Page 281 of Cross Checked
My body moved before my brain did, one step toward him, then another, like if I could get close enough to the phone I could force the words to rearrange themselves into something that did not involve Cade.
“Who?” I asked.
Knox held up a hand. “Bliss, stay there.”
Absolutely not. “Who is he talking about?”
Knox’s face tightened.
Ryker stepped closer. “Knox.”
Knox looked like he wanted to put his fist through the nearest car window. “Ryan found Cade.”
The name hit me so hard I forgot how to breathe.
Cade.
Ryan found Cade.
The word opened under me like a hole.
“What do you mean found?” My voice didn’t sound like mine. It was too high. Too thin. Too far away. “Knox, what do you mean found?”
He was still listening, one hand pressed over his other ear now because the crowd around us had not figured out the universe had ended. People were still laughing. Still yelling. Still climbing into cars and replaying goals and living inside a normal Friday night like I had not just heard my brother ask if Cade was breathing.
Then Knox said, “Stabbed?”
Everything inside me dropped. Straight through my body. Through the asphalt. Through every fragile piece of happiness I had been stupid enough to touch tonight.
Charm made a sound beside me. Aura’s fingers tightened around mine so hard it hurt. Dad said something, but I couldn’t hear him over the roaring in my ears.
Knox’s voice went low and deadly. “How bad?”
I stared at his face because it was the only thing holding the world together. His mouth. His eyes. The lines around them. Anything that might tell me this was a misunderstanding. A mistake. A word I had misheard because trauma had a way of making monsters out of shadows.
But Knox’s expression got worse. “Two wounds?” he repeated.
A noise tore out of me. I didn’t mean for it to. I didn’t even know I had made it until people turned toward us, until Dad’s hand clamped harder on my shoulder, until Ryker’s face snapped toward me like the sound had cut through him too.
Two wounds.
Cade.
Stabbed.
He had texted me.
He had told me he would meet me outside.
He was supposed to walk through those doors with damp hair and that stupid controlled face and act like scoring twice wasn’t an anger disorder. He was supposed to smirk when I told him he played okay. He was supposed to pull me into his side like I belonged there. He was supposed to be annoyed when my brothers made comments and amused when Charm said something unhinged and weirdly soft when my dad said good game.
He was supposed to be alive in the casual way people were alive when you loved them and they had promised to come right back.
He was not supposed to be somewhere inside the arena bleeding while Ryan called my brother.
“Where is he?” I demanded.
Knox shook his head once, still listening.
