CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #4
‘You can write it, then!’ he insists. Scouring through Riley’s things is unspeakably rude.
Riley is the boss, he runs Iron Star, best friend cannot come before that, so Kade is just the best and “friend” is said in silence, like a codeword, like a secret, secrets everywhere, hidden and burrowed and built into the walls of this whole fucking—
‘Kade.’
Riley is standing in front of him, palm over his heart. ‘It’s OK, just breathe. You’re all right. Don’t spiral. It’s gonna be OK.’
Kade looks down at his hand, currently full of lightweight chains, cuffs on both ends. He’s pulled them out of the drawer and didn’t even realise.
‘Oh.’ He blushes violently. ‘God. I’m so sorry.’
He hasn’t seen Riley so much as kiss another person in all the time he’s known him, let alone tie or be tied, but there’s no denying what these are and why they’re in his bedside drawer. Kade drops them like they’re poisonous.
Riley picks them up, puts them back, patient and calm once more.
‘It’s fine.’
‘I didn’t know you like—’
‘I don’t. They’re just necessary.’
Kade sways on his feet, wants to cry and scream until the titanium cracks and the glass shatters and the earth splits so the core will know he needs answers, truth, justice. He wants to scream until the lightning strikes this tower and all the lies are unmade.
‘I don’t know anything anymore.’
Riley’s resolve hardens. ‘Know that I love you. That you’re my brother, my best friend, all I never knew of love. That’s real and it’s not ever gonna change.’
‘You’ve lied to me for seven years.’
‘I’ve tried to keep you alive and keep my promise.’
‘To who?’ Kade grips his arms, fingers digging in, they’ll leave half-moon bruises for sure. ‘Who did you promise, Riley?’
Those blue eyes are never wet, not like Kade’s.
Riley is Kade’s North. Iron Star is Riley. Riley is the compass Kade has always trusted to navigate the confines of his life within these walls.
‘Tell me please.’
‘It’ll hurt.’
‘Just tell me!’
Riley whispers, ‘Your little sister.’
Pain unlike anything strikes Kade’s solar plexus.
The urge to pass out is overwhelming, but Kade resists with all he has, clings to consciousness and lets Riley hold him up until they sit on the bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Riley says, while Kade catches his breath, trembling. ‘I really am.’
Kade nods, eyes closed. ‘I know you are, but I… fuck, that hurt so bad.’
‘That’s what I feel when I try to tell you things.’
‘You could have written it down, you—’
‘You’d have forgotten. Any time you got close to figuring it out, she—’ The pain strikes again, so vicious that time that the pressure makes Kade’s nose trickle blood, pain in his skull impossibly tight.
‘I’m sorry. I usually t-try to hold it back but I need you to feel it to understand. I’ve never lied to you.’
‘Nothing is what I thought it was.’
‘I know.’
‘You were the one I looked to.’
Riley cups his face. ‘I know that too.’
‘What was the promise you made to her?’
Riley glances to the side as he thinks. He doesn’t speak sign language like Kade can but everyone in Iron Star knows tactical hand signals so when he makes a single sign, Kade understands instantly.
Hide.
‘That was your promise? To hide her?’
‘She…’ He trails off, groaning softly as a fresh bout of pain comes over him, and Kade feels less of it that time but he’s starting to understand. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’ Kade holds his hand. ‘What can you tell me?’
Riley exhales raggedly, looks like he might cry. ‘That I love you and I know I’ve done a bad job of it, but it was the best I could do.’
‘What else?’
‘I can tell you about your father,’ Riley says with returning confidence after thinking for a minute. ‘The shit Tanner doesn’t even know.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Absolutely it matters. It’s why I was so scared of Penhalyx knowing y—that his son is still alive.’
‘You’re not scared of anything.’
Riley squeezes his hand, eyes so blue. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘What if you’re lying?’
He brings Kade’s hand to his heart, settles his palm there and says, ‘A lie makes a double beat,’ with a faint smile as if remembering something.
‘Tell me then.’
‘OK.’ They sit cross-legged on the bed opposite one another.
They won’t be interrupted up here, no one would dare.
‘You ready?’
‘I’m ready.’
‘It wasn’t Tanner who arranged for the kidnap and extraction,’ Riley tells him, heart level beneath Kade’s palm. ‘It was Jules Penhalyx. He contacted Troy, organised the whole thing.’
Kade reels. ‘What?’
‘Jules was trying to get them both free without Tanner knowing. He knew what Alistair was planning for your—fucking hell, “his” twenty-first birthday.’
Riley’s heart is solid, strong, no skips.
‘What was he planning?’
‘It’s why Jules had a bodyguard,’ Riley says, still exceptionally pale.
Kade’s knuckles are fully healed now whereas Riley’s are painted with ugly, dark bruises, visibly broken.
He never threw the punches, but he wears the wounds.
‘It’s why it was in Tanner’s contract that he was never allowed to make him bleed or let anything scar. ’
Kade waits as some long dormant horror begins to unfurl inside.
‘Please, tell me.’
Lies are the bricks of any prison.
And truth is the violence that breaks them.
Riley takes a fortifying breath, bracing for pain.
‘He wanted your body for himself.’