Chapter 45 #2
He looked at me, and whatever he saw on my face broke him.
“Bliss—”
“Stop. Please.”
He did.
But the guilt stayed in the room.
It had been there since the truth came out. My dad’s guilt. Ryker’s. Knox’s. All my brothers carrying the impossible weight of not knowing what I had made sure they didn’t know.
Harrison looked from Ryker to my dad, then to me. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet enough to make everyone listen.
“No family survives betrayal without looking backward and finding places they think they should have seen it. That is what predators count on. They count on good people mistaking access for trust. They count on shame doing their work for them.” His jaw tightened. “Luke Dempsey counted wrong.”
The room held still.
Maren turned a page in the folder. “The narrative released publicly protects Cade without exposing Bliss to unnecessary scrutiny. The police are not interested in feeding the press details of what Luke did to her or what Cade heard in that hallway. Officially, Dempsey was unstable, armed, and violent. He had a connection to the Bennett family, became fixated on Cade through Bliss, and attacked Cade after the game.”
“And the letters?” Emmitt asked.
Maren’s gaze flicked briefly to Knox before returning to the room.
“The medical examiner will document everything. We cannot make evidence disappear when it is carved into a body. But interpretation matters. Luke had a knife. Luke’s shirt and body were already damaged during a violent struggle.
Luke was believed to be in a disturbed mental state when he entered that hallway.
Investigators have no appetite to turn an unclear detail into a case against the victim who nearly died defending himself. ”
Harrison’s voice went cold. “If anyone attempts to make my son the villain for surviving an armed attack, they will regret it.”
No one doubted him.
Not even a little.
Knox looked at me again. “Bug.”
I hated how gentle his voice got. “What?”
“You’re going to hear things. Maybe not now, but eventually. People talk. Reporters dig. Luke had friends who will want to pretend he wasn’t what he was because admitting it means admitting they missed it too.”
My throat tightened. “Then we bury what the world doesn’t need.”
Dad turned toward me.
I looked at Harrison. Then Maren. Then Knox. Then every brother in the room.
“I don’t care what story you tell if it keeps Cade safe.”
Ryker’s face folded in relief.
“I don’t,” I said, stronger this time. “Luke is dead. Cade is alive. Barely. If the world needs Luke to be a crazed stalker who snapped, fine. If the world needs him to be a disgraced ex-firefighter with arson issues, fine. If everyone wants to pretend nobody knows what NO means, fine.”
My voice broke around the word, but I kept going.
“I know what it means.”
I pressed a hand over the center of my chest, where Cade’s name should have been on the jersey I hadn’t changed out of until a nurse forced me to shower.
“It means Cade heard me when it was ignored for years. It means he knew. It means he did what nobody else could because nobody else had the chance.”
Dad’s eyes filled.
“I will not let anyone punish him for being the one person who made sure Luke never touched me again.”
Harrison stared at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
Not agreement.
Respect.
“Neither will I,” he said.
The meeting ended without feeling like it ended. Harrison took another call. Maren left with Knox to speak to the detectives. My brothers stayed behind, all of them looking at me like they wanted to apologize and murder someone but had no one left to kill.
I went back to Cade.
That was the only place my body would go.
His room was dimmer now, quieter than the waiting area, machines murmuring softly around him.
The ventilator was gone, but the oxygen remained beneath his nose, and the monitors still tracked every fragile proof that he was here.
His chest rose carefully, uneven enough to make my heart squeeze every time, but it rose.
On its own.
His face was pale beneath the bruising. There was a split near his lip. His knuckles were torn. One hand lay on top of the blanket, taped and marked and scraped from the violence of protecting me.
I sat beside him and slid my fingers through his. His skin was warm, and that was another miracle.
“Hi,” I whispered.
His eyelids fluttered.
I froze. “Cade?”
For a second, nothing.
Then his eyes opened halfway, glassy and unfocused beneath the heavy pull of medication. He looked at the ceiling first. Then slowly, painfully, his gaze moved until it found me.
My entire world stopped when his mouth moved.
I leaned closer immediately. “Don’t try to talk.”
He ignored me, because he was Cade, heavily medicated or not.
No sound came out the first time. The second was barely anything. But by the third, I heard him clearly.
“Pip.”
I broke.
Not loudly.
Probably dramatically.
But absolutely and completely.
Tears fell onto our joined hands while I pressed my mouth to his scraped knuckles and tried not to sob hard enough to scare him. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
His fingers twitched against mine. “Safe?” he breathed.
My heart shattered.
I lifted my head and nodded through tears. “I’m safe.”
His eyes drifted.
“No,” I said quickly, panic flaring. “Hey. Stay with me for one second, okay? Just one.”
His gaze fought its way back to mine. So tired, so drugged, and so impossibly, mercifully alive.
“You did it,” I whispered. “You protected me, baby.”
His brow moved faintly, like he didn’t understand why I was saying something so obvious.
Typical.
Even half-conscious, Cade Mercer somehow managed to be arrogant.
“You’re going to be okay,” I told him, even though the doctors had said hour by hour, even though fear still had teeth, even though okay was a country we hadn’t reached yet. “You hear me? You’re going to be okay because I refuse to add you to my Book of Nevers. I have final say. Author rules.”
His mouth twitched.
Barely.
But I saw it.
A broken laugh escaped me. “You think that’s funny? Good. Laugh later when your lung isn’t being dramatic.”
His eyes closed, but this time, I didn’t panic as fast because his fingers stayed curled around mine.
Sleep took him again, slow and heavy, his body choosing healing over me for a little while.
I let it.
I stayed in the chair beside his bed and told him everything.
I told him Coach Little made him sound like a national treasure with anger issues.
I told him Briggs cried but would deny it under oath.
I told him Easton looked like he was two seconds from fighting the entire hospital until Aura made him sit down.
I told him Ryan stayed with him and kept telling me he didn’t leave, and I told Cade he better wake up enough to thank him properly because Ryan looked like his soul had been dragged through a paper shredder.
I told him his parents were here. I told him his mom cried when she saw him and between the two of us, he was never alone.
I told him his dad was terrifying in a way that made much more sense now.
I told him my dad hadn’t left. I told him my brothers were losing their minds quietly, which was somehow worse than when they did it loudly.
I did not tell him about the meeting. I had no way of knowing what Cade would remember, but I knew and would never forget what this man with devastating cheekbones and a lethal mouth had done for me.
For now, I gave him the only truths that mattered.
“You’re alive,” I whispered, brushing my thumb over his hand. “And apparently we’re boyfriend-girlfriend now thanks to media coverage outing us, so rude of you to make me your girlfriend while in a coma. Romance fail, babe.”
The monitor kept beeping, and his chest kept rising.
My hand never left his, and for the first time since Ryan called Knox, hope did not feel like a lie.