Chapter 30
Bliss
The engine turned over beneath me while rainwater hissed softly beneath the tires as I pulled onto the road.
Downtown Kimball Falls glowed around me in blurred neon streaks.
Students flooded sidewalks in Fury hoodies and winter jackets while bars spilled music and laughter into the cold night air.
Headlights reflected across wet pavement beneath old streetlamps, and somewhere farther across town, The Furnace glowed against the dark sky like a beacon.
Cade was there, and the thought settled something deep inside me almost instantly.
Just get to Cade.
That was all I had to do now. Get to him, tell him we were not friends with benefits and that I always knew it was more than that, and maybe for the first time in years, I could finally stop feeling like I was drowning alone inside my own life.
The idea should have overwhelmed me with panic, but instead, it steadied something fragile in my chest. I would be free from Luke once and for all, and if things went the way I believed they would, I would be Cade’s. I wouldn’t need reassurance because I was choosing him with my entire chest.
Rainwater hissed softly beneath my tires as I drove farther from downtown, the glow of bars and restaurants slowly fading behind me while the darker backroads surrounding the lake stretched ahead through drifting fog and towering trees.
The Furnace still glowed faintly in the distance somewhere beyond campus, and I tightened my grip on the steering wheel as relief and nerves tangled painfully together beneath my ribs.
Then headlights appeared behind me.
At first, I barely noticed them. Just another truck riding too close along the narrow stretch of road curving around the lake toward campus. But then the brights flashed once.
Twice.
Aggressive enough that my stomach tightened immediately.
My eyes flicked toward the rearview mirror.
The truck accelerated hard.
Closer.
Closer.
Cold panic exploded through me so fast my fingers nearly slipped against the steering wheel.
No.
Please no.
The headlights flooded the inside of my Jeep now, harsh white light swallowing my mirrors while my pulse slammed violently against my ribs.
Every instinct inside me started screaming at once because I already knew before I saw the truck clearly.
My body recognized danger before my brain could fully catch up to it.
Then the truck swerved briefly into the opposite lane beside me, and my blood turned to ice when I recognized that black Ford.
Luke.
He laid on the horn once, long and aggressive, before jerking back behind me again. Then the brights flashed repeatedly.
“Oh fuck,” I whispered shakily.
The road around us sat nearly empty this late at night, this close to campus.
Everyone was either in town bar-hopping or on Athlete Row for parties.
Thick trees lined both sides while lake fog drifted low across the pavement in pale, ghostly streaks beneath the headlights. No witnesses or traffic meant no help.
Luke surged closer again until his headlights swallowed my mirrors completely.
My phone started ringing through the Jeep speakers.
Luke.
I ignored it.
His truck jerked sharply toward my bumper, close enough to hit me.
A sob climbed violently up my throat. “Stop,” I whispered desperately. “Please stop.”
The phone kept ringing. Then stopped. Then rang again immediately, and my vision started to blur from tears.
Luke swerved beside me suddenly and rolled his passenger window down while screaming something I couldn’t hear through the glass. His face looked wrong, not so much angry as furious, and then he jerked his truck in front of me without warning.
I slammed the brakes hard enough that the Jeep fishtailed slightly across wet pavement before stopping on the narrow shoulder near the trees.
For one horrifying second, everything went silent except my ragged breathing.
Then Luke climbed out of the truck.
I locked the doors instantly, my heartbeat thundering violently while he approached through the drifting fog and harsh wash of headlights.
For one disorienting second, I hated that some part of my brain still remembered the version of him I used to think was beautiful before I understood what he really was beneath all the charm and attention and false devotion.
Now all I felt was dread.
Fear sharp enough to make my hands shake.
Luke yanked the driver-side handle once, but I had locked the door. I tried to calm myself enough to put it in reverse and leave, but I kept popping the clutch and stalling out.
He tried again, harder this time, violent enough to rock the Jeep slightly beneath me.
“Open the door, Bliss.”
I shook my head immediately while tears blurred my vision.
“Baby,” he said quieter this time. “Open the door for me. I just want to talk to you. We can work this out.”
False softness laced his voice, but I had learned long ago that the softer he spoke, the harder he hit.
“No.”
His jaw flexed for a split second as he tried the handle one more time. Then he smiled.
The expression barely looked human beneath the headlights.
“You really gonna force me to do this over Cade fucking Mercer?”
Fear slid like ice through my bloodstream.
He always knew my next move, and I would never understand how.
“You’ve been ignoring me long enough,” he continued conversationally.
“Fighting me every time you see me, running from me when I try to talk to you. Acting different, like you only see him, which is an awful lot, Bliss.” His eyes dragged slowly across my face through the glass.
“Then you bring him to my world thinking I wouldn’t react? ”
My chest tightened painfully as Luke leaned closer to the window.
“You forgot who you belong to, and I will fucking remind you, Bliss.” He tried the door again, then slammed his hand against my window. “You open this fucking door right now, or I swear I will pull it from the fucking hinges and drag you out.”
Something inside me snapped then.
Could have been exhaustion. Could have been fear. But a rage so hot and wild burned through me in that instant.
“I don’t belong to you!” I screamed loud enough for heaven to hear me. “How are you this delusional? I fucking hate you!”
Luke went completely still. Even the fog drifting through the headlights suddenly felt frozen around us.
“What did you say to me, you little bitch?”
My entire body shook violently, but somewhere beneath the terror, Cade existed like warmth in the center of a storm. Safe and steady and mine if I was brave enough to reach for him. And for the first time in my life, I was willing to risk my own safety for something that mattered more.
“I said I don’t belong to you!” My voice was loud, even if I didn’t have the strength to fight this battle again. “Oh, and I fucking hate you!”
Luke stared at me through the glass like he genuinely couldn’t process the words.
Then his expression changed, and it wasn’t the rage I expected.
It was humiliation.
I should have seen that as the threat it was, but it made me fucking smile to know I had finally driven the truth home.
“You think Mercer wants damaged goods?” he asked softly.
The words hit hard enough to physically hurt, but not hard enough anymore.
“I think he’s more of a man than you’ll ever be.”
I reached for my phone and went to my contacts for Knox’s number.
The silence afterward felt catastrophic as my hand shook around the phone. Luke stepped back from the Jeep slowly, and for one second, I thought he was running.
Then glass exploded everywhere.
I screamed as Luke reached inside immediately, unlocking the door before I could react fast enough.
“No—”
He ripped the door open violently and grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise instantly.
“Luke, stop—”
He dragged me from the Jeep so fast my knees slammed against wet pavement, pain exploding through me.
“You think you can replace me?” he roared.
Fear detonated violently through my chest while I tried scrambling backward across gravel and rainwater.
Luke grabbed my hoodie and hauled me upward hard enough to snap my head back.
“You think I would let that fucking guy walk into my life and touch what belongs to me?”
“I’m not yours!” I screamed.
The slap split my lip instantly. White light exploded across my vision while I stumbled sideways against the Jeep.
Luke looked horrified for half a second afterward, then furious again for feeling horrified, and somehow that terrified me more.
“You made me do that.”
My stomach twisted violently. He had never hit me in the face. He had hit me, pulled my hair, pinched me, raped me, but he had never left a mark bad enough that someone might look closer or believe me if I finally told.
“You think I will ever let you go?” he hissed, advancing on me again. “That I would let him take my place?”
I tried backing away when Luke grabbed my throat.
My spine slammed against the Jeep door while his hand closed tighter around my neck. Panic exploded through me as I clawed at his wrist, gasping desperately while his face twisted inches from mine.
“You forgot who I am,” he snarled. “You forgot what I am capable of.”
Black spots burst violently through my vision, and my lungs burned like fire.
“Luke—”
“You think Mercer’s gonna want you after he knows what you are? After everything you begged me to do to you?”
The words shredded through me while his grip tightened harder for one more brutal moment, then suddenly loosened.
I collapsed forward, choking violently for air.
Luke shoved me backward hard enough that I slipped on wet gravel and crashed onto the road shoulder.
Pain detonated through my ribs, and a scream tore from my throat before I could stop it.
Luke froze.
The sound echoed through the trees around us while both of us breathed heavily in the headlights.
Then his expression twisted again into rage. At himself. At me. At the fact that I was forcing him to see what he really was.
“You fucking bitch! How could you do this to me after everything?” he roared, then kicked me hard in the ribs.
Agony spread so violently I genuinely thought something cracked inside me. I curled instantly, choking on pain while tears mixed with rainwater against the pavement.
“Luke, please—”
“You wanna run to Mercer?” he shouted. “Go ahead. Let’s see which one of us gets to him first.”
He kicked me again, this time in the chest, knocking my head back from the impact as I fell to my side. My cheek smashed sideways into gravel hard enough to split skin near my eye.
The world rang violently, and I could taste blood.
I was trying to register that this was different. This was a rage I had never experienced. I kept telling myself to fight, to get to the Jeep and get away because he was hell-bent on killing me.
He was going to fucking kill me if I didn’t get away.
Then hands grabbed my hoodie again, hauling me upward before my body could process it fast enough.
Luke’s face blurred through tears and headlights and dizziness.
“I loved you,” he said hoarsely.
He genuinely believed this was love and that I was actively betraying him. He couldn’t—wasn’t capable—of love.
“I will never let him have you,” he cried before his fist crashed into my face.
Everything went sideways then.
The road. The headlights. The trees twisting violently through blurred vision while pain detonated through my skull hard enough to make the world pulse in and out around me.
I genuinely thought this was it.
This was how I died.
Broken in the middle of some dark road with Luke standing over me while my family spent the rest of their lives wondering why I never said anything sooner. How Cade would learn my—
Cade.
The thought hit like lightning through the fog swallowing my brain.
Cade.
Get to Cade. He was in The Furnace, and I could see the lights in the distance. Cade would help me. Protect me.
God, please let me live through this, and I will call Knox. I will tell every single thing he ever did to me.
Survival instinct slammed violently through me, and no fucking way did my life end here.
Luke stood over me, breathing hard while blood dripped steadily from my mouth onto the pavement beneath my cheek.
Rainwater soaked through my clothes. My ribs screamed every time I tried dragging air into my lungs, and somewhere far off near campus, I suddenly heard voices drifting faintly through the trees.
Laughter.
Car doors.
Somebody shouting across a parking lot in the distance.
Luke heard it too.
His head snapped sharply toward the sound.
For the first time all night, panic flickered across his face.
Not guilt.
Not horror over what he had done to me.
Fear of being seen.
Fear of being caught standing over the woman he beat like the coward he was beneath all the charm and manipulation and false control.
Because men like Luke only felt powerful in silence. Only in private. Only when nobody bigger or stronger was there to expose them for what they really were.
“Hey!” a male voice shouted from somewhere beyond the tree line. “What the fuck?”
Another voice followed, closer now, sharper. “Yo, is somebody down?”
Luke’s eyes cut back toward me, fury and calculation twisting together across his face while I fought to stay conscious beneath him.
For one horrifying second, I thought he might try to finish it anyway, even with footsteps pounding against wet pavement in the distance and voices tearing through the fog toward us.
Then something shifted in his expression.
Not guilt.
Not horror.
Fear.
The cowardly, exposed kind that only surfaced when someone might actually see what lived beneath the charm and control.
He backed away quickly like the little bitch he was.
The truck door slammed hard enough to echo through the trees before headlights swung violently across the road and disappeared back toward town, tires spitting rainwater and gravel behind him while he ran before anybody could get close enough to stop him, leaving me broken in the road with rain soaking through my jeans and pain pulsing through every inch of my body.
For a second, I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.