by Lissa Kasey
Chapter Fourteen
IT WAS after 1:00 a.m. when Kade finally appeared in bed next to me. I was in a fitful sleep. After spending the evening reading hundreds of articles about things Kade had supposedly done in his youth, my head spun with ideas and fears I couldn’t squash. How well did I really know him? And each time I fell asleep, I’d be jolted awake by another thought that was better off not voiced. This time I woke to find him spooned around me. I turned in his arms to face him.
“Sleep, baby. I didn’t mean to wake you,” he murmured.
Why was he back so late? And he smelled like Tomas’s cologne.
I rolled out of his arms and the bed instantly.
He groaned and struggled to reach the light.
I blinked back tears as it flooded the room.
“Ollie? What’s wrong?” He had stripped down to just a jock, as was usual. He looked tired, but normal, not like he’d been ravaged by our office assistant while thumbing his nose at me not knowing his secrets. No, that was an irrational thought. Kade had never given me reason to doubt him. It was his family who put those doubts in my head, and my overactive brain that kept telling me the only reason a great guy like him was with me was because he was hiding some horrible skeleton in his closet.
He struggled to the edge of the bed. He was getting good at functioning with only one leg. He even had his cane within reach, so he was up and pulling me against him before I could finish sorting through the chaos in my head. “Shh, baby. Don’t cry. It’s okay. I’m right here.”
He kissed away tears I hadn’t even realized were falling. “I don’t even know why I’m crying,” I told him. And I didn’t. Exhaustion, maybe. Fear. I was such a mess.
“You’re tired. Come back to bed.”
“You smell like Tomas,” I whispered.
He frowned. “We were in the car together for hours.”
“Mhmm.”
He let out a long sigh. “How about you go back to bed and I’ll go shower?”
I shrugged, trying to ignore the hurt in his eyes. “You don’t have to.”
He let me go and headed toward the bathroom. “Go back to sleep, Oliver. I’ll try not to wake you when I get back into bed.” He vanished into the bathroom and shut the door firmly behind him.
I turned off the lamp, dropped down onto the bed, and rolled over to hug my spare pillow. My heart hurt, my lungs squeezed tightly, and my head throbbed. I couldn’t help the tears or the choking sob that fell from my lips. I was just so tired. Tomorrow I’d apologize, we’d talk, and he’d forgive me for being stupid. Tomorrow.
IN THE morning I woke to an empty bed and another headache. There was a note on the nightstand that said Kade had gone into work early because he had a midday appointment for rehab, so he’d be taking a long lunch before returning to the office. My work schedule was minimal. Contracts were done. The few personal responses I had to craft only took a few minutes.
I made my way to the kitchen for tea while wincing at the noise still coming from the second floor. Just how long was this renovation going to take? What was Jacob doing while all this noise was going on? The answer was that he was sitting in my kitchen, his noise reduction headphones over his ears, playing a match-three game of bursting flowers on his tablet.
He pointed toward the fridge. “Breakfast is on the top shelf. Eat.” He spoke louder than he needed to, likely due to the headphones.
I opened the fridge and stared at a plate of almond butter and strawberry minimuffins. It was one of Kade’s favorite recipes. Just how early had Kade gotten up? Or had Jacob made them? I grabbed two and made my way back to the table. Jacob had a notepad and pen. He shoved it toward me as I sat down.
What? was all I wrote.
“What did you do to piss off Kade?” Jacob said.
I blinked at him. “Nothing.” Though the bedtime encounter was still on my mind, his long list of supposed crimes took forefront. I just needed time to sort through all of it. If he’d been home and I could have roused him with slow lovemaking, maybe we’d have talked about it and he’d have been able to ease my doubts. But him leaving before I woke stung. Why hadn’t he at least woken me for a kiss? Sure I’d been stupid last night, but Kade wasn’t really the type to hold a grudge. And I’d have apologized if he’d given me a chance.
“Which is why he left at like quarter after seven like his ass was on fire?”
“I was asleep,” I defended myself. “He didn’t even get home until after one. Then came to bed smelling like Tomas.”
Jacob took one of his headphones off. “What?” He flinched when banging came from above. “Write it down, dammit.” He put the headphone back over his ear. “I should find a hotel. Would be quieter than all this racket.”
You can leave anytime, I wrote on the notepad and underlined anytime several times.
He gave me a droll glare. “So what did you say before?”
I wrote Kade, Tomas and one A.M.
He let out a long sigh. “He’s not cheating on you, O. He’s been home less than a week.”
What does one have to do with the other? I wrote.
“He loves you. Not some twink who works in your office.”
And who took him to work? I asked though I already knew the answer.
He scowled at me. “Tomas picked him up.”
Of course.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? You just get him back and now you’re accusing him of cheating? Can you wait until the bedsores from having his ass tied down by his parents heal before you whip him?”
Fuck you, I scribbled on the page.
“No way. You couldn’t pay me to put up with your poor-me bullshit.”
My jaw dropped open.
“Yeah, you heard me.” Apparently the entire house did because the noise from upstairs had vanished as well. “Stop being such a whiny bitch. Either you love him or you don’t. Don’t string him along, playing like you’re the one suffering when he’s the one that has to heal. He lost a fucking leg. He spent more than a month being drugged with mind-altering drugs by his family. Don’t tell me you have it harder than he has.”
I yanked his headphones off. “Get out of my house.”
“Truth hurt, O?”
“Out!” God, I hated Jacob. Why had I ever let him back into my life?
“I really hope you pull your head out of your ass, Ollie. That man loves you. Even when you play the damsel in need of rescue only to turn around and smack him for it.”
“I hate you,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Sounds like life as usual to me.” He got up and made his way upstairs. The noise resumed, and I was suddenly angry at everyone and everything. Kade for making me doubt him. Jacob for always judging me. Ty and Will for treating me like a child. Tomas for making goo-goo eyes at Kade. And Kade for not needing me. He’d come home after experiencing things that would have had me crying in a corner, only to roll back into life like it had been nothing but a vacation to the beach. It made me feel weak and angry. Damn, I was fucked up.
I made my way upstairs and packed a bag. There were things I needed to do. People to talk to. A mystery to solve. That was something I could focus on for a while. If Kade wouldn’t provide details, then I’d find them myself. I left a note on the fridge for him, asking him to look after Newt, as I’d be gone a few days, but said nothing about where I was going or why. I needed time, though I wasn’t sure for what yet. I’d had over a month away from Kade, but somehow I didn’t think this was as much about him as it was about me. My head was messed up. Maybe it always had been. With Kade around it had been easier to ignore, but I couldn’t use him as a crutch when he was struggling to stand up on his own.
The drive was longer than I remembered, though mostly headache free. My phone started ringing not long after I’d reached the border of LA. It got so annoying I shut it off. The trek through town took forever, and by the time I was finally out of Los Angeles and on my way to Carlsbad, I was tired, lonely, and a headache began to march it
s way across my left temple.
I stopped at the first hotel I could find near Carlsbad, though I barely remembered getting there, checking in, and falling into bed. It was after two in the morning when I woke, headache free, and tried to remember where the fuck I was and how I’d gotten there.
I grabbed my phone and turned it on, only to be rewarded with almost three-dozen voicemails, more than fifty texts, and a bazillion missed calls. I sighed. A lot of them were from Kade, but some were from Tomas, Jacob, even Britney and Will. It was too late to call them anyway, so I put the phone on the nightstand and rolled back over.
The phone rang. I groaned and grabbed it. Kade.
I gulped, but answered.
“Where are you? No never mind. I know where you are. I can track your phone. Did you forget that? What are you doing, Ollie?” Kade demanded. He sounded tired, frustrated, and angry. It wasn’t a tone I was used to hearing from him. My Kade was always calm, collected, and understanding. I hated his family so much for changing him.
“Investigating.”
“Investigating what?”
I said nothing. I didn’t want him to feel ashamed or afraid of his past. What if he had done some of the things he’d been accused of and he just didn’t want to tell me for fear that I’d hate him for it? I’d already ruled out a handful of things because he’d been hospitalized at those times, but I’d still research them and interview people to see if I could get a clue as to who had smeared his name. Maybe none of it was related at all, and it was just a list of incidents his father could piece together to convince his family that it was okay to imprison the son who embarrassed him. Or maybe I’d find something truly horrible like he’d had something to do with Nathan’s death.
“Oliver.”
I hated when he said my name rather than the nickname, which often sounded like a caress on his lips.
“I love you,” I said, wishing for a million things to fix us instantly. I really did love him. Ached for him most days. But did that mean I could pretend his silence didn’t bother me? No. Kade was the one who often reminded me that a relationship took two people. He always prodded me to talk, share with him whatever was in my head, yet he never did the same.
He let out a loud breath. “Then why aren’t you home in bed?”
“Why did you leave without waking me this morning?”
“Because I was mad. You practically accused me of fucking Tomas.”
“I didn’t.” I’d only sort of implied it, and that had been in a sleepy haze.
“You know I wouldn’t,” he growled. “You make me so mad sometimes. I love you so much, but I hate the way you shut me out. It’s like you keep looking for a reason to break up with me. Is that what you want?”
“No.” And that was the truth because I was madly in love with him.
“Then why do you push me away?”
But he’d done it first. “You didn’t want me to attend therapy with you. Either of them. You’re taking Tomas to investigate with you after you know how hard I worked to get my license. I’m not the one shutting you out, Kade.”
He was silent long enough that I had to pull the phone away from my ear to make sure we were still connected. “Can you tell me when something I do makes you feel like shit? Is that too much to ask?” he finally said. “How you perceive things is not always the same way I do.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“First, I didn’t want you to attend my therapy because I didn’t want you to see me weak or in pain. I was pretty sure I’d break down into a crying baby with Jolanda—which I did—and didn’t think you needed to see that. And I’m trying to give you more time to do what you love, which I thought was designing, rather than spending time at the office. None of that was to shut you out or separate you from me.”
Of course that confession made me feel like crap, but, “Shouldn’t those things be my choice?”
“You said you were okay with it.”
“Because I thought it’s what you wanted.” Not because it was what I wanted.
He sighed. “But how am I going to know if you don’t tell me? Talk to me? I’m not a fucking mind reader, Ollie. And my head isn’t on right some days. Sometimes I still think I’m strapped to that fucking hospital bed and this is all just an elaborate dream. I fell asleep while on a stakeout with Tomas last night, and he just let me sleep while he ran around like you used to. He didn’t even have a Taser on him. He could have been hurt. It was Ty calling to complain that his boyfriend was missing that woke me to realize Tomas wasn’t in the car, and it wasn’t like I could go chasing him down.” He sounded very tired. “Then I come home to you and accusations. I’m tired, Ollie. Depressed. Unstable. You deserve better than what I can give you right now, but I don’t want to let go. Don’t make me.”
I swallowed back tears. “I don’t know how to help you.” I didn’t know how to help me.
“Being here would be a nice start.”
“But you won’t talk to me.”
“I’m not ready. Can you give me time?”
My heart hurt. I wanted to, but I was so afraid of so many things.
“They didn’t try to reprogram me this time, Ollie. They just kept telling me you were dead. Over and over. I swear I saw you sometimes and then they’d remind me that you were dead. I just need you here. Need to know where you are, so that when I wake up each morning I know you’re not dead,” Kade said. “The rest I can’t share yet. It’s too hard.”
But I couldn’t go home yet. There were doubts in my head. Fears I needed to alleviate and truths I had to find. The seed of discord had been planted and was digging itself deep into my gut. “I’ll be home in a few days,” I said. Kade had lost a leg, but it was me who needed to find my feet. “There’s stuff in my head I need to work out. Answers I need.”
He was silent a minute, like he could somehow hear all the things I wasn’t saying. “Don’t do this, Ollie. Please.”
“Don’t do what? Look into your past? You said you think your family killed my brother. You’ve not brought it up once since your return. You never shared with me what you found out about Nathan’s death. Just said it looked pretty cut-and-dry. Always you have excuses about protecting me, but I’m a grown man. I know the world sometimes hurts. You keeping things from me is more painful than suspecting that Nathan was murdered. Don’t you get that?”
“Ollie…,” Kade began.
But I cut him off. “I’m tired of never being good enough. Of no one ever letting me stand up on my own. It’s my fault. I know I let people think I need to be babied, dependent, protected. But I’m not a child.”
“I’m not trying to treat you like a child.”
“So what are you saving me from by not telling me anything?” Maybe it wasn’t me he was trying to save. “What are you hiding?” I asked, knowing it was a horrible thing to say. It was his right to tell me or not. Should have been his choice, but him not telling me felt like an admission of distrust. “Why don’t you ever talk about any of it? Your time serving, the friends who died overseas, what your parents did, all the things they accused you of? Is any of it true? How can I know and trust you if you don’t talk to me? The more I learn, the less I know about you.”
“Isn’t that my choice?” he threw back at me. “To tell you what I feel is need to know and forget the rest? My life wasn’t rainbows and kittens, Ollie. Why do you need to know my past to be my future?”
“I need to know if it’s dangerous to me.”
“What are you saying?”
What was I saying? That I thought he was some sort of monster? That he was crazy or a sociopath? That he was using me? Maybe he would just break my heart. I could probably survive that, though it’d truly kill whatever was left in me that believed in love.
On the flip side, if his family killed my brother, what was to stop them from hurting me? Or taking Kade again and doing something so much worse to him? It might not just be Kade who was a danger to me. “If your family killed Nathan,
what’s to stop them from hurting me?”
“I would never let them hurt you.”
“You couldn’t stop them from kidnapping you and holding you hostage for almost two months.”
Again the silence stretched between us. “What do you want me to say?”
I wanted answers, but just as always, he hesitated to give them. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know a lot of things, Ollie.” His tone was angry again.
“But maybe it’s time I learn. I’ve waited months for you to talk to me, open up, and treat me like you trust me. Even with the painful stuff in your past. But you keep chugging forward like nothing happened, and I feel like I’m a weight holding you back. I don’t want to hold you back. I love you too much to be a burden.”
“My past doesn’t define me any more than yours defines you.”
“But it does. I wouldn’t be what I am now without Nathan.”
“And not all of that is good, Ollie,” Kade said tightly.
Yes. There were things I recognized now that I could look back and tell they’d damaged me. His overprotectiveness. The need to always please him. The way he sheltered me and kept me from getting close to others. Britney had been my only close friend for years simply because Nathan hadn’t approved of anyone else. I was naturally distrustful of everyone. Even Kade had been kept at a distance by Nathan. Rarely had Kade ever been allowed to be alone with me. The few occasions when I’d been young and Nathan had to go out, leaving Kade behind, the neighbors had checked in hourly. At the time my brother’s suspicious behavior hadn’t seemed out of the norm. Stifling as I got older, but standard operating procedure for him. Jacob had despised the way Nathan always demanded to know where I was. We’d had more fights than I could recall about my brother’s place in my life. Even the tiny things Nathan had done, like requiring me to eat at certain times of the day or call him when I was working to check in. All of those things made me paranoid. Used to being watched and controlled. Most people didn’t live their lives under a protective umbrella to shelter them from pain. I wasn’t used to being unmonitored and allowed to make my own decisions. It was why when something large happened to disrupt my normal, I instantly fell apart.
