Chapter 50 Cody
“Trust me?”
I go still, searching her face, but all I see is my baby.
Fuck, I loved that she enjoyed herself earlier. She gets on the bed and grabs the blindfold. I grab her wrist.
“What do you plan to do with that?”
She chews her bottom lip for a second, then flattens the blindfold, lifting it to my eyes. She slowly ties it around my head. Then she guides me to the bed and makes me lie in the middle. She ties my left wrist. Then my right. Then my ankles.
I test them once to test how well she tied it. She's better at knots than I gave her credit for. It’s snug.
I hear her pick up the candle from the nightstand.
She doesn’t say anything before she pours it. Heat lands on my abs, and I stay very still, not reacting to the sensation. I've taken a lot worse, and I've never once let anyone see it on my face.
She pours more.
All over my chest, my arms, and the edge of my jaw.
She giggles.
I relax at the sound of her enjoying herself. I love her laugh. Her smile is outrageous; it could light up the whole city, but her laugh is probably one of my favorite sounds.
More than anything, I’m happy to be alive right now to hear it one more time.
She continues back down my body, pouring wax on wax now.
"This wasn't the deal, babe," I say.
She puts the candle on the nightstand, and then I feel her breath on my lower stomach. Then her mouth. She moves her tongue against my skin, sucking at a certain place.
Fuck.
If I had known she had this in her these past two years, I would have had a lot more fun with her.
But I can still smell him on her, and it makes me sick to my stomach that she was just fucking him right before I showed up.
I want her to say his name.
That's what I'm waiting for. Underneath all of this — the candle and the rope and her mouth on my stomach — I'm waiting for her to give me the name.
Not because I don't know who the fuck it is.
But because I want it from her. I want to hear her say it, so that when I handle it, she'll know it was never about anger.
It was always about her. Everything is always about her.
When I take care of him, she'll know that what I did was for love.
She needs to understand that.
She needs to say his fucking name.
“Adela.”
Her mouth stops.
I wait for her hands to start peeling the wax the way I peeled it from her, but nothing happens.
“Babe?”
I try to reach for the blindfold, but I can’t.
I lift my head and listen for her footsteps.
"Adela."
I put everything into that one word –– the warning, the command, the tone that has always made her pause.
But it doesn’t work.
I hear the front door open.
Shit.
It closes.
“Adela!”
I breathe, and then I’m pulling at the fucking rope tied around my wrists. It doesn’t pull free.
“Fuck!”
I don’t hear my car. She’s on foot. I tug my left hand free, kicking my feet and trying to get free.
She'll come back.
It’s fucking cold outside.
She has to come back.
I work the right knot. It's waxed over. She was thorough with it in a way I'll be impressed by later, when I'm not furious. I try again. The rope is embedded. I shift my angle and try a third time, and I get one finger through a gap. I work it slowly while I listen for my engine to start.
It doesn't start.
Good.
My right hand comes free.
Then my ankles. Thirty seconds total, and I'm off the bed with the blindfold gone and my clothes in my hands.
I get to the door and fly it open.
"Adela!"
It’s dark outside. Shit! The property stretches out in front of me — the gravel drive, the tree line, there’s nowhere to run and hide. My voice goes out and comes back without an answer.
She's not running down the driveway.
I pull my shirt over my head, get my jeans on, and shove my feet into my shoes. I'm down the porch steps and into the dark.
"Adela!"
Nothing.
I run down the driveway and look both ways. I search the trees. I can’t fucking see a thing.
"Fuck!"
The word comes out of me at full volume into the empty night and doesn't help anything.
I run back up the driveway.
She's fast. I know she's fast. She ran cross-country in high school.
I get in my car.
I throw on my high beams and look in every direction.
“Come on,” I whisper.
I roll down my window and call out her name. Nothing. I turn right, drive a little, then turn around and drive the other way.
I pull back up to the top of the driveway and kill the engine.
She can't survive out here for long. Not in November without a fucking coat. It's forty degrees out here and dropping.
I look both ways, keeping myself alert.
She has to come back.
Nearly an hour.
I watch my phone tick through fifty-two minutes with no movement at the end of the driveway and no sound from the tree line.
There’s fucking nothing.
Does she not know what I would do for her?
Right now, she’s acting like I’m the monster.
That’s how I know Julian was full of shit. She didn’t only see one of the videos. There’s no way she’d be this angry with me.
I picked all the wax off my body and piled it right outside the window.
My phone rings.
I look at the caller ID.
Nessa.
I exhale for three full seconds. Then I answer because she'll keep calling, and right now I don’t think Adela will show face any time soon.
"Nessa. Hi."
"Hey, what are you doing?" she asks in a chipper voice.
"I'm in the middle of something. Can I call you back?"
"Depends. Is it anything I can help with?"
I think about that for exactly one second. "I'll call you back."
"You keep pushing me off. When do I get to see you?"
"Doctor's orders." I keep my eyes on the driveway. "I'll call you soon."
"Okay. Looks like I'll have to tell you when I see you then."
I rub my mouth. "Tell me what?"
She doesn't answer immediately.
"Nessa." My voice drops. "What is it."
"I saw Theo with Adela."
Acid burns my mouth. "What the fuck do you mean you saw him with Adela?"
She doesn't answer right away, and I don't have the patience for her timing tonight. "Nessa."
"They went to Gas Works Park." Her voice isn’t chipper anymore. "And I saw them kissing."
The acid in my mouth flows through my veins. "When."
"Is she all you care about?" she snaps. "When am I going to see you? When do I—"
"When the fuck did you see them together?"
"This morning."
"This morning!" I scoff.
What the fuck is Adela doing?
"Cody, why do I always—"
"I gotta go."
"Wait—" she starts talking, but I don’t hear anything. I can tell she’s mad, she’s hurt, and she’s confused, but I give zero fucks about Nessa and her feelings right now. Not after the bomb she just dropped on me.
I look at the driveway. At the dark. At the hour, I've been sitting here waiting for a girl who went to Gas Works Park this morning with Theo and kissed him and then went home and fucked Beckett, and then came to my lake house tonight and let me give her the best orgasm of her life.
I grip my steering wheel, wanting to punch something.
Theo?
Theo Rhodes!
"Nessa," I interrupt. "Listen to me very carefully."
"Cody—"
I cut her off. "I don't give a fuck about you." Each word placed exactly where I mean it. "I never did. You were leverage against your brother. That's all. Stop calling me. Stop begging for my attention." A pause. "You are nobody to me. Understand?"
The sound she makes is not something I'm going to think about.
"Fuck you!" she screams, and there's more coming. I end the call before I have to hear any of it.
I sit in the dark.
Theo.
I look at the cabin.
At the dark windows. The locked door.
She's out there in the cold in my clothes with nowhere to go.
I step towards the cabin. "I was waiting for you to come out," I say to the dark, to the tree line, to wherever she is right now. "So I could give you a ride home, Adela." I pause. "If this is how it's going to be." I start the engine of my car. "I guess I'll see you later."
I lock the cabin from the app on my phone, and I pull down the driveway. I turn onto the road, and I drive.
Theo Rhodes.
I've been waiting for the right moment since I woke up in that hospital bed.
The right moment just introduced itself.
I pick up my phone and call Silas.
"Cody."
"Silas. It’s time.” I pause. "Parking lot. North side of campus. Twenty minutes."
He's leaning against his car when I pull in.
Hands in his pockets. Shoulders relaxed. The lot is empty at this time of night.
I park and get out.
I don't cross all the way to him. I stop at the midpoint between our cars and wait, and he pushes off his hood and meets me there.
We look at each other.
I know that Silas is not loyal to me.
I also know he's not loyal to Theo.
"How much?" I say.
He doesn't blink. "For what exactly?"
"About Adela."
"Fifty," he says.
"Done."
Something moves in his face. Just slightly. I moved too fast.
He nods once.
"Beckett," he says.
I wait for more.
"I need confirmation."
"He introduced himself and played rescue," he says.
I look at the orange streetlight above his car.
"Theo," I say.
Silas shakes his head. One small movement. "Different price."
"Name it."
"There isn't one." He says it without apology.
I look at him.
He looks back.
We both understand what he's actually saying.
Not that he won't give me Theo. That he can't. That whatever Silas knows about Theo Rhodes is the kind of information that doesn't have a clean exit once it's been exchanged.
You sell it, and you live inside what comes after it.
And Silas has looked at what comes after it and decided that no number I name tonight covers that cost.
"Okay," I say.
I reach into my jacket. I count out the bills without making a production of it, and I hold them out. Silas takes them without counting them either, because we're both past the point of performing distrust about the small things.
I turn back toward my car.
"Cody."
I stop.
I look back at him over my shoulder.
"When this is over," he says, "what happens to the team?"
I look at him for a moment, knowing that he loves having his position back. He doesn’t want that jeopardized.
"Depends on what everyone does next," I say and get in my car.
I sit in the dark of the parking lot and wait for Silas’s taillights to disappear.
I open my laptop, and the footage loads fast.
I go directly to the timestamp I marked before I left the cabin — not the beginning, not the parts that are mine, not anything that shows what she gave me willingly in that room –– just two seconds.
Two seconds of Adela.
Tied to my bed.
Blindfolded.
Completely unambiguous.
I open my messages and find Beckett's name.
I attach the clip.
No message. No explanation. No context. He doesn't need any of it — the clip is the entire message, every word of it, delivered in two seconds of footage that says everything I need it to say without requiring a single syllable from me.
I see you.
Your move.
I hit send.
I watch the notification confirm delivery.
Then I close my laptop, and I sit in the silence. I wonder where my little Adela is right now. I open the app that gives me the front view of the cabin. Nothing. Maybe she went into the trees.
I glance at my phone to see if Beckett responded. I don’t expect him to, but I’m wondering when he’ll see it.
I have been patient since I woke up in that hospital bed.
I am done being patient.