Chapter 25
Cade
I didn’t know how long I held her on that couch.
Time stopped working right after she closed my fingers around that marble and told me she carried her last Never everywhere she went so she could remember to keep burning her ass for the warmth.
That was Bliss in a nutshell. Ridiculous. Crude. Too bright for the dark thing she carried. And it gutted me worse than anything else she’d said.
She stayed tucked against me while the apartment settled around us, her face pressed into my neck, just letting me hold her because I needed it.
I should have said something. I didn’t. Couldn’t, maybe.
My brain was too loud, and it was a lot for anyone to process.
I kept replaying every piece of what she told me, and it kept rearranging itself into something worse.
Luke at the funeral. Luke in her room. Luke becoming the person she ran to when grief split her open.
Luke learning every weak place and pressing there until there was barely enough of her left to fight him.
Luke watching her family love him while he destroyed her behind closed doors.
I had left that barbecue thinking she had a violent ex.
Violent, I understood. Violent had rules, even when men pretended it didn’t. Violent could be handled. Violent stepped into the open eventually.
This wasn’t that.
Luke Dempsey wasn’t a temper problem with a haircut and a high school glory-days complex. He was patient. Strategic. Unstable in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck lift because all I had done tonight was piss him off, and I didn’t know yet what he would do with that.
Bliss shifted slightly against me, her fingers curling in the fabric near my ribs. “Your brain is doing that loud thing.”
My mouth twitched despite everything. “My brain has volume settings now?”
“Yours does. It’s currently at murder documentary with sponsored ads.”
I breathed out something that almost became a laugh and kissed the side of her head before I could think better of it. She went still for half a second, then softened again like she hadn’t expected it and didn’t know what to do with the fact that she liked it.
That almost finished me.
I stood with her in my arms before I could sit there any longer letting the marble burn a hole through my palm.
“Whoa.” Her arms tightened around my neck. “What’s happening?”
“We’re moving.”
“That is wildly vague for a man transporting cargo.”
“You’re the cargo.”
“I am precious cargo.”
“I know.”
She blinked at me, and something flickered across her face at the way I said it.
Too honest. Too fast.
I carried her down the short hallway toward her room while she watched me with those big, tired eyes that had seen too much tonight and still somehow managed to judge my technique.
“For the record,” she murmured, “this is giving caveman.”
“You love when I give caveman.”
“I tolerate caveman when caveman has emotionally disturbing arms.”
“Praise.”
“Don’t get hard over compliments right now. Read the room.”
“That’s not what I’m getting hard over.”
Her mouth parted, and there she was for half a second, alive in the middle of all that wreckage, cheeks pink, eyes flashing. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
I laid her on the bed and climbed in behind her before she could find something else to throw at me.
She let me pull her back against my chest, but I felt the question in her body.
The slight stiffness. The way she wasn’t afraid of me but still wasn’t used to someone moving her from one safe place to another just because he decided she deserved better than a couch after tearing herself open.
I wrapped an arm around her waist and held her there. For a while, neither of us said anything. That was probably good because every thought in my head had teeth.
Finally, I pressed my mouth against her hair and said, “My thoughts are a mile a minute.”
Her fingers found mine over her stomach. “Sounds crowded in there.”
“It is.”
“Do they need snacks? Because we have Doritos and whatever weird protein bar Charm bought that tastes like pencil shavings and betrayal.”
I huffed a quiet laugh into her hair. “Pip.”
“Fine.” Her voice softened. “Talk to me.”
That did something to my chest I didn’t have time to examine.
I stared over her shoulder into the dark room.
Her room smelled like vanilla, fabric softener, and her.
There were little pieces of Bliss everywhere.
Books stacked sideways on the nightstand.
A glittery tumbler on the floor beside her bed.
A hoodie half hanging out of a laundry basket.
Some tiny ceramic ghost wearing a pink bow sitting on her dresser like it had been appointed guardian of her chaos.
“I don’t know how to do this part,” I admitted.
She didn’t move.
“The emotions. The rage. The fear.” My hand tightened against her stomach before I made myself ease up. “I’ve never been scared like this.”
Her breathing changed. Not much, but enough.
I kept going before she could turn around and look at me because I didn’t know if I could say it with her eyes on me.
“I left that barbecue thinking you had a douchebag ex who got violent. Violent, I can handle. I understand violent.” My jaw flexed. “I’m violent.”
“You’re not like him.”
“I know.” I said it immediately because that part didn’t get to breathe between us. “Violence doesn’t scare me. Guys who swing because they’re pissed off don’t scare me. I know what to do with that.”
Her thumb brushed across my knuckles.
“This is different,” I said. “He’s different. He isn’t just reacting. He’s calculating. He’s unstable, and all I did was piss him off.”
Bliss went quiet in my arms.
Too quiet.
So I shifted, propping myself on one elbow enough to look down at her. “That’s not me saying I regret it.”
“I know.”
“Good. Because I’d do it again.”
Her mouth twitched faintly. “You say such romantic things.”
“I’m working with what I have.”
“Very organized menace of you.”
I brushed her hair back from her face, careful around the bruise at her neck. The color had deepened beneath her skin, blue and purple in the low light, and the sight of it pulled that cold thing back into my chest so fast I had to stop touching her for a second.
Bliss noticed because Bliss noticed everything when she was pretending not to.
“You’re doing it again,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“Come back.”
That wrecked me because she had spent all night handing me pieces of herself nobody else got, and now she was calling me back from the exact place those pieces sent me.
I lowered my forehead to her shoulder and breathed once. Twice. Then I lifted my head and looked at her again.
“I need to talk to the boys.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Your boys?”
“Yeah.”
She turned slightly in my arms. “About me?”
“About the situation.”
“Cade.”
“I’m not telling them what you told me.” The words came out sharper than I meant them to, but I needed her to understand that boundary was already locked. “That’s yours. No one gets it unless you hand it to them.”
Her face softened, and it almost hurt to look at.
“But they need to know I emasculated your crazy ex in front of his entire community,” I said.
“I outed him, and I did it intentionally. The repercussions of that could be catastrophic. They need to know he’s not just some drunk asshole who got jealous at a party.
They’re my support system. Your family is yours.
Aura and Charm are yours. The boys are mine. ”
She blinked slowly. “Did you just admit you have emotional support hockey players?”
“I will deny that in court.”
“Oh, absolutely not. I’m texting Briggs.”
“You’re not texting Briggs.”
“He needs to know he matters in a crisis.”
“Briggs knowing he has emotional value would be a disaster for everyone.”
A soft laugh slipped out of her, and I felt it against my chest.
Holy shit, I needed that sound.
“I want them to be there when we you tell your family,” I said.
The laugh faded, but she didn’t pull away.
“With my family?” She laughs.
“Yeah.”
“You want to bring the Fury to my family meeting?”
“Not the Fury. My guys.”
“That distinction feels fake.”
“It isn’t.”
Her mouth twisted like she wanted to argue, but the exhaustion won. “My brothers are going to be insane.”
“I know.”
“My dad is going to cry.”
“I know.”
“Ryker might actually commit a felony before you get the chance.”
“I’ll calm him down.”
That made her turn her head enough to look at me. “You?”
“I said what I said.”
“You are not the felony prevention guy.”
“I can be situationally mature.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That sounds fake too.”
“It is mostly untested.”
Her laugh was quiet, but it was real, and when she rolled onto her back, I moved with her until I was braced over her, one forearm beside her head, my body covering hers without putting my weight fully on her.
She looked up at me, hair spread across the pillow, eyes red from crying, mouth still curved like she couldn’t believe we were joking in the middle of all of this.
That was her though. That was the thing I understood now more than ever. Bliss didn’t laugh because things were easy. She laughed because sometimes that was the only way she could keep breathing.
“You know what’s annoying?” I asked.
“Your face?”
“My face is one of your favorite things.”
“I have never said that.”
“You stare.”
“You loom. My eyes are victims.”
I let my mouth hover over hers. “Your sculpture is ugly.”
Her gasp was instant and offended enough to almost make me smile.
“Excuse me?”
“The massive glass trauma tower in the corner of your frilly living room is hideous.”
“It is art.”
“It is a safety hazard.”
“It has emotional depth.”
“It is literally held together by glue and trauma.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” I kissed her once, not hard, just enough to take the sting out before continuing. “I thought it was ugly before I understood it.”
She went still beneath me as I brushed my thumb along her jaw.