Chapter 4
KADENCE
The ride to Annika’s place was quiet except for my soft crying and the screaming in my head.
My fingers touched my neck where Doc bandaged my throat.
I never thought the woman I loved would hold a knife to my throat and almost kill me, but here we were.
My wrist throbbed, but my body felt numb at the same time.
I hadn’t felt like this in a long time. It was foolish of me to even think I could be happy when my entire life was a series of tragic events.
“Kadence,” Hunter started, “do you want to talk?”
“What’s the point?” I whispered. “Not talking is what caused this, so why should I talk now?”
“Kadence, what happened isn’t your fault.”
I swallowed hard. “Isn’t it?” I looked at her. She couldn’t look at me because she was driving. “I thought I could run from my past. I thought I could bury Caden and never remember her.” I laughed bitterly. “I can't even be a dead girl correctly.”
“Kadence, you aren’t dead. Maybe you were too focused on burying who you were, you couldn’t focus on who you wanted to be.” Why did she sound like she spoke from experience? “You experienced something no one should, and you never processed it. You ran. It’s time to stop running.”
A bitter laugh threatened to escape me. This woman was reading me like a book. I never should have stayed here in the first place or started to care for the people in this town. All I did was run because no one ever stopped me.
My eyes went back to the window and I caught a Harley in the side mirror. “Why is he following us?”
Hunter looked in her rearview mirror. “Son of a bitch. I’m going to kill him. He has a savior complex.”
If he had a savior complex, I wouldn’t be crying or injured.
He wouldn’t have pinned me against the wall or drugged me.
Blaize may not have known my history, but Hawke knew what happened to me.
He knew I was drugged. He knew I was raped.
And yet, my pain meant nothing to him. He didn’t have a savior complex—he had a guilty conscience.
When Hunter pulled up to the apartment, she leaped out of her Jeep and went to Hawke, yelling at him. Instead of listening to them argue, I scurried upstairs. “Kadence, wait,” Hawke called. I ignored him. “Kid, please.”
“Leave me alone, Hawke!” I yelled back at him as I stormed inside the apartment, alarming Annika and the guys, which made them jump up from the couch.
“Kid, wait. Just let me talk to you.”
“Hawke,” Hunter hissed, but it was too late.
“Talk?!” I screamed, curling my fingers under the bandages, ripping them clean off my skin.
Doc would be pissed, but so was I. The wounds had scabbed over, but they were not that nice to look at.
His eyes saw the ugly marks, and he winced.
“You want to fucking talk now? I trusted you. I told you what they did to me, and you let her do this to me!” Annika rushed to my side, gently grabbing my wrists and looking back and forth between the two of us.
His face dropped. “I’m sorry, kid. I know we fucked up. I was angry, hurt, and scared. It doesn’t excuse what I did.”
“Both of you triggered me! I was doing fine. I was fucking raped. I was healing from my trauma and you both ruined it!” I scream, feeling the tears well in my eyes.
I was so sick and tired of this. Everything was fine.
I didn’t need help. I didn’t need pity. “I relived it, Hawke. I felt his hands burn into my skin, felt his thick fingers around my throat as I cried. I felt every goddamn forced thrust inside me. I was helpless because of the two of you.” Annika caught me in her arms as I collapsed to the floor.
She ran her fingers through my hair and rubbed soft circles around my back.
“What did you do?” Theo demanded.
I didn’t let Hawke answer him. “I don’t know what happened to Layla or Fallon, and I’m so fucking sorry that she’s dead, and I hope Fallon pulls through, but I didn’t fucking do it. I don’t have any fucking connections to the people who did! You both reacted horribly and framed me as the bad guy.”
Hawke ran his hands through his hair as Noah and Theo approached him. “Kid, I—” I flinched at his voice, and the guys growled.
“Go. Get out of our house,” Theo ordered. “I don’t know what the fuck you did, but you aren’t touching her.”
Hawke looked like he wanted to argue, but finally shook his head. “Take care of her,” he said before the door slammed shut.
Annika rocked me back and forth as I sobbed into her shoulder. Everything that happened in the last few months finally crashed into me like a tidal wave, and I couldn’t stop. This was what I got for trying to move on instead of coping with what happened to me.
“What did they do, Kadence?” Annika asked softly. I shook my head.
“Hawke and Blaize thought she had something to do with Fallon and Layla,” Hunter began.
“S-she w-wanted to k-kill me.” My words were broken. The woman who held me the night before, the one who took me on a date and made sweet promises, was nowhere in the room. She was feral.
Annika ran her fingers through my hair as she comforted me. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
“Hunter, what did Blaize do?” Drew asked. He sounded different talking to Hunter.
She sighed. “Hawke drugged her and took her from the club before chaining her in the basement. Blaize took her knife to her, and said she had a panic attack that resulted in the chains cutting her wrist.
“How did you know?” Drew asked.
“I found her. It’s not my story to tell. Take care of her, okay?” Hunter said. “She needs comfort right now, and I need to kick Blaize’s ass.”
“I will.” As Hunter walked out, Drew crouched down next to me and Annika. “You need to shower and clean those wrists. Annika will be there with you, I’m just taking you there. Are you okay with that?”
I nodded, and he picked me up into his arms. I sank into his chest as he walked me into my bathroom, sitting me on the counter as Annika turned on the faucet and started filling her bathtub. Annika’s guys didn’t scare me. None of the men here scared me…not until tonight with Hawke.
Annika closed the door and lifted my shirt up, pulling it over my body. I didn’t know whose clothes I was wearing since my lingerie had blood on it.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Annika soothed, her voice keeping me from falling back into the dark abyss I had fought so hard to stay out of. I stood on wobbly legs as she tugged the shorts down my legs. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I looked at her and opened my mouth, waiting for the words to come out, but it was only replaced with a sob. She pulled my naked body into her and squeezed me tight. “I’m sorry.” She shushed me before saying, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
I sank into the hot water, letting it engulf me and soothe my aching muscles, being careful of my wounded wrists.
“I was raped,” I whispered, causing a frown to paint Annika’s face, “before I came here. I was also stabbed, that’s the scar I have.
It’s the reason I had a blood infection when Hawke found me.
I didn’t tell anyone ‘cause I didn’t want to cause a problem.
I was fine for the most part. I’m sorry. ”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Kadence,” Annika comforted.
“I didn’t tell anyone who I was. This could’ve been prevented.”
“This isn’t your fault,” Annika said, firmness laced in her voice. “Your story is yours to tell. Blaize shouldn’t have done this. I don’t care if you killed her kitten, she should’ve thought beforehand.”
I forced out a smile. “I love her.”
Annika looked at me, surprised. “Oh.”
I sank further into the water, wincing when it hit the lacerations on my wrist. “I shouldn’t. Not now. She hurt me. She wanted to kill me. The look in her eyes was feral.”
The woman I saw in that basement was not the woman who brought me immense pleasure weeks ago.
The new Blaize was terrifying, and I’d faced a number of terrifying people in my lifetime, but nothing compared to Blaize in that moment.
She only faltered when I panicked. Blaize wanted to kill me, and she might’ve accomplished her mission if I hadn’t had a full-on panic attack.
“Don’t listen to your heart right now. You know me, normally I’d tell you to—but after this…trust your brain. If you choose to let her love you or try to, make her pay. I don’t care if she’s my boss or if she’s scary, if she hurts you again, I’ll kill her myself.”
“I love you. I don’t know how I got so lucky to meet you or your guys.”
“We’ll always be here for you.”
I gave her a smile. “I guess I should get out and get my wrists cleaned. I’m exhausted.”
Annika helped me clean and bandage my wrists, then gave me one of Drew’s shirts to sleep in. I told them all goodnight before slipping under my covers and hoping sleep would find me quickly.