Chapter 19
Cade was as meticulous about aftercare as he was about training.
After they’d finished, he’d lit a candle, helped Asha out of bed, and cleaned both of them up at the washstand.
He’d then tucked her back in and brought her water and some strips of jerky that she’d happily swallowed down.
He rubbed arnica ointment into the sensitized flesh of her backside despite her protests, probably because it was starting to lightly bruise.
He insisted on rubbing her wrists, her shoulders, her hands—anywhere that may have lingering aches from his treatment.
All the while, he spoke to her in hushed tones, soothing and sweet and loving.
There was no other word for it. She may not have known how to process that, but she enjoyed the comfort and safety he was providing.
He’d become more precious to her than she was ready to admit.
When Cade settled next to her in bed and held her close, she felt as close to perfect as she ever had. He splayed out on his back, his formidable chest bared to the warm evening air, his arms curled around her in an affectionate, protective curve.
“How are you feeling?”
With the words came no judgment, no pressure, no expectation to say any particular thing. But Asha knew the answer without thinking.
“I’m so good,” she murmured, still feeling a little drunk on him, and she felt his smile against her hair as he pressed a kiss there. “How do you feel?”
His deep chuckle reverberated in her chest. “Like a fucking god.”
She burst into laughter. “A god?”
“Yes,” he said, smirking at her. “You’re a tough nut to crack, Asha Agarwal. Not the trusting type. So yeah, you submitting to me and letting me touch you and discipline you and fuck you…it makes me feel like a fucking god, and I won’t apologize for it.”
She giggled some more, feeling lighter and sillier than she ever had before. She’d never have imagined that she could make a man feel that way, and it gave her a strange sense of power that she treasured.
They lay together in peaceful silence. Asha lazily traced over Cade’s sleeves of tattoos. She’d never had the chance to look at them properly before, up close.
“Do your tattoos mean anything?” she asked, following the line of long, black vines up his right arm.
“Sure,” Cade replied indulgently. “That one, I got because it was cool-looking.”
She clucked her tongue. “You know what I meant.”
He turned onto his side, giving her a better view of his broad, muscled back.
The vines connected to a sprawling tree, with branches that spread out up his shoulder blades like fingers, reaching heavenward.
Small, delicate leaves decorated the branches, with a few pictured mid-fall toward the ground.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, leaning forward to kiss the tree trunk. He gave a small, addictive shudder at the touch of her lips, and so she kept kissing down his spine.
“The Tree of Life,” Cade said eventually, after he’d rolled onto his back and gathered her close again.
“I got it back when I was more of an idealist.” He adopted a mocking tone.
“Life is sacred, deserves protecting, blah blah blah. Back then, it was supposed to represent what I was protecting as a soldier: the lives of everyone in the compound.” He huffed.
“I’m less precious on my views these days. ”
“You don’t think life is sacred anymore?”
He shrugged. “If it was, it wouldn’t be so easy to destroy it.”
Asha considered that for a moment before moving on, next tracing the fat, black snake that coiled up his left arm, from his wrist to his shoulder. “What about this one?”
“The snake represents the Delta. Or, maybe more accurately, the people that ran it. The more control they asserted over our lives, the more I saw them as the real enemy—the snake in the grass.”
“Why?” She sat up to look at him. “I know that a lot of the rules were bullshit, but they kept us safe. You kept us safe, soldier.”
He pulled her back down to kiss her, and she got lost in his lips for a while before he answered her question.
“Might be true,” he replied. “But it came to a point where I wondered if I was keeping dangers out…or keeping people in. We had no real freedom, and no recourse if things went to shit. They controlled every part of our lives: our jobs, who we married, when or if we had kids, where we got to live and who got to know anything about the inner workings of our little society.”
Asha was quiet. Everything he said was, of course, true for her as well. She’d never known anything else…but she had long since understood that much of the misery in her life could’ve been avoided if she’d only had another choice.
“There’s no guarantee that our choices would’ve made us happier,” she said, but it sounded hollow even to her own ears.
“That’s true,” Cade conceded, “but at least we wouldn’t have been stuck. That’s how I felt so much of the time: stuck, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
Asha snuggled closer to him. She knew the feeling.
“It’s only recently that I’ve felt…unstuck,” she admitted. “A lot is still out of my control. But with you…you make me feel like I have agency.”
He stroked her hair. “I’m glad.”
They lay together quietly for a few minutes before Asha worked up the courage to ask, “Is that why you left?”
“Left?”
“The Delta. Did you just get sick of it? Were Leo and Dom sick of it, too?”
He sighed. “It’s not a pretty story, darling. I’d rather—”
Asha lifted herself up on her elbows to fix him with a stare. “Do you trust me or not, soldier? We had sex last night, and I told you a secret. Now, I think it’s time for you to return the favour.”
Cade made a sound of amusement. “Sex and secrets, is that it?”
“Yes,” she replied in a definitive tone. “Every time we fuck, one of us owes the other a secret. Now, tell me yours.”
He laughed and kissed her. “Alright, I guess.”
He paused, but she sensed it wasn’t to stall.
He seemed to be trying to determine how to begin.
Asha stared at him, waiting. He’d never broached the subject again since she’d first asked, but she was more curious than ever as to how a man like Cade—a man who clearly excelled at what he did and was a natural leader—ended up in the Wasteland, especially if his compound still existed.
“You said before that they would’ve kicked you out anyway,” she prompted, trying to help him.
Cade chuckled softly. “More like they would’ve put a bullet in my head, really. I was—or would’ve been—wanted for a crime.”
“What did you do?”
His smile turned into more of a grimace. “Murder.”
“Did you do it?” Asha knew that people sometimes were blamed for crimes in the compound for reasons other than their guilt. Anyone who asked too many questions had a habit of being charged with crimes or simply disappearing without explanation.
“Yep,” Cade replied, with a glibness that she didn’t buy for a second. “Murdered my old man in cold blood.”
She frowned. “Why?”
He looked away, uncomfortable for the first time. “He killed my mother.”
Asha stayed silent, watching him and offering him the same quiet witness to his pain he’d given to her.
Cade swallowed hard, then continued: “He was always a dickhead, even when I was a kid. Liked to smack her around. He was a soldier too, in the Old World and at the Delta…and he didn’t keep his shit together very well.”
“Did he hit you?” Asha asked.
“Not often,” Cade answered, with a shake of his head. “Mom always protected me, and he was a coward. As soon as I was big enough to hit back, he rarely wanted anything to do with me anymore. But he started treating her even worse when I got drafted and left home.”
He paused again, letting out a breath filled with tension. Asha found herself holding him tighter, stroking his chest in soothing circles.
“Anyway, I was trying to get her out,” Cade said after a moment. “Trying to get her to report him. But she wouldn’t. She really loved that asshole, God only knows why. Had every excuse in the book for him.”
“How did you find out what he did?”
“Went over to their house before my patrol shift. I always said bye to my mom before I went, because you never know. I get there, he’s standing over her in the kitchen, and she’s bleeding out on the floor with her head busted open.”
Asha winced. “Oh my God.”
Cade ground his teeth. “My father—” he spit the word out like it was poison, “claimed that she fell and hit her head on the counter.”
“But he pushed her?”
He shook his head in disgust. “No. He always thought I was an idiot, see—that’s why he lied. But even an idiot can see blood on a heavy marble rolling pin and put two and two together.”
Asha grimaced. “He got what he deserved, then.”
“I’d say so,” Cade said with a mirthless smile. “Beat him to death with his own weapon. Never lost my temper quite like that before…or since. But then I had a problem, obviously.”
“So, how did you get out?” she asked, intrigued. She didn’t know how one would escape a functioning compound; they were heavily fortified. If the Cave hadn’t been destroyed, she’d never have been able to leave, even if she wanted to.
“Figured that it’d take at least a day for them to even notice my parents were missing, and that gave me time to plan.
Told Leo and Dom what happened, and that I planned to desert.
I gave them the option to stay home, but they didn’t.
Like I told you, there’d been an uprising recently, and they had their own reasons to leave…
plus they’re just the best fucking friends a guy could ask for. ”
Asha couldn’t help smiling a little at his tone.
“When we went on patrol the next day, we all deserted together.”
“And then you went to Ashburn?”
“Not right away. Our main concern initially was getting out of range of our tracking beacons.”
Asha frowned. “Tracking beacons?”
“Oh, right,” Cade said, as though remembering something important.
“I guess you wouldn’t know, as a civilian.
Your implant—and mine—has a tracking beacon on it.
Allows them to track you up to 300 kilometres from the compound.
All soldiers carry a PID—that’s a Personal Identification Device—that we use to sign in and off shift.
Among other things, it also allowed us to track people.
Didn’t happen often, but sometimes people would try to escape, so… ”
“Wait, what?” She asked in alarm.
“Yeah. They billed the tracking as a safety feature, because it also enabled protection from the guns on top of the Walls. If the AI can track you, it can identify you, so the guns won’t accidentally fire on soldiers and other personnel.
But realistically…it was surveillance, like most of what they did. ”
Asha tried to swallow her panic. “If they can track me, I’m not safe here. The compound isn’t that far away.”
Cade pulled her back down into his arms and kissed the top of her head.
“Darling,” he said gently, “if they were going to do something about it, they would have by now. It’s been months.” He stroked her hair away from her face. “And I’ll protect you. No matter what happens, or who comes knocking, or what it costs. I promised you.”
She relaxed a little against him. “You better. Because I’m fulfilling my end of the bargain pretty well lately.”
He laughed. “I’ll give you that. Anyway, we didn’t find Ashburn right away. We put as much distance between us and the Delta as we could first. And despite what came after, I’ve never regretted leaving. Or killing my father.”
“You don’t miss running water and central heating?” Asha mused, tracing over his snake tattoo again.
“Sure. But out here, I’m free. Not just a chess piece in the game of people whose identities I’m not even allowed to know.”
“Free to die of starvation,” she countered. “Free to be sold into slavery. Free to be shot by a gang member. Free to be eaten by a bear. Is it freedom if even your basic needs are a daily struggle?”
Cade’s small, ironic smile was back. “I never said I was a philosopher, my angel. Just a man trying to determine his own destiny. What I always tell you is true for me too: we do what we have to do to survive. Whatever we have to. Whatever it leaves us with.”