Cade
When I was the skinny boy at school, getting the shit beat out of me three days a week in the same stairwell, a teacher from another grade had pulled the kid off me and hauled me up by the arm.
Mr. Brennan. I still remembered his face.
He'd crouched down to my height and said, "It only takes a small piece to make a bigger man fall apart. "
I'd kicked that kid so hard in the nuts the next day that I'd put money on him never having had children.
Did I feel bad? No fucking way. Actions brought consequences and he'd brought his.
Now I was the big man, and I was falling to pieces one small part at a time.
There came a point where you didn't care what killed you, because something already was. Slowly, quietly, in the spaces between the things you were supposed to be doing.
I was there.
The radio silence was killing me.
The day I met Avery, she’d had fire in her eyes and acid on her tongue, and she’d screamed in my face like I was the devil… I was still living.
I just hoped like hell that she was too.
That thought slammed into me like a fucking train. Not the slow creep of worry I'd been carrying for weeks. This was something else. This was the sudden image of her alone with nothing and no one.
I crouched down to the ground with my head in my hands, elbows on thighs. I couldn't breathe for a second. Couldn't think past it.
I heard the crunch of boots beside me and I knew who it was. But not what he would do.
Dax rested his hand on my shoulder and didn't say anything for a long moment. Just the weight of his palm and the sound of the yard around us.
Then he said, "Go to her, brother."
I stood up slowly and he placed a hand on each of my shoulders and looked me dead in the face.
"She might need you more than you need her."
That was all I needed.
She might need me more.