Page 205 of Cross Checked
His hand landed on my shoulder in a firm squeeze, rough calluses scraping lightly through my hoodie. It wasn’t a dramatic gesture. Just a firefighter’s grip. Steady. Certain. The kind of handshake that carried more meaning than most conversations.
A father’s approval wrapped in a warning and a thank-you.
“Go see your girl.”
Daniel disappeared down the hallway before I could figure out what to do with the knot sitting in my throat.
Your girl.
The words followed me all the way to the door. I stood there for a second with my hand wrapped around the handle, staring through the small rectangular window set into the center of it. Then I pushed inside.
The first thing I saw was Bliss trying to smuggle hospital pudding.
The sight hit me so unexpectedly I actually stopped walking.
She froze too.
A plastic pudding cup hovered halfway between the rolling tray beside her bed and the blanket covering her lapwhile a spoon dangled from her fingers like she’d been caught committing a felony.
For a second, neither of us said anything.
Then she slowly lowered the evidence. “Before you say anything,” she informed me, “I pay taxes.”
My laugh died before it fully formed.
Because now I could really see her.
The bruising along her cheek was darkening by the second. Angry purple and blue shadows stretched beneath one eye. Her bottom lip was cut and swollen. Faint scratches marked the side of her face.
And her throat.
Holy fuck.
The room instantly felt ten degrees hotter. The outline of Luke’s hand wrapped around her neck in ugly black bruises.
I couldn’t stop looking at it, couldn’t stop imagining his fingers there, couldn’t stop imagining what I’d do if he walked through that door right now.
Something in my expression must have shifted because Bliss’s grip tightened around the pudding cup, and the little bit of mischief still clinging to her face softened into something too careful.
“You’re doing it again,” she said quietly.
I forced my eyes away from her throat and found her watching me with one swollen eye half-narrowed, like she was annoyed her face wouldn’t cooperate with the full amount of attitude she wanted to deliver. The sight should have been funny. It was funny, in a way that hurt like hell. She looked pissed off at her own injuries, like Luke had inconvenienced her instead of nearly taking her from me.
“I know,” I said.
Her mouth twitched, then immediately flattened when even that tiny movement pulled at her split lip. “Rude. You’re supposed to deny it so I can accuse you with more confidence.”
I crossed the room slowly, every step measured, because if I moved too fast, the rage might mistake motion for permission. “I’m not giving you material right now.”
“You always give me material. It’s one of your only marketable qualities.”
“I thought my cheekbones were emotionally manipulative.”
“They are. Different department.”
I reached the side of her bed, and the full damage of her up close almost put me on my knees. The bruising wasn’t abstract anymore. It wasn’t something Daniel had warned me about in the hall. It was there in the swollen curve of her cheek, in the cut at her mouth, in the angry marks around her throat where another man’s hand had tried to make her small. Luke had left proof of himself on her skin like he had a right to be remembered there, and something cold and vicious slid through me with enough force that my hand flexed at my side before I caught it.
Bliss noticed because she was watching my every instinctive move right now. “Cade.”
