Page 157 of Cross Checked
I reached for the marble in his hand and closed his fingers around it.
“That’s why I carry my last Never everywhere I go.” My voice broke completely then, but I kept going because he needed to understand this part. Maybe more than any other part. “It reminds me to keep burning my ass for the warmth.”
I looked at Cade, sitting there with my last Never in his palm, staring down at the tiny dagger moth trapped inside like it was sacred to him too. His face changed, and I could see him fighting it in real time. His jaw locked. His throat moved as he tried to force the emotion back down, but his eyes were already shining. He looked away before the tears could fall, leaning forward to hide them from me.
“Fuck,” he whispered, scrubbing both hands over his face. “Fuck.”
My chest squeezed as I watched him fight it. I stood to give him a second because I knew pride was important to him, but as soon as I stepped in front of him, he reached for me.
I climbed onto his lap without hesitation, straddling his hips as his arms wrapped around me so tightly, I felt every uneven breath punch through him. He didn’t say anything, and I understood what it cost him to let me see this. He held me with one hand buried in my hair and the other locked around my back, his mouth pressed to the side of my head while he worked through whatever he was fighting.
25
Cade
I didn’t know how long I held her on that couch.
Time stopped working right after she closed my fingers around that marble and told me she carried her last Never everywhere she went so she could remember to keep burning her ass for the warmth.
That was Bliss in a nutshell. Ridiculous. Crude. Too bright for the dark thing she carried. And it gutted me worse than anything else she’d said.
She stayed tucked against me while the apartment settled around us, her face pressed into my neck, just letting me hold her because I needed it. I should have said something. I didn’t. Couldn’t, maybe. My brain was too loud, and it was a lot for anyone to process. I kept replaying every piece of what she told me, and it kept rearranging itself into something worse. Luke at the funeral. Luke in her room. Luke becoming the person she ran to when grief split her open. Luke learning every weak place and pressing there until there was barely enough of her left to fight him. Luke watching her family love him while he destroyed her behind closed doors.
I had left that barbecue thinking she had a violent ex.
Violent, I understood. Violent had rules, even when men pretended it didn’t. Violent could be handled. Violent stepped into the open eventually.
This wasn’t that.
Luke Dempsey wasn’t a temper problem with a haircut and a high school glory-days complex. He was patient. Strategic. Unstable in a way that made the hair on the back of my necklift because all I had done tonight was piss him off, and I didn’t know yet what he would do with that.
Bliss shifted slightly against me, her fingers curling in the fabric near my ribs. “Your brain is doing that loud thing.”
My mouth twitched despite everything. “My brain has volume settings now?”
“Yours does. It’s currently at murder documentary with sponsored ads.”
I breathed out something that almost became a laugh and kissed the side of her head before I could think better of it. She went still for half a second, then softened again like she hadn’t expected it and didn’t know what to do with the fact that she liked it.
That almost finished me.
I stood with her in my arms before I could sit there any longer letting the marble burn a hole through my palm.
“Whoa.” Her arms tightened around my neck. “What’s happening?”
“We’re moving.”
“That is wildly vague for a man transporting cargo.”
“You’re the cargo.”
“I am precious cargo.”
“I know.”
She blinked at me, and something flickered across her face at the way I said it.
Too honest. Too fast.
