Page 188 of Cross Checked
Aura handed my phone back to me. “Go to Cade.”
Charm moved behind me and opened the door. “Go get your man, then come home so we can bury this creep in paperwork and consequences.”
For the first time all night, Luke’s name on my screen did not send me backward.
It pushed me forward.
I tucked my phone into my purse beside Cade’s tiny blue marble, took one breath, and let my girls shove me out the door toward the good thing waiting for me.
By the time I climbed into my Jeep, I could barely breathe normally.
Luke knew something. I felt it in the growing distance between us, in the way his attention had sharpened lately because of Cade, and in the increasingly dangerous silence that followed whenever I avoided his calls too long. Avoidance always brought his inner stalker out and usually ended with me sprinting into whatever building he was waiting outside of. He noticed emotional shifts the way predators noticed weakness in prey, and lately I had stopped pretending.
I had let Cade shove it in his face.
Luke knew my feelings for Cade weren’t surface level, and that was why he was spiraling. He had seen the way I relaxed around him. Welcomed him. Saw the way fear didn’t have a chokehold on me when Cade stood beside me.
And Luke hated me for it.
Fear clawed deeper into my chest as I gripped the steering wheel, my thoughts spiraling hard enough to make my hands shake.
Maybe I should just go to Hockey House and wait there.
But I couldn’t.
If I delayed this, if I let fear reroute me one more time, I might lose the nerve. I was telling Cade everything, and then we were going to Knox. If I couldn’t look my brother in the face, I knew Cade would help me find the words.
The thought barely existed before anger rose up stronger beneath it.
No.
Damn it, no.
Every single time I chose fear over truth, Luke took another piece of me with him. Another year. Another memory. Another part of my soul sacrificed just to keep him calm enough not to spiral into something worse.
And tonight, for the first time in years, I was finally angry enough to fight that instead of just surviving it.
This was me choosing myself.
Choosing Cade.
And I was pretty certain Cade would choose me back.
The little blue marble sat tucked safely in my purse while I pulled out of the apartment lot and headed toward The Furnace, where Cade would be finishing practice. My hands trembled on the steering wheel, but my chest felt full in a way that had nothing to do with panic.
I kept imagining his face when I handed it to him. The way his brows would pull together first, suspicious of anything emotionally sincere coming from me. The way his mouth would soften when he understood. The way he would probably say something dry to keep us both from drowning in it.
I bought a Never for you, because if my mom were here, I’d tell her about you.
The thought made me smile so hard my cheeks hurt.
And for once, I let it.
I let myself be happy.
I let myself want.
I let myself drive toward the boy who had somehow become one of the good Nevers.
