Chapter 6
Cade
By the fourth Sunday, I knew three things with absolute certainty. Daniel Bennett should not be allowed near an open flame without municipal supervision.
Bliss lied with her right hand in her pocket.
And Luke Dempsey smiled too much when people were watching.
The first thing had been easy to learn. Daniel had burned chicken so thoroughly my first Sunday at the Bennett house that even Ryker, who looked like the kind of man who would eat drywall if his father served it, had stared at the grill in silence for a full three seconds before saying, “Dad, that bird died twice.”
Daniel had pointed his tongs at him and called it “char.”
Bliss had whispered, “It’s okay. We survive on sides.”
She’d said it like a joke, but I had watched her fill her plate with potatoes, pasta salad, and one roll, then push the blackened chicken around like rearranging the evidence of a crime scene.
The second Sunday, I brought Chinese food to her apartment before dinner.
She’d opened the door, seen the bag in my hand, and narrowed her eyes. “Tell me you did not bring emergency food.”
“I brought strategic carbohydrates.”
“My dad will be offended.”
“Your dad served poultry ash last week, Pip. I’m protecting the project.”
“You’re protecting yourself.”
“Also true.”
She’d laughed, and I’d pretended the sound didn’t rearrange something behind my ribs.
By the third Sunday, the routine had become ridiculous enough to be dangerous.
I showed up early. Bliss pretended she was surprised.
We drank coffee, made potatoes, argued about whether Detroit sports loyalty counted as a character flaw, and ate whatever food I brought before going to her father’s house, where we both acted like we had not already had dinner like criminals.
By the fourth Sunday, I knew her Chinese order, her coffee order, the drawer where she kept foil, the fact that she hated when people chopped potatoes unevenly, and the exact look she gave me when I reached over her for the baking pans.
I also knew she checked her phone more before Sunday dinner than she did any other time.
That part wasn’t a joke.
That part lived under everything else.
It was in the shift of her shoulders when her dad texted.
In the way her mouth stayed bright while her eyes got quieter.
In the way her fingers kept finding the pocket of whatever she was wearing, curling around her marble hidden there like she needed proof of herself before walking into a house full of people who loved her.
The first time I noticed, I told myself it was none of my business. The second time, I stopped believing that.
Today, she opened the door before I knocked, like she’d been waiting on the other side.
“You’re early,” she said.
I held up the takeout bag. “You say that like you weren’t standing there counting my footsteps.”
“I was not counting your footsteps.”
“You opened the door before I knocked.”
“Because you stomp arrogantly in hallways.”
“That’s a new one.”
“You inspire creativity.”
She stepped back to let me in, and I immediately regretted the entire concept of self-control.
Bliss wore a cropped Tigers sweatshirt that slipped off one shoulder, denim shorts, and white socks with tiny red hearts on them.
Her blonde hair was down in loose waves, softer today than usual, and the sight of her standing barefoot in her apartment doorway, smelling like vanilla coffee and warm sugar, hit somewhere low and inconvenient.
I walked inside before I did something stupid, like stare.
“You brought tacos?” she asked, shutting the door behind me.
“Chinese last week. Tacos today. I’m diversifying.”
“You cannot keep feeding me before my dad’s dinner.”
“I’ve seen what your dad does to meat.”
“That’s my father.”
“That’s a grill crime scene.”
She pressed her lips together like she was trying not to smile. “You’re getting too comfortable.”
“Probably.”
“Careful, Cross Check.”
There it was again.
The name still hit me the same way it had the first time she said it.
Like she’d reached into my life, grabbed something sharp, and made it hers with a smile.
Everybody else called me Mercer like it meant something.
Like captain, money, hockey, expectation, trouble.
Bliss called me Cross Check like she had decided the worst thing about me was also funny enough to keep.
I liked it too much.
Dangerous, considering I was already deep enough in this thing to know her taco order and pretend that wasn’t insane.
She moved past me toward the kitchen, and I followed because apparently I had become the kind of man who carried takeout and potatoes through a girl’s apartment every Sunday like domesticity hadn’t once sounded like a punishment.
Her coffee table was already covered in project notes, her laptop, a half-dead highlighter, and the little black tote bag she always brought to her father’s. A marble sat beside it, catching sunlight in a bright wink of glass.
Not the moth one.
This one was green and gold, with something tiny trapped inside it. A pressed flower, maybe. Or a leaf.
I set the tacos on the counter. “New one?”
Bliss looked over her shoulder. “New what?”
I nodded toward the coffee table. “Never.”
She froze.
Not dramatically. Not enough for someone else to catch it. But I saw the tiny pause before her body remembered how to move, the way her right hand twitched once toward her pocket before she realized the marble wasn’t there.
Then she smiled. Too bright. “Look at you remembering my emotional vocabulary.”
“I remember things.”
“I’m learning that.”
She walked to the coffee table and picked up the marble, rolling it between her fingers. The sunlight caught in the glass, turning the trapped little flower inside it gold.
“It’s old. It fell off and I need to reglue it. This one is for prom,” she said.
The word landed quietly.
I leaned back against the kitchen counter, careful not to move too fast. I’d learned that with her too.
Bliss didn’t like being handled, and she didn’t like being cornered, but she noticed when people gave her room.
I could flirt with her until she blushed.
I could argue with her until she threatened me with a potato peeler.
But when something real came into her face, rushing her felt like a violation.
“Prom?” I asked.
She nodded, eyes still on the marble. “My mom missed mine.”
I said nothing.
Bliss took my silence as permission to keep going or maybe as enough safety not to stop.
“I mean, Aura and Charm’s moms went full military operation on us.
Hair, makeup, pictures, all of it. Charm’s mom cried every four minutes like we were being deployed instead of shoved into a limo with boys wearing rented tuxes and too much cologne.
” Her mouth curved faintly. “It was beautiful. It was also one of those days where I couldn’t stop thinking about how my mom would’ve been the worst in the best way. ”
“The worst how?”
“She would’ve cried. A lot. Embarrassingly.
She would’ve tried to help with my hair and made it worse.
She would’ve taken four thousand pictures and told us we were brave for going just the three of us and no dates.
” Her thumb moved over the glass. “So this is one of the nevers. Never got to help me get ready for prom.”
The apartment went quiet.
Not empty. Just full of something I did not have the right words for.
“How can you tell them apart?” I asked.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
“The nevers.”
She swallowed once. “I collect them in moments.”
“I think it’s cool you honor her like that.”
“I know it’s strange.” She looked back down, turning the marble again. “It sounds depressing when I explain it.”
“It doesn’t.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because you keep being wrong.”
That got me a real smile. Smaller than usual, but real.
“I guess it’s how I keep her with me,” she said. “All the things she won’t get to do, I try to give them somewhere to go. So, they don’t just sit in me and rot.”
My chest tightened.
There were people who talked about grief like it was a wound to close. Bliss talked about it like it was a room she kept decorated for someone who wasn’t coming home.
“Then bring it,” I said.
Her brows pulled together. “Where?”
“To dinner.”
Her expression changed, soft and startled in a way that got under my skin instantly.
“If it keeps her in the room,” I said, “bring it.”
For a second, Bliss just looked at me.
Then she glanced away, and the hand holding the marble curled close to her chest.
“You can’t just say things like that before tacos.”
“I’ll try to schedule better next time.”
“Please do. My emotional availability is very limited and mostly powered by salsa.”
I smiled because she needed me to. Because if I didn’t, she might cry and because if she cried, I had no idea what I would do with my hands besides reach for her, and I didn’t know if she would let me.
She set the marble on the side of all the others and turned toward the kitchen with theatrical briskness. “Okay. Potatoes. Tacos. Then my father’s house, where you will pretend to eat whatever he burns because you have manners.”
“I have survival instincts.”
“You have Manhattan cowardice.”
“I have taste buds I respect.”
She opened the cabinet and rose onto her toes for the baking pans, even though we both knew how this went now.
I let her try for two seconds then I moved behind her. Her body stilled before mine got close enough to touch.
That right there was why I was in trouble.
Not because she was beautiful, though she was.
Not because she made me laugh, though she did.
It was because I was starting to know the difference between her scared stillness and this stillness.
The one where her breath caught, but her shoulders didn’t tighten.
The one where she waited like she hated that she wanted to.
I reached over her and pulled down the pans, setting them on the counter beside her.
“There,” I said.