Chapter 25
Sadie
What have I done? What are we doing?
My head spins as my back presses hard against the drywall beneath the front window, my knees pulled up to my chest, my bare feet tucked beneath the comforting weight of Flint’s torso.
Beside me, Cade’s long legs stretch across the floor. His shoulder is a solid, burning anchor against mine, radiating a heat that is more comforting than it should be. But for the first time in five years, the guilt is gone.
The house doesn’t feel like a tomb anymore.
Cade’s breaths come out so even, and so opposite of my rapid inhales. We’re occupying the same pocket of space, both of us hyper-aware that the clock is running down, but he handles it with a calmness I don’t understand.
And before I can ask, beneath my feet, Flint goes rigid.
The hound’s chest tenses, his breathing stuttering into nothing before a low growl starts deep in his throat. The vibration travels through his fur, into the soles of my feet, and hits my spine with a shiver.
I feel the urge to breakdown and cry. I’m not ready for this.
Cade’s hand releases mine. The loss of his heat is a physical shock against my skin.
Before I can breathe out, his shadow is already moving, his frame rising from the floorboards with a fluid, terrifying silence that makes me forget his leg was ever ruined.
His fingers close around the rusted length of rebar he found in the mudroom, his jaw setting into a hard, professional line as he slips into the deep shadow of the kitchen archway, disappearing from sight entirely.
Through the old lace curtains, a sudden, blinding flash of yellow cuts across the living room wall. I recognize it. It’s the twin, high-intensity halogen beams of a county cruiser, slicing through the driving rain as the vehicle rounds the final turn of the gravel drive.
“It’s Clayton,” I say to the shadow of Cade, wherever he went.
“I know.”
The silence that follows has my heart in my throat, and the wet, heavy thud of a truck door slamming shut has me finally moving.
I stand up slow, my bare feet sticking slightly to the vinyl floor. I reach back, my fingers sliding into the back pocket of my sweatpants, my knuckles wrapping around the cold, cross-hatched iron handles of my fence pliers. I don’t know why I grabbed them on the way to the living room.
I don’t know how to use them for anything other than fixing fences.
The back mudroom door yanks open with an uncoordinated slam that makes the drywall in the hallway shudder.
“Sadie!” Clayton’s voice roars through the dark house, and I can already tell he’s running on a dangerously short fuse.
The soles of his leather duty boots thud against the floorboards as he storms into the kitchen, leaving wet, dragging tracks behind him.
“The goddamn repeaters are totally blacked out. The whole south side of the county is down. Where the fuck are you? Why is the house dark?”
I take a deep breath, watching as he moves through the house.
Why isn’t Cade moving? Doing something?
Clayton keeps going, tracking straight past the archway where Cade is hidden, breaking down the narrow corridor toward the master bedroom. He’s going to strip off his wet uniform shirt. He’s going to walk into our room.
And he’s going to see. He’s going to see it all.
“What the hell is that smell?” Clayton mutters, the disgust oozing from every word.
I can’t hide in the dark anymore. I follow him. I step into the threshold of the master bedroom right behind him, my heart redlining at a thousand beats a minute.
“Hey,” I say, just as he hits the light switch.
He doesn’t say anything back to me.
The harsh glare of the overhead light floods the space, making my eyes water after the dark.
Clayton stands in the center of the rug, his midnight-blue uniform shirt soaked through from the storm, his campaign hat dripping water onto the floorboards.
His neck is flushed a dark, angry purple above his collar, his eyes bloodshot and scanning the room with a frantic, volatile energy.
Then his gaze lands on the bed.
“What the…”
His eyes track the ripped-down smoke detector dangling by its naked copper wires, the jagged, black crater scorched straight through the center of the quilt, and the silver wedding frame smashed to nothing on the pine dresser.
Slowly, his head cants downward. His eyes find the floorboards right next to the nightstand, where his diamond wedding ring lies naked and glittering in the dust.
I can still smell the sex in the air. Can he smell it, too?
The transformation on his face takes less than a second. The cop persona evaporates, stripped away to reveal the raw, feral beast beneath the uniform. He turns on his heel, his jaw shaking with a toxic, homicidal fury as his eyes lock dead center on mine.
“Who the fuck was in my bed, Sadie?” Clayton screams, the sound tearing out of his throat like an animal, his chest heaving against his heavy ballistic vest. He steps into my space, looming over me.
“Look at this fucking room! Look at what you did! Who the fuck was in here with you? Tell me before I break your goddamn neck!”
Five days ago, I would have shrunk back.
I would have tucked my hands around my ribs, let the tears well up, and whispered the soft, submissive ‘Yes, sir’ that kept his fists from landing too hard on my face.
I would have accepted the guilt he built for me, pinning myself to the floorboards of this tomb because I believed I deserved the pain.
But now, I look him directly in his bloodshot eyes, my spine straight.
“Nobody was in your bed, Clayton,” I snap, unyielding. “Because it isn’t your bed anymore. And this isn’t your house.”
His lips twist into an ugly sneer, his hand dropping automatically toward his hip where his holster sits. “What did you just say to me?”
“I know what you did,” I say, the words entirely devoid of fear. “I know exactly what you did to me. And Lila.”
Clayton’s face goes instantly pallid, the angry purple flush draining out of his cheeks until his skin looks the color of old lard.
“I know I was right when you told me I couldn’t remember anything correctly,” I continue, stepping forward, driving him back a half-step into his own tracks.
“I know you were the one driving it. I know you ran me off the road because I told you I was taking her and leaving. I know you bashed my head into the steering wheel to make sure I wouldn’t remember, and then you set the car on fire with our daughter still trapped inside the backseat. ”
“Sadie, shut your fucking mouth—”
“You used the county budget to drop Joshua Rigley’s assault charges, so he’d keep his mouth shut about what he saw from the pasture.
You falsified my lab work! You made two separate reports so the judge would give me ten years of probation and an ankle monitor, trapping me on my father’s land so you have it all.
You killed her, Clayton! You murdered my daughter, and you made me carry the weight of it for five fucking years!
” My voice cracks, pure rage bubbling out of my chest. “You are the monster in this house. Not me.”
The shock on his face lasts for a heartbeat before his paranoia explodes and his eyes grow a shade darker.
“You crazy, ungrateful bitch!” Clayton roars, his face contorting into an unhinged mask as he lunges forward, his hand coming up in a wide arc to strike me down and silence the room forever.
Not this time.
Before his fist can connect with my jaw, my right-hand whips out of my back pocket. I swing the fence pliers with every single ounce of strength left in my body, driving the blunt steel nose straight into the center of his face.
The collision is visceral and sickeningly loud. A crack echoes through the room as the iron shatters the bridge of his nose.
Clayton lets out a strangled, breathless shriek, reeling backward three steps into the dresser.
His hands fly up to his face as a thick spray of dark red blood spurts through his fingers, splattering across the pristine white gloss of the wallpaper and dripping onto his uniform shirt.
He gasps for air, his eyes wide with a stunned, uncomprehending horror.
He cannot process that the broken, submissive housewife he’s controlled for half a decade just broke his fucking face.
“I’m going to kill you,” he chokes out through the blood, his voice wet and rattling as he straightens his spine, his hand dropping down to unhook the leather strap of his holster to draw his service weapon. “I’m going to bury you in the draw, Sadie, I swear to God—”
He never gets the gun out.
From the dark of the hallway corridor, my own monster steps into the light.
Cade executes the lunge with the precision of an elite weapon that has finally recovered its full weight. He doesn’t make a sound as he explodes out of the blind spot behind Clayton’s shoulder, his frame slamming full force into the side of my husband’s ribs.
The impact of their bodies colliding rattles the foundation beneath my bare feet.
The rebar connects with Clayton’s forearm with a thud, and the sheer momentum of Cade’s weight tears the Sheriff completely off his feet, sending both men crashing into the drywall with a force that shatters the trim and sends the bedroom into absolute chaos.
The floorboards shake as the thunder roars overhead, the lightbulbs flicker and die into blackness, and the room belongs entirely to the monsters.