Page 253 of Face Off

A quiet laugh moves through the pavilion.

Ryan holds the box but doesn’t release it when Cade reaches for it. “There is one thing you can never give her. You can’t bring Cindy back tomorrow. You can’t make that empty place beside Daniel disappear, and you can’t love Bliss hard enough that she stops missing her mother.”

Cade’s hand closes around the bottom of the box while Ryan still holds the top.

“All you can do is keep loving her as fiercely and completely as you already do,” Ryan tells him. “You stand beside her when it hurts. You remember who is missing. You never ask Bliss to make her grief smaller because it interferes with your happiness.”

“I won’t.”

Ryan studies him for a moment, then releases the box. “I know.”

Cade carries it to Bliss. Her hands remain around the three smaller boxes, so he places the larger one on the table in front of them.

“Open it together,” Ryan says.

Cade lays one hand over Bliss’s. They lift the lid. A clear marble nearly the size of a golf ball rests in the center of the black velvet.

Something appears trapped inside it but I can’t see it clearly enough.

Bliss bends closer. Cade goes completely still beside her.

The photograph curves within the glass, preserved so clearly that I recognize the black, neon-pink, and yellow colors of The Furnace before I understand what I’m seeing. Cade stands on the ice in his KFU jersey with one glove pressed against the boards. Bliss stands on the opposite side with her palm aligned with his.

Their mouths meet through the glass.

Twenty thousand people had watched Cade kiss her that night.

Only a handful of us knew that hours later, he would be bleeding beneath The Furnace after killing the man who had tried to destroy her.

“Oh my gosh,” I whisper.

Aura’s hand finds mine.

Bliss lifts the marble from the box. The image moves inside it as she turns the glass between her fingers, making the kiss appear alive beneath the light.

“Where did you get this?” Cade asks.

“A place called Fragile in Milwaukee,” Ryan answers. “The guy who owns it made it for me. Temple helped me get a high resolution copy from the KFU campus news center.”

Temple raises one hand. “He threatened me.”

“I offered incentives.”

“You said you’d tell Rider what happened in Detroit.”

I look at her. “What happened in Detroit?”

“Nothing.” They both say as Ryan takes the microphone properly again. His gaze returns to Cade and Bliss brushing it off but something cold settles inside of me.

Whatever happened in Detroit feels important.

“Both your lives changed that night,” he says. “Everyone standing here is proof of what survived it. Bliss, you stopped allowing fear to decide how much life you were permitted to have.”

Her fingers close protectively around the marble.

“You learned to live inside joy even when you knew how quickly it could be taken. You stopped apologizing for being loud, difficult, emotional, the incorrect over usage of the word emotional and completely fucking impossible.”

“I was always emotionally impossible,” Bliss says through her tears.