Chapter 13
Cade
It’s gonna take everything I have to get up the hill.
“You really need to shower,” Sadie sighs, out of breath beside me. “Your clothes are gross now, too. I can wash them real quick.”
“Least I didn’t piss myself.” I glance over at her, her own body drenched in sweat from working on some stupid fucking gate all afternoon. I’ve somehow worked myself up to a standing position without her help.
“I’m going to burn these.” Sadie reaches for the pile of soiled clothes I came in. “I have some trash I need to burn anyway…”
Always trying to reason about everything.
It’s annoying. God forbid, she just do what she wants.
“Let’s go,” I bark at her, my calf screaming already.
She looks up at me, a flash of fear in her eyes as I loom above her. “Okay. Right. We have approximately five hours to get this done before Clayton comes home.” She rolls the soiled clothes up, tucks them under her arm, and then heads for the door.
I watch as she struggles with it, her movements jerky with nerves.
She’s scared, and I don’t think most of it is because of me.
But it should be. I’m a much bigger monster than Clayton.
“Come on,” she turns back to me, as the sunlight fills the barn and the dog bounces just outside. I straighten up, and then start to move.
Holy fuck. I grit through the movements, crossing the barn with a nasty limp.
Sadie bends over and shoves a rock at the bottom of the barn door, leaving it propped open. Then, without even looking at me, she crosses to a burn barrel near the fence and tosses the clothes in it.
I squint in the sun, breathing the fresh air. It feels good, and for a second, I consider just stealing a truck and taking off.
But then I take another step, and reality crushes that pipe dream.
I push through the pain the best I can. The caliche is loose and shifts under my good leg’s boot every time I put weight on it, so every step is a gamble.
And about the halfway mark, I miss.
“Fuck,” I mutter, my boot slipping, forcing me to bear the weight on my bad leg and bare foot. I start to go down.
“Cade!” Sadie’s eyes go wide, but then she’s there, tucked up under my arm and holding me up. “I’ve got you.”
The words feel foreign coming from her tone of voice.
“Left, right,” she says, and I don’t know if she’s talking to me or herself, but I follow the instructions anyway.
The scent of her wafts up to my nose. Her sweat, her detergent, and the one that I know is uniquely her. I swallow hard, wondering if she’s suffocating and repulsed by my own stench. New clothes can’t fucking mask a body that desperately needs a fucking shower.
And I feel a blast of shame about that.
“You’re gonna get there,” Sadie murmurs against me, breathless as she holds me up. “We can do this.”
I don’t say anything. I just keep my eyes on the yard, and I’m really fucking glad I do.
There’s a section of fence and then past that, the road. I can see a dust cloud, small and static, maybe a mile off. If it’s a neighbor, I have two minutes, max, before they’d crest the turn and see us.
Less if they’re hauling ass.
Sadie must see it, too. She pivots, swinging her body between me and the road, and drives us up the rest of the incline with a strength I’m damn near shocked by.
Her hands are locked around my ribs, not giving a shit about my comfort, and when we hit the porch steps, I’m able to use the railing to propel us both up.
“Hope that’s not your old man.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not. It’s one of the neighbors making their daily run to feed their cattle on one of their far pastures.”
“Right.” I eye her, as she finally releases me, the absence of her sending some weird feeling through my gut. I nod to the door. “Sure you wanna let me in there?”
She rips the screen door open and meets my gaze. “Sure you wanna come in?”
I can’t help it. I smile, and then limp inside.
The temperature drop is instant and brutal. The A/C’s set to the fucking Ice Age, and the sweat on my skin goes cold in half a second. My whole body seizes up, and I have to blink to keep my vision from tunneling.
“Keep moving,” Sadie presses, voice flat, and guides me forward, her hands on my lower back.
And I ignore the urge to lean back into her.
The inside of the house is cleaner than I expected, though I’m not sure what I did expect.
It’s not fancy—it’s rancher functional, with chipped tile and cheap linoleum—but every surface is wiped down, every edge squared up.
Counters bare, not a single dish in the rack.
There’s a weird kind of geometry to it, like whoever lives here has to keep things at right angles just to breathe.
On the stove, a dish towel is folded so precise it could pass a military inspection.
My own presence here feels wrong.
I’m six-four, heavy, and every inch of me is covered in a layer of dried mud, hay, and what’s left of the blood that didn’t wash out of the last shirt. I can smell myself even with the A/C blasting. The house absorbs me like a black hole.
Sadie steers us left, down a short hall, and we hit the bathroom door in a few steps.
“In here,” she guides me.
The bathroom is a rectangle, painted the color of cheap toothpaste. There’s a tub with a plastic liner and a single grimy window up near the ceiling, the kind that’s supposed to open but is painted shut.
Sadie reaches past me, flips the shower on full hot, and the water starts to shriek through the pipes. She edges past me, careful not to brush me in any way. “There’s soap in there. I added some antibacterial soap for your leg and… there.” She nervously points to where the bullet grazed me.
“Okay.” I use the counter, thinking I can do this. But as my heel hits the tile, the pain goes all the way to my head, my vision blurring.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
I drop down to the closed toilet lid, a pained groan erupting from me without my fucking consent.
“Cade?” Sadie’s voice is timid. So stupidly timid.
“Just go the fuck away,” I snap at her, unwanted moisture pooling behind my now-closed eyes.
But she doesn’t go the fuck away.
Instead, she gently approaches me with the pure ignorance of what she might trigger. “Let’s do this together.”
I want to laugh in her face. I want to make her feel so fucking stupid for thinking we’re some sort of team. But then I smell her.
And I want to drown in the strange, safe sensation it brings.
“Fine,” I mumble, and start working at the button on the jeans. My fingers are clumsy. It takes too long, and by the time I get the zipper down and start sliding the denim over my hips, Sadie is already in position, ready to pull them down.
Fuck, this is embarrassing.
But somehow, I still lift my hips and let her work them down. I smell so goddamn bad, I want to vomit.
“Now the shirt,” Sadie goes for the hem of my shirt, her chest right at my eye-level. I don’t care that she’s in a sweaty-ass T-shirt. It might even make it better. I don’t know.
But I have to focus on a dented spot in the wall to keep my cock at a half-hard state.
“Here we go.” She tugs it up and off me, and I lift my arms to make it easier for her.
Once it’s off, she tosses it to the floor.
“I’m going to go throw these in the washer real quick.
” She doesn’t look at my naked body as she spins and grabs my clothes, scurrying out of the room and leaving me alone.
What the hell has happened to me?
My head spins as I take in the shitty little bathroom of a woman I don’t really know, who’s married to a man who should be six feet under.
But then again, I should be, too.
My calf throbs, and I realize this is the most vulnerable I have ever fucking been since I was a kid. I hate it.
I’d be better off if I was dead.
I start to consider how hard that’d be to pull off, but then the door opens, and Sadie is back, her eyes finally sweeping over me. My neck crawls with heat, but before I can snap at her, she sighs.
“Do you think you can shower on your own?”
“Yeah,” I lie, and try to stand. My head almost cracks the wall, and Sadie rushes toward me, grabbing my shoulder to keep me from pitching forward.
She steadies me. “I’ll just shower with you.”
“What?” I explode, trying to pull away.
“To hold you up.” She pins her brows together, as she holds onto me. “Just like this.” She nods downward toward her T-shirt and jeans. “I’ll just change after.”
“That’s real fucking modest of you.” My voice comes out sharp and degrading. “What a good girl.”
Her eyes drop. “I hear you.” The tone is like a knife to my chest, the exact same she used with Fuck Face Clayton.
“Don’t say that to me,” I growl as a new kind of anger tears through me, and as I clench my fist, I lose my balance. I stumble, knocking us forward and pinning Sadie into the wall.
Her eyes blow wide, her body frozen against me. “I-I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I blink, suddenly feeling confused as I watch her lower lip tremble. She’s terrified of me. Absolutely fucking horrified.
And I can’t stand it. Why the fuck do I care? There’s no addictive power rush, like usual. Nothing screaming in my head.
I just feel… guilty?
My hands press against the wall, instantly giving her body relief from mine. “I didn’t mean to trip and hurt you. I’m sorry.” The apology feels foreign.
She doesn’t meet my eyes as pulls the shower curtain back, her breaths loud and rapid. “It’s okay. I’m not hurt. The water is kind of hot.”
“That’s okay.”
I move toward the tub, brace a hand on the wall, and try to swing my leg over. The height is wrong for me—or maybe I’m just that fucked—but I almost lose it on the wet porcelain. Sadie is right behind me, one hand at my ribs, her body pressed close again to keep me upright.
The water is instant relief as I finally step in. I lean in, both hands on the tile, and let it hit my back, then my head. The first blast of it sends chills straight down my spine, and then the sweat starts up again, under the new heat.
This is fucking heaven. My muscles start to ease, and the relief is greater than the pain in my calf.
Sadie grabs the lye soap off the shelf and works up a lather in her hands. Then she puts a palm flat on my back and starts to scrub. I breathe deep and even, closing my eyes and bracing against the tile.
Don’t look at her. Don’t look.
But I know she’s getting wet.
I know her blonde hair is turning dark, sticking to her face.
And my cock is growing at just the knowing.
She works the soap down my arms, across the shoulders, then slides her hand across the bullet wound that’s now fully scabbed over. I glance down at my abdomen, seeing her hand swipe across my skin.
Oh fuck. My cock starts to throb.
“I can’t wash myself,” I choke out, feeling so goddamn weak. “Just hold me up.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry,” I rasp, as her hands wrap around me again for support. I let myself lean into her, wishing it was her skin and not the soaked material of her clothes.
I make quick work with the soap, washing everything, including my hair and ass, as quickly as I can. Finally, when it’s time to rinse, I force myself to turn around and face her, using the shower wall for support.
And then I have to fucking look at her.
Sadie looks just like I knew she would, with her hair stuck to her face but fuck, I didn’t realize her T-shirt would be clinging to her like that. It’s heavy, pulling her shoulders down.
I don’t realize what I’m doing when I find the hem of it and pull it up. I don’t think she realizes it.
“Cade,” she breathes out.
“You’ll never get it off,” I nearly choke on the words, because they don’t make any fucking sense. I just want to see her.
“I’m—”
I force it over her head.
She gasps as I toss it out onto the bathroom floor, not even caring where the hell it lands. I can’t take my eyes from her. She’s just in a thin white sports bra, the nipples on her tits erect and poking through.
I drink it in, my mind going quiet. I trace the curve of her stomach, the softness of her skin. I want to fucking touch it.
But when I reach out, she steps back.
“I’m married.”
I swallow hard. “I know.”