Chapter 42
Bliss
For one bright, impossible stretch of time, everything felt perfect.
Not safe in the naive, storybook way people pretended the world could be safe if you loved someone hard enough.
I knew better than that. I knew monsters could wear familiar faces and sit at your father’s table.
I knew happiness could be interrupted by a text, a hand on your throat, a truck behind you on a dark road.
I knew the world did not stop being cruel just because a boy with blue eyes kissed you through glass and made twenty thousand people scream like love was something worth cheering for.
But it felt good.
So good I forgot to not trust trust it.
The night outside The Furnace buzzed with postgame electricity, cold October air biting at my cheeks while students poured through the main doors in black, neon pink, and bright yellow waves.
Everyone was loud. Everyone was laughing.
Cars crawled through the parking lot while people honked and shouted out windows, still drunk on the Fury win and the way Cade Mercer had played like the entire rink owed him blood.
He had scored twice because apparently the man had decided being devastating off the ice wasn’t enough and needed to be publicly obscene with a hockey stick too.
My dad stood beside me with one arm locked around my shoulders like he could physically keep the night from taking me anywhere bad.
Ryker was close enough that I could feel him watching the crowd more than the doors.
Knox hovered with that cop stillness I used to tease him about before I understood what it cost him to notice everything.
Lyon, Emmitt, and Kellen were around us somewhere, arguing and laughing and replaying Cade’s second goal on a phone screen, but for once their noise didn’t feel like a barricade.
It felt like family.
Aura and Charm were beside me too, bundled in coats and secondhand victory, both glowing in the way only best friends could glow when they knew something had shifted and were already planning to ruin your life about it later.
Aura kept pretending she wasn’t checking the arena doors for Easton, which was hilarious because Aura Clarke could survive a courtroom, a crime scene, and possibly a hostage negotiation, but apparently not a goalie with pretty eyes and emotional constipation.
I saw you, Aura.
I was in too good of a mood to ruin her life about it.
Not yet, anyway.
“He was ridiculous tonight,” Charm said, still staring at the doors like Cade might appear in slow motion with arena lights behind him and a sports documentary voice-over.
“Embarrassing, honestly,” I said, even though I couldn’t stop smiling. “Like, sir, some of us are trying to be normal about you.”
Aura gave me a slow side-eye. “The man made it clear to anyone who hadn’t seen you in his jersey that you are his and then kissed you through the glass.”
I looked down at the MERCER 55 stretched across my chest beneath my coat. “I am all for school spirit and supporting team morale.”
Charm snorted. “Your school spirit has dimples and causes emotional carnage.”
My dad glanced down at me, his mouth twitching. “You happy, Bug?”
The question landed softer than everything else around me.
For a second, the parking lot blurred at the edges. The students. The shouting. The cold. The neon colors. The whole ridiculous world still spinning like it had not just watched me let myself be seen in a way I had spent years avoiding.
Was I happy?
Cade was inside finishing postgame media, and I was outside with my family, wearing his name and waiting for him without fear chewing through my ribs.
My brothers weren’t looking at me like one wrong word might break me open.
My dad had watched Cade play tonight with that grudging, terrified respect fathers gave boys they didn’t want to like but couldn’t not because they were good to their daughters.
Aura and Charm were beside me. The air was cold. My cheeks hurt from smiling.
Luke Dempsey was still out there somewhere. But for the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel bigger than everything else.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I think I am.”
Dad’s arm tightened around me. That should have been the moment I held onto. That should have been the memory.
My dad asking if I was happy. Me saying yes. Cade’s name across my chest. The arena doors opening any second so he could walk out with damp hair and tired eyes and that stupid controlled face he wore when he was pretending he hadn’t just played like a feral god in front of an entire campus.
Instead, Knox’s phone rang.
I wouldn’t have noticed it if his face hadn’t changed before he even answered.
One second, he was Knox. My brother. Annoying, overprotective, trying to pretend he hadn’t softened at the glass kiss like the rest of them.
The next, he was gone.
His body went still in that terrifying way cops went still when the world handed them something ugly. Not calm. Not blank. Worse. He became quiet around the edges, like every human part of him had stepped back to make room for whatever came next.
Every Bennett within ten feet stopped moving.
Knox looked at the screen. “It’s Ryan.”
Relief and confusion tangled together in my chest because Ryan calling Knox should not have meant anything terrible. Ryan was Cade’s friend. Ryan was steady. Ryan was the one who watched rooms and noticed things and somehow made silence feel useful instead of awkward.
Why would Ryan call Knox?
Knox answered, already stepping half away from us. “Decker?”
Whatever Ryan said took every bit of color out of my brother’s face.
I saw it happen.
Saw his jaw go slack for half a second before it locked so hard the muscle near his temple jumped. Saw his eyes cut toward the arena doors. Saw his hand lift slightly, palm out, like he was already trying to hold me back from something I didn’t even know existed yet.
The cold went through me differently then. Not the October cold. Something internal with teeth.
“What?” Ryker asked.
Knox didn’t answer him. He pressed the phone harder to his ear. “Slow down.”
My heart started pounding so hard it hurt. Dad’s arm loosened from my shoulders, but his hand stayed on me, heavy and warm and suddenly not enough.
“Knox,” Dad said.
Knox’s eyes flicked to me. That was when I knew. Not what. Not how bad. Not the shape of the thing. But I knew something had happened, something bad enough that my brother looked at me like he was already trying to figure out how to break my life in half without killing me.
“No,” I whispered.
Aura’s hand found mine. Charm caught my other wrist.
Knox turned slightly away, but terror sharpened every sound until the whole parking lot seemed to narrow around his voice.
“Where?” A pause. “Is he breathing?”
The world stopped.
Not slowed.
Stopped.
No.
No.
No, no, no.
My body moved before my brain did, one step toward him, then another, like if I could get close enough to the phone I could force the words to rearrange themselves into something that did not involve Cade.
“Who?” I asked.
Knox held up a hand. “Bliss, stay there.”
Absolutely not. “Who is he talking about?”
Knox’s face tightened.
Ryker stepped closer. “Knox.”
Knox looked like he wanted to put his fist through the nearest car window. “Ryan found Cade.”
The name hit me so hard I forgot how to breathe.
Cade.
Ryan found Cade.
The word opened under me like a hole.
“What do you mean found?” My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too high. Too thin. Too far away. “Knox, what do you mean found?”
He was still listening, one hand pressed over his other ear now because the crowd around us had not figured out the universe had ended.
People were still laughing. Still yelling.
Still climbing into cars and replaying goals and living inside a normal Friday night like I had not just heard my brother ask if Cade was breathing.
Then Knox said, “Stabbed?”
Everything inside me dropped. Straight through my body. Through the asphalt. Through every fragile piece of happiness I had been stupid enough to touch tonight.
Charm made a sound beside me. Aura’s fingers tightened around mine so hard it hurt. Dad said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the roaring in my ears.
Knox’s voice went low and deadly. “How bad?”
I stared at his face because it was the only thing holding the world together. His mouth. His eyes. The lines around them. Anything that might tell me this was a misunderstanding. A mistake. A word I had misheard because trauma had a way of making monsters out of shadows.
But Knox’s expression got worse. “Two wounds?” he repeated.
A noise tore out of me. I didn’t mean for it to. I didn’t even know I had made it until people turned toward us, until Dad’s hand clamped harder on my shoulder, until Ryker’s face snapped toward me like the sound had cut through him too.
Two wounds.
Cade.
Stabbed.
He had texted me.
He had told me he would meet me outside.
He was supposed to walk through those doors with damp hair and that stupid controlled face and act like scoring twice wasn’t an anger disorder.
He was supposed to smirk when I told him he played okay.
He was supposed to pull me into his side like I belonged there.
He was supposed to be annoyed when my brothers made comments and amused when Charm said something unhinged and weirdly soft when my dad said good game.
He was supposed to be alive in the casual way people were alive when you loved them and they had promised to come right back.
He was not supposed to be somewhere inside the arena bleeding while Ryan called my brother.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
Knox shook his head once, still listening.
“Where is he?”
“Bliss—”
“Where the fuck is he, Knox?”
The entire group went still. People nearby turned. I didn’t care.