Chapter 24
Cade
I stay on my knees for a few beats, my hands resting flat against Sadie’s thighs. The denim of her jeans is stiff beneath my calloused palms, but her skin through the fabric is warm, vibrating with the ragged, shallow rhythm of her breath.
The scent of us mixed with fire is a heaven I’ve never fucking known.
And I’m okay to die now.
Sadie’s fingers are still tangled loosely in the hair at the base of my skull, her nails lightly scratching my scalp.
She’s staring right past my shoulder, her blue eyes fixed on the empty space on the floorboards where her diamond ring had rolled into the dark.
Her ring finger looks pale, a clean, unblemished circle of skin where the metal had sat for years, guarding a cage that doesn’t exist anymore.
She’s mine. And I’ll make sure she’s free before I have to go.
Slowly, I lift my head. The movement makes the muscles in my right calf tighten, a low, dull throb reminding me of the rattlesnake venom still there, but the blinding fire of the bite is gone.
I take in her face. The overhead light is harsh, catching the yellowing edge of the bruise along her jawline and the dark, dry smudge of black soot smeared across her collarbone from the burning photograph.
She looks entirely wrecked, but she doesn’t look broken. The timid, submissive mask she had been wearing since I crawled into her draw is gone, stripped away by the flame we just lit in the center of her husband’s bed.
But still, this room reeks of all the bad she’s been through.
“We can’t stay in this room,” I say, my voice coming out rough, sounding foreign in the quiet of the house.
Sadie’s eyes blink, tracking down to meet mine.
She lets out a long, trembling exhale, her chest falling against my shoulder.
“Clayton’s going to see it,” she whispers, her lower lip twitching just enough to show the raw pink of the inner skin.
“He’s going to walk through that door, look at the bed, and he’s going to know. ”
“Let him,” I mumble, and I stand up, using her knees for leverage.
The room is an altar of domestic desecration. The smoke detector is dangling from the ceiling plaster by two naked copper wires, the silver wedding frame is shattered against the pine dresser, and the mattress smells like an active arson investigation.
There is no cleaning this up. There is no putting the mask back on and standing at the stove to pour his fucking coffee in the morning. We have crossed the line into No Man’s Land, and the bridges are already ash behind us.
But beneath the imminence of Clayton’s return, there’s a colder reality sitting in the back of my skull.
Ben Knight might come for Sadie, too.
I know how Ben operates better than anyone alive. He doesn’t just pack up his manila folders, climb into a black truck, and drive back to Lubbock because a local sheriff interrupted his conversation.
Ben is a predator of metrics and perimeters.
He’s out there right now, sitting in the dark of the draw or parked along the fence line where the cattle are huddled, watching the house, tracking the timeline, waiting for the pieces to fall into the exact configuration he needs to execute the drop.
I know he’s coming back.
I can feel the weight of his blue eyes through the drywall.
I look back down at Sadie. She’s still sitting on the edge of the mattress, her arms wrapped around herself, her shoulders shivering slightly from the freezing draft of the central air. She looks dirty. Not from the barn, but from the ghost of Clayton’s cologne and the black soot of her old life.
“Come on,” I say, reaching out and wrapping my fingers around her wrist.
She doesn’t ask where. She just stands, her bare feet stepping carefully around the glittering nest of broken glass on the floorboards, and lets me lead her out of the ruined master bedroom.
The hallway is dark, the bulbs flickering. We move in total quiet, our bodies brushing against the painted pine frames until we hit the bathroom door at the end of the hallway.
It’s the exact same toothpaste-colored rectangle where she dragged me three days ago. The space smells faintly of lye soap and damp towels. I reach past her shoulder, my forearm brushing the damp red-blonde hair at her neck, and turn the shower dial all the way to full hot.
The water shrieks through the old copper pipes, a high-pitched wail inside the drywall before the spray hits the porcelain tub with a heavy, deafening roar.
The steam rises instantly, a thick white cloud that rolls over the edge of the curtain and begins to erase the cracked floral wallpaper, turning the small mirror above the sink into an opaque sheet of gray.
I turn back to Sadie. She stands in the center of the tile, her hands loose at her sides, watching me with an unhurried patience that makes my heart rate drop to that steady forty beats per minute.
I wait for something to break, but there’s only the sound of the water and the sight of her standing in the fog.
“Let’s shower,” I tell her.
I reach out, my fingers finding the hem of her black shirt.
I lift it slow, my knuckles grazing the soft skin of her ribs, and pull the cotton over her head, tossing it onto the linoleum floor.
She helps me with my own shirt, her small hands brushing the jagged white line of the bullet scar on my side without a single ounce of disgust.
We strip off our clothes again, and I take her hand and step into the tub first, my bad leg flexing against the wet porcelain. I brace my left palm flat against the tile wall, taking the weight, and pull her in after me.
The hot water hits us both, it scalds my shoulders, rushing down the planes of my chest and belly, but I don’t look away from her face.
Sadie stands directly under the stream, her face tipped up into the spray, her eyes closed as the water washes the dirt and the sweat from her forehead.
Her red-blonde strands go dark instantly, plastering heavy and slick against her cheeks and neck.
I reach for the bar of soap on the small plastic ledge. I work it between my large palms until the lather is thick and white.
Then I put my hand on her shoulder.
She freezes for a fraction of a second, her muscles locking under my touch out of five years of conditioning, but then she lets out a long breath and leans her back straight into my chest. Her skin is smooth, slick with water, and the contrast between her soft frame and my heavy, scarred muscle feels like the only real thing left in the county.
I start with her neck. I run my soapy palm over the side where Clayton’s fingers had left those pale purple shadows however long ago, washing away the memory of his grip. I bring my hand down over her collarbone, scrubbing gently at the black smudge of the wedding photo ash.
I want it gone. I want every single trace of the men who broke her, the man who built her cage, and the town that watched her bleed erased from her skin.
The water runs gray down her shins, swirling against the rusted chrome drain at our bare feet before disappearing into the earth below the ranch.
Sadie doesn’t say a word. She just reaches back, her fingers wrapping around my left forearm to steady herself as the hot spray pounds her head.
I work the soap down the curve of her waist, over the soft flare of her hips, and down the length of her strong, thick thighs. My cock is fully hard now, thick and throbbing against the wet skin of her lower back with every shift of my weight, but there’s no urgency in the blood.
It isn’t the frantic, primal hunger of the barn floor or the desperate rebellion of the bedroom mattress. This is just fucking domestic or something.
I rinse my hands, then take her hair in both fists. I work the water through the thick strands, massaging her scalp until the soap runs clear down her back, exposing the clean, pale skin of her neck.
When I finally turn her around to face me, her eyes open. The blue irises are wide, clear, and completely level under the falling water. She looks at my face—at the stubble on my jaw, the crooked line of my nose, and the wild, wet mess of my blond hair.
She reaches out, her small, wet palm flattening over the center of my chest, directly over the thudding of my pulse.
“You’re quiet,” she whispers, her voice cutting clean through the roar of the shower.
“The smoke cleared,” I say, my jaw popping as I lean down into her space. “It’s just you. I don’t have to talk to cover the noise.”
She pulls her head forward, her lips meeting mine under the scalding stream. The kiss tastes of pure well-water and salt, our tongues sliding together with a certainty that tells me she isn’t running from the fire anymore. She’s holding the match, and she knows exactly who’s going to burn with her.
We stay under the spray until the hot water begins to die, the current turning lukewarm and then dropping to a thin, cold drizzle that makes us both shiver.
I step out of the tub first, my bad leg stiff but functional, and grab the rough gray towels from the rack. I dry her off with a slow, terrifying gentleness, dragging the cloth over her shoulders, her stomach, and the pale, empty ring finger on her left hand.
We get dressed in the dark of the bathroom, pulling on clean clothes—another pair of her loose gray sweatpants and a dark shirt for her, fresh denim for me. It’s a quiet ritual that makes the house feel almost ordinary, like we’re just two normal people waiting for the evening news to start.
Except we aren’t. Not even fucking close.
I open the bathroom door, and the smell of the charred quilt from down the hall hits my nostrils immediately, a sharp reminder of the ticking clock.
Sadie doesn’t head back to the bedroom. Instead, she walks into the dark living room and drops down onto the linoleum floorboards right beneath the front window, her back resting against the wall, her knees pulled tight against her chest.
I walk over and slide down beside her, my long legs stretching out across the floor, my bad foot propped against the base of the coat closet. The house is freezing, the A/C screaming through the vents, but the space between our shoulders is pure heat.
Flint pads out of the mudroom, his claws clicking soft against the floorboards. He looks at me, lets out a long, dog sigh, and drops his massive frame directly across Sadie’s bare feet, his big brown eyes tracking the window screens.
Outside, the storm is at its absolute worst. The lightning is continuous now, a violent strobe light that cuts through the old lace curtains and carves our shadows into huge, distorted negatives against the far wall.
It’s the closest thing to the calm before the fucking world ends.
Sadie rests her head against my shoulder, her hair still damp, cold against my neck. Her fingers reach out, sliding into my palm and locking tight around my knuckles, her grip unyielding.
“How long do you think we have?” she whispers.
I look at the window, at the long, empty stretch of the gravel driveway fading into the haze of the horizon.
I think about Clayton at the station, staring at the game camera photos of a Marine he thinks he’s going to capture for the glory of himself.
I think about Ben Knight, sitting in his truck with his silenced pistol and his manila folder, counting the seconds until the target breaks perimeter.
They are both coming. And the road only leads to this house.
“I don’t know how long we have,” I say, my voice steady, my fingers tightening around hers until the bones in our hands grind together. “But I’ll keep you safe, Sadie. I promise.”
But I don’t make the same promise for myself.