Chapter 31 #2
The drive to the hospital is a blur of wet streets, red lights, and my hands locked so tightly around the wheel my knuckles ache.
Ryan keeps one hand braced against the dash, not because I’m driving out of control, but because every turn feels like restraint with tires.
Briggs is silent in the back, which is how I know this is bad.
Rider says something under his breath once, a low curse that sounds more like a prayer he is trying not to make.
My phone keeps buzzing, but I don’t look because I don’t know what is on the other end, and if it’s bad, it’ll need to be said to my face.
Ryan looks for me. “Aura says they’re there,” he says. “Charm too. Bliss is still being evaluated.”
That’s hospital language for nobody wants to say the thing out loud yet.
When we pull into County, I barely get the Rover in park before I’m out.
The automatic doors slide open on bright fluorescent light and antiseptic air, and the smell of the place hits me like a fist. Cleaners.
Coffee. Fear. That sterile hospital cold that makes everything feel too loud and too far away.
I see Daniel Bennett first.
He stands near the waiting area in a fire department sweatshirt, shoulders caved in but face hard, like grief and rage are fighting for the same body.
Ryker is beside him, eyes red, jaw clenched so tightly he looks carved from violence.
Knox stands near two uniformed cops and a pair of detectives in plain clothes, talking low, phone in one hand, badge clipped at his belt.
Aura and Charm are near the far wall, both crying, both trying not to, holding onto each other like if one moves wrong, the other will fall.
Then Daniel sees me, and his face changes.
Not with blame.
Not even comfort.
Recognition, like he knows exactly who I am to his daughter now, even if nobody has said it out loud.
“Where is she?” I ask.
My voice comes out shaking, and I can’t give a fuck if I sound scared because I am scared.
Daniel swallows. “They’re working on her.”
That answer nearly puts me through the floor.
Ryker turns away, both hands going to the back of his head. Knox steps toward me before I can move deeper into the hall.
“Cade,” he says.
“What room?”
“They’re not letting anyone back yet.”
“What room?”
Knox’s eyes sharpen. “Listen to me. You losing it in this hallway does not get you to her faster.”
I look at him, and for half a second, I think he sees exactly how close I am to breaking something that will not go back together.
Ryan steps up beside me. “He knows.”
Knox’s gaze flicks to him, then back to me. I drag one breath in through my nose, and it burns.
“What do you know?” I ask.
Knox’s face hardens, grateful maybe that I can still form the question.
“Two witnesses found her on the shoulder near Main in front of the campus entrance. They saw a black Ford leaving fast. She told them it was Luke before she passed out, and they didn’t get a plate, but they got enough of the truck and enough of him to confirm it was Dempsey.
Her Jeep is going to impound. He shattered her driver window to get her out of the Jeep.
Forensics will process it for prints, blood, glass, anything he left behind.
We’re pulling cameras from campus routes, traffic lights, nearby businesses, whatever we can get.
If he crossed into any lot with cameras, we’ll find him. ”
“He ran,” I say.
Knox nods once. “Yes. She called me, but I sent her to voicemail. Didn’t realize why until I got the call from those two officers that my sister was brought in badly beaten.”
“Find him and put whatever you are feeling on him. None of us thought he was this stupid.”
“We will.”
It isn’t enough.
Nothing is enough.
Daniel steps closer, and his voice is rougher than I have ever heard it. “She told me everything when I first got here, but the medical staff asked us to hang tight while they check her and do X-rays and shit.”
I go still.
Daniel’s eyes fill, but he doesn’t look away. “Not everything, but enough. She told me you convinced her, that you promised you would help her through this.” He closes his eyes as his voice cracks. “Thank you for making my baby feel safe when I was too blind to see she wasn’t.”
My chest cracks open so hard I almost stagger seeing Daniel Bennett thanking me for something she had the courage for, not me.
“I wanted her to start fighting,” I say, but the words barely make it out. “I didn’t want her doing it alone.”
Daniel nods, and the motion looks like it hurts him.
Ryker turns then, eyes locked on mine. “Did you know?”
I look at him.
“During street hockey,” he says, voice shaking with something ugly. “When you went at him. Did you know what he was doing to her?”
“No.”
The word is immediate, and Ryker’s face twists.
“I suspected something,” I say, because the truth matters even if it guts me. “I didn’t know what. I saw the way she acted around him. The way her whole body changed when he got close. I saw him touch her like he had the right to. I knew he was doing something, and I wanted to see him crack.”
The hospital noise around us fades beneath the sound of my own blood.
“I pushed him,” I say. “I called him out in front of everyone. I wanted him to show me what he was.”
Daniel’s jaw flexes, and Ryker and Knox stare at me.
“And if I had known he was this level of dangerous,” I say, my voice lowering until it barely sounds human, “I would never have done it that way.”
“Cade,” Knox says.
“No.” I shake my head once, hard. “I made him feel exposed. Humiliated. I put him on notice before she was ready, before any of us knew, before we had anything in place. I thought I was pushing a possessive ex. I didn’t know I was pushing a man who had spent years hurting her in private.”
“Don’t,” Daniel says, but his voice breaks.
“I should have been smarter.”
Ryker laughs once, brutal and wet. “You think you caused this?”
“I gave him a reason to escalate.”
“He had a reason before you ever showed up,” Ryker snaps. “He wanted her, and she wanted you, and he knew it. That was his reason.”
I know that.
I know.
But knowing doesn’t stop the image of Bliss broken on wet pavement from tearing through my head so violently I can barely stand.
Ryan’s hand lands on my shoulder. Not soft, but anchoring.
“You didn’t know,” he says.
I look at him.
His face is steady, but his eyes are hard. “She told you after. There was no way for you to know what he was before that. You saw wrong and pushed at it. That’s not the same as causing what he did.”
I want to believe him, but all I can see is myself rubbing Luke’s face in it and Bliss paying the price.
Knox looks toward Aura and Charm. “They said she wasn’t coming from work when it happened.”
Aura’s face goes pale, and Charm’s hand flies to her mouth.
“Where was she coming from?”
Aura looks at Charm, then at me, and whatever moves across her face makes the hallway tilt beneath my feet before anyone answers.
“She was coming from the apartment,” Charm says, her voice shaking. “Before that, the mall. We went shopping. It was girl time.”
My pulse slams once, hard. “Why did she leave the apartment after? Where was she going?”
Neither of them answers fast enough, and my mind starts spinning.
Was he blackmailing her to get her out of the house?
“Aura,” Knox says carefully, but there is a cop’s edge beneath the brother now. “If you know why she was on that road or where she was headed, I need you to tell me.”
Aura’s eyes fill, but she shakes her head slightly. “It’s not my story.”
One of the detectives standing beside Knox speaks gently.
“It may help establish where she was going and her state of mind before the assault. If he was luring her somewhere or following her and she found out, that could explain her Jeep cockeyed in the road and corroborate the witnesses saying he cut her off.” The detective looks back at Charm and Aura.
“We need to know what happened before the assault.”
That word hits the hallway like something ugly and official.
Assault.
Aura’s jaw tightens. Charm starts crying harder, and every second they stand there trying to protect Bliss’s privacy while Bliss is somewhere behind those doors makes something violent and desperate crawl up my throat.
“Why did she leave the apartment?” I ask.
Aura looks at me, wrecked.
I step closer without meaning to. Ryan’s hand lands between my shoulders, not stopping me, just reminding me there are people around us, detectives, cops, her father, her brothers, a whole hospital hallway I cannot tear apart because I can’t get to her.
“Aura,” I say, and my voice comes out too sharp, too loud. I drag in a breath and force it down even though every part of me is shaking under my skin. “Just fucking tell me why she left! She knew I was meeting her there after practice. Why the fuck did she leave?”
They cry harder as Ryan squeezes my shoulder.
“Please, just tell me what you know!”
The please breaks something in their faces.
Charm reaches for Aura’s hand, and Aura holds on like they need each other to carry the weight of it.
“She was coming to you,” Aura says, her voice barely steady.
Everything in me stops.
Charm wipes at her face and nods quickly, like if Aura started it, she can make herself finish.
“She was freaking out all day, but not in a bad way. She was happy. Scared, yeah, because she’s Bliss and feelings make her act like she’s being audited by the government, but she was happy.
We got her ready. She wore your hoodie, the cropped one, and her jeans and her white Nikes, and she kept checking her purse because she had this whole plan. ”
My throat closes. “What plan?”
Aura swallows. “We went with her to Trinkets and Things.”
Knox’s eyes flick toward one of the detectives, who immediately starts writing something down.
“She bought you a Never,” Aura says.
For one second, I don’t understand the words because they are too small for what they do to me.
“What?”
“A marble,” Charm states. “A blue one. She picked it because it looked like your eyes.”
The hallway blurs at the edges while one of the detectives looks at Knox. “What’s a Never?”
Knox starts explaining my girl’s wild therapeutic marble addiction to a detective like any of this could make sense to someone who doesn’t speak Bliss.
“She bought it with us,” Aura says, looking straight at me now, because she knows this part matters. “She wanted to add good back into her Nevers. That was the whole point. She said if Cindy was still alive, she would have told her all about you. She was coming to tell you that you were a Never.”
I can’t breathe.
Physically can’t.
“I’m a Never?”
“A good one. She hasn’t had a good Never in a while, Cade. She wanted to talk to you about catching feelings for you and show you your marble.”
Anyone listening to this would think it is nonsense, but to me, it is everything.
Ryan’s hand tightens on my shoulder. Briggs curses behind me, low and broken, and Rider turns away. Easton moves toward Aura without thinking, but he stops short, like even now, he is trying not to take more than she offers.
A blue marble.
Bliss had been coming to me with a Never in her hand, wearing my hoodie, dressed by her girls, brave enough to tell me the thing I had already felt every time she looked at me and tried to pretend she didn’t.
Not because I hurt her or because I was another thing she had to survive without her mom.
Because I was good.
Because she was choosing me.
And Luke got to her first.
I look toward the double doors they won’t let me through.
“Let me see her,” I say.
Knox exhales. “Cade—”
“Let me see her.”
Daniel looks at the doors too, and the father in him breaks all over again. “They said they’ll come get us when we can go back.”
“I need to see her.”
“I know,” Daniel says.
“No, you don’t.” My voice cracks, and I hate it. I hate everyone hearing it. I hate that I don’t care. “I need to see her and tell her I’m her Never.”
No one says anything to that, and I accept that I sound crazy, but these people understand because, like me, they speak Bliss’s language.
A nurse comes through the doors then, and every single person in the hallway turns at once.
“Family for Bliss Bennett?”
Daniel steps forward immediately. “I’m her father.”
The nurse’s eyes move over the rest of us, cautious but not unkind. “She’s stable. She’s awake in pieces, but very disoriented. We’re keeping her for a few hours of observation. Immediate family only for now.”
Relief hits so hard I almost go down.
Stable.
Disoriented.
Alive.
Daniel looks at me, then at the nurse. “He needs to come.”
The nurse hesitates. “Sir—”
“Dammit,” he snaps, voice breaking but firm. “She’ll ask for him, and I care about her comfort more than your bullshit policy.”
My chest caves in.
The nurse studies Daniel’s face, then mine. Maybe she sees something there. Maybe she has worked enough nights in emergency rooms to understand that family does not always begin with blood.
“You can go with her father. Fifteen minutes,” she says. “If she gets distressed, you step out.”
“I won’t distress her.”
Ryker looks at me then, something raw and shattered moving across his face.
“Same team,” he says quietly.
It hits me in a place I don’t have armor for because I know exactly what he is saying, and I nod once because fuck yes, same team.
“Same team.”
Ryker nods, then looks past me to Ryan. “Same team?”
Ryan doesn’t need a map drawn to understand what Ryker is really asking. His gaze flicks to me once before he answers.
“His team.”
Ryker nods slowly.
“Same team then.”