Page 302 of Cross Checked
Not even a little.
Knox looked at me again. “Bug.”
I hated how gentle his voice got. “What?”
“You’re going to hear things. Maybe not now, but eventually. People talk. Reporters dig. Luke had friends who will want to pretend he wasn’t what he was because admitting it means admitting they missed it too.”
My throat tightened. “Then we bury what the world doesn’t need.”
Dad turned toward me.
I looked at Harrison. Then Maren. Then Knox. Then every brother in the room.
“I don’t care what story you tell if it keeps Cade safe.”
Ryker’s face folded in relief.
“I don’t,” I said, stronger this time. “Luke is dead. Cade is alive. Barely. If the world needs Luke to be a crazed stalker who snapped, fine. If the world needs him to be a disgraced ex-firefighter with arson issues, fine. If everyone wants to pretend nobody knows what NO means, fine.”
My voice broke around the word, but I kept going.
“I know what it means.”
I pressed a hand over the center of my chest, where Cade’s name should have been on the jersey I hadn’t changed out of until a nurse forced me to shower.
“It means Cade heard me when it was ignored for years. It means he knew. It means he did what nobody else could because nobody else had the chance.”
Dad’s eyes filled.
“I will not let anyone punish him for being the one person who made sure Luke never touched me again.”
Harrison stared at me for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
Not agreement.
Respect.
“Neither will I,” he said.
The meeting ended without feeling like it ended. Harrison took another call. Maren left with Knox to speak to the detectives. My brothers stayed behind, all of them looking at me like they wanted to apologize and murder someone but had no one left to kill.
I went back to Cade.
That was the only place my body would go.
His room was dimmer now, quieter than the waiting area, machines murmuring softly around him. The ventilator was gone, but the oxygen remained beneath his nose, and the monitors still tracked every fragile proof that he was here. His chest rose carefully, uneven enough to make my heart squeeze every time, but it rose.
On its own.
His face was pale beneath the bruising. There was a split near his lip. His knuckles were torn. One hand lay on top of the blanket, taped and marked and scraped from the violence of protecting me.
I sat beside him and slid my fingers through his. His skin was warm, and that was another miracle.
“Hi,” I whispered.
His eyelids fluttered.
