by Mia Kayla
My fingers lightly traced his jawline. "And I'm in love with you, too. So much."
He turned his head and kissed my fingers, each and every one, then he guided me into his arms, all of me, chest to chest, hips to hips. "I'm leaving, Angel," he said in a soft whisper.
His words shocked me from the warmth he provided, and I pulled back and peered up at him. "You can't."
"I've been meaning to go for a while now. To go back home, check on my mom, spend more than a weekend with her."
"You're leaving me?" I stepped back, feeling desperate. "You just told me you loved me."
"And I do." He let go of me and ran both hands through his hair, gripping the tips. "Maybe you can think things through. Maybe it's just the best for both of us. I need this space, and so do you. We both need time." His voice cracked.
"No," I said, gritting my teeth as a slew of emotions hit me directly in my chest. "I have nothing to think through. I've already made up my mind." Hysteria bubbled within me, at the thought of being without him. "Then take me with you." I gripped both of his hands and brought them up to my beating heart. "Take me away from this small town. Away from this drama. Away from it all. Just take me with you. Wherever you go, I want to be."
His eyebrows furrowed, his eyes debating.
"Please. If you love me like you say you do, then you'll take me with you." Desperation leaked in my tone.
“Please, Cade."
After a beat, he pulled me close again and kissed the top of my forehead. "You know we're trouble when we're together."
I relaxed in his hold, knowing he had made up his mind. "Then trouble is where I want to be."
Chapter 21
After I picked up my car from Roland's and dropped it off at my new apartment, Cade and I drove out of the city. I didn't tell Tene or anyone that I was leaving. The worries of work, my mother, Roland, and responsibilities of my tenants could wait until I got back.
I needed to escape. Escaping with Cade, who was choosing me and the life I wanted to live, and I knew as I stepped into the car that it was the best decision I'd ever made.
We left the city lights behind us. It didn't matter where we went. All that mattered was that I wanted to go anywhere and be everywhere with him.
I reached for my phone in my purse to silence it in case anyone called. “Crap.” I kept digging to the bottom, then realized it wasn’t in my purse. “I left my phone at the apartment.”
He eyed me carefully. “Did you want me to go back for it?”
“No. I don’t need it.” Escaping meant escaping from it all.
“No, you don’t.” He leaned over and chucked his phone into his glove compartment. “And I don’t need mine, either. Everything that matters is in this car and where we are going.” He gripped my hand then gently placed a chaste kiss on the top of my fist. “There’s no emergency at Allswell or anywhere else that Kristy can’t handle or that can’t wait until I get back.”
When I stared back at the beautiful gray-eyed male in front of me, I knew with every fiber of my being that I was doing the right thing and escaping with him, even if it was for a little bit.
The comfortable silence ticked between us, and I yawned as he caressed the inside of my wrist with his thumb.
"Sleep, Angel. We're going home."
The way he said “we” and “home” together had my stomach doing non-stop flips.
"I'm taking you to where I grew up,” he said, his crooked smile appearing. "You'll get to meet my mom. We're celebrating her birthday this weekend."
"Way to bump up the pressure," I mumbled sleepily.
He squeezed my hand. "You have absolutely nothing to worry about." Cade stared into the open space in front of us, his smile faltering, his gaze unfocused. It was as though he'd gone somewhere else.
"Cade? Where did you go?" I asked. "What were you thinking?"
"I just have some things on my mind."
I angled closer to him, reveling in the warmth of our clasped hands. "Like what?"
"You. Work. My mom. My dad. My sister."
"Do you think about them often?" I asked.
"Yes. Even more recently." His voice softened, and a subdued sigh escaped him. "I just keep remembering how we lost them so soon. My sister, she would’ve loved you. And ... she would’ve loved you for me."
I inched closer, leaning over the center console and kissing his lips. "I want to know more about her. More about your family."
"We were close, my sister and I." His tone broke with a heavy, sullen huskiness. "Her name fit her perfectly. Candice was sweet, full of life but naïve at the same time. You already know that my parents were foster parents. And I already told you about my two other brothers they took in—Jordan and Wyatt."
The warmth of his smile echoed in his voice as he talked about his brothers that weren't blood. "Wyatt has always been quiet. Came from the wrong side of the tracks. When he walked into my house on the first day, I thought he was mute." He shook his head, but a small laugh left his lips. "The only person that could handle him and forced him to talk was Candice. They bonded on a level Jordan and I were never able to touch. They'd talk about deep things, and he told her things he had never revealed to me about his family."
"And they fell in love?"
"Hell no.” He cringed and chuckled. “Wyatt and Candice were more like best friends. It was Candice and Jordan who fell in love."
"Jordan Ryder, right?"
He narrowed his eyes, then threw me a playful glance. "Don't get any ideas, Angel; you're mine. End of story."
I sighed openly. His. I could totally get used to being his.
As he recalled memories of his past, his eyes grew animated. "Jordan was Candice's twin. He was funny, spunky, and full of life. As soon as he walked into my house, I knew he was just a good guy that got dealt the wrong cards. We got along well until he saw my sister. I didn't think anything of it until she saw him back. She never was interested in boys, so I didn't think I had to worry, but I should’ve known better. Jordan was a looker. Best looking guy on earth. Practically every girl wanted him, but he only saw Candice." He eyed me carefully, and I grinned, liking jealous Cade—possessive Cade, my Cade.
My hand brushed against his collarbone. "I'd like to cast a vote on the best-looking guy on earth."
"Jordan, I already know,” he said, feigning disdain. “Or maybe it's Wyatt. You haven't seen him yet."
"There’s only one guy I have my sights on." But then I reeled back. "Oh, yeah." I’d remembered that his brothers were in business with him. "You guys make up CJW LLC investments, don't you?" Cade. Jordan. Wyatt. His brothers were his silent partners.
No wonder Cade had more than enough capital to set up restaurant after restaurant in the poshest areas of North America. One of the investors was the biggest rising star to grace the planet. His last movie had paid him millions.
My curiosity spiked. "So, what happened between them? Candice and Jordan. Could you blame her for falling in love with him?"
He shook his head, amused. "He wasn't the actor you guys all know now. He was this tall, handsome, confident kid. I warned him to stay away, and I warned her about guys like him."
"And then what happened?"
"He took her virginity."
Cade's guttural roar had goose bumps forming on my skin. This time he wasn't smiling. "He took her virginity—my sixteen-year-old, virginal sister, who had never had a boyfriend." Cade's jaw tightened. "And I beat the living shit out of him."
I gasped. "Cade!"
"At one point, though, Candice threw her body on top of him, sheltered him from my punches, so I stopped. His face was a bloody mess, and he didn't get up from the floor. I was pretty sure I broke his nose, but when I started yelling at Candice, that's when he pushed to his feet and put her behind him." The visible tension in his arm tightened. "He said he loved her. That I could yell and beat the shit out of him, but I wasn't allowed to yell at her." He let out a subdued laugh. "And when I looked at him, then at her … my sister ... I
knew she loved him, too. She wasn't the little girl I was used to taking care of."
He released my hand and rubbed at the center of his chest, as though it hurt to think of her.
"I'm sorry, Cade. I'm sorry that you lost her." What he painted wasn't a drug addict, but a young girl who’d fallen in love. Though my curiosity to know more almost killed me, I didn't pry. I didn't enjoy seeing the same hurt on Cade's face every time he talked about her. I knew she’d been attacked, but I didn't know how that fit into the picture.
"We all loved her.” His voice was thick with emotion, and his eyes darkened with pain. “We all experienced loss. But she was taken away from us way before she killed herself."
His eyebrows pulled together, his gaze growing distant again. "She started using when she was assaulted and that ... that was the beginning of the end."
"Cade ..." I didn’t know what to say, how to comfort him.
"She had a stalker at school. Real messed up kid obsessed with her." The muscles in his forearms bulged as he gripped the steering wheel with both hands. "See, Candice was nice to everyone. Every single person. And he took her kindness to mean she was interested in him." He blew out a long-winded sigh, one that was filled with sorrowful emotion.
"Cade, you don't have to talk about this," I said.
He cleared his throat. "No, I do. I want to. I want you to know everything." He winced, reliving his past. "She shut down. Totally. We didn’t even know it happened. For weeks she seemed not all there. Numb. I didn't even realize that anything was wrong until Jordan came crying to me, a grown man breaking down and telling me she had broken up with him for no reason at all. It wasn't until Candice told Wyatt that we all knew what had happened."
A tear escaped me, but I tried to control it. He needed consoling—not me—but hearing it through his strained, shaky voice made me realize that their loss had affected them all. Though Candice had died years ago, the pain was still fresh, real.
His eyes didn't waver from the road, though his mind went back in time, back when tragedy hit. "Candice was strong. She wasn't the weak one between us. She didn't tell anyone because she didn't want anyone to bear that cross. Little did she know, we were all one unit. She hated Wyatt for telling us, but he had to." When the tightness in his eyes heightened, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. "Jordan lost it. Totally lost it. Happy go lucky since the day he moved in, and yet I'd never seen him angrier. He knew who it was. He was going to kill him and not care if he went to jail. I wanted the very same thing."
He let out a slow, shaky breath that shook his whole body. "But I didn't have to do anything. Jordan reached him first. When I found them, the bastard was barely breathing, an inch from seeing the devil who created him. I was going to finish him off. I was going to fucking kill him for taking the life out of Candice." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, they held a blazing faraway look in them. "But Wyatt stopped us. He was our voice of reason."
Reliving the moment was too much to take. He pulled the car to the side of the road and hung his head, his arms resting on the steering wheel. "We tried to save her. She said if we told our parents, she'd kill herself." His arms started to quake, his chest concaving.
"We tried everything. We'd take her out. Wyatt would cook her favorite meals. Jordan did everything short of bleeding out for her. I didn't even know she was using until Jordan found drugs. Hardcore drugs."
He scrubbed one heavy hand down his face. "She wanted to block it out. She wanted to forget it even happened. I understood. I did. To a point. Every day we were losing her. More and more she wasn't the same girl we used to love. Jordan begged me. He said he'd handle it, but I couldn't watch her dwindle to a fucking junkie." His voice cracked with torturous heartbreak, and I reached for his hand, tears coursing down my face like a waterfall. "I told my mom, and …”
His tone lacked strength, lacked life. "And the day that my parents confronted her, she was so high." His face crumbled in utter devastation. "My dad begged her … but she didn't want to give up her keys." His voice softened to above a whisper. "So, they got in the car with her." His face pinched with unbearable pain, a stabbing pain that I could physically feel. "And that's the last time I saw my family whole."
The ache in the back of my throat spread to my chest, and my tears gushed down my cheeks. I jumped on his lap, straddling him, legs on both sides of his waist, kissing his cheek and gripping him tightly to take the hurt away, wishing and wanting to consume his anguish.
He shivered against me, as though he was cold from his revelation, reliving his agony all over again by retelling what had happened. I now understood the magnitude of suffering he'd gone through. I understood why he'd been so angry when that man had attacked me at the club. I understood it all.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, framing his face with my hands. Because I was. Sorry for his loss, for his pain, for his family.
His eyes filled with depths of despair. "I had to tell them." His lip quivered. "We were barely kids and I ... we couldn't save her. I knew we couldn't."
His words only confirmed what I had thought—he blamed himself. He held himself responsible for his sister and his father's death. "It's not your fault." My voice was soft, yet firm because he had to know. "It's not, okay? You did what you had to do. You were barely kids."
I angled closer, forcing him to look at me. "It's not. How could you predict that freak accident was going to happen? How were you supposed to predict what she was going to do? You said it yourself. You guys were kids, crying for help. Pulling on your last strings of hope."
I wasn't getting through to him, so I pulled him close. "Baby ... It wasn't your fault." I framed his face and kissed his lips again to reassure him.
His voice was so quiet, so miniscule that I had to strain my ears to hear him. "I need you, Angel." He tapped his head against mine and held my hands that were framing his face. "So much."
This time, he met my lips and kissed me. Feather light. "I can feel you, but in any second ... it's like you're too good to be true and you'll disappear."
There was a spark of a definable emotion in his eyes—hope, longing, love. "Don't leave me." He sounded like a broken child, vulnerable and in need.
As another layer of Cade's toughness was stripped away, I felt closer in knowing the real him. The scariest part was it only confirmed that, although I didn't know what the future held, I knew that I loved him. I was irrevocably his.
And as I stared into his eyes, the dark gray eyes that held so much pain and yet so much life, I knew I wasn't going anywhere.
"You're never going to get rid of me,” I promised him. “I'm staying right here."
Chapter 22
I awoke to the bright sunlight and the breeze of the warm air on my face. Rows and rows of cornfields were laid out before me.
"Morning, beautiful." A deep, sexy voice awoke every nerve in my body, making me straighten in my seat.
"Morning." I glanced around and admired the endless rows of golden corn husks in the horizon and long grass speckled with wildflowers. "Are we there yet?"
"Almost. I stopped to take a little nap, which delayed us a bit." He lifted a playful eyebrow.
After he turned down the corner, the scenery transformed. Boarded up shops and graffiti on buildings lined both sides of the street. The farther we drove, the shadier my surroundings became. Overgrown weeds spanned neighborhood front lawns, bars on windows, boarded up homes.
"Not the best of neighborhoods, but Mom didn't want to sell the place we grew up in, even though we could afford to buy her anything she wanted."
"It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” I said, half-joking, half-serious. Rosendell was clean and wealthy, and aside from the local soup kitchen volunteer event, I wasn't exposed to a lot, but still, if I needed to, I was sure I could handle my own.
"We're not in Rosendell anymore, Angel. This is the hood like you've never seen it. My brothers and I, we've earned a lot of respect in these parts. No one touches us or the
house or messes with anything that's mine, and since you're mine ..." He threw a playful glance my way. "Are you mine?"
I leaned over and kissed his cheek without hesitation. "Exclusively and forever yours."
"Well then, no one will be bothering you, either." He pulled into a driveway, and as I stepped out of the car, I took in the quaint house, with its white windowsills accenting the gray siding and the white wooden fence that caged it in. The lawn was manicured with lilies and roses and hostas lining the pathway to the door. It seemed very well-maintained like it didn't belong on the block of outdated houses with barred windows.
"Ready?" Cade asked. "You get to sleep in my childhood bed where I filled all my teenage dreams with Adriana Lima."
I grimaced. "Okay, gross."
"But Adriana has nothing on Angelica Armstrong." His eyes danced with humor and he laughed.
"Mmhmm."
He popped the trunk, then gripped my fingers fiercely.
"So, I get to meet the infamous Jordan Ryder." When his jaw tensed, I added, "But Jordan Ryder has nothing on Cade Ryder."
He looked cautiously pleased. "And that's what I like to hear."
People were out on the street. Some wearing bandanas, others wearing the same distinguishable colors as though they belonged together. Cade made eye contact, tipped up his chin to the men and the women congregated outside and kept walking toward the house.
As soon as I entered the house, I let out a silent yet overwhelming huge breath out of my system.
Cade dropped his bag on the floor. "You're okay." He pulled me in and kissed the top of my head. "I'd never let anything happen to you."
I reveled in his hold, enjoying the way his lean body pressed against mine.
Hardwood floors gleamed from the sun shining through the windows. The walls were painted a neutral cream, and pictures hung on the walls, decorating the room in matching dark mahogany frames.
Cade reached for my hand and pulled me deeper inside. "Where’s everyone at?"
"In here," a deep voice rumbled from the kitchen. Laughter carried us from our destination in the family room and into the kitchen.
