Chapter 32 Shot Through the Heart and I’m to Blame
KADE
I want to kiss her.
Standing here on the sidewalk outside her parents’ house, watching her process what just happened, all I want to do is pull off this fucking helmet and kiss her until she forgets every cruel word her mother ever said.
I want to take her away from everyone who’s ever hurt her, made her feel small, or convinced her she’s not enough.
But I can’t. Because I’m the one who hurt her most.
I push that thought down, bury it deep where it belongs, and hand her the helmet.
She takes it without hesitation this time, pulling it on with steady hands. No argument. No protest. Just trust.
She climbs onto the bike behind me, her arms wrapping around my waist like they belong there.
CHAD
Where do you want to go?
She doesn’t even look at her screen. Instead, she leans forward, her voice slightly muffled by the helmet but clear enough.
“You know me better than anyone,” she says. “So you know what I need right now more than anyone.”
Fuck.
That right there. That’s trust. Trust I don’t deserve but trust I’m going to fucking take because I can’t help myself.
Because she’s right. I do know what she needs.
The shooting range is tucked away in an industrial part of Queens that most people drive past without a second thought.
I know the owner—did a job for him a few years back, helped him disappear some problems that were threatening his business.
He lets me come here after hours when I need to blow off steam.
Tonight we won’t be disturbed.
I park the bike and lead Amanda to the entrance. She’s quiet, but I can feel the tension coiled tight in her body.
“It’s perfect,” she says as I unlock the door. “How did you know?”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. Because the truth is too complicated.
Inside, I get her set up in one of the booths, turning on the lights, setting up the target system. She watches me move around the space, and I can see the questions in her eyes.
Then she reaches into her purse and pulls out her gun.
Pink. Compact. Custom grip. The Glock 43 I gave her as a wedding gift in Vegas.
My chest tightens. After eight years, she still carries it. Still has it. The one piece of me she kept.
I start to pull out my phone to text her, but she shakes her head.
“Please,” she says, her voice soft. “I don’t want to talk to you like this. I want to hear your voice. Know this is real.”
I pause, phone halfway out of my pocket.
Fuck.
I move to the booth next to hers, pull off my helmet, and lean against the dividing wall. She can’t see me, but she can hear every word.
The first shot rings out, clean and precise. Then another. And another.
Perfect grouping. Right to the head, every time.
She always was such a natural at this.
“Nice shooting,” I say, keeping my voice low and rough, different from how I normally sound. “That’s a beautiful piece. Where’d you get it?”
Another shot. “It was a gift.”
“Must have been someone special.”
A pause. Then a bitter laugh. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Ex-husband. Wedding gift, if you can believe that.”
My grip tightens on the wall between us.
“Most men give jewelry,” I say carefully.
“Most men aren’t—” She stops herself, fires another shot. “He was different. Said a girl like me was way too much of a target, needed to know how to protect herself. Made it fun, you know? Taught me how to shoot, how to handle it properly.”
She clears another shot.
“It was actually… it was some of the best times we had together. Out on the range, just us, him teaching me, showing me how to be strong. Often led to, um…” She clears her throat. “Well. Let’s just say target practice had some interesting side effects.”
I can picture it perfectly. Because I remember every single session. Remember the way she’d bite her lip when she was concentrating. Remember how proud she’d be when she nailed a perfect shot. Remember taking her against the wall of the range afterward, both of us high on adrenaline and want.
“Why do you still have it?” I ask, my voice rougher than I intended.
She’s quiet for a long moment. More shots. Perfect form, perfect aim.
“It’s one thing from him I could never get rid of,” she admits finally. “And I sort of hate myself for that.”
Another shot.
“We met in Vegas. Completely insane, whirlwind thing. Married him after knowing him for, like, an hour.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “God, I was so stupid. So caught up in this fantasy of love and adventure and finding my person.”
My hand curls into a fist against the wall.
“He made me feel like I was the center of his universe, you know? Like nothing else mattered but me.”
She clears another perfect shot.
“We had one month. Four weeks of me thinking I’d found my fairy tale. And then one day it was all just… gone. Like he’d never been real at all.”
My chest feels like it’s caving in.
“No note. No explanation. No goodbye. I spent weeks thinking something had happened to him. That maybe he was hurt worse than me, or in trouble, or…” She fires another shot, harder this time. “But no. He just decided he was done with me and left.”
The pain in her voice is killing me.
“Eight years later, and I still don’t know why. Still don’t know what I did wrong, what I wasn’t enough of, what made him decide I wasn’t worth staying for.”
“Amanda—”
“But”—she cuts me off with a sharp laugh—“he got his in the end. Has a particular tattoo of my name that’s probably a constant reminder of what an asshole he was to me. Even if he got it removed, I bet that was really painful.”
I shift, feeling the weight of her name permanently etched on my skin.
If only she knew how right she was.
“Sounds like he really fucked up,” I manage.
“Yeah, well.” She fires another shot. “I try not to go there.”
The conversation shifts, and she starts talking about tonight. Her voice gets quieter, more vulnerable.
“You know what the worst part is?” she says, firing another shot. “I’m twenty-nine years old, and I still desperately want my mother’s approval. Like some pathetic little kid who can’t figure out why nothing she does is ever good enough.”
Another shot. Perfect aim.
“I’ve been chasing it my whole life. Perfect grades, perfect behavior, perfect looks, perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect everything. And it’s never enough. There’s always something wrong with my choices, my career, my life. Always some way I’m disappointing her.”
I hear the click of her gun reload.
“I think that’s why I respect Raven so much. She never tried to impress her. Never tried to be perfect. Just always was herself, unapologetically. And somehow that drives Mom even crazier.”
Another shot, this one with more force behind it.
“Raven’s been vegan for, like, ten years. Ten years. And Mom still makes pot roast every single family dinner. Doesn’t even try to accommodate her. Just acts like Raven’s dietary choices are some kind of personal attack instead of, I don’t know, making a salad or literally anything else.
“But Raven doesn’t care. She brings her own food, eats what she wants, doesn’t apologize for it.
Meanwhile, I’m over here eating meat I don’t even like that much just to avoid the passive-aggressive comments about being ‘difficult.’ Tonight, when she brought up my marriage, that was the lowest blow.
Because she knows. She knows how much that destroyed me, how much I blamed myself for not being enough to make him stay. And she used it against me anyway.”
Her voice cracks slightly.
“I keep thinking maybe if I just try harder, be better, achieve more, she’ll finally look at me and be proud. But she won’t. She can’t. Because if she built me up, she’d have to admit that maybe I was never the problem.”
She pauses.
I press my forehead against the wall between us, my jaw clenched so tight that it aches. Listening to her tear herself apart, hearing the pain she’s carried all these years—pain I made worse by leaving—it’s taking all I have not to walk around that divider and tell her the truth.
That she is perfect. That leaving her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
That every day without her has been hell.
That her name is still inked into my skin and I’ve never once thought about removing it.
That seeing the scar on the inside of her arm makes my chest feel like it’s caving in, and I’ll never stop hating myself over it.
But I can’t. Not yet.
“And the really fucked-up part? I do the same thing to myself. I tear myself down before anyone else can. I deflect with humor and chaos and pink everything, because if I’m the joke, then when people laugh at me, at least I’m in control.”
Another shot. Right to the head.
“I think that’s why I liked AI Chad so much,” she says quietly. “He was safe. Predictable. He couldn’t actually leave me because he wasn’t real. And if he wasn’t real, he couldn’t really hurt me.”
The ache in my chest is overwhelming. Because she’s describing exactly what I took from her—her ability to trust that love could be safe.
And I hate myself for it.
“But real people can,” I say.
“Real people do.” Another shot. “Real people tell you they love you and then disappear without explanation. Real people make you feel like you’re their entire universe and then prove you mean nothing.”
“Maybe real is worth the risk,” I say quietly. “Maybe when it’s real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Says the man hiding behind his visor.”
She clears the magazine, and the paper target comes flying forward. Every single shot clustered in the head, perfect groupings.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe I think too much.”
And that’s when I can’t help myself anymore. Fuck, I shouldn’t be doing this, but I push away from the wall and walk into her booth anyway. She tenses as I come up behind her, my helmet off, close enough that she could turn around and see me if she wanted to.
“Keep looking forward,” I say, keeping my voice rough.
Her breathing changes. Gets shallow.
I reach around her, my hands ghosting over hers as she reloads, not quite touching but close enough that she can feel the heat of me.
The target resets in the distance. She raises the gun and aims for the head like always. My hands settle over hers, just barely touching. She flinches at the contact, her aim jerking downward just as she pulls the trigger.
This time, the bullet flies straight through the heart.