by Samantha Bee
But wait. Why would Luca say she had fallen for me too if she had already made a choice? Before I get the chance to clarify, Kade storms into the room and I really do mean storms. We hear the front door slam into the wall a second before the big guy is standing in front of us.
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “What the fuck happened to you?” Luca seems unperturbed by Kade’s appearance, so he’s clearly already seen him in this state or knew he would be coming back like this.
Kade’s face is black and blue with some undertones of yellow and green, as if he has new bruises on top of older ones that were already halfway to healed. The skin on his knuckles is ripped open and still bleeding, and while he moves confidently, I can tell he’s favoring his left side. It’s obvious he’s been fighting, and I have to assume it isn’t a new pastime of his.
His green eyes meet mine and I see the surprise flash in his eyes before he grunts out an acknowledgement before turning towards the fridge and grabbing a beer. I look back at Luca who is going back and forth between anxious glances at his phone and concerned looks at his friend. Kade continues to ignore the blood dripping down his forearm as he throws back the beer in his hand before even closing the fridge. He grabs another one before turning back to us.
My eyes flit between the pair of them. “So, I’m guessing she didn't choose Kade?” The big guy wouldn’t be in this bad of shape if she had ridden off into the sunset with him. Not that she’s that type of girl anyways.
She's the girl that doesn’t settle in one place, doesn’t plant roots. She’s the wind that touches everything she blows past but never stops for more than just a touch. The rain that feels like it soaks into your skin but drips off as it continues to move.
So why are any of us surprised that she ran?
Kade scoffs, “She chose herself. She chose fucking revenge.” My mind latches on to that single word. Revenge. He mutters something else under his breath, but I don't catch it.
“Kade.” Luca’s sharp tone clearly indicates the reprimand, telling him to shut his mouth as he gives me a pointed glare. I could be offended, but I always knew they had secrets. I get the feeling it’s for my own safety as much as their own.
Kade’s laughter booms out of him, a painful and acrid sound. Nothing like the guy that I’ve gotten to know these last couple months. The carefree, smiling, big guy is a thing of the past. The man in front of me is rage personified, warped by the simmering of emotions under his skin.
He chucks his beer, and it explodes against the wall behind Luca, drawing my attention to the news playing on the TV in the corner. Another pang hits me as I recall the day we set it up so Roe could watch cartoons while hanging out in the kitchen with Scar as she cooked.
Only a couple of weeks ago, this room had been the center of the life it seemed like we were building. The family. Filled with laughter, comfort, and affection. Maybe even some love. At least it felt a lot like it had been. Maybe I was wrong about it all.
Now this room is filled with nothing but pain and anger as beer drips down the wall and Kade’s voice echoes through the too empty house. His arms are spread wide as he leans forward yelling, “Whose ass are you fucking pandering to?” Luca flinches at his words but Kade isn’t done. His eyes harden and burn with more furious energy the longer he stares at Luca. His anger rolls off of him in waves, crashing into Luca’s stoic form. I understand being angry at Scar, but I get the feeling she isn’t the only one he’s pissed at.
I never even thought he would have this type of side to him. I always wondered how he fit with Luca and Scar, the darkness in both of them is always so close to the surface it’s impossible to miss once you looked. Kade had his buried deep, covered by his teasing personality, joyful antics, and ever present grin. Even his mission to pry Scar open kept his own demons quiet.
“She’s fucking gone.” An angry swipe of his arms sends the fruit bowl, mail, and several other miscellaneous items to the floor.
With her gone, every ounce of his darkness is seeping out of him. His demons snapping his control until he breaks and tears through everything in front of him. Becoming his own force of nature, intent on causing as much destruction as he feels to all that is around him.
“She left,” he bellows. It’s clear he’s angry but even more than that, it’s betrayal etched into every line on his face. Kade is hurting. Maybe more than he ever has in his life. I rub my chest as my own ache grows. It’s been an ever present sensation since Scar stopped responding, one I’ve almost become accustomed to. But as I watch Kade, a man I’ve come to respect and even admire, break apart in front of me, it grows, making itself known once more.
“Fucking left because we wanted her safe.” His anger isn’t fully pointed at Luca, but I have a feeling he’s been feeling the brunt of it. You can’t hit a target you can’t see, and Scar disappearing is causing more pain than I think she could ever imagine. Not only are we all missing her, but they’re taking it out on each other. Tearing apart everything we built.
My own anger simmers. Now that I know she’s safe and just running scared, I feel the first tendrils of rage course through my bloodstream, unfurling deep in my gut. Wanting, craving to cause my own chaos. Wreak havoc the way Scar tore me apart. Tore us apart.
“Because she’s fucking selfish.” Kade’s words are dripping in vitriol. A level of disdain I’m still struggling to connect with the guy I knew. Yet, also calling to my own fucked up feelings. Brewing more resentment and need for something.
Something.
Something I can’t quite put my finger on. What is it that my body is craving in this moment? Pain? Violence? Alcohol? The source of my loss? The very woman I didn’t realize I was falling in love with until she ripped us to shreds, never even looking back?
It feels like my body might just be craving all of the above and I’m not sure what exactly to do about that. I have no school to currently get lost in like I normally do when my own darkness threatens to overwhelm my tightly-wound control. No complex mysteries to unravel, or puzzles to put together.
Or do I?
“Why the fuck should we keep her secrets?” Kade’s voice breaks me out of my wandering thoughts. I focus in on him, analyzing everything he’s said so far and start to look at it in a different light. Examining every facet and hint at new information of the woman who has consumed me. “She’s not here to even care anymore. So, what the fuck does it matter if Noah knows she chose revenge over us?”
Revenge. There’s that word again.
“She left him too, or did you forget that?” Luca and I both flinch at the reminder, but I refuse to allow myself to focus on my own hurt. I have something to put the rage coursing through me into. I have a puzzle to take my mind off all of the complex and dark shit that is begging to come to the surface and make me relive. Tempting me to fall back into old patterns. Patterns I swore I would never go back to.
“Kade,” Luca hisses out his warning. His entire focus on cajoling Kade to keep her secrets, to settle down long enough to not do or say anything he would regret. That’s okay. I don’t want Kade to tell me. I want to figure it out for myself. Let my brain go into overdrive so some of the noise quiets. Luca continues to try and talk him down, bring him back to reality when it’s clear he’s been lost to the chaos of his mind. Maybe even his soul.
That’s the problem with falling for a girl like Scar, isn’t it? You start to crave the chaos she brings with her. The violence and destruction she wears like a fucking second skin. I haven’t even seen that side of her, and yet I know it’s there. Waiting to be unleashed and rip cities apart. I’ve felt the damage she causes, with a single touch, a whispered word, a slow smile, a heated kiss. Every ounce of attention she gave me drew me further and further into her storm until chaos is all I know now.
It’s the reason Kade is going off the rails. The reason Luca looks like such a mess. Why my own darkness is creeping up and leaking out of me in ways I haven't experienced for years. Fucking years. We all crave the chaos,
the destruction, the damage. We crave her.
And she craves… revenge. She craves revenge the way we crave her intensity.
Why would she have to choose? My eyes latch onto the two men standing mere feet from me, still arguing. I listen only halfheartedly. Only enough to catch anything that will give me any extra clues about why Scar ran, but they aren’t focusing so much on her as much as each other right now. I get the feeling that old feelings are coming back up to the surface. It’s bound to happen with a friendship as long and twisted as theirs has been. I might care any other day, but today? Today I am far too focused on working out this mess the woman who owns my soul left behind.
Luca said she felt she had to choose. Not between us, but between us and revenge. It’s easy enough to figure out why she wants revenge even if not the who or how. I’ve seen her scars. The ones that mar almost every inch of her body and the even deeper ones on her mind. Scar has been broken multiple times over and is made up of all the shattered pieces she’s taped and glued together. A beautiful mosaic of every trauma and hardship she’s endured. They say your past shapes you, but Scar’s is etched on her skin in long, angry strokes. They tell a story full of more pain and anger than even what Kade is feeling in this moment. Of depression and a low so far from anything I’ve ever experienced I wouldn’t be surprised if Scar has grazed the pits of hell itself.
Ryder bursts into the kitchen, drawing my eyes away from the wall I didn’t realize I was staring at so intensely. Wow. As bad as the other two look, Ryder looks even worse. His eyes are swollen and bloodshot as he stumbles into the wall. He just barely manages to catch himself as he slurs, “Why the fuck are you guys so loud?” He rubs his eyes as he continues to move into the kitchen. Instead of heading towards us he moves to the corner and plops himself down in a seat before settling his head down against his arms and resting against the counter.
His movement turns my gaze back towards the TV by him. The TV that was only ever used by Roe. The TV that is now showing the news. They never watch the news, in all the time I spent here, I’ve never seen it on. Not once. The story is the same one that has had the entire nation reeling for the last two weeks.
Two weeks.
I do the math quickly in my head, trying to figure out exactly when Scar first disappeared and when the story first broke. I block out the chatter of the other guys as I focus on reading the subtitles on the TV. I don’t even realize I’m moving closer until I'm standing directly in front of the TV mouthing the words I’m reading.
“Police have confirmed they have an anonymous source that has been feeding them the evidence of these crimes. These crimes have included some of the most well known faces of our country…”
The voices die around me as I spin on my foot and look straight at Luca, probably the sanest person here, currently. “It’s her.” My voice comes out barely more than a whisper. I look back at the TV before meeting his eyes. “This is her revenge.”
I don’t need to ask. I already know. Luca sees that too as he hangs his head forward. “You couldn’t just be dumb, could you?”
I smirk, even though no part of me finds any amusement in this. “Scar never would have kept me around.” I can’t bring myself to use his same words from earlier. Saying Scar had been falling for me seems like nothing more than an unattainable wish. Especially now.
But fuck me.
Sex trafficking.
The scars. The despondency I’ve seen in her eyes. The shields of ice she keeps erected around her. The disconnect from her emotions. The fucking nightmares. I never could have guessed how accurate I was when I guessed she had brushed up against the devil himself. Just how bad is her story?
“We can’t tell you her story,” Luca whispers, still shaking his head. His own grief and dejection written on his face. Her story may just hurt him as much as it hurt her. I don’t want her story from him though. I don't want them to break her trust and spill her secrets. I want to earn those for myself. I want that infuriating and frustrating woman to be in front of me. For her to open up to me and let her darkness consume me. Let them spill out of her until her story, her pain, her vulnerability are the only things I know.
“No.” Kade’s voice has lost the almost manic edge it had. He seems more centered, determined, still pissed but a little less ragey. “We can’t tell hers, but I can tell you mine.”
Chapter Four
Well fuck.
Kade never talks about his past. I'm positive the only reason I know anything about it is because I was right next to him every step of the way. The pair of us grew up right down the street from each other. He's been in my life for as long as I can remember.
I don't actually remember the first time the two of us met. Kade has always just been there, covered in bruises but still wearing that big dopey ass grin of his. For him to want to share his story just shows how emotional this whole thing has him.
The stream of dead bodies I've been having to clean up almost every damn day should have been a hint, but if there was any doubt, it's been cleared up now. Kade is breaking, fracturing, falling apart in a way I've never seen him do before. Our whole lives Kade’s taken everything that has been thrown his way and never let his smile falter.
The first time he lost Scar was the closest I ever saw him come to losing it before, but even then, he wasn't this full of anger, resentment, and pure rage. I’m starting to feel like the emotions he buried back then are spilling out now. I see the harsh looks he’s been throwing my way. It’s all the anger I had expected when I first reconnected him and Scar at Steel Roses. I had been fully prepared to receive a fist to the face. Hell, I deserved it. But he accepted every aspect of what I told him without a flicker of the resentment I am owed. It seems as though I’m finally getting it. He’s letting his rage loose and it's overwhelming every aspect of his life.
Between him and Ryder, I've barely been able to sleep going back and forth between cleaning up their messes. Ryder hasn't been sober for even a moment since that damn news report first aired. Kade hasn't been much better either. Drinking from sunup until he passes out, half the time still covered in the blood of whatever poor fool had the insane idea to get into the ring with him.
He’s going to run out of opponents here pretty soon. Word is getting around about his insatiable thirst for violence. People have also noticed that Scar hasn't been around the last few weeks. The rumors are already widespread and becoming more ridiculous every day. Lord help us all when they get back to him. If he's mad now, he'll be monstrous when he hears what people are saying.
I set my gaze on Noah as he assesses Kade and they trade looks with each other. Ryder is still half passed out in the corner. I know Kade is waiting for me to say something to acknowledge what he wants to do. But what can I say?
He's right. Scar left Noah too, he does deserve some answers. And it is Kade's story to tell whoever he wants to tell it to. But it does overlap with Scar's as well. We all know that Noah is going to know and understand a lot more about her once Kade opens his mouth about this.
I know she left us. I know what she did was wrong and selfish. When I let myself stop and feel the hurt of missing her, I get so fucking pissed I feel like my anger is bound to explode out of me and take half the city with me. I want to track her ass down and tie her to my fucking bed. I want to place a hundred trackers on her that she can't possibly get rid of this time.
When I realized she had taken her tracker out, it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my body. I thought I was going to die right then and there. It was the moment I realized just how serious she was about leaving us. She couldn't even trust us to just give her space. She wanted no possible connections left to us. It broke my heart more than anything else.
I've been by her side the entire process to get here and now she's just gone. It feels like trying to live with half my heart, breathe with only one lung. Like I don't even know how to properly function anymore. Maybe I don't.
I barely sleep. I hardly eat. I spen
d all my time cleaning up messes. Romano is breathing down my neck for answers and I just don't know what the fuck to do anymore. All I can focus on is the feeling that I'm not whole. That I'm missing the best part of myself. The part that pushed me to be the leader that I've become. The part that helped me get to where I am today. The part that turned me into a weapon. I'm missing her. I'm missing who I am when I'm with her.
So, because she abandoned us should I turn my back on everything I've vowed to do for the last eight years? Protect her? Mind, body, and soul. To be her vault, never letting her secrets slip out. But Kade isn't wrong. And I'm not the one to spill her secrets. I can't stand in the way of Kade doing what he needs to do to heal. Especially when I owe him more than I’ll ever be able to pay back.
Scar will always have my loyalty, regardless of what she says or does to me. She can leave me a hundred times and she will still have my loyalty. But she doesn't realize just how much damage she caused with this little stunt. Just how hard all of us are taking her being gone. We've all lost the best part of ourselves. Reverted back to who we were before we knew her, and I don't think any of us like what we see in the mirror now.
I nod to Kade giving him my acknowledgment to continue. Noah is too smart for his own good. Too damn clever. Too damn observant. He's going to continue putting pieces together. I watch as he pushes down his own anger that has been simmering in his eyes and instead focuses on the puzzle in front of him.
If he can stay calm maybe he can help me figure out some of this goddamn mess we've found ourselves in. Maybe he can help soothe me the way he did for Scar. He was able to bring her a sense of peace, balance out some of her erratic nature. If I need anything right now, it's to find some semblance of control as the world implodes around us.
Scar declared war and we are left dealing with the fallout.
