Chapter 33 #2
"Hungry? I made breakfast. Well, Cole and I made breakfast. Well, Cole made breakfast, and I created artistic chaos.
" A smile, a real smile, spread across her face, small but genuine.
"I can see that," she said, glancing at the flour dusting my shirt and the streak of what might have been pancake batter in my hair.
"It looks... impressive."
"That's one word for it," Logan murmured, but his hand had found Cade's, their fingers intertwining with a casual intimacy that made my heart ache with happiness.
"Come on," Cole said, gesturing toward the dining room. "Before it gets cold and Ryder's hard work goes to waste."
We settled around the table, passing plates and pouring coffee with a domestic ease that felt both foreign and deeply right.
Cade didn't eat much; her appetite was still recovering from her ordeal, but she tried a little of everything, making a point to comment on the pancakes I'd made, the least burned ones, carefully selected by Cole.
"These are actually good," she said, sounding genuinely surprised. "I didn't know you could cook."
"I can't," I admitted cheerfully. "This was a fluke. Or possibly Cole secretly made them when I wasn't looking."
"I wish I could take credit," Cole said, "but those are genuinely Ryder's work. Apparently, pancakes are the one thing he can't mess up." Logan laughed, the sound startling all of us. It had been so long since any of us had laughed freely.
"Maybe we should put you on permanent pancake duty," he suggested, nudging me with his elbow.
"Only if you want to replace the smoke detectors weekly," Cole countered.
The banter continued, light and easy, as if we were just four normal people having breakfast together, not three broken men trying to help an even more broken woman find her way back from hell.
But maybe that was what healing looked like: moments of normalcy amidst the trauma, small steps toward a future that wasn't defined by pain.
After breakfast, we migrated to the living room, settling onto the large sectional sofa with Cade nestled between Logan and me, Cole sprawled in the adjacent armchair.
Logan found a movie on Netflix, something light and mindless, perfect for a lazy morning.
Cade curled into his side, her feet tucked under my thigh in a gesture of casual trust that made my throat tight with emotion.
I watched her more than the movie, cataloging the small signs of progress: the way she leaned into Logan's touch instead of flinching from it, the way she laughed softly at a joke in the film, the way her body had gradually relaxed over the course of the morning.
She wasn't fixed, none of us were, but she was healing, finding her way back to herself one small moment at a time.
Logan caught me watching and met my eyes over Cade's head.
There was gratitude in his gaze, and something deeper, a shared understanding of what Cade meant to both of us, to all three of us.
We had started this as a game, a manipulation, a conquest. But somewhere along the way, Cade had become the centre of our world, the one thing we all agreed was worth protecting at any cost. The morning drifted into afternoon, one movie blending into another.
Rosa appeared briefly, tutting at the state of the kitchen but softening when she saw Cade nestled between us, more relaxed than she'd been in weeks.
She disappeared back to the kitchen, promising to return with lunch later.
I must have dozed off at some point, lulled by the warmth of Cade beside me and the comforting background noise of the movie.
When I blinked awake, the light in the room had shifted, the afternoon sun casting long shadows across the floor.
Cade was asleep against Logan's chest, her face peaceful, free from the nightmares that so often plagued her.
Cole had moved to sit on the floor near the coffee table, scrolling through his phone with a focused expression that told me he was still working, still searching for any trace of Damien.
It was a perfect moment, a bubble of peace in the midst of all the chaos and pain.
I wanted to freeze time, to live in this moment forever, where Cade was safe and healing, where we were all together, where the world outside couldn't touch us.
Of course, that was when the banging started.
Three sharp, authoritative raps on the front door, so loud they seemed to shake the very foundation of the house.
Cade jerked awake with a gasp, her body instantly tense, her eyes wild with fear.
Logan's arm tightened around her protectively, and Cole was on his feet in an instant, moving toward the door.
"Who the fuck-" I began, but before I could finish, the sound of splintering wood cut me off.
They didn't wait for us to answer. The door crashed open with enough force to slam against the wall.
"What the hell is this?" Logan demanded, rising from the sofa with Cade still clutched to his side.
"This is Covenant House. You can't just-" The living room door burst open, cutting off his protest. Trivium enforcers, at least six of them, dressed in black tactical gear, their faces grim and purposeful.
They poured in, moving with practiced efficiency.
Before any of us could react, two of them had seized Cade, dragging her from Logan's arms with brutal force.
"No!" I shouted, lunging forward only to be intercepted by another enforcer, his arm like an iron bar across my chest. "Get your hands off her!"
Cade's scream tore through the air as they forced her to her knees in the centre of the room, her arms wrenched behind her back. The sound of it shredded my heart, catapulting me back to the night we'd found her, broken and terrified in that freezing cell.
"Stop it!" Cole's voice, usually so controlled, was raw with rage. "You're hurting her!" Logan was fighting against two enforcers, his face contorted with fury as they held him back.
"Who authorised this?" he demanded. "Where's Killingham?"
A new figure stepped into the room, a man I didn't recognise, dressed in the more formal attire of a Trivium high-ranking official rather than the tactical gear of the enforcers. He was older, with steel-grey hair and the kind of face that had never known softness.
"Cadence Turner," he said, his voice as cold and impersonal as a knife's edge. "By the authority vested in me by the Trivium Foundation, I am placing you under arrest for fraud against the Trivium, falsification of scholarship credentials, and violation of the Legacy Code."