Chapter 32
Cade
Daniel Bennett looked like a man held together by rage and sheer force of will.
The hospital hallway glowed beneath harsh fluorescent lights that washed everything pale and colorless.
Nurses moved quietly between rooms. Rubber soles whispered across polished floors.
Somewhere farther down the hall, a machine beeped in a steady rhythm.
The entire place smelled like disinfectant, stale coffee, and fear.
I hated every second of it because Bliss was in one of these rooms, and Luke Dempsey had put her there. Every instinct in my body kept reminding me that somewhere out there, he was still breathing.
Daniel stood outside her door with his arms folded across his chest and his shoulders locked tight beneath a faded department hoodie.
He looked older than he had before walking the hall to her room.
Harder. Like somebody had ripped away every comforting lie and left nothing behind except a father’s fury.
His eyes landed on me, but neither of us spoke immediately. We didn’t need to because the violence sitting behind my ribs recognized the violence sitting behind his.
“She’s awake,” he finally said.
My pulse kicked once. “How is she?”
The muscle in his jaw flexed.
“She’s my baby girl lying in a hospital bed with his handprint on her throat.”
I stared at him, every muscle in my body going rigid.
His handprint.
The image flashed through my head immediately. Luke’s fingers wrapped around her neck, touching her, hurting her. I cut the thought off before it finished because if I let myself fully picture it, I was going to put my fist through his fucking skull.
Daniel watched me carefully.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That’s about where my head goes too.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“Running.”
The word came out flat and cold, very dangerous for Luke Dempsey.
Daniel laughed once, but there wasn’t a damn thing funny in it. “Or hiding. Or whatever cowards do when they realize the people protecting them finally figured out who they really are.” His gaze shifted toward the room. “Doesn’t matter now.”
I stayed silent.
“Knox has every cop in Michigan looking under every damn rock. Every contact. Every favor. Every department that owes him one.” Daniel’s voice roughened. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he ran out of places to hide the second my daughter told the truth.”
“Good. It’s still not enough, but he is scared now.”
Daniel dragged a hand down his face, and for a second, the anger cracked just enough for the grief underneath to show. “I should’ve seen it.”
The words came so quietly I almost missed them.
“I saw her disappearing back then.” I said nothing because Daniel wasn’t talking to me anymore. He was talking to ghosts. “I saw her stop eating. Saw her get quiet. Saw her pull away.” His throat worked hard. “I thought it was grief.”
Holy shit.
The pain in those four words almost hurt worse than the anger.
“I thought losing her mom had swallowed her whole.” His eyes closed briefly. “I kept thinking if I loved her hard enough, she’d find her way back.”
“She did.”
His gaze lifted to mine, and I held it so he knew it mattered what he saw now. Luke had taken enough.
“He didn’t ruin her,” I said quietly. “He didn’t break her.”
Daniel’s eyes glistened.
“She found her way back then, and she will find her way back now.”
The silence that followed felt thick enough to touch until he finally nodded.
“Yeah.”
Another nod.
“Yeah. We’ll all make sure of it.”
The hallway fell quiet around us as Daniel looked toward Bliss’s room again, then back at me.
“She asked for you.”
My chest tightened. “She did?”
A faint smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Girl was barely conscious and still managed to ask whether somebody had warned you not to do anything stupid.”
Despite everything, a rough laugh escaped me. “That sounds like her.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Daniel studied me for another moment. “She seems different when you’re around. She’s calmer, which is saying a lot for Bliss, who is a mile-a-minute talker.” He looked back toward the room. “I haven’t seen that in a long time and didn’t know it was missing until I saw it come back.”
Daniel’s eyes returned to mine, and whatever he saw there must’ve been enough because some of the tension left his shoulders.
“You’re good for her.”
The words landed harder than they should have, and for a second, I just stared at him.
Nobody had ever said something like that to me before.
My entire life had been built around expectations, achievements, and whether I was living up to the Mercer name.
People praised the player. The captain. The first-round draft pick.
Nobody had ever looked me in the eye and told me I was good for someone they loved.
Daniel stepped forward before I could figure out what to do with that.
His hand landed on my shoulder in a firm squeeze, rough calluses scraping lightly through my hoodie. It wasn’t a dramatic gesture. Just a firefighter’s grip. Steady. Certain. The kind of handshake that carried more meaning than most conversations.
A father’s approval wrapped in a warning and a thank-you.
“Go see your girl.”
Daniel disappeared down the hallway before I could figure out what to do with the knot sitting in my throat.
Your girl.
The words followed me all the way to the door. I stood there for a second with my hand wrapped around the handle, staring through the small rectangular window set into the center of it. Then I pushed inside.
The first thing I saw was Bliss trying to smuggle hospital pudding.
The sight hit me so unexpectedly I actually stopped walking.
She froze too.
A plastic pudding cup hovered halfway between the rolling tray beside her bed and the blanket covering her lap while a spoon dangled from her fingers like she’d been caught committing a felony.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then she slowly lowered the evidence. “Before you say anything,” she informed me, “I pay taxes.”
My laugh died before it fully formed.
Because now I could really see her.
The bruising along her cheek was darkening by the second. Angry purple and blue shadows stretched beneath one eye. Her bottom lip was cut and swollen. Faint scratches marked the side of her face.
And her throat.
Holy fuck.
The room instantly felt ten degrees hotter. The outline of Luke’s hand wrapped around her neck in ugly black bruises.
I couldn’t stop looking at it, couldn’t stop imagining his fingers there, couldn’t stop imagining what I’d do if he walked through that door right now.
Something in my expression must have shifted because Bliss’s grip tightened around the pudding cup, and the little bit of mischief still clinging to her face softened into something too careful.
“You’re doing it again,” she said quietly.
I forced my eyes away from her throat and found her watching me with one swollen eye half-narrowed, like she was annoyed her face wouldn’t cooperate with the full amount of attitude she wanted to deliver.
The sight should have been funny. It was funny, in a way that hurt like hell.
She looked pissed off at her own injuries, like Luke had inconvenienced her instead of nearly taking her from me.
“I know,” I said.
Her mouth twitched, then immediately flattened when even that tiny movement pulled at her split lip. “Rude. You’re supposed to deny it so I can accuse you with more confidence.”
I crossed the room slowly, every step measured, because if I moved too fast, the rage might mistake motion for permission. “I’m not giving you material right now.”
“You always give me material. It’s one of your only marketable qualities.”
“I thought my cheekbones were emotionally manipulative.”
“They are. Different department.”
I reached the side of her bed, and the full damage of her up close almost put me on my knees.
The bruising wasn’t abstract anymore. It wasn’t something Daniel had warned me about in the hall.
It was there in the swollen curve of her cheek, in the cut at her mouth, in the angry marks around her throat where another man’s hand had tried to make her small.
Luke had left proof of himself on her skin like he had a right to be remembered there, and something cold and vicious slid through me with enough force that my hand flexed at my side before I caught it.
Bliss noticed because she was watching my every instinctive move right now. “Cade.”
I looked down at her.
“No skull-crushing in the hospital,” she said. “I’m pretty sure they frown on that here.”
“They have cameras. Too obvious.”
“See? Growth. You’re considering legal repercussion first.”
A rough breath left me, almost a laugh, and the relief that crossed her face told me exactly why she kept doing it.
She needed me here. Not the version of me that wanted blood.
Not the version of me standing in the hallway with Daniel, calculating every place Luke might hide.
She needed the man who knew how to sit beside her bed and let her be Bliss even when everything hurt.
So I sat, cautious and careful.
The mattress dipped beneath my weight, and she shifted her hand across the blanket until her fingers found mine. Her grip was weaker than usual because of her scraped-up knuckles, but the second our hands locked together, something in my chest loosened for the first time since I’d walked in here.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi, Pip.”
Her eyes shone immediately, and she looked away like the ceiling had suddenly become the most fascinating thing in Sutton County. “Don’t do the voice.”
“What voice?”
“The one where you sound like you’re about to say something devastating and make me emotionally responsible for surviving it.”
My thumb brushed over her knuckles. “You’re beautiful.”
She blinked back at me, unimpressed despite the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. “That is a very bold compliment from a man with great eyesight.”
“I’m honest.”
“You’re concussed by feelings.”
“Probably.”
“My face looks like it got jumped by a folding chair.”
“The chair won, Pip.”
She stared at me for half a second, then a laugh slipped out of her before she could stop it. Pain flashed across her face instantly, and she sucked in a careful breath, pressing her free hand to her ribs.
My body went rigid. “Don’t laugh.”
“You can’t say funny things and then police my ribs. That’s entrapment.”
“I’ll be less funny.”
“That feels unlikely. You’re funniest when you’re trying not to be.”
I leaned closer, keeping my hand gentle around hers even though everything in me wanted to gather her up and hold her so tightly nothing in the world could reach her again. “Then stop being obsessed with me.”
Her swollen mouth parted slightly. “Wow.”
“What?”
“I am literally in a hospital bed.”
“And still staring.”
“I’m injured, not blind.”
There she was.
Holy fuck, there she was.
Bruised, beaten, furious, still mine in the most terrifying way a person could become mine without ever asking permission.
Not property. Not possession. Something worse.
Something permanent. Something that had gotten under my ribs and rearranged me until the thought of losing her made the world turn sharp at the edges.
I lifted her hand and pressed my mouth carefully to her fingers. “I heard I got my own Never.”
The joke drained from her face so quickly I regretted saying it wrong.
Her lashes lowered, and for a second, she looked younger than twenty-one.
Not fragile. Bliss Bennett could have been lying there in a full-body cast and still somehow managed to insult me and call it part of the benefits.
But she looked exposed in a way I rarely saw from her.
Serious Bliss. The version who stepped out from behind the sparkle and chaos and handed me pieces of herself with shaking hands.
“I bought it,” she said.
“I know.”
“No, I mean, I really bought it. I picked it out.” Her throat worked carefully around the words, and her fingers tightened around mine.
“It was this ridiculous little marble, and it was perfect, and I had a whole plan, which is humiliating because I don’t plan romantic emotional ambushes. I’m more of a panic-and-insult girl.”
“You’re versatile.”
Her eyes flicked to mine, wet and wounded and trying so hard to smile. “I was coming to you.”
“I know, Pip.”
“I tried to keep it.” Her voice cracked there, and the crack went straight through me. “When he grabbed me, I had it in my hand, and I tried so hard not to let go, but everything hurt and I couldn’t breathe right, and I don’t know where it went.”
My jaw locked, but I made myself stay with her. Not with Luke. Not with the image of his hands. With her.
“We’ll find another one,” I said quietly. “You’re the queen of cool marbles. Marble hunting is basically your weird little superpower.”
A tear slipped down her temple into her hair. “It wasn’t about the marble.”
My chest tightened.
She looked at me then, really looked at me, and for once there was no joke between us. No dramatic insult. No emotionally confused escape route. Just Bliss, bruised and terrified and braver than anyone I’d ever known.
“It was me trying to tell you that you’re not just benefits to me.”
The words filled the room softly and moved through me with impact.
I didn’t smile right away. I didn’t want her to think I was teasing the moment out of existence.
I just held her hand and let the truth of it settle between us, heavier than the machines humming around her bed, heavier than the rage waiting in my blood, heavier than every careful lie she had used to keep herself safe.
“I know,” I said.
Her eyes widened, and a little spark of offended Pip cut through the tears. “You know?”
“Yeah.”
“You just knew?”
“Yeah.”
“That is so invasive.”
I brushed my thumb over her knuckles again. “You bought me a Never.”
“You didn’t know that part.”
I played along. “I knew the rest.”
Her mouth opened, closed, then opened again. “I hate you.”
The corner of my mouth lifted despite everything.
“No, you don’t.”
She glared at me as much as her face allowed. “I am severely injured, and you’re still smug.”
“I’m consistent.”
“You’re a menace.”
“You love me anyway.”
Her breath caught, and the room changed.
I felt it the second the words left my mouth, felt the way her fingers stilled inside mine and her eyes went glossy with something bigger than fear.
I hadn’t meant to say it like that. Not here.
Not with bruises around her throat and pain medication making her soft around the edges.
But the truth was already out, sitting between us with all the other things Luke hadn’t managed to destroy.
Bliss swallowed carefully.
“I was trying to get there with the marble,” she whispered.
I leaned down and kissed her knuckles again, slower this time.
“I know.”