
Then, Haley lets out an appreciative whistle. “Damn, Lex! Bella always said you nearly split her in two, but that thing is…” She trails off, her eyes doing a slow and shamelessly brazen sweep of the towel Lex is currently white-knuckling against his hip. “Wow, babe!”
“What the hell are you doing here?!” Lex gripes, eyes darting between her, the towel, and then gaping at me like this is somehow my fault.
“Knox went back downstairs,” she says with a shrug. “Didn’t want to sleep alone.”
Lex groans, rolling his shoulders. He nearly rips the handle off the dresser drawer when he yanks it open to grab a pair of black athletic shorts. He steps into them without bothering to dry off the rest of the way.
“I’ll fix it,” he grits, shoving his phone into his pocket.
“What?” I ask, already bracing for whatever unhinged remark that’s about to come out of my boyfriend’s mouth.
Lex pulls a shirt over his head, still dripping from the shower. “I’ll go drag Knox’s ass back upstairs.” He shoves a finger at Haley who’s snuggling back under her blanket. “Stay awake, Hales. You’re going back to your room.”
Then he storms out barefoot, muttering something under his breath in Russian neither of us can catch.
Haley and I both crack up as the door slams shut behind him.
She grins. “So, where were we?”
“You were talking about O’Malley.”
“Oh yeah.” She nods. “Mac’s actually really funny when you get to know him. Had me and El in stitches by the end of rehearsal.”
I smile. “How is Ellie?”
“You mean how is Ellie? Or how is Ellie and Caleb?”
I blink. “Caleb?”
“Ugh! Briggs!” she shrieks. “You guys do know that the Black Books actually have first names, right?”
“I just…” I sigh. “I just don’t get it.”
“Look,” she says, the green hues in her eyes flickering in the lamplight. “I know you’re her big brother and you want to protect her. But Caleb’s good for her.”
“How can you know that?” I frown. “We just found out about their secret whatever-the-hell this is a few days ago.”
“I didn’t,” she corrects.
“What?”
“I’ve known since the masquerade.”
I sit up a little. “What do you mean?”
“When Caleb took us upstairs before Laing did his mind-meld shit or whatever he did to get Bella back, Ellie completely broke down. She fell into him sobbing and the way he held her.” Her voice softens.
“It wasn’t just comfort, Cade. He held her like she was his entire world.
Like he knew her. Way more than he should’ve. ”
I stare at her.
“I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“And you didn’t?”
“Well, I told Knox.”
“Of course you did,” I huff.
“What can I say?” She smirks. “Pillow talk’s sacred.”
“I wish she would’ve told me.”
“You can’t really blame her,” she says, twirling the end of her braid on her finger. “I mean between Luca and all the other drama this year?”
“Still,” I scold. “I’m her brother.”
“And you can be a little judgy,” she says, wrinkling her nose.
“I’m not judgy,” I mock, wrinkling my own nose right back at her.
“Oh please,” she snorts. “You moped around for over two months after you found out Bella’s past. Ellie remembered that, Cade. She was scared you’d freak out and made Caleb promise to keep it quiet.”
Her phone dings from the nightstand. She reaches over, picks it up, and laughs as she reads the message.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Lex,” she says, fingernails clicking on the glass as she types back. “He told me to pack my shit.”
She sets her phone back down.
“So what, Briggs was just fine with keeping it a secret from everyone?”
“Not even a little bit,” she answers. “He hated it. It nearly broke them up more than once.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Especially with everything we have to do as the Trifecta. The dancing. The flirting. The chairs.”
I nod.
“I mean, look at Lex,” she explains. “Love him to death, but the guy flies off the handle all the time and still gets to be front and center on the Trifecta boyfriend row. Caleb? He’s never been put in a chair.
Never even had a seat in the stands. He either had to watch her dance from the shadows like some sort of creepy stalker or watch it on a Row party live stream. ”
“Damn,” I say quietly.
“Yeah and he still stayed. Supported and loved her without ever being seen. It’s been rough on him.”
“But he stuck around. That’s good,” I admit.
“He almost didn’t,” she says, shaking her head. “After the Catacombs party and everything with DeShawn that night?”
“Oh shit, yeah. I forgot about that.”
She nods. “They were in a fight before about the whole secret thing. She got drunk, really drunk. Knox and I thought for sure they’d break up.”
“And he still didn’t leave?”
“He loves her, Cade,” she says, rubbing her eyes. “So much that he’s renting an apartment in the city just so he can be closer to her.”
I lean back against the pillows, exhaustion finally dragging me down with it. Haley shifts closer, tugging the blanket higher as she curls onto her side.
“I hate that she felt like she couldn’t tell me.”
She lifts her head, settles it against my chest, and wraps an arm lazily over me. “She loves you,” she murmurs, yawning as her eyelids begin to droop.
“Just…”
Another yawn.
“Just talk to her.”
“What do I even say?”
Silence.
“Hales?”
I glance down. Her red braid spills across my chest, eyes shut tight.
A few minutes pass before the door flies open. Lex and Knox step in, both silhouetted by the hallway light.
“Seriously, Cade,” Lex mutters, stopping short when he sees us. “You were supposed to keep her awake.”
“I tried.”
“Well, bestie,” Knox says, smacking Lex’s chest with the back of his hand. “Guess you’re bunking with me tonight.”
“What about me?” I whisper. “Can I come?”
“Nope,” Knox laughs. “You put her to sleep, you get to babysit.”
“Damn it,” Lex groans, adjusting the bulge in his pants as he heads out the door. “Fucking little cockblock.”