Page 200 of Cross Checked
“I suspected something,” I say, because the truth matters even if it guts me. “I didn’t know what. I saw the way she acted around him. The way her whole body changed when he got close. I saw him touch her like he had the right to. I knew he was doing something, and I wanted to see him crack.”
The hospital noise around us fades beneath the sound of my own blood.
“I pushed him,” I say. “I called him out in front of everyone. I wanted him to show me what he was.”
Daniel’s jaw flexes, and Ryker and Knox stare at me.
“And if I had known he was this level of dangerous,” I say, my voice lowering until it barely sounds human, “I would never have done it that way.”
“Cade,” Knox says.
“No.” I shake my head once, hard. “I made him feel exposed. Humiliated. I put him on notice before she was ready, before any of us knew, before we had anything in place. I thought I was pushing a possessive ex. I didn’t know I was pushing a man who had spent years hurting her in private.”
“Don’t,” Daniel says, but his voice breaks.
“I should have been smarter.”
Ryker laughs once, brutal and wet. “You think you caused this?”
“I gave him a reason to escalate.”
“He had a reason before you ever showed up,” Ryker snaps. “He wanted her, and she wanted you, and he knew it. That was his reason.”
I know that.
I know.
But knowing doesn’t stop the image of Bliss broken on wet pavement from tearing through my head so violently I can barely stand.
Ryan’s hand lands on my shoulder. Not soft, but anchoring.
“You didn’t know,” he says.
I look at him.
His face is steady, but his eyes are hard. “She told you after. There was no way for you to know what he was before that. You saw wrong and pushed at it. That’s not the same as causing what he did.”
I want to believe him, but all I can see is myself rubbing Luke’s face in it and Bliss paying the price.
Knox looks toward Aura and Charm. “They said she wasn’t coming from work when it happened.”
Aura’s face goes pale, and Charm’s hand flies to her mouth.
“Where was she coming from?”
Aura looks at Charm, then at me, and whatever moves across her face makes the hallway tilt beneath my feet before anyone answers.
“She was coming from the apartment,” Charm says, her voice shaking. “Before that, the mall. We went shopping. It was girl time.”
My pulse slams once, hard. “Why did she leave the apartment after? Where was she going?”
Neither of them answers fast enough, and my mind starts spinning.
Was he blackmailing her to get her out of the house?
“Aura,” Knox says carefully, but there is a cop’s edge beneath the brother now. “If you know why she was on that road or where she was headed, I need you to tell me.”
Aura’s eyes fill, but she shakes her head slightly. “It’s not my story.”
