Page 152 of Cross Checked
I sighed and stared at the ceiling fan. “Luke snuck into my room under the guise of a friend. I fell for it because I was grieving something bigger.”
He didn’t say anything as that truth settled, but when he did, it hit me in the chest.
“You were vulnerable, Pip. Luke used that because guys like him aren’t capable of human decency.”
The smile slipped before my tears did, and somehow Cade noticed that too. His expression sobered instantly, but the warmth he’d made stayed in the room, small and fragile and enough to let me breathe.
I looked down at our joined hands. “He was Johnny on the fucking spot holding me and wiping my tears,” I whispered. “Telling me I was sexy when I cried.”
The humor vanished from Cade’s face so completely it felt like watching a door slam shut.
“After that, he started telling me it was my fault we couldn’t be together. He was twenty and I was fourteen and too young for anyone to understand. He told me that as much as he wanted to be with me, it would never happen because if Ryker or Knox found out, we would both lose them.”
Cade cursed immediately under his breath, low and vicious. “He got you to promise not to tell.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to. The answer was lying between us already.
“I thought it meant I was special the way he wanted me,” I admitted, my voice quieter now. “And fuck, I was so infatuated with him. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for him and me to be together. I thought being wanted that intensely meant it was real. I didn’t understand what healthy love looked like yet. I just thought without him I would die.”
Cade’s fingers tightened around mine. Not enough to hurt, but enough to remind me he was still there.
“My reality was if I wanted to be with him, I had to wait until I was eighteen or keep a secret I had no business understanding,” I whispered, nausea rolling through me even now. “And by the time I started understanding what it meant to be his, he already knew every way to keep me quiet.”
23
Cade
I watched her for a long moment after she went quiet.
The apartment had fallen silent around us sometime during the last hour. The world outside the bedroom kept moving. Cars drove past. Somebody’s dog barked somewhere down the street. Charm and Aura were probably home and asleep now, but in here, it felt like time had stopped.
Bliss sat beside me beneath the blankets, her fingers twisted together in her lap while tears dried slowly on her cheeks. I’d spent months learning every version of her. The loud version. The chaotic version. The glitter-covered menace who stole my food and told me she hated me for sport. The girl who collected Nevers and somehow managed to compare everything in life to either a bear attack or a social experiment gone wrong.
But this version?
This version was new.
This version was terrifying, because every piece she handed me felt like discovering another room hidden inside a house I thought I already knew.
“I was fifteen when everything went sideways in that you never get another first time kind of way.” Her voice went thinner. Quieter. “I was lying in the bed of his truck, drunk on peach schnapps, telling myself it hurt for every girl.”
Every muscle in my body locked because I understood immediately. There wasn’t a single part of me that missed what she was trying to tell me, and the knowledge settled heavy and ugly in my chest while I stared at the wall and tried not to picture a fifteen-year-old Bliss convincing herself that was normal.
I stared at the ceiling for a second and swallowed the rage trying to crawl up my throat until I didn’t know if I needed centering or if she did.
“I’ll take Smile in My Mugshot for two hundred, Alex.”
Her head snapped toward me so fast I almost regretted saying it.
Almost.
Then a laugh slipped out of her, small and broken and still wet from crying. It shouldn’t have been my favorite sound in the world given the circumstances, but there it was.
She knew I was telling her to breathe, and the tension between us loosened just enough after that. Not lighter. Not better. Just easier. Easy enough for her to keep talking without having to climb back inside the worst moment of her life and drag me in with her.
“It was varying stages of that from then on.” She looked down at her hands. “I only need one incident to charge him, and my story becomes credible because now you can corroborate enough felonies the DA can pick from a smorgasbord.”
Holy shit.
