Chapter 26
Bliss
I wake up because Cade is trying not to wake me.
Which is stupid, honestly, because Cade Mercer has the subtlety of a bank robbery when he is fully dressed in black hockey workout gear, moving around my bedroom before sunrise like a six-foot-something emotionally expensive burglar.
The room is still dark, washed in the faint blue-gray light that sneaks through the blinds before morning has fully committed to being morning.
My body feels heavy in that post-cry, post-emotional-destruction, post-Cade-had-his-hands-on-me way that makes every muscle slightly useless and every thought come wrapped in cotton.
For a few seconds, I just lie there beneath my blanket and watch him move quietly through my room, pulling a black hoodie over his head, finding his socks near the foot of my bed, checking his phone with his jaw already set like the day has personally offended him.
He looks good.
Which is deeply unfair.
No one should look that good before sunrise, especially not after a night that involved sex, trauma, my giant ugly marble sculpture, emotional devastation, and a make-out session that almost made me reconsider several moral positions.
Cade glances toward the bed and catches me watching him.
Of course he does.
“You awake?” he asks quietly.
“No,” I whisper.
His mouth twitches. “Convincing.”
“I’m sleep-talking.”
“You sleep-talk sarcasm?”
“It’s my first language.”
He crosses back to the bed, and my heart does something stupid when he sits on the edge beside me like he belongs there.
Like my room is already part of his routine.
Like he has every right to be here before practice, smelling like soap and laundry detergent and whatever dangerous hormone hockey captains emit when they are awake too early and emotionally unavailable to the general public.
I hate him a little for it.
Or I would, if he didn’t look at me like that.
His hand slides over the blanket to my hip, warm and heavy through the fabric, and his eyes move over my face with the kind of attention that always makes me want to throw something at him and crawl closer at the same time.
“You have practice?” I ask, even though I already know.
“Six.”
“That’s illegal.”
“It’s hockey.”
“Same thing.”
His thumb moves once against my hip. “I’m talking to the boys after.”
The words settle between us, quiet but not heavy.
Not like last night. Not like the marble in his hand or the way his breathing broke against my hair while he held me on the couch.
This is different. This is morning planning.
This is logistics. This is Cade waking up in my bed after hearing the worst parts of me and acting like the next step is already obvious.
He is not running. He is scheduling and somehow that feels more dangerous.
I blink up at him. “The emotional support hockey players?”
“I told you I’m denying that in court.”
“Too late. It’s canon.”
“Briggs can never know you called them that.”
“Briggs is absolutely going to make shirts.”
“He will not survive making shirts.”
“You’re very threatening before sunrise.”
“I’m very threatening after sunrise too.”
I smile before I can stop myself, and his gaze drops to my mouth like the smile personally did something to him.
The room changes in that immediate Cade-and-me way, the air warming despite the early morning chill, and I have one terrible second where I remember his body over mine last night, his voice at my ear, the terrifyingly honest way he said he had never felt what I made him feel.
My stomach flips.
His hand tightens slightly on my hip like he knows.
“What are you telling them?” I ask, because apparently sleep deprivation has made me brave and stupid.
His expression shifts, not darker exactly, but more focused. More captain. More man who has already spent the hours I was asleep building a plan around every threat I handed him.
“Not your story,” he says immediately. “That stays yours.”
My chest tightens.
“Then what?”
“That Dempsey is unstable. That I pushed him publicly yesterday, and he’s the kind of guy who might retaliate sideways instead of coming straight at me.”
I go still beneath the blanket.
Cade notices.
Of course he does.
His hand smooths once over my hip, grounding but not restraining. “I’m not trying to scare you.”
“Awesome job.”
His mouth barely moves. “I’m trying to keep you, Aura, and Charm from being easy targets on campus while everyone figures out what the hell comes next.”
Oh.
That lands differently.
Not boyfriend panic. Not alpha posturing. Not Cade wanting backup because he can’t handle his emotions.
For the spaces Luke already knows how to access because he has spent years being allowed too close to everything that belongs to me.
My throat goes tight before I can stop it. “Cade.”
“I’m not telling them details.” His voice stays calm, but there’s steel under it.
“I don’t need to. I can tell them enough to make sure nobody lets Aura walk alone from night class, nobody lets Charm get cornered outside The Sin Bin, and nobody ignores Dempsey if he shows up around your apartment, the arena, the parking lots, or anywhere near you three. ”
For a second, I can’t speak.
Because that is the thing about Cade Mercer that keeps knocking me off balance.
He can be filthy and arrogant and possessive enough to make my entire nervous system consider mutiny, but then he turns around and thinks ten steps ahead in a way that makes safety feel less like a fantasy and more like infrastructure.
“You’re making a campus protection grid before coffee,” I whisper.
“I had coffee.”
“Of course you did.”
“I’m also texting Knox after practice.”
My eyes widen. “My brother Knox?”
“He’s a cop.”
“He’s also a Bennett.”
“Useful overlap.”
“You cannot just start a hockey-cop coalition before seven in the morning.”
“I can if it’s efficient.”
“Oh my gosh.” I press my palms over my face. “You are becoming a task force.”
“A very attractive one.”
“Do not make me laugh during tactical planning.”
“Then stop being funny.”
I peek at him through my fingers. “You really think he’d go after Aura or Charm?”
“I think he wants control,” Cade says, and all the humor bleeds cleanly out of his voice. “Men like him do not always hit the thing they want to punish. Sometimes they hit what the thing loves.”
Cold moves through me so fast my skin prickles.
Cade’s face softens by maybe half an inch when he sees it. “I’m not letting that happen,” he says.
Something inside me folds around those words.
Not because I think he can control every bad thing in the universe.
I know better than that. I know bad things happen in locked rooms, bright kitchens, familiar driveways, and houses full of people who love you.
But Cade doesn’t say it like a magic promise.
He says it like a man building a wall one brick at a time and daring the world to test the foundation.
“What time is your class?” he asks.
“Eleven.”
“You going?”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you asking as my emotionally unavailable situationship or my academic probation sponsor?”
His face barely moves, but the look he gives me is devastatingly dry. “Both, apparently.”
“I’m going,” I mutter. “Probably.”
“Pip.”
“I said probably with confidence.”
“You’re going.”
“Wow. Bossy.”
“You slept maybe two hours, cried enough to qualify as weather, and still have a class at eleven. I’m making sure you don’t wake up at noon and blame me.”
“I would never blame you.”
“You blamed me yesterday because your coffee was too emotionally aggressive.”
“It was.”
“It was black coffee.”
“Exactly. Aggressive.”
His mouth finally curves, and holy shit, this is the part that ruins me. Not the dirty talk. Not the body. Not the way he can make my brain unplug itself with one hand on my waist. It’s this. Cade sitting on my bed in the dark, arguing about coffee and class and practice like we are normal.
Like the world didn’t crack open last night. Like he didn’t see the worst parts and decide to stay close enough to make plans around them.
He leans down and kisses me once, slow and sleepy and not nearly long enough for my personal standards. I make a small sound when he pulls back, which is humiliating because I am supposed to be a woman of mystery and emotional restraint, not a touch-starved raccoon in tiny sleep shorts.
“Text me when you’re up,” he says.
“Demanding.”
“Text me.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“Bliss.”
I sigh dramatically. “Fine. I’ll text my situationship warden.”
His eyes sharpen just enough that I feel the shift before he says anything.
There it is.
Tiny. Fast.
But I see it.
I see the way his jaw sets at the word. The way his gaze drops from mine for half a second before coming back harder.
He hates it. Not because he’s insecure. Cade Mercer wouldn’t know insecurity if it walked into a room wearing his jersey and asked for validation.
He hates it because we both know it is bullshit now.
Friends with benefits.
Situationship.
Whatever tiny cowardly label I keep trying to tape over this enormous thing between us.
It doesn’t fit and honestly, it probably never did.
“What?” I ask, because apparently I enjoy psychological danger before breakfast.
His hand slides from my hip to my waist beneath the blanket, and he leans closer until his forearm braces beside my head. His body covers just enough of mine to make my thoughts scatter in every direction, but his face stays calm. Focused. Cade.
“We both know this is deeper than benefits,” he says quietly.
My throat goes tight.
Oh no.
Absolutely not.
Direct Cade before sunrise should require a permit.
“Cade—”
“I’m not making you slap a label on anything before you’re ready.” His eyes hold mine, steady and too blue in the dark. “I know you have hang-ups.”
My mouth falls open. “Hang-ups?”
“Several.”
“That is so rude.”
“It’s accurate.”
“I have emotionally complex boundaries.”
“You have hang-ups with better marketing.”