Page 150 of Cross Checked
Cade’s chest moved against my back with a quiet laugh. “Fine. I’ll concede to mental Wheel of Fortune. My point is, I’ll fill in the blanks. I’m working on my bachelor’s in engineering, Pip. I’m confident I can gather context clues.”
I turned in his arms before I could lose my nerve, cupping his face in my hands and kissing him because sometimes kissing was easier than answering. Cade let me for about three seconds before his hand slid into my hair and his mouth took over like he had a personal vendetta against my ability to think.
When I pulled back, he looked entirely too pleased with himself.
“So kissing is still undecided,” he murmured.
“Under review currently.”
“Tell me how Glory Days gets a boyfriend title and all I get is friends with benefits.”
“I think I like besties with benefits better. Catchier, don’t you think?”
Cade stared at me for one silent second, then said, “I’ll take things that cause a breakup for two hundred.”
A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it, and his mouth twitched like he’d won something. The next second he rolled me beneath him, one hand finding my side and tickling me just enough to make me shriek into his chest.
“No, no, no, absolutely not.” I grabbed at his wrist, laughing so hard my ribs ached. “That’s psychological warfare.”
“You laughed at my joke.”
“It was funny.”
“I know.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He kissed me before I could argue, slow and deep and unfairly good at ruining every defense mechanism I had ever built. By the time he pulled back, I was flushed and breathless beneath him while he hovered over me with one forearm braced beside my head, his other hand smoothing my hair back from my face like he had every right in the world to touch me like I was his.
Maybe he did, but I would never let him know that.
That thought scared me more than it should have.
“Why is it,” I whispered, my fingers settling against his cheek, “that I can joke with you and feel this happy, and then trauma dump my worst moment, and it still just feels like a Monday night?”
Cade’s expression shifted.
Not soft. Cade never went soft. But something in his face changed, focus sharpening as his fingers drifted from my hair to the side of my neck. His touch brushed over the blue and purplish bruise there, so careful it almost undid me.
“I want to kill him, Pip.”
I knew he did.
That was the terrifying part. It wasn’t male ego or empty threat or hockey-boy chest beating. Cade meant it with the same quiet certainty he brought to everything else. Out of thousands of men at KFU, somehow I had found the one who would tear a star from the sky if I told him I was afraid of the dark.
I trusted Cade with the parts of me I had never given anyone. The broken parts. The ones I buried beneath jokes and glitter and loud chaos before anybody could look too closely and see the cracks.
But Cade did. He had been seeing them for longer than I wanted to admit, and I had been fighting against him ever since, desperate to keep him at a distance because if he got close enough, he would destroy his life over me and I didn’t know how to believe I deserved that kind of selfless loyalty.
His fingers continued to brush lightly along the bruise, and it felt like his touch had found the timer hidden beneath my skin, the one I had spent years pretending wasn’t counting down.
“I was crying when he came into my room that very first time,” I whispered.
Cade entwined our fingers, kissing my knuckles like a silent prompt to keep going.
“We had buried my mom that day, and everyone who ever knew her was in our house celebrating her life.” I looked at him, tears falling down my face onto the pillow. “I felt like I was dying, the pain was so intense. I never knew sadness like that. I knew my mom was gone and that I would only ever have fourteen years of memories with her.”
He leaned over and gently kissed the top of my head with a softness I had never seen from Cade.
