Page 148 of Cross Checked
22
Bliss
The apartment had gone quiet in the strange, soft way it only ever did after midnight, when Aura and Charm were either asleep or pretending to be because they loved me enough to give me privacy and were nosy enough to absolutely ask questions tomorrow.
After an insane round of benefits, Cade and I had gone back down to the party at Hockey House, but it had somehow grown twice as loud and twice as crowded, which was absolutely not my vibe anymore. We stayed for a few drinks, long enough to prove we were technically social creatures, then grabbed Cade a small overnight bag and came back here.
Cade lay beside me in my bed like he had always belonged there, which was rude because I had worked very hard to convince myself no man belonged anywhere near my sheets, my heart, or my emotional infrastructure.
His back was propped against my pillows, one arm tucked behind his head while the other stayed around me, his fingers moving lazily over my hip beneath the blanket. I was curled into his side with one leg thrown over his, my cheek resting against the warm slope of his chest, and everything inside me felt too settled for the kind of girl who usually treated peace like a suspicious package.
That was the problem.
I didn’t think I would ever feel safer than this.
Not because Cade made the room perfect or because what happened between us earlier had magically erased anything. It hadn’t. The bruise on my neck still ached when I swallowed. Luke still existed somewhere outside these walls like a rot theworld hadn’t cut out yet. My past still sat beneath my ribs with teeth. But Cade’s hand kept moving over me in slow, thoughtless strokes, and for once, the silence didn’t feel like something waiting to punish me.
It felt like space.
Like maybe I could finally put this burden down.
Cade didn’t ask at first. That was the thing about him that made my chest hurt if I thought about it too long. He could push harder than anyone I’d ever met when he wanted something, but right now he didn’t shove. He waited. He watched me stare into the dark like he knew I was standing on the edge of something, and when he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough behind my hair.
“You’re looking at the ceiling like the answer’s written up there.”
I looked up at him. “Maybe it is.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Maybe you’re stalling.”
“Maybe you’re nosy.”
“I’m absolutely nosy.”
I swallowed hard and let the room breathe with me.
“But I deserve something, Pip.”
There it was. Not therapy. Not pleading. Not some soft, golden-retriever emotional support nonsense that would have made me climb out the window from secondhand embarrassment. Just Cade being Cade. Blunt. Controlled. Cocky enough to sound calm while his fingers brushed a bruise another man had left on my skin.
“I know,” I whispered. “And I know this is about keeping me safe in your eyes, not some deep dive into the psyche of the girl you’re crushing on.”
“Crushing on?” His mouth twitched. “Give me a little more depth, Pip.”
I smiled and rolled my eyes. I knew what he was doing, and I secretly loved it. The way he could make the heaviest parts of my past feel less terrifying by keeping me grounded in the outside of it. The trauma itself was detestable, but somehow Cade kept us outside of it.
Cade and Bliss.
Still us.
“Okay,” I said. “I see your point, and I raise you a ‘my friends with benefits’ psyche.”
He groaned dramatically and clutched his heart. “That’s worse than crushing. How about my girl’s psyche? It just feels right, Pip.”
“And allow you to give us a title? I would never defeat that easy.”
He leaned down, and I thought he was going to kiss me, but he dropped a quick kiss on my nose instead and winked. “I’ll get your defeat.”
I let out a shuddering breath. “Keep dreaming, Cross Check.”
