Page 236 of Cross Checked
Good.
I wanted them to.
“I’m still me, Cade.” My voice shook now, but I refused to stop. “I’m still annoying. I’m still dramatic. I still want coffee I shouldn’t have to file paperwork to obtain. I still hate your emotionally manipulative cheekbones. I still want to sit on counters because chairs are boring and spiritually oppressive, and I want that even more when you’re there taunting me.”
His mouth barely twitched.
“And I still want you.”
The air changed instantly. That thing underneath all of it, where I went from being his obsession to his patient and not in the fun roleplay way.
Cade went very, very still.
My heart started hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.
“I know you’re busy,” I said, because now that I had opened the door, apparently my dignity had decided to sprint directly into traffic. “I know the opener is Friday. I know you have two-a-days and press and film and team meetings and whatever weird hockey stuff you do where everyone smells like tape and the soap in the shower dispensers.”
Nothing.
He didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. He just watched me, and it made me reckless.
“But when you’re here, you’re so gentle.” I swallowed hard. “So careful. You kiss me like I’m somebody’s auntie you’re being forced to kiss on the cheek at Christmas.”
His eyes flashed.
I kept going because if I stopped, I was going to lose my nerve.
“You kiss my forehead. You hold me like I’m going to shatter. You help me with meds and pillows and water and stairs and everything else. And I know that should make me feel loved. It does. It does, Cade. But it also makes me feel like you don’t see me the same anymore.”
His expression hardened. I saw it happen.
I used the wrong words.
Maybe they were dangerous words.
But they were already out.
“Maybe hearing everything changed it,” I whispered. “Maybe seeing what he did, knowing what he did, maybe now when you look at me, you just see—”
“Stop.”
The word cracked through the kitchen.
I flinched, not because I was afraid of him, but because his voice had gone raw enough to scrape.
Regret flashed across his face for half a second, but the anger underneath it swallowed the softness whole.
“No,” he said, dragging both hands through his hair as he turned away from me like he physically couldn’t stand still. “No, you do not get to finish that sentence.”
“Then what am I supposed to think?”
He swung back toward me. “Not that.”
“You barely touch me!”
“You have cracked ribs!”
“I know!”
